Page 27

I know what you’ll be thinking, Reid. I can hear your Detective Reid Murray thoughts.

Just because Kit and Ryan were there, at the right time, that doesn’t mean either of them were involved in Tanya’s death.

But lack of definitive proof means nothing.

And, in fact, it means less than nothing in the face of a litany of coincidences which stretch too far: Tanya and Holly both dying of a drug overdose.

Both having spent the evening with the same people before they died.

The two of them talented young athletes.

Both deaths being dismissed as accidental overdoses, despite a lot of questionable features.

Kit and Ryan claimed Tanya left that dinner early; that they’d never talked to her.

But the more I thought about that, the more unlikely it seemed.

Tanya was a magnetic young woman and a star athlete.

She would have been exactly the kind of girl they’d be into, even if she was maybe a little too blonde and a fraction too tall for Kit’s usual type.

Tanya had a reputation as a sportswoman, too. She was popular with her teammates, and making waves. There was no way they wouldn’t have known who she was, and they would have wanted to impress her.

As I walked rapidly away from the wine tasting, presumably crossing the river at Magdalene Bridge even if I forgot how I’d done it within a few seconds, I found myself thinking that we could find other witnesses to what happened that night. Witnesses the police clearly never bothered to find.

There would, I knew, be students who remembered whether Kit and Ryan had talked to Tanya, and whether they’d left with her.

Ryan had said their first rugby team had been hosted by the university women’s hockey team.

That gave me a list of people to identify and covertly contact– as long as I could work out who’d been playing last year.

I found myself thinking again of Holly, and how she’d wanted to get advice the day before she’d died. Was there a chance the advice could have been about something she’d only just understood? Something that related to Tanya’s death six months before?

The moment I was back in the Jesus Green house I loaded up the WhatsApp files Cordelia had sent me and trawled back to the date of Tanya’s death.

I’d obviously already checked these dates, but I hadn’t known what I was looking for then.

I wondered, now, whether there was something significant that I’d missed.

But the only thing that stood out to me was from a week after Tanya’s death, from Holly to Cordelia.

We want to cheer Kit up. He’s still a bit stressy-depressy. Xx

It was the kind of phrase that would have sounded heartless to anyone not firmly Gen-Z, but talking lightly about mental health stuff is something I’m fully familiar with.

Holly just meant, basically, that Kit was anxious and sad.

He’d seemed that way when we’d talked about her death at the wine tasting, too.

There were three reasons he might feel like that, as far as I could tell. The first was that he’d simply been sad about the death of a girl he’d failed to help. It was, I had to admit, possible. But it seemed more than weird that this kind of death had happened around Kit twice.

The second reason was that he’d done something to harm Tanya directly and been racked with guilt, or anxiety over being caught, or both. That was the kind of thing that might make someone stressy-depressy for a long time.

The third option was that he’d failed to stop someone else harming her.

He’d been at that dinner with Ryan, who had been quick to dismiss Kit’s guilt over the event.

Could he have attacked Tanya when drunk and then killed her to cover it up?

Was it possible that Holly had found out about it and died, too?

You know as well as I do that there was no examination of Tanya’s body for sexual assault. No attempt to identify whether she’d been the victim of something worse before those drugs got into her system.

Having thought about what might have happened, I then tried not to think about it. I wondered about the others instead. James and Esther hadn’t been at the dinner, theoretically, but they still might have met up with the other two later on, perhaps with Holly.

James had seemed unaffected by the conversation about Tanya, which was maybe a point in his favour. Esther, though, had grown all but silent later on. She’d kept glancing around as if looking for an escape, and then suddenly said that she was tired and wanted to go home.

Maybe she’s the one I should be interrogating.

I scrolled back through the screenshots of Cordelia’s WhatsApp messages to the night Tanya had gone to sleep and never woken up; the night of the formal exchange. There was that brief, apparently unimportant conversation about drinks to reread. It had started with Cordelia:

Hey, Holl! What are you up to? Evening plans? Xx

And then Holly replying:

I’m on deadline, but I’ll probably get finished up in time to get drinks in with Kit and the others. Xx

So it sounded like Holly could have been there for after-dinner drinks, and that ‘the others’ could have included James and Esther.

There were no more messages that evening, but I noticed now that twenty minutes later, Cordelia had called Holly. I hadn’t really registered this before.

The conversation had lasted for fifteen minutes, and that meant Cordelia might, just might, have some idea of what Holly had decided to do. I needed to find a way of asking her about it.

I picked up my phone and, after hesitating, messaged Cordelia to ask if we could meet up the next day.

And then after a little consideration I sent Esther a message, too, telling her how much I’d enjoyed the night and finishing with Let me know if you want coffee tomorrow!

I have a day off training and I’m determined to actually be sociable. Xx

Esther replied before Cordelia did.

Thanks for the fun. You have to come and keep me company with the boys more often. I’d love to have coffee but unfortunately with exams looming I only have time for a brief break, and I’ve promised an old flame I’ll see him for breakfast. So sorry, darling! A drink after my next exam? X

The mention of an old flame interested me. It sounded to me like Esther wanted to talk about it, or she’d just have said she was busy. So I took the bait, and said:

You’re on for post-exam drinks! Thursday evening? And old flame sounds exciting. Tell all if you have time. Xx

I could see her typing for a little while before her reply came through. A message arrived from Cordelia agreeing to meet before Esther had finished.

When Esther’s message came, it was short, suggesting that she’d been writing and deleting.

Oh, it’s not really that exciting. I probably shouldn’t be going. There’s no future in it. But somehow you always want to see the inappropriate ones, don’t you? X

This was interesting, too. An inappropriate ex could have been someone she’d been dating when both Holly and Tanya had died. Could he have been at the May Ball? Or was he totally outside their social circles?

And by the way, Reid, I noticed then, as I’ve noticed since, that Esther has a weirdly old-fashioned way of talking and messaging.

It’s like she’s fifty instead of twenty-one, and already married with kids.

I think, you know, that it makes it hard for her sometimes.

She doesn’t instinctively gel with anyone her age, and because of that she puts barriers up to avoid getting hurt. Which only makes it all worse.

I decided I was going to have to ask Cordelia more about Esther and the ex-boyfriend. If she’d been dating someone inappropriate and it had gone badly wrong, that was more than interesting.

Before I finally fell asleep at a half-reasonable time, I found myself thinking about James Sedgewick all over again.

I had to admit, it was harder thinking about him as a killer now I’d got to know his very normal-seeming family.

The easy banter between them all was a lot more like the relationship between you and your parents and sister than like the messed-up stuff I’ve witnessed in troubled homes.

I’m including mine in that, by the way, even though I have yet to kill anyone.

But saying all that, there can be an unconscious pressure in having a brilliant family.

One that a younger son might feel unable to live up to.

And I wasn’t going to assume that the public face of the Sedgewicks was everything there was to know.

They might be warm and friendly on the surface and cruel and controlling behind closed doors.

Though, actually, the thing I ended up wondering right before I drifted off was: What would they do if James killed his girlfriend?

And I somehow knew for sure, Reid, exactly what they would do: They would close ranks and protect him, convinced they were doing the right thing.

I felt more optimistic about everything in the morning, once I’d finally had a proper night’s sleep.

Though that was followed by a not very productive day hanging out in an amazing coffee shop called Bould Brothers which I’d heard Esther and Kit talking about.

It was near Downing College, and I could see why they liked it.

Totally aside from the decor being lush, it served the nicest coffee, and I was jittery with too many cups of it by the time it hit twelve.

It kind of surprised me, you know, that they didn’t hang out at specific Pitt Club locations.

My vision of the club as being a fraternity was not quite right.

It seemed more like somewhere they would go occasionally for dinners.

Which was making me a little anxious about being able to get a story about the place as backup if I didn’t uncover a murder, if I’m honest. Something I badly needed to keep Gael happy.