Chapter One

Matthew Denison thought he was probably going to be sick. The last time he’d seen a murder victim was in the morgue during his medical degree, and back then he’d had to fight not to collapse in an embarrassed heap on the autopsy room floor. He was already sweating and feeling jumpy, and he wasn’t even at the crime scene yet. What would he do if he saw the body and had to throw up?

Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Weathers glanced at him sideways as they drove along. ‘Are you going to be all right, Matt? You know you don’t have to come.’

Denison lowered the car window to get some air. ‘We should take advantage of the fact I happened to be here.’

‘This death…we don’t know it’s related,’ Weathers said. He switched on the radio. Denison said nothing: they both knew that a murder at Ariel College was only going to mean one thing.

The DJ on the local Cambridge station was already talking about the murder, even though Weathers had only just got the call himself, even though it was late at night. Denison suddenly realized there were likely to be journalists at the college, and started to straighten his tie and run a shaky hand through his hair.

The familiar twin spires of Ariel’s chapel appeared above the rooftops of the houses and shops as they drew nearer. They rounded a corner and the chapel was revealed in all its Gothic glory. Denison blinked. It seemed to be glowing a shocking pink.

Even from the far end of the road they could see the cluster of vans and cars, men and women with microphones and cameras and clipboards. Blue lights flashed from the roofs of three panda cars, though the sirens were silent.

Weathers pulled up as close to Ariel’s gatehouse as possible and they walked through the horde of reporters and a lightning storm of camera flashes. Denison kept his head down, but at one point he self-consciously readjusted his glasses, realizing with embarrassment that he was doing so in order to make it obvious he wasn’t wearing handcuffs, just in case any of the reporters got the wrong idea about what he was doing with a CID officer. He had once written a paper on the contagiousness of paranoia; he wondered now if perhaps he was spending too much time with his patients.

A sergeant escorted them through a small door that was cut into the larger wooden gate of the gatehouse. On the other side they were greeted by the sight of hundreds of students in evening gowns and dinner jackets. The students were huddled in groups. Some sat on the lawn, despondent. Many of the girls wore their boyfriends’ jackets over their glamorous dresses, and a few were wrapped up in police-issued blankets. They talked to each other in hushed voices, but there was no excitement in their tone. Their faces seemed pale despite their summer tans. One girl looked up at Denison, her eyes like smudges of soot in their sockets.

‘It was their May Ball tonight,’ the sergeant said quietly. ‘That’s why the chapel’s lit up like a Christmas tree and there’s a bouncy castle on the front lawn.’

‘They know about the murder?’ Weathers asked as they passed the students, who in the darkness looked like grey battlefield ghosts.

‘They don’t know who’s been killed, but yes, they’re aware there’s been another murder.’

They walked under an archway, below the college library, and entered Carriwell Court. Gravel crunched under their feet. Chinese lanterns radiated colour into the shadows. There were more police here, but only two students – a boy and a girl – who were talking to officers on opposite sides of the courtyard.

Denison took a good lungful of the warm night air before following Weathers and the sergeant through a doorway and up the stone staircase. He could hear voices, and as they reached the top of the stairs he could smell something unpleasant: a strange coppery scent, combined with ammonia and the stench of vomit.

Denison paused at the top of the staircase, holding on tight to the wooden banister. Half an hour ago we were having a beer, he thought. What the fuck am I doing here?

Weathers turned back. ‘You really don’t have to do this, Matt,’ he reiterated. ‘If it’s anything like the last two, it will stay in your brain for ever.’

Denison tried to shrug. His mouth was dry. ‘I want to help.’

Weathers nodded. He said nothing more, but turned and let Denison follow him into a room bustling with people.

There was a young man in a dinner jacket, with blood and God knows what else on his hands and trousers. His white shirt was smeared with it. ‘I was trying to put them back,’ he kept saying to a WPC. ‘I was just trying to put them back.’

In another corner a girl was curled up in the foetal position. She was bright red with the blood that covered her. At first glance Denison took her to be naked, then realized her bra and knickers were soaked through with the stuff. A paramedic was trying to shine a torch in her eyes. Denison instinctively went over to see if he could help. The girl was rocking to and fro, eyes unseeing, her pupils huge and black, ringed with only a thin line of iris. Her lips were moving but she made no sound.

‘Is she hurt?’ he asked the paramedic.

The paramedic shook his head. ‘Not as far as I can tell. Not physically, at least. The blood doesn’t seem to be hers.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Denison heard Weathers say. He stood up, and as the paramedics and police officers and pathologists shifted position, he saw, between and beyond them, the body that lay spreadeagled on the floor in a pool of blood, torn open, intestines dragged out and over the floorboards.

© Ruth Newman 2010