Gone to Ground Page 2

  No, he did not have any classes that day.

  Just as well, Will thought, all those students missing a lost hour of vital education. More time to lounge around in bed, sad bastards.

  He rang back the department administrator and learned that prior to taking this post, Bryan had done some part-time teaching at De Montfort University in Leicester. Yes, the woman said, her accent pleasantly northern, not East Anglian at all, she believed Leicester was where Mr. Bryan had lived before. As for a previous address, well, it was, of course, outside normal university policy, but in the circumstances if she could call him back...

  Within ten minutes, Will had Bryan's old address in the Clarendon Park area of Leicester and very soon after that the name of the dentist with whom he had been a patient. Or should that nowadays, he wondered, be customer? No matter. A copy of Stephen Bryan's dental records would be put in the post that afternoon, guaranteed delivery by 9 a.m. the following day.

  Will rose from his desk and stretched his arms, thought about fetching coffee from the machine, changed his mind and sat back down, reaching for the phone.

  "Mr. Bryan," he asked the administrator, "you don't happen to know if he was married or anything do you?"

  "Oh, no," the woman said, something of a smile in her voice, "I don't think he was anything like that at all."

  "He's gay, then," Helen said. "That's what you think?"

  They were in the police station car park, standing close to Helen's VW, the end of a long day. Headlights were showing clearly now on most of the passing cars. The moon like a thumbprint, faint in the sky.

  "Don't you?" Will said.

  "Based on what? One photograph? A little bit of innuendo down the telephone?"

  "When you first saw him ... the body ... it was what you thought then."

  "Yes."

  "And why?"

  Helen shrugged. "The scene ... the force with which he'd been bludgeoned."

  "Bludgeoned?" Will raised an eyebrow. "That's a good old-fashioned word."

  "You know me, Will. Just an old-fashioned girl."

  He grinned. "Home by eight, a little gentle needlepoint before Ovaltine and an early night."

  "That kind of thing."

  "Not what I've heard."

  "Oh, Will," fluttering her lashes, "you'll never know."

  "Can we," Will said, "get back to the matter in hand?"

  Helen grinned. "In hand, certainly."

  "A lovers' quarrel, that was your suggestion."

  "Or the obvious."

  "Which is what?"

  "A bit of rough trade. Bryan goes out cruising, picks up some bloke and brings him home. Things turn nasty round about act four."

  "You don't think that's a bit of a cliché?"

  "Clichés are clichés for a reason."

  Will nodded. Sexuality, Gender and Identity: perhaps there were a few lessons to be learned there. "The wallet turn up?" he asked.

  "Not so far."

  "Credit cards? Cash?"

  Helen shook her head.

  "The laptop would be too much to hope for."

  "Wouldn't it just?"

  "Robbery the motive, then, you think?" Will asked. "Or a little add-on after things went wrong?"

  Helen pointed toward the backseat. "Maybe we'll know more once I've been through all those. Letters and diaries from the house."

  "You want me to take half?"

  "No need. Go home and be nice to Lorraine and your kids."

  Halfway across to his car, Will turned. "First thing tomorrow, if those dental records match, we're going to have to track down the family, next of kin."

  "I know."

  As he waited for a gap in the traffic he could see her behind the wheel of her VW, lighting another cigarette.

  ***

  Will drew the car slowly onto the gravel, locked it, and walked toward the house, the downstairs curtains already drawn against the dark. Lorraine was sitting in the half-light, the sound of the Cowboy Junkies, languorous and slightly spaced-out, coming low from the stereo; Jake was curled on the settee beside her, his head in her lap, the baby held high against her shoulder, sleeping.

  For a moment, Will thought his heart had stopped.

  Lorraine turned toward him in slow surprise, and, as he reached down to take the baby from her, his fingers grazed the back of her neck and then the baby's face was against his, the familiar musky smell of her breath, the bewildering smallness of her bones.

  Lorraine lifted Jake, the boy barely waking, and together they carried the children up to bed.

  "You know how long it has been," Will said, unhooking the fastening at the back of her blouse, "since we made love?"

  "A long time?"

  Will laughed. "Unless you count a couple of assists."

  She dug her elbow sharply into his ribs and he cried out louder than was necessary and rolled back on the bed, taking her with him, her dark hair, as their mouths met, falling across her face and his.

  Chapter 2

  STEPHEN BRYAN'S PARENTS HAD MOVED FROM CHESTER-field to a new-build bungalow on the outskirts of Kirkby Stephen, pitched perfectly between Swaledale and the Lakes. His father, early retired from a medium-grade administrative post with Derbyshire County Council, was only too happy to potter in his garden, slowly knocking it into shape; a former midwife, his mother now volunteered at the Citizens' Advice Bureau three days a week. Still fit, they walked a good ten to twelve miles each weekend, rain or shine.

  The request had come from the Cambridgeshire Force mid-morning, and the local sergeant had waited until there was a woman officer free from other duties to accompany him. Never a task to be relished and this one, by the sound of it, worse than most.

  Delaying the inevitable, the sergeant parked at the end of street.

  Ted Bryan was digging a trench beyond last year's set of onions; his wife, Grace, sitting, coat on, reading a Margaret Forster novel in the weak afternoon sun. As the two officers passed through the side gate, the book slipped from her lap, unnoticed, to the ground.

  "Ted, Ted..." She called her husband's name, and, resting one foot on the spade, he looked around. "Oh, Ted..."

  "Perhaps we should go inside?" the sergeant suggested, as gently as he could.

  Reaching out, Grace Bryan gripped the sleeve of his uniform just above the wrist. "It's Lesley, isn't it? Something's happened. Or is it Stephen? No, it's Stephen. Our Stephen. There's been an accident. Ted, there's been an accident."

  "Mrs. Bryan," said the constable, stepping forward, "let's go inside."

  "Just tell me, is he all right? He is all right?"

  Reading the answer in the young constable's eyes, the older woman's face collapsed inward, like a balloon sucked short of air.

  Ted Bryan looked into the sergeant's face, then turned away. "Bastard!" he said. "Bastard! Bastard!" Driving the spade hard into the ground.

  Helen Walker had begun reading Stephen Bryan's diaries the previous evening while eating her supper—a cheese and tomato pizza pried from the freezer and then microwaved, sliced into manageable sections and washed down with a glass of quotidian chardonnay. Not finding anything either salacious or especially revealing, she had shifted her attention to a batch of some thirty or so letters, stretching back several years and ranging from the sheerly practical—an acceptance by the gas company that he had been overcharged for the first quarter in his new accommodation—through the academic to the more intimate and personal—family, lovers, friends. Helen had saved these for last; poured a second glass of wine, ran a bath.

  There was some lengthy correspondence, entertaining and chatty, sent from New Zealand by someone whom Helen thought at first might be an old girlfriend, but later realized was Stephen's sister, Lesley; a letter of congratulation from his mother, sent on the occasion of his new university appointment, her happiness allayed by an anxiety that was never spelled out; and finally, some half a dozen love letters, the erotic content in places detailed to the point where Helen felt she was being told more about the specifics of man-on-man byplay than she really wanted to know.

  Back downstairs and wrapped in an oversize white toweling dressing gown, the television switched on though she was neither watching nor listening, Helen smoked a final cigarette of the evening, drank instant coffee, and went back through what she'd read, noting down those names and dates that seemed, on early sight, to be important. Between midnight and the quarter hour she felt her eyes closing, pushed her notebook aside, turned the key in the front door, switched out the last of the lights, and went to bed.

  Will had gone for a run that morning, pulling on an old Simple Minds T-shirt and some shorts on the landing, then lacing up his running shoes in the dark of the downstairs hall; as he stepped out through the front door, he slipped an orange reflective vest with Day-Glo stripes over his shoulders: no sense getting sideswiped by some half-awake driver who failed to pick him out in the slow-rising light.

  The air was raw in his mouth as he went beyond the furthest edge of the village and turned off along the fen. Mist hung over the blackened water and drifted, wraithlike, above the rutted surface of the fields. It would be another quarter of a mile or so before the knots disappeared from his legs and he could relax into the rhythm, lock off all thought of what he was doing—the need to put one foot down after the other, the slight ache in his side—and let whatever thoughts slip through him, higgledy-piggledy, as they may. The first blows, had they been struck in the shower or earlier? Will saw a man turning under the full spray of water, eyes squinched almost shut, hair splayed out flat upon the dome of his head. He would have felt the impact of the first blow before realizing what was happening. And then another: another. More than a fist. Something hard, metallic, possibly. A hammer? Like a leviathan, the bulk of Ely Cathedral r
ose out of the mist.

  Mark McKusick was in good spirits. Confirmation had come through that morning that a £17,000 order from an American couple for equipping their Chester Street house had been confirmed. Both academics, they had taken the house on a long lease, and had wanted the best audio and DVD technology their not inconsiderable salaries could buy. McKusick had first convinced them of the wisdom of investing in a fully integrated setup, then demonstrated the beauties of a plasma surround sound system with adjacent Artisan Acoustic speakers supported by a subwoofer, and compatible speakers in all of the other main rooms. Everything controlled by a simple Philips Pronto universal touch screen remote. Looked great, sounded great, cost no more than they could afford, and in nine months time he'd be getting back to them about upgrading to a superior surround sound amplifier and hard disc soundserver.

  He was still counting the prospective commission on that little lot, when the buzzer sounded over the main door and a few moments later one of the other assistants put his head round the door of the multi-room department that was Mark McKusick's domain.

  "Asking for you."

  McKusick strolled out into the body of the shop, sizing up the couple at the centre of the floor. A man in his mid- to late thirties, tall, wearing a dark suit that had seen better days, tie loosely knotted, blue shirt, his brown hair in need of a trim; the woman with him was five or six years younger, black trousers and a black T-shirt under a waist-length leather jacket, little obvious makeup, thick dark hair cut short and not without a certain style: no way they were going to be spending more than a thousand, two tops, and then only if the man could get away with keeping the exact cost secret.

  "Morning. Mark McKusick. How can I help?"

  Both handshakes were firm, businesslike, her grip, if anything, the stronger; their eyes stayed focused on his.

  "Detective Inspector Grayson," Will said, showing his warrant card. "This is Detective Sergeant Walker. Is there somewhere we can talk?"

  No sale then, McKusick thought. It wasn't until they were seated in the smaller of the two demonstration rooms that it occurred to him this might be about something other than some stolen hi-fi.

  "Stephen Bryan," Will said, "you're a friend?"

  "Yes."

  "Know him well?"

  "Yes, yes. Why? Why do you want to know?"

  "When did you last see him?" Helen Walker asked.

  "Stephen?"

  "Yes, Stephen."

  Something low in McKusick's gut was starting to squirm. "Not ... not for a while now. A good few weeks, I suppose, a month or so. I'm not sure."

  "But if you're such good friends..."

  "We ... well, we decided to stop seeing one another, so much of one another anyway." McKusick's throat was dry and he could hear, louder than usual, the sound of his own breathing.

  "You had a row."

  "No."

  "A falling out."

  "No."

  Will was sitting with his hands held steady, fingers lightly interlocked. Helen's elbows were resting on the arms of her chair, relaxed; she was having trouble marrying the writer of those sexually explicit letters with the man in front of them. But then, with sex you never could tell.

  "What's happened?" McKusick said. "Something's happened."

  They looked back at him without expression, their gaze unfaltering.

  "You don't know?" Will said.

  "Don't know what?"

  "Yesterday morning, Stephen Bryan was found murdered."

  McKusick recoiled as if he'd been thumped in the chest; the colour blanched from his face. Head turned aside, he leaned low over the side of the chair and retched, but aside from spittle and a few thin strings of saliva, nothing emerged. His eyes stung but as yet there were no tears.

  "Here," Helen said, handing him a couple of tissues from her bag.

  "How...?" McKusick began, then stopped.

  "He was beaten," Will said, with a slight softening of his voice.

  The pain in McKusick's chest was real, something pressing against his breast bone, against his ribs. It was becoming more and more difficult to breathe. "Where? Where did it happen?"

  "In his own home."

  McKusick's cry was a wail of pain. Falling forward onto his knees, he began punching himself in the face with his fists.

  "Don't," Will said, catching hold of McKusick's wrists. "Don't."

  Helen left the room and when she returned with a cup of water, Will was bending over McKusick, holding his arms and talking to him quietly, earning trust.

  "Drink this," Helen said, and Will stood away.

  McKusick took the drink in both hands.

  "We'll need to talk to you," Helen said. "At the station."

  McKusick looked at her vaguely and then nodded his head.

  "We should go now," Will said a few moments later, offering to help him to his feet.

  "I shall just have to explain ... my boss..."

  "Of course."

  The early morning mist had cleared leaving a wan sky; a breeze, slight for the time of year, barely disturbed the trees, yet McKusick was shivering as they led him to the waiting car.

  That early in the enquiry, detectives would be working as close to round the clock as motivation and overtime would allow: uniformed officers would be helping with house-to-house, and civilian staff would be setting up files, starting to cross-reference information and accessing it on computers. As senior investigating officer, it was Will's job, assisted by the office manager, to establish priorities and ensure that all viable leads were followed up. Each move, each policy decision he agreed to or set in motion would be carefully recorded.

  For some, this was an invitation to slip behind a desk and demonstrate powers of organization, delegation, play mastermind. But for Will, the crux of what he did was still what happened out on the street, confronting suspects face to face, the heat, the heart of the action. When necessary, he knew Helen to be the most capable of deputies, but together, he felt, they could achieve more than they could apart.

  And these first days were crucial. Without results, the adrenaline would cease to race and the number of officers involved in the investigation would be cut back; not so long after that, someone else would likely be brought in to look over Will's shoulder and pick out what he'd missed, point out where the investigation had gone awry.

  He didn't want that to happen.

  Detailed results of the postmortem had been promised for the following morning, along with the first results from samples taken at the scene; until then officers were following up on the names garnered from Stephen Bryan's diaries or letters, together with those of any friends or close colleagues mentioned by either his parents or the university.

  Which left Mark McKusick...

  "What did you think of the show?" Helen asked once they were back at the station and McKusick was safely out of earshot.

  "You think that's what it was, a show?"

  "Punching himself in the face."

  "He was upset..."

  "I'll say."

  "Distraught."

  "Careful to miss his eyes and nose, you notice that?"

  "He'd just heard someone he cared for had been murdered, what do you expect?"

  "Something more than play acting."

  "If that's what it was."

  A smile crossed Helen's face. "You ever do drama at school?"

  "Not if I could help it. Why?"

  "I was the White Rabbit once in Alice in Wonderland. This born-again hippie drama teacher reckoned it was all some kind of druggie fantasy, dreamed up by poor old Lewis Carroll on laudanum or whatever the Victorians used to get spaced out on. So that was our school show. Strobe lights and patchouli and lots of stoned Sixties music. You know, Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane. One pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small."

  "Grace who?" Will said.

  "Never mind. I was fourteen years old, never done drugs in my life. The occasional drag on someone else's spliff aside. But I had that white rabbit spinning through an amphetamine trance so convincingly, on the second night a drug counselor came up after the show and practically begged me to make an appointment."

  "And your point is?"

  "Maybe it takes a faker to tell a fake."