Creed (A Kate Redman Mystery Read online

  She gulped the last of her drink, put the glass down on the empty table, and made her way over to the exit. He must be in the loo, she told herself. Stop panicking. Stop panicking over a man. All the same, she couldn’t help looking from side to side, looking for his familiar face in a crowd of unfamiliar faces. As she reached the entrance hallway that led to the outside terrace, she was almost grabbed again by a visibly swaying Theo.

  “Kate! Come ‘n dance, you said you would—”

  “Nope, not this time,” said Kate, side-stepping. She felt tipsy but she was stone-cold sober next to her fellow DS. “And for Christ’s sake, Theo, have some black coffee or something. If I lit a match in your mouth, it’d burn for a week.”

  “Huh?” said Theo, blinking owlishly. His date for a night, a very young, very pretty girl, came up beside him and dragged him away sharply, giving Kate daggers over her shoulder as she hauled her boyfriend away. Kate smiled despite herself. Don’t worry love, you can keep him.

  She walked outside onto the terrace and immediately felt calmer and more in control. Perhaps it was the sobering slap of the cold air in her hot face, or the quietness after the noisy din of the ballroom, or the fact there were only a few people out here, mainly smokers. Kate wrapped her arms across her body as she walked slowly down the steps to the main terrace below. Candle lanterns had been placed at regular intervals on the wall that encircled the terrace. Beyond the wall, the gardens of the house were mere black and grey shapes in the darkness. There was another flight of steps that led from the terrace down to the lawn, and Kate caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure sitting right at the bottom of the steps. There was something familiar about it; the set of the shoulders, perhaps. Shivering, she walked closer and as she got within a few feet, breathed a sigh of relief. It was Tin.

  “What are you doing here?” she exclaimed, coming up to him. She didn’t sit down but remained standing, teetering a bit on her heels.

  Tin didn’t look up. He was looking across the dark gardens with great concentration. After a moment, he lifted a lit cigarette to his lips.

  “You’re smoking,” Kate exclaimed.

  “Yes. I do, sometimes.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that,” Kate replied, a little lamely. There was so much about Tin that she didn’t know. There’s so much about me that he doesn’t know, she said silently to herself. “Listen, I’m sorry I’ve been so long...”

  Tin said nothing.

  “I ran into Anderton, and you know how it is, we just got talking. I lost track of time.” Tin still said nothing. “I’m sorry,” Kate finished.

  Tin took a final drag of his cigarette and pitched it into the darkness before him. Kate and he both watched the orange tip describe a glowing parabola in the dark before it hit the wet grass and fizzled out. “Have you finished talking shop, now?”

  His tone was polite, but there was a fine needle of – what? Something unpleasant – underneath that stung. “Yes,” said Kate, not wanting to get into an argument. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  Tin sighed and got up. “Christ, it’s freezing out here. Let’s go inside.” He looked at Kate, who stood shivering, and some of the anger in his face melted away. “Do you want my jacket?”

  Kate shook her head, trying to stop her teeth chattering. “No. Thanks. Let’s just – come on, let’s go and have a dance.”

  They walked back up the steps, side by side but apart. It wasn’t until they had almost reached the house that Tin finally took her hand. Kate took it gratefully but a small part of her was wondering if one of them was overreacting. Her? Him? She put the thought aside for a later perusal.

  “Want a drink?” she asked Tin, wanting to make up for her inattention. He nodded.

  Kate joined the queue at the bar, Tin waiting for her a few feet over. Goddamn it, I am going to get drunk tonight, thought Kate with a sudden anger. She was aware that her feet were now aching viciously.

  She bought their drinks and they went and chatted to Rav and his fiancée, and then they danced and bought more drinks and danced some more and eventually went home and fell into bed in a drunken, giggling haze. The argument, if it had been one, appeared to be long forgotten. Kate stumbled to the bathroom and forced herself to drink a pint of water and take an ibuprofen tablet before staggering back into bed and curling up next to Tin, who was already snoring. Just before sleep claimed her, Kate had an odd vision. She’d never seen the crime scene, if it had been a crime at all, but her last thought was of the two young people in the grassy clearing in the woodland, lying there with their clothes jewelled with tiny drops of the morning dew, their cold hands clasped together, their sightless eyes staring up at the gradually brightening sky.

  Chapter Two

  Kate walked into the office on Monday morning with only the faintest pulse of what had been a terrible hangover in her temples. She took one look at Theo, face down on his desk, and realised she’d got off lightly.

  “Dear Lord,” Kate said, walking over. “You’re not still suffering, are you, Theo? Saturday was two nights ago.”

  Theo raised a haggard face. “Be nice to me today, Kate. Please.”

  Felicity Durrant, otherwise known as Fliss, was hovering solicitously. “Apparently Theo didn’t stop at Saturday night.”

  “Dear Lord,” Kate said again. “What happened?”

  What happened, it transpired from Theo’s faltering narrative, was that he had continued drinking at the wedding, commandeered the dance floor when the DJ had started playing You Should Be Dancing, tried to head-butt a guest who had objected to being violently shoved out of the way, been escorted from the premises by Anderton and Rav (who had courteously stopped to let Theo vomit in the bushes on the way), and had put him in a taxi with his furious girlfriend, who had immediately dumped him, prompting a lengthy bender through the whole of Sunday, which only ended in the early hours of Monday morning.

  “Oh dear,” Kate said, somewhat inadequately, when Theo had finally wound to a close. “Never mind. How about a bacon sandwich?” Theo dry-retched and buried his head in his hands again. “Okay, maybe not,” said Kate, hastily. “Have you had some painkillers?”

  Fliss, of course, had already supplied paracetamol, Berocca and water. After a moment, Kate patted Theo lightly but sympathetically on his shoulder and made her way back to her desk.

  Anderton arrived a moment later. “Morning, team. All recovered from the excitement of Saturday night, are we?” He looked at Theo, who looked remarkably like someone who’d been recently disinterred from a grave. “Okay, I see most of us are. Anyway, to business.” He strode up to the whiteboards and started sticking up photographs. “This is our top priority at the moment. Double suicide at the Abbeyford School of Art and Drama.” The first photograph was of the crime scene, the two bodies lying side by side, their hands clasped, looking like a pair of dolls posed by giant hands. Anderton continued talking. “Now, it may be that it’s not a suspicious death. In fact, the most likely explanation is that that is precisely the reality – in which case, it won’t be our problem. But I need to make sure, as you well know.”

  “You said we had an ID on the victims, didn’t you?” Kate asked. She couldn’t recall the names Anderton had told her at the wedding. Too drunk, probably, she chastised herself.

  “Yep. The boy is Joshua Widcombe, the girl is Kaya Trent. I should say ‘man’, really – Joshua was eighteen, Kaya too. They were in their first year at the Abbeyford College and had apparently been a couple since the first term.”

  The team were on their feet now, moving closer to the whiteboards and peering at the photographs.

  “How did they die?” asked Rav, looking at a close up shot of Kaya Trent’s dead body.

  “First impressions are that they cut their wrists,” Anderton said. Kate winced at the thought but he went on. “However – and this is what gives me pause about this case – there’s a few anomalies that struck me when I first saw the photographs.”

  “Which are?” asked Jane.


  Anderton tapped the photograph of Joshua Widcombe’s pallid corpse. “There doesn’t seem to be as much blood around his body as perhaps there should be, given the wounds in his wrists. It might be that there’s a simple explanation for that but... Well, we’ll see what the PM throws up.” He glanced around at his team, and a thought seemed to strike him. “But I don’t know why I’m doing all the talking. Come on, Fliss, you were actually on the scene. What do you think?”

  Kate looked at Fliss in surprise. She hadn’t realised that her young colleague had actually attended the scene although, thinking about it, it made perfect sense, because everyone else had been at Olbeck’s wedding that day. She watched as Fliss drew herself up and spoke, rather hesitatingly. Kate realised it was probably the first solitary case that Fliss had taken on.

  “Yes, that’s true, I did take the call and go there.” Kate watched Fliss as she spoke, the girl’s cheeks stained a little pink with embarrassment at being the centre of attention. Kate was suddenly struck with how young she looked. Could Fliss be any more than twenty? No, she must be, she’d been to university. Twenty two at the most, surely? Kate shook herself mentally and listened to what Fliss was saying.

  “The bodies were identified by the groundskeeper, John Dawson – Joshua and Kaya were quite well known on campus, apparently – but of course we had them formally identified by their parents as well, obviously. Um...I didn’t have a chance to talk to their friends or anything, or their teachers yet, but their parents were obviously very shocked and upset and they couldn’t understand why the kids had done it. There was no obvious motive for suicide that they could think of.”

  “No mental health issues?” asked Kate.

  Fliss shook her head. “Nothing reported. They were just normal teenagers, apparently. They liked acting, that was what they were studying at college – in fact that’s how they met. They were in the same class.”

  Anderton spoke up again. “Obviously, if the PM throws something up that warrants a full investigation, we’ll have to interview everyone: parents, teachers, friends. But there’s no point starting anything until we have something to go on. So, for now, we’ll wait to hear the autopsy results and take it from there.” His gaze fell on Theo, who looked, if possible, even more ill than he had been twenty minutes before. “Fancy being our representative at the post mortem, Theo?” Anderton asked with a touch of sadism.

  “Oh, please God, no,” said Theo in a voice that was very near to tears.

  Kate couldn’t help laughing. “I’ll do it,” she said, and Theo’s reddened eyes gave her a look of intense gratitude.

  “Good stuff,” said Anderton. “I’d like to hear back from you as soon as you get back. And Theo, go home and sleep it off, for God’s sake. Don’t let me catch you coming in again in this state.”

  “Sorry,” mumbled Theo, his pale face now scarlet. Anderton rolled his eyes and then dismissed them.

  *

  Kate chuckled most of the way to the pathology labs. Still grinning, she parked the car, sprang up the steps, stopped to have a quick chat with Doctor Gatkiss, who was leaving the building, and then checked in at reception.

  Doctor Kirsten Telling was doing the post-mortem on the two students, and Kate was glad, because she liked the quiet doctor and admired her skill at her work. They had one of those relationships that had almost but not quite deepened into real friendship. Every time Kate saw Doctor Telling, she told herself that she really should reach out, try and suggest a proper social meeting, but somehow it just never happened.

  She hadn’t seen the doctor for several months, and it was something of a shock, and not a particularly pleasant one, to realise that Kirsten was pregnant. The doctor’s normally gaunt face had softened and rounded, and her baby bump was clearly visible beneath her white lab coat. Quickly, Kate pasted a smile on her face to hide her feelings.

  “Congratulations!” she cried, hoping she sounded more sincere than she felt. “I had no idea. When are you due?”

  They chatted about the baby for some minutes, somewhat incongruously Kate felt, given the presence of the two shrouded bodies between them. Kirsten looked very relaxed and happy.

  “I’m hoping for a girl, actually,” she said, drawing on her rubber gloves. “But I’m pretty sure Peter wants a boy. Oh well, we’ll just have to see what we get. A healthy baby, that’s all you can really ask for, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” agreed Kate. Her face ached from smiling. “Well, I’m very happy for you, Kirsten.”

  Doctor Telling wheeled the instrument trolley up to the first gurney. “I don’t believe I’ve ever asked if you have children, Kate. Do you?”

  Even after all these years, Kate couldn’t help the slight hesitation she always gave before answering. “No. No, I don’t.”

  There is never any good response to that answer. As with most people, Kirsten just gave a slightly embarrassed smile and bent to her work. Thankfully, Kate relaxed her face and moved back a bit to let the doctor concentrate on what she was doing.

  After ten minutes, Kirsten looked up from the body of Kaya Trent. Kate had been looking at Kaya’s face. Even in death, she was strikingly pretty, with high cheekbones and finely arched black eyebrows, the lines of her mouth and chin like a finely modelled statue. Kate’s high spirits had already evaporated, on hearing Kirsten’s news, but looking at Kaya was making her feel worse. So young, so beautiful, so much life ahead of her, and now nothing, everything truncated, her life a dead-end. Why had she done it? With a start, Kate realised Kirsten was speaking to her.

  “Sorry, I missed that.”

  Patiently, Kirsten repeated herself. “I said, have you heard Andrew’s news?”

  “Andrew?” Andrew Stanton had been a boyfriend of Kate’s some years ago. Kate shook her head. “No, I haven’t. We’re not really in contact anymore.”

  “Well, he’s getting married.” Kirsten smiled and continued with her work. “One of the nurses he met out in Sierra Leone. They’re coming back to the UK for the wedding this year – September, I think.”

  “Well, that’s great,” said Kate, lying through her teeth. Another bloody wedding! At this rate, she really was going to be the only spinster left in the parish. Spinster...why did that sound so horrible, where bachelor sounded rather, well, cool? Bloody patriarchy, thought Kate, trying to make a wry joke to herself, but it wasn’t very funny. A small childish part of her wanted to stamp her feet and whine why didn’t he want to marry me? But he did, Kate, or he would have done. You dumped him. What’s wrong with you?

  Blindly, she stared at Kirsten’s hands, now stitching up the incision that ran along the breastbone. As always, the doctor’s hands were gentle and precise, but perversely, Kate wanted to see her rip and tear. She looked down at her own hands, which had clenched themselves into fists. What was wrong with her and what was wrong with the world? Why was everyone getting married and having babies and yet she was stuck on her own, just as she always was, unwanted, unloved?

  I have Tin, she thought suddenly, but the thought wasn’t quite the panacea that she wanted to be. After a moment, she took her mobile phone out of the handbag and sent him a text.

  Want to meet up tonight? X

  Then she pulled herself up with a jerk. Be professional, Kate, you’re at a post mortem, for God’s sake. Hurriedly, she put her phone away and looked up, expecting to see Kristen looking at her with disapproval, but of course she wasn’t. The doctor had moved to the body of Joshua Widcombe and was folding back the green sheet that covered him. Kate was suddenly struck with the thought that the two bodies were in almost identical positions to how they were found. If she linked their hands, they would look as they had done when John Dawson had first discovered them. Kate held the thought for a moment and then discarded it.

  “You’ll have to wait for the toxicology results,” Kristen said. “That will take a few days.”

  “You think there might be drugs involved?” asked Kate, slightly startled.

  Kirste
n glanced at her. “It’s possible. I’m just covering all bases.” She bent over Joshua Widcombe’s body.

  “Anderton seemed to think that the cause of death was from them cutting their wrists,” Kate remarked after a few minutes.

  Kirsten looked across at Kaya Trent. “That would certainly be the case with her,” she said, gesturing towards the body. “It’ll all be in my report, of course. But him—” She walked around the gurney and picked up Joshua’s right hand, turning the pale arm so that the livid red wounds in the wrist could be seen. Kirsten frowned. “But as for him...” She trailed off. “Was he right-handed?” She asked Kate a moment later.

  “I don’t know,” said Kate. “I can find out.”

  Kirsten shook her pale blonde head. “Actually, it doesn’t matter.” She walked around to the other side of the body and examined the left wrist. “It doesn’t matter. There isn’t any way that these cuts could have been self-inflicted. It’s quite obvious when you look at the position and the depth.”

  Kate sat up. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m positive.”

  Kate swallowed. “Does that mean...” She trailed off, thinking hard.

  Kirsten looked up at her again. “It means someone else made these cuts.”

  They were both silent for a moment. Then Kate said slowly “As far as I’m aware, the knife was found by Kaya Trent’s hand. I’m not sure what the fingerprint findings were.” She looked again at the wounds in Joshua’s wrists. “So Kaya Trent made those cuts?” She murmured the sentence almost to herself.