‘I knew that the best thing I could do was to be firm about it. It would be better for her in the long run. I’ve got this far through my life without becoming a family man. I couldn’t start now. Plus, well – she was a student.’
‘It’s not illegal to sleep with a university student, is it?’ Armstrong asked.
‘No, it’s not, but it is frowned upon. And Angie knew it. Once she realised I meant what I’d said she started making threats – she was going to tell the Dean that I’d been giving her money for sex.’ His face flushed. ‘As you know, I had given her money. I even gave her a thousand pounds – a kind of goodbye gift. But the money wasn’t anything to do with sex and never had been. She’d had a waitressing job in some restaurant that paid peanuts, and she was struggling to pay her rent. Her parents were having a hard time, I think, so she couldn’t go to them. I wanted her to quit the job, so I said I’d help her with things.’ He shook his head at his own stupidity. ‘I think she read more into it than was there.’
‘So you killed her?’
‘God, no!’ Cage looked up. ‘No – I gave her more money. I thought maybe if I could just manage the situation until she calmed down then everything would be all right. She was a nice girl. I didn’t think she would actually tell the Dean – but I did worry about who she had told. She always swore she’d kept us a secret, but she was upset and angry, and you know what girls are like when they get a glass of wine or two into them. They talk about men; whether they’re twenty or forty, that doesn’t change. If she told someone, then it would be back to the Dean in no time. He’s a “no smoke without fire” man – “fire” being the operative word.’ He looked over at Armstrong. ‘It might not be illegal to sleep with a student, but I’m a man in my fifties and if I lost my job I wouldn’t get another shot. I’ve got some savings, but I need to stay in employment to get the mortgage paid off. I don’t have much of a private pension. I—I used to have a small gambling problem in my thirties, and I lost some equity that way, back when there was such a thing. There are plenty of younger lecturers out there who’d easily fill my place, and for a lot less money. One whiff of this and I’d be out on my ear – especially if anyone mentioned the cash.’
‘No one ever wants to look like they’re paying for it, do they?’ Cass asked.
‘And I wouldn’t want Angie to look like a cheap whore,’ Cage countered, showing a flash of inner fire, ‘which she wasn’t.’
‘Your concern for her is touching. Right up until the point you killed her.’
‘I didn’t kill her! Oh Christ, this is such a mess.’ He rested his head in his hands for a moment and composed himself before sitting up again. ‘She called me, said she had to speak to me, it was urgent. I’d been teaching, but she was at home. She said her housemate was out and could I go round, so I did.’ He took a shaky breath. ‘She was in the kitchen cutting up vegetables when I got there. She was smiling and happy – it took me off-guard. I had been expecting tears and tantrums. She made me a coffee and we talked for a bit, just small talk, about work and the course. Then out of the blue she told me she was pregnant. Just like that, with a big smile on her face. She said wasn’t it wonderful that we were going to have a family? She said we should get married; that she’d be the perfect lecturer’s wife. I couldn’t believe it – she was talking away, and all I could see in my head were the faces of my colleagues in the faculty office and how they’d sneer at me. I’d get the sack and then be stuck with a baby to support and a bitter woman. It was like seeing my entire life crumbling away because some silly little cow didn’t realise that it had just been fun and friendship.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, I told her she had to have an abortion. I told her I’d pay for it and then that would be it: everything had to stop – the money, the texts, everything. I’d had enough.’
‘You hadn’t used protection?’ Cass asked. Clearly Cage was one of the deluded middle classes that believed the bug could never find them.
‘She said she was on the pill, and I believed her. Anyway, when I told her enough was enough, she just snapped. She lunged at me with that stupid vegetable knife like she wanted to stab me in the throat. She was screaming and swearing at me, and I grabbed her wrists and just threw her back to defend myself. She was wild – I’d never see her like that. There was some water on the floor, maybe from where she’d been washing the veg in the sink, and she slipped. She banged her head on the corner of the breakfast bar and went down.’
‘So you thought you’d help her along by slitting her wrists and leaving her to die?’
‘No.’ Cage swallowed hard. He’d paled with the memory. ‘I told you. I didn’t kill her.’
Cass frowned. He’d been locked in Cage’s tale, but now a different image rose up in his head suddenly: two girls coming out of the lecture theatre, both going to their lockers to dump their books. But when he left them, one was still holding hers. The key hadn’t worked.
‘Someone else did,’ Cage finished. ‘And she scares me.’
‘Oh fuck.’ Cass was suddenly on his feet and heading to the front door.
‘Where are you going?’ Armstrong called after him.
‘Call a panda to come and take you and him back to the station. I’ll see you there.’ Someone else could have the fun job of telling Cage it had all been for nothing. Angie Lane hadn’t been pregnant – she’d just been desperate for him to want her back. There was nothing in the path report about a baby. It was all so fucking stupid.
As he unlocked the car, he played back the first message on his phone – the one from the number he didn’t recognise. It wasn’t Mr Bright. Shit.
‘Hi, DI Jones? It’s Rachel Honey. From South Bank?’ Her voice was soft and hesitant. ‘This is probably nothing. I mean, really probably, but I’ve just been thinking about Angie. You see, it doesn’t make sense, what Amanda said – there’s probably an explanation and I don’t want to waste your time, it’s just – well, Angie was on the caving trip, down to Cheddar Gorge. They did caving and pot-holing. Isn’t it dark in those kind of things? Like I said, it really is just a stupid thing, but I just can’t get it out of my head, not combined with seeing them in the car park. Not Angie—After Angie was dead. I’m not making sense, am I? Maybe you could call me back if you get a few minutes? Thanks.’ The message cut off. Shit. He pressed redial and waited for her number to start ringing. It did. No one answered.
Rachel stood in the doorway for a long few minutes. Going through someone else’s stuff felt wrong on every level, and her heart pounded and her ears buzzed as the seconds ticked silently away. Finally, she pushed herself away from the cool wooden door behind her. Amanda wouldn’t be back from Uni for at least an hour – there was nothing to be nervous about. Still, a chill of fear bloomed in her stomach and sent bile burning up towards her throat and she took a deep breath.
The room had been the small dining room of the flat, but she’d converted it after what had happened to Angie. The table was now folded down against one wall and in the middle of the floor a single blow-up mattress was neatly covered with a pillow and duvet. They’d picked up a cheap second-hand chest of drawers and side table for her stuff, although the other girl had left quite a lot at the old place to be collected when the lease was up. Maybe what Rachel was looking for would still be there rather than here? What was she looking for anyway? A confession? A locker key? Love letters, maybe?
She slid open the small drawer of the side table, careful not to knock any of the face creams and odds and ends that were stacked up on top. There was very little in there: a couple of magazines, some A4 lined paper and a couple of Biros under a battered university textbook, as well as a small make-up bag. Rachel quickly rifled through it – various lipsticks, eye-liner and mascara, just what she’d expect to find. She closed the drawer, flinching slightly at the grating of wood on wood. She was hardly proving her mettle as a hard-ass journalist. She was terrified searching a room in her own flat – how would she ever manage to
do anything seriously undercover if she couldn’t even manage that?
On the other side of the small room the chest of drawers proved equally fruitless. Its surface might have been a mess of jewellery trees and bits and pieces, but inside, each layer was impeccably neat. Even her underwear was folded and allocated into a section of one drawer; knickers to the left, tights and socks in the middle and bras on the right, all further sorted in colour coding. Rachel carefully searched around and under them but there were no hidden treasures. There wasn’t even anything remotely seductive about any of the items. That was odd after what she’d seen. What had she seen? Really? The two of them in a car, talking heatedly, and then Amanda getting out – after checking there was no one else close by to see them. It meant something, she was sure it did, and what else could it mean other than an affair? She looked back at the sensible underwear and its tidiness that was so at odds with the clutter on the top. Was all that jewellery and mess just for show? If someone sorted their knicker drawer into itemised piles, then surely their rings and necklaces would be equally organised?
She frowned and moved on to the remaining drawers, her hand sliding carefully between each folded top or sweater to check nothing unusual was hidden there. There wasn’t. She sat back on her heels for a moment before crawling round to check the small space between the back of the wood and the wall. Nothing. Thus far nothing just about summed it up. There were just clothes and accessories – where was all her personal stuff? If it had been Rachel in Amanda’s position, she knew she’d have brought photos and pictures, to make the new room feel a bit like home. So it looked like Amanda had either left those back at the place she’d shared with Angie, or she just didn’t have any, both of which options would be weird. There was something here – there had to be.
Looking under the duvet proved fruitless, revealing nothing but a clean sheet pulled tight across the airbed. Rachel’s own bed-making consisted of just casually straightening up the top layer before heading off to college, and that was on the days she was feeling particularly diligent. Judging by the tautness of the cotton, Amanda clearly made hers with hospital-corner efficiency every morning. She rearranged the duvet as perfectly as she could manage before slipping a hand between the mattress and the carpet and running it all along the length. After that she checked the pillowcases, but all they contained was soft foam.
The fear she’d felt when she started was gone, replaced by niggling frustration. Her hair had come loose from her ponytail and she pushed it out of her face as she looked around her for somewhere she might have missed. In the corner of the room, a TV sat on an upturned dark blue plastic storage box. Her heart picked up the pace as she carefully lifted the heavy monitor – God only knew where Amanda had got this relic – and put it down on the carpet. She sat beside it and tilted the box upwards. She smiled. A single shoe box was hidden there. She pulled the cardboard container out and carefully lifted the lid. If Dr Cage had sent Amanda love letters – which would make him an idiot, but then most men were – then this is where they’d be. Her heart raced as she tipped the contents out, no longer concerned about order as her curiosity overwhelmed her.
A frown slowly crinkled her face as she spread the various pieces of paper out in front of her. These weren’t love letters. One was a statement from a firm of accountants providing what looked like quarterly balances for a series of investments and fund accounts, many of which were held abroad – one even in the Cayman Islands. Amanda might plead student poverty like the rest of them, but she certainly wasn’t broke. In another envelope was two hundred pounds in cash. That made no sense either. Why would she have that much money – and why hide it away?
The cash was immediately forgotten when she unfolded a battered letter dated almost ten years previously. It was from a Harley Street doctor’s address. She didn’t know the name, but whoever he was, he had a lot of letters after his name. A psychiatrist? She scanned the several short paragraphs that followed.
Amanda Kemble has been a difficult child to evaluate. She is remarkably composed and has moments of being charming and engaging. While the death of her father when she was so young seems to have had no lasting effect on her, I do believe that witnessing her mother’s slow deterioration and ultimate death from cancer goes in some way to explain the psychotic episode she recently had. When questioned on her mother …
Psychotic episode? What the hell did that mean? What was all this? Who was the girl that she’d let into her flat? Had Angie Lane known anything about this? She read to the end, and turned over, looking for some clue to what the younger Amanda might have done, but the event was only alluded to, and never mentioned in detail. Whatever it was, the doctor thought Amanda should be re-evaluated in another year. She stared at the sheet. Why had she even kept this?
‘I killed my mother’s cat.’
Rachel almost yelped as the voice cut through the silence and her own thoughts. She looked up. Amanda stood cool and composed in the doorway.
‘I remember it took a long time to die. Comparatively. My mother took longer. It seemed like she took for ever to die. The cat died in an afternoon. I cut bits off it, just like they had with my mother. And just like with my mother, the amputations didn’t save the cat.’ She paused. ‘It was very messy and I really don’t like mess. They didn’t have to worry about me doing that again.’
Rachel sat on her heels and stared up at the other girl. The fear was back now, and her mouth had dried. She thought she should say something – something innocuous and innocent, but she could feel the weight of her own guilt in the paper in her hands.
‘I could mention how rude it is to look through someone else’s things. And aside from that, you never find anything you might like.’ She held up one hand. ‘Are you looking for this?’
Something silver glinted between her fingers. A locker key.
‘Are you sleeping with Dr Cage?’ Rachel finally found her voice as she left the papers where they were lying and got to her feet.
‘Good God, no.’ Amanda laughed, a short sharp bark of unpleasantness. ‘What an absurd suggestion. It wasn’t me, it was silly little Angie. She was in love with him.’
Rachel was about to ask another question when Amanda pushed the door closed and brought her other hand out from behind her back. The bread knife.
Somewhere out in the hallway, her mobile phone began to ring.
Cass was almost halfway across London by the time the station called back with Rachel Honey’s address and he swore and cursed at every unfortunate driver that couldn’t get out of his way quite quick enough, despite often having nowhere to go but the pavement, regardless of how loudly he blared his horn. A team was headed to the University to see if Amanda Kemble was there, and back-up was following behind him to the girls’ flat. Rachel Honey didn’t have a lecture until this afternoon, so she would likely be at home. If Amanda was there too, and if Rachel decided to confront her, then God only knew what would happen. No, he corrected himself, he didn’t need God to tell him: Amanda Kemble would fight back. What the hell did she have to lose?
Finally at the bridge, Cass managed to get some speed up. Ten minutes. That was all he needed, ten minutes to make sure Rachel Honey was safe. He slapped the steering wheel and willed the traffic forward. Whatever other shit was going on, he did not want another dead teenager on his hands. Rachel Honey would not die on his shift. She fucking well would not.
‘Angie wasn’t scared of the dark,’ Rachel said, trying to keep her voice steady. Don’t look at the knife. Just keep talking. The steel shone, teasing her, but she kept her eyes firmly on Amanda’s face. ‘She went on the caving trip.’
‘That was what made you suspicious? That was it?’ Amanda spat the words out and then her mouth twisted. ‘Not that it matters now. I saw police cars heading towards the Uni, and Cage isn’t answering his phone. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he’s blabbed to that stupid detective. He must have had a crisis of conscience.’
‘Maybe they jus
t figured it out,’ Rachel said. ‘Like me.’
‘What, because she went caving? That’s hardly going to get me locked up for life.’
‘You couldn’t get into your locker. I didn’t think about it at the time. When the police came. You couldn’t get into your locker, because you’d brought the wrong key. It was Angie’s key, not yours – the one you’d stolen so you could write Chaos in the darkness on her locker door.’
‘That was unfortunate – but I doubt he noticed.’
‘I did.’ Rachel’s eyes widened as another thought dawned on her. ‘That morning when we came out of the lecture – you wanted us to hang back and let the others out first, and you were going on about how people were calling Angie a slut and that she had a poor choice of boyfriend. You said people were so quick to believe rumours.’ She gasped slightly. ‘That was a threat, wasn’t it? You kept us back on purpose so you could say that where Dr Cage could hear you, didn’t you?’
‘It’s all been so much fun.’ Amanda smiled. ‘It really has.’
The envelope stuffed with cash sat at Rachel’s feet. ‘Were you blackmailing him?’ she asked. ‘Did he kill Angie?’
‘Blackmail? Why would I do that?’ Amanda flicked her wrist and the serrated knife pointed at the pile of papers on the ground. ‘You’ve clearly seen that I’m not exactly short of cash. I inherited well. I found that cash in Angie’s room afterwards. I thought I’d better take it so that it didn’t raise any questions. I’ve been meaning to give it back to Anthony, but he’s been so tetchy about even being seen with me.’
‘Anthony?’ Rachel asked. ‘Doctor Cage?’
‘Yes. After everything I did for him, he seems to want me just to disappear. It doesn’t work like that though.’
Rachel felt a chill grip her guts. ‘What did you do for him?’
‘Angie, of course.’ The thin girl took a step forward, gripping the knife more firmly, as if she’d suddenly remembered what she intended to do with it.