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

“There’s this girl, used to be in our year. She hated him,” he told us. “Like really, really hated him.”

“She used to call him all sorts of names,” Vanessa went on. “Throw things sometimes, leave him horrible letters, threats, nasty.”

“Did he ever report her? Inform anyone?”

“No.” Charlie shook his head. “He thought she was harmless.” He said it in such a way that it made me think he didn’t think she was.

“Any reason as to why?” Mills asked.

“Just didn’t like him, I think.” Charlie shrugged and looked down at his shoes again, fiddling with the ring on his finger.

“Do you know her name?” I asked, watching him twitch curiously.

“Billie,” he replied instantly. “Billie Helman.”

I nodded to Mills, who quickly jotted the name down.

“Do you think she ever would have done anything to hurt him?” I asked. “Was she ever violent?”

“We haven’t seen her in a while,” Fiona told us in a quiet, deep voice. “It was worse, really, the quiet.”

The calm before the storm, I wondered.

“Can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to hurt him?” I asked.

They all shook their heads. “Everyone liked Charlie,” Vanessa said. “He was nice to everyone.”

I noted that Fiona ducked her head down, wrapping herself even more tightly into a ball. Mills clocked it too, looking at me with a slight raise of the eyebrow that the students wouldn’t be able to detect.

“He was a good friend,” Claude informed us. “A nice boy.”

“Well,” I said, standing up from the bench, “thank you for helping us. We might be in touch with you again, but until then,” I pulled out a card and handed one to each of them, “if you can think of anything else that might help us,” I looked specifically at Fiona as I spoke, “or if you have any questions, feel free to call.”

“Thank you,” Vanessa said, slipping the card into her bag.

“How’d it happen?” Charlies asked, staring down at the card. The others fell quiet, looking at him with worried, horrified expressions. “Would it have hurt him?”

I winced internally and debated how to answer that question. I didn’t want to lie to the boy, but I also wanted to spare him from the rather gruesome truth of it all.

“It would have been over quickly,” Mills said. Not untrue.

Charlies nodded, put the card in his pocket then looked up at us, managing to plaster a charming smile on his face that I guessed was there most of the time. He stood up, the others following.

“Better find the bastard that killed our friend then, Inspector,” he said, holding out his hand. I was a little surprised by the gesture, but I hid it, shaking his hand. Mills shook it next, then Charlie herded his friends away from us, out of the courtyard through the gates. Fiona lagged behind them, looking down at the card, then quickly over her shoulder back at us.

“Do you think she’ll be in touch?” Mills asked, watching them vanish around the corner.

“I think it might be worth talking to her without the others there,” I replied. They were a tight group, but it was clear to see who was in charge. I wondered if that had been Edward before. Either way, it was clear that if we wanted to know what Fiona really thought about Edward, positive or negative, we’d need to talk to her alone.

Mills’s phone chimed in his pocket, and he pulled it out.

“Wasco’s into the phone,” he told me. “Want to head back and check it out?”

“Might as well. Do a little digging into this Billie Helman as well, see if there are any red flags there that might be worth our time.”

“Why do you think she hated him?” Mills wondered as we walked back to the security office to drop off the key. “Love affair gone wrong?”

“Potentially. People rarely hate with reason, though. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, so I’m guessing Edward did something to piss her off.”

All we had to do was figure out what that something was.

Six

Thatcher

Back in the station, we beelined for Wasco’s office, entering the warm, humming room of computers and wires. Wasco was leaning back on his chair, feet propped on the desk, waiting for a screen beside him to load. He glanced over as we came in and gave us a grim smile.

“Saw Lena earlier,” he told us, swinging his legs down. “She said it was a bit of a gristly affair.”

“She’s not lying,” I answered, walking over to his desk. “You’re in the phone?”

“Piece of cake,” he told me, handing the phone over. “New code is 1-1-1-1. The laptop might take me a bit more time, and Chief’s got me working on this cyber situation.”

“Take your time,” I assured him. “Teens tend to keep most of their stuff on their phones, anyway.”

“Very true,” Wasco agreed. “Good luck with it all, not that you’ll need, eh, Thatcher?” He winked at me comically, and I laughed, steering Mills from the room.

We headed upstairs, settling down in our office. Mills ambled off to find something to eat while I opened up Edward’s phone and connected it to the projector, showing the screen on the wall. Edward’s background picture was an image he must have taken himself of what looked like Venice. He didn’t have many apps, I noticed at first glance, and no social media.

That was interesting. I thought that all teenagers were on social media. I opened up his call history as Mills walked back in, sliding a mug of tea and some biscuits my way before taking a seat on the edge of my desk, looking at the wall.

“Spoke to his parents,” he observed the most recent call from last night. “Just like they said.”

The call didn’t last very long, a few minutes at most, but it was the time that I needed more than anything else. Six minutes past six. I walked over to our whiteboard, wiped the remnants of the last case off, and drew a wobbly line, ending at seven,