Close Your Eyes Read online

  ‘Just wanted some fresh air?’ Tom said without conviction.

  Jumbo shook his head. ‘They have a lovely garden over that wall.’ He pointed to a brick wall about six feet high, which only Jumbo – and at a push, Tom – could look over on tiptoe. ‘There’s no gate in it to access this path, so she must have come out of the front door and walked down here.’

  ‘In high heels. I get your point, Jumbo. It doesn’t entirely make sense. What about footprints?’

  Jumbo puffed out a long breath through pursed lips. ‘Nothing that’s any use. It seems the husband paced up and down while he called 999 and has been on his hands and knees in the mud around her body. Plus it rained earlier, and walkers might have come down here after it stopped.’

  A perfect single footprint could have made life easier, but things were rarely that simple. ‘Is her phone switched on?’

  ‘It is, but it’s password-protected. Probably uses facial recognition, but it’s not going to recognise hers now, I’m afraid. Becky asked the husband if he knew the pass code, but apparently not. It’s on its way to the digital forensics team as we speak, but you know how bloody difficult manufacturers make it to get into smartphones these days.’

  Tom grunted. It was always a battle, but the phone might have something to tell them.

  He edged as close to the body as he could without compromising the scene and crouched down. In the light of the arc lamps he saw a young woman lying on her side, one arm stretched out as if she had tried to protect herself when she fell, not knowing that it was too late. Her eyes were open, staring at a puddle, red with blood, just in front of her face. One false eyelash had become detached and sat on her cheek like a dead spider, and dark red lipstick was smudged across her cheek.

  What had persuaded her to walk down here in the middle of the night? Had she driven home and seen something as she put her car in the garage? Perhaps she had never even gone into the house. Maybe it was simply a case of wrong place, wrong time.

  It sounded like they’d have plenty of time to come up with hypotheses while they waited for the pathologist, and Tom hoped some bright spark would rustle up a cup of coffee from somewhere. He needed a caffeine hit badly.

  2

  MARTHA

  I’m five minutes later than usual getting to work, and I realise the minute I walk through the door to the main office that something is wrong. There’s a buzz in the air, and a look of blank shock on a few faces. Elise – the office gossip – is fit to burst with excitement. She turns as I open the door, tucks a strand of her white-blonde hair behind one ear and gives me what looks like a sly grin. I stare right back at her. She won’t get any response out of me.

  With a quiet ‘Good morning’ I walk straight through the room and into my own private sanctuary.

  I hear her shout, ‘Martha, you’ll never believe what’s happened,’ but before she can tell me more, I close the door softly.

  I couldn’t bear to sit out there in the general office all day, listening to Elise disgorging her vitriol. I know some of the others are uncomfortable with her gossiping, but they don’t want to become a target for her acid tongue so they go along with her.

  Elise doesn’t like me, and that makes the others wary around me too. It seems they have to conform to her code of behaviour. There’s nothing I can do about it – nothing I want to do. They know nothing about me, and that’s fine. Maybe I’m a tough person to like, and try as I might it’s sometimes hard to ignore the voice in my head that takes me back to my teenage years and beyond: You need to look at your failings, girl. You need to understand your faults; be a better person.

  I give my head a quick shake to shut out the voice. I know who I am. I know all the bad bits.

  I drop my bag by the desk and pull out my chair, but it only takes seconds for Elise to barrel her way through the door. I can tell that my lack of interest in the latest rumour has irritated her.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what we’re all talking about?’ she demands.

  I don’t answer. I just raise my eyes and look straight into hers. She thinks it’s spooky the way I never avert my gaze – she’s told me so – and I see her mouth harden as her eyes drift beyond me to the window so she doesn’t have to stare me down.

  ‘It’s Genevieve,’ she says.

  Niall’s wife. I feel a shiver run up my spine, but still I don’t rise to her bait. Instead, I reach down into my bag, remove my mobile phone, switch it off, pop it into the drawer, slam it shut and twiddle the mouse on my desk to bring my computer to life.

  ‘Jesus, you’re a cold bitch,’ she says, her curling lip betraying her dislike for me. ‘She’s dead, Martha! I know you don’t give a fuck about anyone, but Niall’s our boss – the person responsible for paying our wages – and his wife is dead!’

  The word echoes around my head, and I lift my eyes back to hers. But I ask no questions. I don’t know what to ask, what to say. And anyway, I know she’s going to tell me.

  ‘The police are bound to be here soon. Let’s see how cool you’re feeling then.’

  Against my better judgement, one word bursts from my lips. ‘Police?’

  This time she positively gloats. ‘Yes, police. Of course they’ll come here – we all knew her, and they’ll definitely want to talk to you, won’t they? Everyone knows how you feel about Niall and how uncomfortable you’ve made him. You thought it was a secret, but we knew. And we heard you arguing with Genevieve last week. What happened, Martha? Was there a showdown between the two of you?’

  She knows nothing. She’s just fishing.

  ‘My conversation with Genevieve is nothing to do with you – or the police.’

  ‘Well, let’s see if they think the same. They’re going to want to know everything – every little detail about anyone who might have had a grudge against her. Don’t stand there looking at me as if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Spence will be in soon, and he’ll want to talk to us. He’s already phoned me. He says Niall called him at five thirty this morning to break the news, and Spence said he was practically incoherent – it took him ages to get out of Niall what had happened. But he eventually managed to choke out the words. It turns out she’s not just dead, Martha. She’s been murdered!’

  I hold myself firm, willing my body not to shake, but there are icicles running down my back. For the first time ever, I am grateful to Elise for being unable to hold her vicious tongue. Had she not been relishing the drama of it all, I might never have considered that the police would want to interview Niall’s staff. Why would they? Genevieve didn’t work here. She only ever came when she wanted something from Niall. I’m sure it will just be routine. Surely they have nothing to tie anyone here to her murder?

  But there’s one thing I know for sure: I can’t be here when they arrive.

  3

  At last Tom was free to leave the crime scene after what had seemed an interminable wait for Amy Sanders. But as the pathologist had pointed out in a slightly acerbic tone when she finally arrived, Tom’s corpse wasn’t the only one in town. Amy or one of her Home Office colleagues had to attend every suspicious death, whether murder or not, and she was looking unusually frazzled. It seemed it had been a busy night.

  As soon as her initial examination had been completed and the body dispatched to the mortuary, she’d turned to Tom.

  ‘I’ll be conducting the post-mortem later today, Tom. You’ll be there, I assume?’ she asked, her tone weary.

  ‘I will.’ He’d resisted the impulse to add ‘unfortunately’. He hated post-mortems and had attended far too many. He didn’t envy Amy, as it seemed likely she would have to conduct more than one that day after little or no sleep. At least all Tom had to do was observe and ask questions.

  Rob had left the scene nearly two hours earlier to head back to the incident room so he could brief DI Sims, but Becky had stayed with Tom while they waited for Amy to appear, and they’d used the time to don protective clothing and have a look round the Strachans’ home, n
ow a crime scene crawling with CSIs.

  It was a red-brick cottage, probably Victorian, and much bigger than it looked from the road. It had probably been lovely, Tom thought, but at some point all the character had been stripped from the inside. Either the Strachans or a previous owner had clearly had an obsession with downlights, which shone brightly in every room, making the still bleary-eyed Tom blink in their glare.

  The study was the only room that didn’t look as if it had come straight out of an interiors magazine. Three walls were lined with workstations, each with a keyboard and two monitors. Wires looped behind the furniture, linking every computer to a big black box which Tom assumed was some kind of server. Whatever it was, it seemed to be busy, with constantly flashing lights showing signs of activity. This was way beyond the average home computer system, and Tom didn’t pretend for a minute to know what it was all doing. But he did know that it would have to be examined. Some of the force’s tech guys would be in their element.

  ‘What’s your thinking, Becky?’ he asked as they looked around.

  ‘There’s no immediate evidence that the perpetrator set foot over the doorstep, and no obvious signs of violence on the premises. But there’s always a chance that the killer was waiting inside for Genevieve when she got home, and then took her out into the lane to kill her.’

  ‘There’s also the chance that her husband wasn’t where he said he was. He remains a suspect until proved otherwise. You spoke to him. What did you make of him?’

  ‘Struggling to process what’s happened, as you might imagine,’ Becky said. ‘He kept staring at his hands as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. There was a lot of blood, and he’d obviously been in very close contact with the victim. I explained that his home had to be treated as a crime scene and offered him the choice of going to a friend’s house or even to a neighbour. But when I mentioned that we could take him to the police station in Swinton, he seemed relieved to have the decision taken out of his hands.’

  Tom could understand why the man wasn’t keen to go to a friend’s house. Although his clothes had been seized, in theory to deal with any issues of cross-contamination but in reality to check for evidence, he would still be covered in his wife’s blood, unable to shower in his own home until the CSIs had completed the forensic examination. At least he’d have a chance to clean up at the station.

  Now that the body had gone and Jumbo’s team was busy searching the path, the Loopline and any adjoining gardens, Tom decided it was time to leave. He needed to talk to Mr Strachan, who was their best bet for understanding why anyone might have wanted to kill his wife. ‘Jumbo, we’re off,’ he called.

  Jumbo raised his head from where he was peering over the shoulder of one of his team, who was gently moving blades of grass in search of evidence. ‘I’ll catch up with you later,’ he mumbled, returning his concentration to the grass.

  As they reached their respective cars, Tom turned to Becky.

  ‘You’ve got the details of the lawyers’ office where Mr Strachan’s meeting was held, and someone should be there to take your call by now, so let’s get his alibi checked.’

  ‘Will do,’ she said, before slamming her car door and setting off at a pace Tom wasn’t even going to try to compete with.

  As he drove towards the local sub-divisional headquarters in Swinton, he pictured the murder scene and tried to imagine what would have persuaded Genevieve Strachan to leave the safety of her home at some time around midnight to walk down an unlit passage in high heels.

  Did she have a lover? Maybe her call to her husband had been to check that he wasn’t going to be back for a while. But then why meet in the alley? Why not invite him into the house? Or maybe she was being blackmailed and was lured out to make a payment. Or she’d gone out to buy drugs. The options seemed endless. One thing was certain, though. Tom was as sure as he could be that she hadn’t gone outside to take in the night air.

  4

  Tom and Becky were shown into what was supposedly a ‘soft interview room’, where a pale Niall Strachan was sitting on a brown leather chair that looked anything but comfortable. He’d been given some clothes to change into and had washed any remaining blood from his skin.

  Tom walked across to shake his hand. ‘Mr Strachan, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Tom Douglas, and I believe you’ve met Detective Inspector Robinson. I’m sorry for your loss, sir, and I apologise that we need to question you at such a difficult time. We don’t want to add to your distress, but I’m sure you realise that the sooner we can get information, the greater our chances of finding out who did this.’

  ‘Ask me anything you want,’ Niall said, his voice slightly unsteady.

  Tom and Becky took seats opposite him.

  ‘The thing we need to understand is why your wife would have gone out into the lane – which would have been pitch black – so late at night. We don’t have a time of death yet, but maybe you can help by telling us anything you know about her movements last night.’

  Niall dropped his head and stared down at his hands, clasped between his knees.

  ‘She went to her sister’s. Sara. She lives in Leigh. I’ve written down her details because someone has to tell her, and I don’t think I can.’ He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and pushed it across the low table between them.

  Tom glanced at it. ‘That’s okay, Mr Strachan. We’ll talk to Mrs Osborne. What else can you tell us?’

  ‘Genevieve got home at about eleven. I know because she called me to ask what time I was getting back. She wanted to know how the meeting had gone with the investors – that’s where I was. In a stuffy meeting room in an office in central Manchester, with a load of lawyers.’

  ‘And what time did you get home?’

  ‘Just after one.’

  ‘Late meeting, then?’ Tom said.

  ‘Have you ever been to an investors’ meeting, particularly one that involves signing contracts? They argue about every bloody comma as the lawyers rack up their charges.’

  ‘Do you think your wife might have seen someone in the lane as she arrived home? Or seen something she needed to check out, perhaps as she was pulling the car into the garage?’

  Niall shook his head. ‘No. When we spoke she was already in the house. I could hear the TV on in the background. It was still on when I got back, which is why it seemed odd that she wasn’t there.’

  Tom thought ‘odd’ was a bit of an understatement, but maybe Mrs Strachan had a habit of going out after midnight.

  ‘I know DI Robinson has already asked you this, but have you by any chance remembered the pass code for your wife’s phone? We’ll be checking her records, and we’re hoping to get the numbers of anyone who she spoke to or texted. Someone may be able to explain why she left the house.’

  ‘I don’t know her pass code. She probably told me, but I can’t remember. She’s unlikely to have used SMS or made a mobile call, in any case. She and her friends always used iMessage or FaceTime, so her service provider isn’t going to have a clue who contacted her.’

  Strachan was right, of course. Whether she’d used mobile data or WiFi, with iMessage the only record of who had contacted her – if, indeed, anyone had – would be on the phone itself.

  ‘DI Robinson mentioned you found your wife on the lane because you were able to trace her phone, is that right?’

  He lifted one shoulder nonchalantly. ‘That’s right. My company designs AI systems to integrate with mobile phones. The app on Genevieve’s mobile could be triggered to send me her location – fairly standard stuff as I’m sure you know – but also to emit a beep if she didn’t respond to my request for her whereabouts.’

  ‘AI systems for mobiles?’

  Niall sat forward in his seat, more animated than they had seen him until now. ‘We’re at the cutting edge. We’re combining predictive behaviour with artificial intelligence. You don’t need to program our apps to switch things on at certain times – you know, like lights, heating, et cetera –
they learn your behaviours, predict what you’re going to do and act independently. It’s going to revolutionise people’s lives.’

  Tom had no idea what he meant, and after his brief burst of enthusiasm, Niall slumped back into the chair.

  ‘So your wife’s phone was beeping?’ Tom said, steering the interview back to the relevant facts.

  ‘It was. And emitting an intermittent flash. I could see the phone on the ground, but I didn’t see Genevieve until I was almost on top of her because I was pointing my torch at the path to avoid the puddles. Suddenly, there she was. I thought she’d fallen.’

  Niall suddenly gulped and jumped to his feet as if the tragedy had struck him all over again.

  ‘I’ll try to remember her pass code, but please excuse me. I’m sorry. I need a minute.’ Head down, he hurried towards the door.

  Tom gave him a sympathetic nod. ‘Of course.’

  It was frustrating to have to wait, but not only had the man just lost his wife, he’d also been the one who had discovered her.

  ‘Becky, while he’s out of the room, can you get on to Rob? Ask him to go and talk to the sister to check if the times tally. See if there’s anything she can tell us about Genevieve’s state of mind.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll call him from the hall in case Mr Strachan comes back.’

  As she closed the door, Tom pulled out his own mobile and did a quick search on Niall’s company. The screen was flooded with mentions of XO-Tech. He was still ploughing through the reports when Becky came back.

  ‘All sorted,’ she said. ‘You’re looking engrossed.’

  He lifted his eyes from his phone for a moment. ‘He wasn’t joking about the powers of this app of his.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘His company’s just had a significant injection of venture capital so they can further explore this artificial intelligence he was telling us about. It gives an example here: listen to this. “If it’s your normal practice to text your partner as you leave the office, the app will monitor your location, and if it’s the right time of day, or thereabouts, and you’re heading to the office car park, it will automatically trigger a text to say you’re on your way. As you get closer to your car, it will unlock the door. Then as you approach home, your electric gates – if you have them – will open, and if your house is suitably equipped it will switch on the heating in anticipation of your arrival.” Bloody hell,’ he muttered.