“And the tech himself?”
“He’s been in hospital the past few days with pneumonia, which is an alibi if I’ve ever heard one. I spoke to him by phone today. Dr. Quigley had volunteered to run basic tech while he was out. We’re investigating both further. How about you? Dug up anything?”
“I had some interesting visitors late last night,” I told her, and described the situation in detail. The important details, that is. I finished by relaying Theo’s warning about Anwen before he ignominiously passed out on my sofa.
“Facedown, I hope,” she said, taking notes.
“Facedown.” I grimaced. “He was still sleeping when I left. Honestly, they’re all so private, even Rupert, but there’s something one of them needs to confess, and the rest suspect it. They wouldn’t keep pulling in Watson and I otherwise. They can’t stand to be alone with each other.”
“Have you tried isolating any of them? Asking questions?”
I shook my head. “They’d rabbit. No, I have to let them come to me. They know my history. My . . . profession. I can’t just innocently inquire about their lives, at this point.”
“So you’re only quasi-undercover, then.”
“I’m not undercover at all,” I said after a moment. “Quite honestly, I’d wanted to take some summer classes and go punting with my boyfriend. And now . . . well, I should be in my chemistry tutorial.”
Sadiq whistled. “They don’t take well to being blown off, your tutors.”
“No.” An understatement. “Anyway, I know better than to ask you what you’ve learned this morning. This isn’t a collaborative exercise. But I hope you don’t mind if I ask if you’ve followed up with Matilda Wilkes’s father?”
Sadiq sighed. “I tried their home number twice. The mother rushed me off the phone both times—she wants nothing to do with us ‘unless we have firm information.’ And as for the father—well, you have a message waiting.”
On her phone, Sadiq pulled up her voicemail and set it to speaker.
“This is George Wilkes, returning a call from a Charlotte Holmes. I hope you’re following up as to my daughter’s disappearance. I’ve been traveling for work but am available off and on these next few days . . .”
“Interesting,” I said, playing it back again, listening for the nuances in his voice.
“I know. A different tack than his wife’s. Though it makes sense, if she’s a nervous wreck. Wants to shove it all under the rug while he wants answers.” Sadiq tapped her pen on the table. “Anything else you want to share?”
“You’re bringing in Rupert Davies and Anwen Ellis this morning, yes?”
“An hour from now.”
I thought for a moment. “Is there anything you can do to upset Anwen? Something that perhaps implicates Rupert, so she wouldn’t go to him for solace?”
Sadiq thought about it, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “You’re not a terribly nice person,” she said finally.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“As long as you can admit it. I’ll see what I can do.”
“And one last favor?” I asked, handing her back her phone.
She slipped it back in her pocket. “Depends.”
“How good are you at making a scene?”
“Hmm,” she said. “Most likely not as good as you are.”
“I TOLD YOU, I DON’T HAVE TO TELL YOU ANYTHING WITHOUT a lawyer!”
Sadiq stormed out after me into the hall. “Then get a lawyer,” she growled, pointing a finger between my eyes. “You’re going to need one.”
The finger was a bit much, but her tone was actually quite believable. “I’m not guilty!” I let myself spiral up into panic. “I’ve only heard things, I haven’t done anything myself! How could I—last year I was in New York!”
“Someone has died,” Sadiq said, advancing on me. “If you don’t tell us what you know, there will be consequences. Don’t leave town. We’ll be picking you up tomorrow, if we aren’t at your door tonight.”
At that, she slammed her way through the door back to the squad room, leaving me, lost and forlorn-looking, to gape after her.
(Really, I was proud. She wasn’t a bad actor. And I knew the lines I’d given her were realistic, as Detective Shepard had once used them on me in earnest.)
“Um,” a voice said. “Are you okay?”
A boy was behind me, frozen in the door of his interrogation room. One of the comfortable ones, from the look of it.
“Oh my God,” I said, wiping at my eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“No—I, uh. They, like, threw the door open and told me I could go, but then you were, um. Out there.”
As she’d promised, Sadiq had excellent timing.
“Can you walk me out?” I said to Sebastian Wallis. “I feel sort of shaky.”
He agreed, swinging his bag over his shoulder. I kept my head down until we made it clear of the front doors, and then, halfway down to the street, I swayed a little, clutching at the railing.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, grabbing my arm to steady me. “Slow down. Do you need to find a place to sit?”
I didn’t. I needed to ride the momentum all the way out of the police station to a place where this boy I’d just met would give up some of his secrets.
He shaded his eyes, looking up the road. “We’re not far from Magdalen College,” he said, “and past that’s the botanic garden. Have you been? It’s a good place to collect yourself. I used to go there last year when I needed to . . . escape.”
We wandered up the bridge, the spiny thrust of the Magdalen Tower in the distance. The small talk we were making was exceedingly small: where I’d grown up, where I’d gone to school. I didn’t lie, but I also didn’t provide too much information. (These days, my surname was too much information.) He told me more or less the same. He’d grown up outside of Bristol, and it was where he was this summer, scooping ice cream at a shop before he went off to Bath Spa to study communications.
“I took the train in this morning. I got a call late last night from the detectives that they wanted me back in, that Dr. Larkin . . .” Sebastian swallowed. “I’d known it wasn’t over, but I hadn’t expected murder.”
I let the silence hang between us. “I’m worried,” I said finally, as we approached the ticket window. There was a short line, as it was a weekday: a girl in a Ramones shirt, a man wearing a baby in a sling, juggling her as she fussed. At the gate, we showed our student IDs—Sebastian still had his in his wallet from last summer—and paid. “My boyfriend is living with these Dramatics Soc kids, and there’s something off about them.”
Sebastian slowed, then sped up, shouldering past the people ahead of us. I followed. We ducked through a wrought-iron gate and into one of those wonderful wide-open spaces that Oxford had in abundance—an expanse of vivid green wound through with walkways, and beyond, a hedge maze. Watson would tell you more, I’m sure, but I wasn’t considering the flora.
A fountain burbled water up into the air, and I cut across the grass toward it. After a moment, Sebastian followed.