Fever of the Bone (7 page)

‘Give the family a break,’ Ambrose said, spreading his arms to keep them at bay as his boss approached the house. ‘Don’t make me waste our time getting the uniformed guys down here to move you away. You back off now, we’ll see what we can do about sorting out a press call with them, OK?’ He knew it was a pointless request, but at least they might try and make themselves a little less conspicuous for a while. And his bulk did sometimes carry its weight in these situations.

By the time he got to the door, Patterson was already halfway inside. The man holding the door would probably pass for handsome in other circumstances. His hair was thick and dark, shot through with silver. His features were regular, his blue eyes had that slight downward angle that seemed to appeal to women. But today, Paul Maidment had the gaunt and haunted look of a man one step away from life on the streets. Unshaven, hair awry and clothes crumpled, he looked blankly at them through red-rimmed eyes as though he’d lost his grip on all the conventions of behaviour. Ambrose couldn’t begin to imagine what it must be like to step off a plane thinking you’re about to be reunited with your family only to discover that your life has been shattered beyond repair.

Shami Patel hovered behind Maidment. She made the introductions. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get the door, I was in the kitchen making tea,’ she added. Ambrose could have told her Patterson didn’t care for excuses, but this wasn’t the time.

They filed into the living room and sat down. ‘We could all use some tea, Shami,’ Ambrose said. She nodded and left them.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t at the airport to meet you myself,’ Patterson said. ‘I had matters to attend to. Concerning Jennifer’s death, you understand.’

Maidment shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea what you people do, I just want you to get on with it. Find the person who did this. Stop them wrecking another family.’ His voice caught and he had to clear his throat noisily.

‘How’s your wife?’ Patterson said.

He coughed. ‘She’s . . . The doctor’s been. He’s given her something to knock her out. She managed to hold it together till I got home, but then . . . well, it’s better that she’s out of it.’ He spread his hand over his face and gripped tight, as if he wanted to rip his face off. His voice came at them slightly muffled. ‘I wish she could stay out of it for ever. But she’ll have to come back. And when she does, this’ll still be here.’

‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am,’ Patterson said. ‘I’ve a daughter about the same age. I know what she means to me and my wife.’

Maidment dragged his fingers down his face and stared at them, tears spilling from his eyes. ‘She’s our only child. There won’t be any more, not at Tania’s age. That’s it for us, this is where it ends. We used to be a family, now we’re just a couple.’ His voice cracked and shivered. ‘I don’t know how we get past this. I don’t understand this. How could this happen? How could somebody do this to my girl?’

Carrying a tray loaded with steaming mugs, milk and sugar, Shami returned. ‘Tea,’ she said, handing round the drinks. It was a mundane moment that broke the mood and made it possible for Patterson to move the interview forward.

‘According to Claire, Jennifer said she was planning to bake you a cake to welcome you home. That she had to go to the Co-op to get some chocolate for it. Was that something she usually did? Made a cake for you coming home?’ Patterson said gently.

Maidment looked baffled. ‘She’d never done it before. I didn’t even realise she knew how to bake a cake.’ He bit his lip. ‘If she hadn’t done that, if she’d just gone to Claire’s like she was supposed to . . .’

‘We’re not convinced she was telling Claire the truth,’ Patterson said, his voice gentle. Ambrose had always been impressed with Patterson’s care for those left in the shadows of violent death. The only word he could think to apply to it was ‘tender’. Like he was conscious of how much damage they’d already taken and he didn’t want to add to it. He could be tough, asking questions Ambrose would have struggled with. But underneath it, there was always a consideration of other people’s pain. Patterson let his words sink in, then continued. ‘We wondered if she was using that as an excuse so Claire wouldn’t ask too many questions about where Jennifer was really going. But we had to check with you. To see if it was the kind of thing she did when you’d been away.’

Maidment shook his head. ‘She’d never done anything like that. We usually went out for a celebration dinner if I’d been away for more than a couple of nights. All three of us. We’d go for a Chinese. It was always Jennifer’s favourite. She never baked me a cake.’ He shivered. ‘Never will now.’

Patterson waited for a few moments, then said, ‘We’ve been looking at Jennifer’s computer. It seems she and Claire spent a lot of time online, both together and separately. Did you know about that?’

Maidment clutched his drink like a man possessed by cold. He nodded. ‘They all do it. Even if you wanted to stop them, they’d still find a way. So we got together with the Darsies and insisted on the girls’ computers having all the parental controls on. It restricts where they can go and who can get to them.’

Up to a point
, thought Ambrose. ‘She used RigMarole a lot,’ he said, picking up the baton of the questioning. He and Patterson had been working together so long they didn’t even have to discuss their tactics in advance. They knew instinctively how to let things flow between them. ‘The social networking site. Did she ever talk to you about it?’

Maidment nodded. ‘We’re very open as a family. We try not to be heavy-handed with Jennifer. We’ve always made a point of talking things through, explaining the reasons why we don’t let her do something or why we don’t approve of some behaviour or other. It kept the lines of communication open. I think she talked to us more than most teenagers. At least, judging by what our friends and my colleagues say about their kids.’ As often happened with the abruptly bereaved, talking about his dead daughter seemed to shift Maidment to a place where he could briefly disconnect from his grief.

‘So what did she have to say about RigMarole?’ Patterson said.

‘They liked it, her and Claire. She said they’d made a lot of online buddies who’re into the same TV programmes and music. I’ve got a page on RigMarole myself, I know how it works. It’s a very straightforward way of making connections with people who share your interests. And their filters are very good. It’s easy to shut somebody out of your community if they don’t fit or they’re breaking the boundaries you’re comfortable with.’

‘Did she ever mention someone with the initials Zed Zed? Or maybe Zee Zee?’ Ambrose asked.

Maidment ran a finger and thumb across his eyelids then rubbed the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘No. I’m pretty sure she didn’t. You’d be better off asking Claire about that level of detail. Why are you asking? Has this person been stalking her?’

‘Nothing like that, as far as we can see,’ Ambrose said. ‘But we recovered some message sessions between them. It looks as if ZZ was suggesting he or she knew some secret Jennifer had. Did she say anything like that to you or your wife?’

Maidment looked bewildered. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Look, Jennifer isn’t some wild child. She leads a pretty sheltered life, to tell you the truth. She’s hardly ever given us a minute’s worry. I know you’ve heard all that before, parents trying to make out their kid was a little angel. I’m not saying that. I’m saying she’s stable. Young for her years, if anything. If she had a secret, it wouldn’t be the sort of thing you’re thinking about. Drugs, or sex, or whatever. It would have been a crush on some lad, or something silly like that. Not the sort of thing that gets you murdered.’ The word brought reality crashing back down on Maidment, crushing him all over again. The tears began to creep down his cheeks. Without a word, Shami reached for a box of tissues and pressed a couple into his hand.

There was nothing else useful to be learned here, Ambrose thought. Not today. Maybe never. He glanced across at Patterson, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Patterson said. ‘We’ll be on our way now. I want you to know that we’re throwing everything we’ve got at this. But we still need your help. Maybe you could ask your wife if Jennifer said anything about this ZZ. Or about secrets.’ He stood up. ‘If there’s anything you need, DC Patel here will sort you out. We’ll be in touch.’

Ambrose followed him from the house, wondering how long it would be before Paul Maidment could get through five minutes without thinking of his murdered daughter.

Tony surveyed his living room, reflecting that it was a convenient proof of the second law of thermodynamics: entropy increases. He wasn’t quite sure how it happened, but piles seemed to accumulate whenever his back was turned. Books, papers, DVDs and CDs, console games and controllers and magazines. All of these were more or less comprehensible. But the other stuff - he had no idea how that had gravitated there. A cereal box. A Rubik’s cube. A small pile of red rubber bands. Six mugs. A T-shirt. A tote bag from a bookshop he was sure he’d never visited. A box of matches and two empty beer bottles he couldn’t remember buying.

For a brief moment, he thought about tidying up. But what would be the point of that? Most of the chaos didn’t belong anywhere specific in the house, so he would just be shifting the mess to another room. And all of them already had their own particular brand of disarray. His study, his bedroom, the spare room, the kitchen and the dining room were each the repository of a particular aspect of his turmoil. The bathroom wasn’t bad. But then, he never spent time there that wasn’t strictly functional. He’d never been one for reading on the toilet or working in the bath.

When he’d bought this house, he’d thought there was enough room to absorb his stuff without it spilling over into these uncontrollable little nests of miscellany. He’d had the whole house painted a sort of off-white bone colour and he’d even gone out and bought a job lot of framed black-and-white photographs of Bradfield’s cityscape that he found both soothing and interesting. For about two days the house had looked quite stylish. Now he wondered if there might perhaps be scope for a Parkinson’s Law of Thermodynamics: entropy expands to fill the space available.

He’d been so convinced that he had more than enough space that his first decision on moving in had been to convert the surprisingly light and spacious basement into a self-contained flat. He’d imagined letting it out to academics spending a sabbatical at Bradfield University, or junior doctors doing a six-month stint at Bradfield Cross Hospital. Nobody long-term, nobody who would impinge on his life.

Instead, he’d ended up with Carol Jordan as his tenant. It hadn’t been planned. She’d been living in London at the time, holed up in a cool and elegant flat in the Barbican, holding the world at bay. A couple of years before, when John Brandon had persuaded her to return to front-line police work, she’d been reluctant to sell her London flat and commit to buying a place in Bradfield. Perching in Tony’s basement was supposed to be temporary. But it had turned out to be an arrangement that suited them strangely well. They were careful enough of each other not to impose. But knowing the other was at hand was comforting. At least, he thought it was.

He decided against clearing up. It would only revert to type within days anyway. And he had better things to do. Theoretically, working only part-time at Bradfield Moor Secure Hospital was supposed to provide Tony with enough free time to work with the police and to read and write the articles and books that helped him stay connected with the community of his colleagues. In practice, there were never enough hours in the day, especially when he factored in the time he spent playing computer games, an indulgence he genuinely believed freed up his subconscious creativity. It was amazing how many apparently intractable problems could be solved after an hour adventuring with Lara Croft or building a medieval Chinese kingdom.

Things had grown worse lately, thanks to Carol. She’d had the brilliant idea that a Wii would help him eliminate the limp he still carried after an attack from a patient had left him with a shattered knee. ‘You spend too long hunched over a computer, ‘ she’d said. ‘You need to get fit. And I know there’s no point in trying to persuade you to go to the gym. At least a Wii will get you off your backside.’

She’d been right. Too right, unfortunately. His surgeon might have given the thumbs-up to the amount of time Tony now spent lumbering round his living room playing tennis, bowling and golf or indulging in surreal games against weirdly dressed rabbits. But Tony had a feeling her approval wouldn’t be matched by the editors whose deadlines he was in serious danger of missing.

He was about to destroy the chief rabbit in a shoot-out on the streets of Paris when he was interrupted by the intercom that Carol had installed between her basement flat and his house above.

‘I know you’re there, I can hear you jumping,’ her voice crackled. ‘Can I come up or are you too busy pretending to be Bradfield’s answer to Rafa Nadal?’

Tony stepped away from the screen with barely a pang of regret and pressed the door-release button. By the time Carol joined him, he’d replaced the game controllers on their charger and poured a couple of glasses of sparkling water. Carol took hers, looking sceptical. ‘Is this the best you can do?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I need to maintain my fluid balance.’ He walked past her, back towards the living room, his move calculated to make resistance easier.

‘I don’t. And I’ve had the kind of day that deserves a treat.’ Carol stood her ground.

Tony kept on walking. ‘And yet you came here, knowing I’m trying to help you move away from drinking so much. Your actions are saying the opposite of your words.’ He looked over his shoulder and grinned at her, trying to take the sting out of thwarting her. ‘Come on, sit down and talk to me.’

‘You’re wrong.’ Clearly grumpy now, Carol followed him and plonked herself down on the sofa opposite his chair. ‘I’m here because I have something important to talk to you about. Not because deep down I want to not have a drink.’