about Dad and happier times. Madeleine Masters had no idea of the ordeal her family had undergone that year. It wasn’t even a conscious decision not to tell her, more a tacit understanding that the news would unlikely penetrate the thick fog of dementia anyway. There’d been some worry that Will himself might bring it up – after all, he was only six, and could hardly be expected to maintain the family subterfuge – but so far he hadn’t. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t keen to relive any of that night. Even with his trauma therapist, he was apparently silent on the subject, preferring to focus discussions on his latest passion: astronauts.
Jo reached the home – Evergreen Lodge – and pulled in along the tree-lined drive. She normally brought flowers or chocolates, but she didn’t think her mum would care. Most the sweets went in a cupboard, to be dished out to staff anyway, and the flowers always wilted in the overheated atmosphere of the residents’ rooms. At the door, she was about to press the buzzer when her phone rang. It was St Aldates station.
‘What’s up?’ she answered.
‘You busy?’ said DI Andy Carrick.
Jo looked through the reinforced glass panel. Mrs Deekins was sitting in her normal spot in the corridor, staring at the opposite wall. She could almost smell the place already. Overcooked food, disinfectant, sadness. Radiators cranked to max.
‘Not especially.’
‘Head over to Oriel College,’ said Carrick.
‘What is it?’ asked Jo.
‘Missing person,’ said Carrick. ‘Signs of a struggle. A student called …’ he paused, and Jo guessed he was checking his notes, ‘Malin Sigurdsson.’
‘You there already?’
‘Division meeting,’ sighed Carrick. ‘Pryce is on his way though.’
‘Course he is,’ said Jo with a smile. ‘I’ll be about fifteen minutes.’
She returned to the car, wondering what awaited at Oriel. Missing people were reported several times a week. Most showed up within forty-eight hours, and unless it was a minor, the police rarely got involved. But indications of violence escalated the case to another level.
She appreciated Carrick giving her the call. Despite being the toast of the town in the summer, she’d sensed the Detective Chief Inspector, Phil Stratton, keeping her at arm’s length for the last few months. There’d been a couple of murders, one a straightforward domestic, the second drug-related, but she’d been sidelined on both cases in favour of Dimitriou and the new kid taking over from the mother-to-be Heidi Tan, Detective Constable Jack Pryce. Sure, they were both competent investigators, but Jo knew she was being treated with kid gloves. Indeed, when she’d asked for a quiet word with Stratton, he’d said as much, though he’d used words like ‘operational sensitivity’ and ‘workplace welfare’. The simple fact was, no one higher up seemed to understand what was going on in Jo’s head. How had she been affected by what had happened? Was she a liability? Perhaps Dr Forster could give an answer in her report. What had she meant that she’d ‘support’ more sessions, anyway – that Jo was still fucked up in the head somehow?
Jo only had herself to blame. She’d rushed back to work a few days after Ben’s funeral, too soon even by her own admission. It was before she’d started seeing Lucas properly, and she’d felt more alone and isolated than ever, drinking too much and missing sleep. She wasn’t really sure what had happened, but Heidi had found her in the toilets at the St Aldates station, mirror smashed and knuckles bleeding. The scary thing was, Jo didn’t really remember actually lashing out. Heidi had done her best to keep it a secret, but the lacerations had bled enough to need proper medical attention, and the mirror came out of the departmental budget. No one bought Jo’s explanation that it was an accident.
She flexed her knuckles now across the steering wheel – there were still a few scars. After that, Jo had agreed to the counselling, and then to medication. She told herself it was just to keep Stratton of her back, but she knew she was scared too. She’d seen plenty of PTSD in her career already – officers attendant on scenes of terror attacks particularly, or disturbing child cases – and it wasn’t a road she wanted to follow.
The problem was that even with Dylan dead, and Sally Carruthers in psychiatric care, the case hadn’t gone away for the Thames Valley Police either. The standards committee had come down hard on Stratton because of the mistakes he’d made in command. Quite rightly, Heidi had said – his eagerness to close the case at any cost had led to poor conclusions. In turn, Jo suspected, he’d decided she was to blame. And she got that, to an extent. She’d been the nexus of the case. Dylan was her childhood acquaintance, the crimes had taken place within a hundred yards of her childhood bedroom. It hadn’t helped either that the internal inquiry reported a day after she received her medal for bravery in the line of duty. Talk about a kick in the teeth for her DCI.
But maybe this misper was a way to put all that to bed. A couple of solid cases would show him and her colleagues that she was the same Jo Masters as before. Prove it to herself as well. Then she could really bury Dylan Jones for good.
Oriel College was nestled in the cobbled streets between the High Street and Christ Church College. Not Jo’s natural milieu by any means, though she couldn’t help but admire the gothic architecture of the entranceway, and the resplendent, perfectly mown quadrangle of grass inside, still coated on the shaded side with the silvery remains of a lingering frost. A sign read ‘Open to visitors’ – term had ended a week or so before, so the majority of students would have left. The city itself was noticeably quieter, enjoying a brief lull before the panic of Christmas shopping really set in.
PC Andrea Williams was waiting just to one side of the quad. As ever, the constable’s height made Jo give her a second glance. She was at least six-two, possibly the tallest woman Jo had ever met in the flesh, and her dreadlocks gave her the appearance of being a couple of inches taller still. Dimitriou called her Andre the Giant, which only he found funny, and which had earned him a verbal warning when Stratton heard him say it. Dimitriou protested that Heidi had once called him George Michael’s less talented, uglier sibling, on the basis of their shared Greek heritage, and the fact that he had murdered a rendition of ‘Club Tropicana’ on a work karaoke night.
‘And I dare you to say it to Andrea’s face,’ Heidi had added. Jo would have liked to see that, because she knew that Williams had been an accomplished judoka before joining the force, only missing out on the national team through injury. She could probably have tossed Dimitriou’s gangly frame from one side of a holding cell to the other.
‘Morning, Andrea,’ said Jo.
‘Ma’am,’ said Williams. ‘Follow me.’
They proceeded under a sort of covered walkway (Williams had to stoop), into another quad surrounded by nineteenth-century terraces, then down a set of stairs into a more modern section of housing. Jo had somewhat lost her bearings – these colleges had been reconstructed so many times over the centuries, to no obvious plan, that it was easy to get lost. A set of clipped heels fell into step beside them.
‘You’re the other detective?’ said a slightly cadaverous-looking fifty-something woman in a plaid suit, holding out a hand. Jo shook it as she slowed.
‘Jo Masters,’ she said.
‘Belinda Frampton-Keys. I’m
