The Echo Man, page 3
“Nav Sharma,” he says, going to offer his hand, but Griffin is already walking away, his head bowed, back hunched.
Nav turns back to Jess, sitting down in the chair the detective has just vacated. He takes her hands in his.
“Nav, have you seen Alice?” she asks.
“Yes. She’s awake but still on oxygen, confused, with a nasty headache.” He smiles, but she can see the lost night’s sleep and the worry on his face. “They’re a great team on the ICU. She’s in the best possible hands. And I know my goddaughter—she’s strong. She’s a fighter.”
“And Mom and Dad?”
“They’re looking after her.” Jess feels marginally better, knowing her parents are there with her daughter. She imagines her mom, gently stroking Alice’s hair. Her dad bustling around, ensuring everything is taken care of.
“And how are you?” Nav repeats softly.
His kindness starts her crying again, and he reaches forward, hugging her in a tight embrace. She leans into him. He smells of antiseptic and a long night on the wards. He slowly lets her go.
“I’m sorry about Patrick,” he says. “He was … he …” And he stops talking, his mouth turned down, eyes closed. She smiles weakly at her friend, squeezing his hand. He takes a long breath in, pulling himself together before turning his attention back to her. She knows Nav is more upset than he’ll let on now, but his professionalism takes over.
“Do they know—” Nav asks, but Jess cuts him off.
“Of course they know, Nav. It’s written all over my medical records.” She snaps more than she intends, and instantly feels guilty. There’s a pause, and she knows Nav is looking at her. She doesn’t like being the person he is seeing. Weak, sick. Pathetic.
Jess looks down, the soggy tissue still clutched in her fingers. She notices the black under her nails, lines of dirt from the fire etched into her skin.
“And who was that?” he says eventually.
“Police.”
He turns and looks in the direction Griffin has gone, but the corridors are empty.
“They won’t let me see Alice. They think I …” Jess’s voice fades as Nav nods, his expression grave.
“I know. Your mom said.”
“You’ll look after her, won’t you?” Jess asks, feeling her eyelids start to droop. Her body is weary, needing the energy to recover.
She takes comfort in Nav being next to her. He’s her oldest friend, since they met at their local dive bar at university. Nav had been part of a group of testosterone-fueled, ritual-drinking medical students. Jess had been on a quiet night out with friends. He’d slurred an apology before puking on her shoes.
The next day—somehow—he’d tracked her down, presenting her with a brand new pair of sneakers. It was an unexpected gesture, but something fully in keeping with the way Nav was. Polite, posh, preppy. She’s always trusted him with her life. And now, she trusts him with her daughter’s.
She closes her eyes.
“I promise,” she hears Nav say as her mind slips away into nothingness.
CHAPTER
5
CARA NOTICES THE whispers from her colleagues as soon as she and Deakin walk into the police station. Two young women. Murdered. Heads removed. Cara knows her every step will be watched to see how she handles the case; she’s guessing there’s already a pot going for time before first arrest. Not that anyone will admit publicly to something so callous.
“Elliott!” Cara hears a bellow from the other side of the room, and turns to see her detective chief superintendent heading toward her.
DCS Marsh is a man under pressure, surviving off a surfeit of nicotine and caffeine, with the pallor to match. His face is gray, hollows under his cheekbones, with a grubby mug in one hand. He takes a swig from it now, winces, then instructs the nearest DC to fetch him a fresh cup.
He gestures for Cara to follow him into her office, then rests his nonexistent bum on her desk, crossing his arms.
“I hear the owner of the car is a dead end,” he says, getting straight to the point.
Cara takes her coat off and sits down on her chair.
“Has an alibi for last night,” she confirms, repeating what Shenton had told them on the drive back from the crime scene. “But the families have been notified, and the boyfriend of one of the girls is waiting downstairs.”
Their DC had been working hard, and sure enough, the two victims were students. Clever, hard-working, diligent women with bright futures. And families in different parts of the country.
She doesn’t like to admit it, but Cara is glad it wasn’t her that had to deliver the terrible news. She’s done it too many times. Ashen-faced parents, distraught husbands, crying wives. There is no good way to tell someone their loved one has been brutally murdered.
“Good. See what you can get out of him.” Marsh frowns, looking through the open door at the whiteboard in the incident room. Shenton has stuck photos of the victims along the top, their names written in black marker pen. Marisa Perez. Ann Lees. They smile out, oblivious of their futures, snapshots taken from their student IDs.
“Anything on CCTV?”
Cara points to the computer at which Shenton’s now sitting, Deakin leaning over his shoulder. “On it.”
Marsh nods. “Keep me updated,” he says.
Cara follows him into the incident room, then watches him walk back to his own office. As he goes, he takes the new mug of coffee, almost downing the scalding hot liquid in one gulp on his way out.
“Deaks,” she calls, and he turns. She tilts her head toward the door. Follow me, she’s saying. Interview time.
* * *
Rick Baker is young and fashionable and nervous. Boyfriend of a few months, and clearly a fan of the gym. They’ve placed him in an interview room, where he’s been waiting for the last half hour, sweating through his shirt.
Cara and Deakin sit down in front of him. They start the video and give the standard warnings for a voluntary interview, at which point he looks as though he might cry. Deakin leads. Time is of the essence, and Cara knows Noah has a way about him that men instantly bond with. He starts gently, expressing sorrow for his loss. The boyfriend nods, his lips clamped together.
“Could you tell us when you last saw Marisa?” Noah asks.
“Yesterday. Lunchtime. We agreed we’d do something today. She wanted a girlie night out with Ann.” Cara watches as the boy tries admirably to hold it together; then his face crumples and he starts to cry.
Deakin looks to Cara and raises an eyebrow a fraction. With that one expression Cara knows what Noah’s saying: the guy’s either a traumatized boyfriend, or he’s trying his hardest to look that way.
Deakin hands him a tissue. “And where were they planning on going?” he says.
Rick wipes his eyes. He blows his nose loudly. “Reflex. Their usual. It’s an eighties club in town. I should have gone with them. I should have insisted they got a taxi home for a change.”
Cara sits up in her seat. “How did they normally get home?”
“They’d walk. But it was cold last night, they might have …” His voice trails off. He shakes his head. “They would sometimes hitchhike. Someone would always pick them up. Marisa laughed at me when I said I was worried about it—she’d say there’s two of them, they’ll be fine.” He looks up. His eyes are bloodshot. “But they weren’t, were they?”
Deakin leans forward, looking the poor kid in the eye.
“You weren’t to know,” he says quietly. “And what were you doing last night?”
Rick talks them through his evening. Working on an essay in his room. Went to bed about eleven.
“Did anyone see you?” Noah asks.
Apparently not.
* * *
They wrap up the interview. Rick leaves. Cara and Noah watch him as he pushes the double doors open, stepping out into the crisp January afternoon.
Cara glances at Noah. He’s deep in thought, then he runs his hand across his hair.
“Not our guy, is he?” he says.
“He’s short but he’s strong. He could have easily done it. But stolen a car, driven an hour out of town, murdered them like that? What would be the motive?” Cara screws up her face. “We’ve taken his samples—who knows what forensics might show. But no. I don’t think it was him.”
“So we’re saying it’s a random?” Deakin asks. They turn and walk back up the stairs to the office.
Cara doesn’t answer his question. She knows what he’s thinking. The majority of murders are committed by someone close to the victim. An attack in a pique of rage, obvious motives. Easy to find. Something like this, out of nowhere—it’s tricky.
They open the door to the incident room. There’s nothing for it, but good solid police work. CCTV. Forensics. Door-to-door. The boring stuff. Following up on witness statements until something pops out.
She glances at the clock on the wall: it’s four already. She knows she won’t be home for dinner.
Because below the clock are new photos, taken that morning from the crime scene. Shenton has obviously received them from the lab, and they demand her attention. She tears her eyes away from the dead women, the disembodied heads, to the rest of the car.
The bloodied back seats, handprints across the doors, smears on the roof. She frowns. Deakin catches her expression.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“It’s just …” She taps one finger on the crime scene photo. “Everything about this scene screams frenzied attack. The stabbing. The blood. Up close and personal.”
“Yes. And?”
“But the location—in the middle of nowhere—and the removal of their heads.” She looks at Noah. “That seems planned. He’d have needed tools, the right sort of knives. And why decapitate them, Deaks? When would we expect to see that normally?”
“For easy disposal of the body?”
“Right. But there’s none of that here.”
“Perhaps he changed his mind?” They stand side by side, facing the board. Their postures mirror each other’s: arms crossed, identical frowns.
“Rape gone wrong?” Noah suggests. “They did something to piss him off, he lost control?”
“Escalated pretty badly, then,” Cara mutters. “This was overkill.”
Cara doesn’t want to add her last thought. Deakin knows what will be going through her head, but to say it out loud feels like tempting fate.
If this guy lost control, she thinks grimly, it won’t be just once. There’s a high chance he’ll do it again. And soon.
CHAPTER
6
WHEN JESS WAKES, the room is darker. She feels muddled, struggling to get a grip on how much time has passed.
She looks to the chair by her side. Nav is slumped, his head at an uncomfortable angle, dark hair falling over his face, fast asleep. He’s obviously been away and come back: a bag is by his feet, his coat draped over the chair.
Even with Nav here she feels sick and alone. She thinks about Patrick, about how they argued last night. About how they left things, without even a goodnight kiss.
She starts to cry, huge wracking sobs. All she wants to do is see her husband, hold her daughter. Alice has lost her father. She should be with her. How can they possibly think she had anything to do with this?
But then she hears voices outside the curtain. She stops and strains to listen. Hushed, urgent tones. Something important.
“Just because the smoke alarms didn’t have batteries doesn’t mean she murdered her husband.” She recognizes the voice: the male detective again, gruff and annoyed.
“No, but her fingerprints were on the watering can that held the paraffin. What does that say to you?” A woman this time, obviously not happy. “And she has a record—have you even read her file? No, of course you haven’t.”
Jess’s mind is reeling. Somehow she still believed that the fire had been an accident. That some faulty wiring or damaged plug had caused a spark. But this? And they know. About what happened two years ago. About—
“I don’t agree.”
“Griffin, with all due respect, I don’t give a shit. You are not working for the police. This is not your case. You shouldn’t even be here.” Jess lifts her head, and through a tiny gap in the curtain, she can see the woman’s face. Mouth pinched, eyes cast down. She looks as if there’s a hundred things she’s holding back from saying.
“Have you asked her about the earring?”
“Seriously, Griffin, this theory of yours …”
“Have you?”
“The fucking earring has nothing to do with the other cases. This is a separate investigation. My investigation. Not everything is connected.” A pause. An intake of breath, then a long sigh. “Fine. As soon as the doctor clears her, we’ll arrest her and we can ask.”
“And when will that be?”
“Right now, if it were up to me. But she had a nasty fall, and I don’t want her keeling over in a cell.” The man goes to say something, but she cuts him off. “Seriously, Griffin. Enough. Stay away from my suspect, I’m warning you.”
Jess listens to footsteps as the woman stomps away, then closes her eyes quickly as a hand pulls back the curtain. She imagines the man standing there—the man who’s apparently not a detective, who seems to be on her side—then hears an exhale as the curtain is replaced and his heavy boots fade into the distance.
She opens her eyes again and feels tears prickle behind them. She puts her hand up, tentatively feeling the bandage. She looks at the drip going into her arm. She’s stuck in a hospital bed with a detective, poised to arrest her, who believes she killed her husband and tried to kill her daughter. A daughter whom she’s not allowed to see, whom she can’t hold in her arms and comfort and tell her that everything will be okay. What sort of mother is she?
She can explain her fingerprints—it was probably her watering can, that she’d used a hundred times before in the garden. But the paraffin? That she doesn’t know. And she’s seen the shows on Netflix; she knows that once the police have a theory, that’s all they’ll go after. They’re blinkered, blind to any other possibilities.
She’s met police like this woman before. Cold, unfeeling eyes, seeing her as one thing, and one thing alone, and never changing their mind. She remembers the pull of her arms behind her. The cold metal on her wrists, sharp gravel against her cheek. She remembers the feeling of complete helplessness and the certain knowledge that she was never going to let that happen again.
Her mouth feels dry and fuzzy, so she reaches over and takes a drink from the glass of water on the table. It’s warm.
She looks at Nav. He’s fast asleep, leaning to one side. Jess knows what she has to do. And she has to do it now.
She sits up. Her head spins and she feels slightly sick, making it hard to get out of bed. Hard, but not impossible.
She looks at the IV in her arm and removes the dressing, then pulls the needle slowly out. Red blooms at the injection site, and she picks up a tissue from the box next to her, pushing it hard against it.
She shuffles around, both feet now on the floor. She stands up slowly and glances at Nav. But he hasn’t stirred. She feels the cold waft around her. She’s wearing no more than a backless hospital gown.
She can’t see her T-shirt anywhere and realizes with a jolt that the detectives probably have it as evidence. She opens the cabinet next to her bed and says a silent thank-you to her mother—a few basic toiletries and a pile of brand new clothes have been left. Underwear, tracksuit bottoms, a pullover. She puts them on, along with socks and a pair of sneakers. With the brush and elastic tie, she pulls her hair back into a high ponytail, doing her best with her disheveled appearance. She forces a smile onto her face. This will work. It has to.
She goes over to Nav and gently pulls his bag away from his feet. Jess rests it on the bed, scrabbling inside.
Her fingers come in contact with cold metal, and she pulls the car keys out. As an afterthought she takes whatever cash is in his wallet.
“Sorry, Nav,” she whispers.
She knows this is a bad idea. She knows that when she is injured, the worst thing she can do is ignore a doctor’s advice, but this is different. This is an emergency.
But to leave her daughter?
On wobbly legs, she pushes the curtain aside. The ward seems empty, so she walks out.
She follows the signs to the ICU. Doors open automatically as she goes. It’s late, and the corridors are deserted; her progress goes unchallenged.
But then she stops. A man stands in the doorway in his recognizable black uniform, waiting, guarding, hands behind his back. He nods, smiling, as a doctor goes past him into the ICU, and Jess knows there’s no way she’s going to see her daughter tonight.
She ducks back around the corner, breathing heavily, on the edge of tears. She’d just wanted to check on Alice, hold her warm hand, kiss her, tell her that everything was going to be okay. But Mom and Dad are there, she tells herself. She remembers the hundreds of times in her past that her parents had commanded the doctors, sitting patiently by her bedside, for however long it took. She may not be able to see Alice, but they are the next best thing.
She turns. She could go back to her ward. Put her faith in the police, that they will find out the truth. But the unease that follows that thought quickly pushes it out of her head.
She starts to walk again. She passes two nurses chatting in the corridor and smiles at them confidently. “Cigarette,” she mutters. They scowl but let her go without question, and she breathes a sigh of relief when she’s clear.
She looks for signs for the main entrance. Her heart is thumping in her chest the whole time, convinced that at any minute someone is going to see her and pull her back to her ward, this time in handcuffs. But perhaps it’s too late, or people are too weary. Either way, nobody stops her.
She sees the double doors of the main entrance in front of her. There are more people here—nurses getting coffees at Starbucks, the bored receptionist checking her computer. All it would take would be for one person to recognize her. And it would be game over.
