Guilty Conscious by Oliver Davies (best ereader for students .txt) 📗

Mrs Vinson stiffened slightly and pushed herself up, wiping her face and squaring her shoulders. “No,” she said firmly. “He was a delightful boy. Well mannered and charming,” she managed to speak through the new wave of tears. “Everybody thought so, everybody loved him.” She broke down into her husband’s shoulder again, and he looked at us slowly.

“Who found him?” he asked.

“Freya Fox. Did you ever meet her?”

“Once before.” He nodded gruffly. “He thought about bringing her on Friday, in fact. Lovely girl. How is she?”

“Her mother took her home last night, so we hope she’s alright, but it will take time.”

“Did Edward express any fears to you?” Mills piped up after being quiet for a while. “Anything that was worrying him or anything he was scared of?”

“No,” Mr Vinson replied. “Not to me, anyway.” He glanced down at his wife, and I slowly stood up, placing one of my cards on the coffee table between us.

“We’ll get out of your way,” I assured him. “Please don’t hesitate to call us if you have any concerns or questions. We’ll be happy to help. We arrange a family liaison officer to come if you wish—”

“No,” he quickly shut me down. “We’ll manage, thank you.”

“We’ll be in touch,” I said, Mills standing and walking over to me. “And we will do everything we can to ensure that we find who did this. We are truly very sorry for your loss.”

Mr Vinson nodded and inched away from his wife enough to offer us both a sweaty hand to shake. We saw ourselves out and stood out on the driveway for a while, letting it all sink in.

“It’s daylight,” Mills murmured. “Shall we head back to the university?”

I nodded. The sooner we took a look around, the sooner we might fit a few pieces together.

Five

Thatcher

The university was less daunting in the daylight. The old buildings cast fewer shadows, their corners and crevices no longer dark hiding places where anything could be lurking. Students roamed the campus, most of them murmuring amongst each other, looking over to Edward’s building with fearful expressions. I wouldn’t want to be the one handling that PR nightmare. Convincing the public, and the students and their families, that it was still a safe place wouldn’t be an easy feat.

When we reached the courtyard, a few straggling onlookers milled about, standing in tight groups and whispering to each other with darting looks to the police tape and locked building. We made a stop at the security office on our way to retrieve the key where’d they’d been in the process of sorting out obtaining the footage from the cameras for us. I got the feeling that we’d be waiting on that longer than we ought to. Maybe I could convince Sharp to stick her head in, snap a few people into a faster gear for us. However, she had her own hands full right now.

Key in hand, we entered the building, which was neither better nor worse in the daylight. I opened the door to Edward’s room and pulled my jumper up over my mouth and nose as the smell crawled out. Behind me, Mills coughed and held his sleeve up to his face.

“Christ,” he muttered, blinking rapidly. “Can we make this quick?”

I nodded and pushed the door fully open, stepping into the world’s worst time capsule.

The blood had sunk into the carpet, a rich, dark, hard layer that looked like paint had been spilt. The aroma in the air was foul, and it was a bloody good thing that forensics would be back here later today to sort it all out. Slowly, I got more accustomed to the smell and let my jumper down, freeing my hands to pull a pair of gloves on and start looking around the room. Mills studied the bookshelf, and I turned my attention to the posters and pictures on the wall.

“I think he studied classics,” Mills told me, tapping his finger on a few of the spines. That made sense, judging by some of the images on the wall of classical scholars, Greek statues and several gift shop postcards of paintings from galleries.

“Your time to shine then, Mills,” I replied. “You’ve a better head for all of this than me.”

He gave a short laugh, bending down to pick up something in the laundry hamper.

“Towel is still a bit damp,” he remarked. “Maybe he had a shower when he got back, waiting for Freya.”

“She did say she was late,” I said, walking over to him where he held the towel aloft. “But if he had time to shower and change, that makes our window a bit fuzzy.”

“Depends on when he left his meeting with the professor,” Mills pointed out, dropping the towel.

“And where on campus that meeting was,” I added. “If he was the other side of the place or only a few minutes away, that changes our timeline.”

“We should talk to the professor soon in that case,” Mills said. I nodded in agreement and took another quick scan of the room.

“Not a lot of personal things,” I said, looking over the plain bedding and the purely academic decorations. Apart from a few photographs, the room looked more like an office or a study than a place where a nineteen-year-old boy had lived.

“Suppose with his parents and home so close, he didn’t really need to bring all that much,” Mills suggested.

I bent down to the bed, looking underneath. A rucksack was under there, as well as a gym bag full of sporting clothes and a beaten-up leather suitcase. Interesting. I pulled them all out, passing the gym bag to Mills as I checked the suitcase. The rucksack was empty.

“Rugby,” Mills remarked, shaking out a rugby top, the university’s team.

“So, he would have been fast,” I said as I unclipped the suitcase. “Probably quite strong.”

“The killer caught him off guard then? Or we’re looking for someone just as strong.”

I hummed noncommittally and flipped