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“I’m ready for gin,” Tom said. “But I don’t think there is any.”
Ann raised her eyebrows but left, presumably to make the coffee.
Ravensbourne sat back down at the conference table, pushing the catalogue to one side. She looked at Tom. “I still want to know if Rico and Kaylan, and maybe others, got places here when they shouldn’t. In the absence of their application records, can you find out?”
Tom nodded slowly. “I can ask their tutors if they were any good, I suppose.”
“Why don’t you do that, and ring Charlie when you find out. Ideally very soon. Charlie and I need to go.”
Charlie felt his arm grabbed again, and followed Ravensbourne out of the office and then out of the college into the street. The shops were still open, although Charlie noticed that the bakery shelves were almost empty, and the butcher next door was washing his counters. There were a few people about, some looking in shop windows, others standing around chatting, and others marching along with their heads down as if on some kind of urgent errand. The skies were clear, though the sun was going down, and the breeze had strengthened, stirring up the fallen leaves and adding to their number. People were wrapping their coats more tightly around themselves, Charlie included. He wondered if he should have ordered a scarf as well as the coat.
Ravensbourne ducked into the doorway of a closed takeaway chicken shop to shelter from the wind and light a cigarette. Then she pointed to the bench beside the war memorial, and the two of them walked over to it and sat down. An empty crisp packet blew onto Ravensbourne’s shoe. She picked it up and handed it to Charlie, so he could put it in the bin a couple of yards away. When he sat down again, the cigarette was finished, and Ravensbourne had her little notebook out.
“The question is,” she said, “how many separate cases are we dealing with here? Is Rico’s death in any way connected to the assaults on women students? And is any of it connected to the attack on the police station, weird messages on computers and possible financial fraud at the college? Charlie?”
“My instincts say they must be,” Charlie said. “Because this is a very small town, and even though the college is a big deal, we’re still not talking about that many people. The previous college principal and the Llanfair police colluded to cover up the assaults. The college and the police are connected. But how it all ties together, I don’t know. I don’t know how the fraud comes in, or if that’s something separate. Except it seems to involve the same people: Vitruvious, Rico, Kaylan. Sorry, boss, thinking aloud.”
Ravensbourne made some marks in her book.
“Do you trust those two police women? Jellicoe and Hargreaves?”
Charlie thought, and had no hesitation in answering. “Yes, boss. Patsy Hargreaves was the original whistleblower, and Mags Jellicoe helped her compile the information. You’ve had them asking questions around the college all day, so you trust them. So, a definite yes.”
“Good. I agree. What are you going to do next?” Ravensbourne asked.
Charlie felt the first spike of panic since Ravensbourne had arrived. You tell me, you’re the SIO.
But Ravensbourne lit another cigarette and said nothing. Charlie focussed on slowing his breathing. Everything Ravensbourne said suggested that she thought his answer would be worth listening to.
“Um, re-interview Kaylan. He’s the key, I think, though I’m not sure he will co-operate. Keep looking for Gwilym. Find out what we can about Vitruvious, and interview him. I think he’s avoiding us. Talk to the Pepperdines again to see if they have the records of the payments they made, because fifty-thousand dollars is a lot of money, and if there were more payments like that… Get a forensic accountant to look at the college books. Catch up with any witnesses to Rico’s body being moved. See if we can work out why it was left where it was. Was it supposed to make a statement? Or was it just a convenient spot?”
“And Harrington-Bowen and his cronies?”
“I hope, boss, that if we can get the answer to some of the other questions, a bright light will shine on Harrington-Bowen and Jared Brody …” Charlie trailed off. “Someone, or several someones, are trying to disrupt every part of the investigation, and stop us being able to focus. I’m guessing they think they can get their jobs back, and if we haven’t found anything by the time they’re back in charge, the secrets will stay buried for ever. So they are trying to keep us chasing our tails until then. We have to ignore the distractions.”
Ravensbourne smiled and slapped Charlie’s thigh so hard that the sound made a couple of passers-by look up in surprise. He thought that the longer he spent with Ravensbourne, the more bruises he would accumulate.
“Good. Ring me tonight with an update.” She pulled out her phone and told whoever answered to pick her up by the war memorial as soon as they could. “Might just have time for another ciggy,” she said.
Charlie stood up as if on automatic pilot. She was going to go, and he’d be on his own again. Except he had a plan, his plan, and Ravensbourne had, in her own peculiar way, signed off on it. His legs began to move in the direction of the police station, his mind racing, trying to put the tasks into some kind of logical order. We’ll start with a whiteboard.
He and Eddy found a whiteboard behind the row of hi-vis jackets, and set it up in the break room, leaning up against some chairs. They found a set of coloured markers in a desk drawer and Charlie wrote the names of the people they were interested in across the top:
Kaylan Sully
Inigo Vitruvious
Gwilym Bowen
Nigel Harrington-Bowen
Jared Brody
Rico Pepperdine (dec)
Down the side, he wrote the items needing investigation:
Rico’s death
