What if she was imagining it? Maybe it was yet another one of her delusional symptoms? The result of a cracked skull.
‘The Metropolitan Police have confirmed that the journalist who broke the Paul Rhynie sex scandal was found dead at his London home this morning. Patrick Howden had been a vocal critic of the Business Secretary’s handling of various contracts awarded to...’
Maybe she should drive straight round to Accident and Emergency? Get herself admitted for some antipsychotics and an MRI scan.
‘...confirmed that Howden’s death is not being treated as suspicious. United States now, and tensions are running high after an explosion at the campaign headquarters of right-wing think tank “The 1791 Patriot Association” killed four and left dozens wounded. The think tank’s links to white supremacists are seen by many as...’
There was a way to check, though — the photos she’d taken of the essay. If they were all smudged, that would mean something, wouldn’t it? Or would it just prove that Benedict Strachan was a messy child? Maybe.
‘...appealed for calm. This afternoon Assistant Chief Constable Findlay Cormac-Fordyce confirmed that local police are looking for a Dr John Christianson in connection with a series of murders in the city...’
The Bloodsmith sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘They’re going to find out about that chandler’s warehouse sooner rather than later, Kiddo. I know you don’t like it, but we need to get this done.’
But why would anyone fake the ‘What I did over the summer holidays’ essay written by a little boy sixteen years ago?
43
Lucy sat behind her borrowed desk, working her way through the printouts of Benedict’s essay. Slow and steady. Ringing every smudge with a swoop of red biro. Not that it necessarily meant anything. Just because the pages had a few smudges on them, didn’t mean it was her that had smudged them. They could’ve been smudged years ago. There was no way to tell.
She slumped back in her seat.
Stared up at the manky ceiling tiles.
That sodding headache had returned, pulsing away as though something horrible was trapped inside her skull, breathing. And she was all out of painkillers. Didn’t matter that she’d already had much more than the recommended daily dose of paracetamol and aspirin.
Just have to struggle on, till she could buy some more.
She picked up the essay again. Skimmed through the bit about the neighbour’s dog for the fourth time since getting back to DHQ. How could anyone read that and not realize Benedict Strachan was a monster? But he wasn’t the only one, was he?
OK, so perhaps she could maybe believe she’d poisoned Mr Denholm’s dog, accidentally, when she’d been little, but her mother? It couldn’t be true — if Mum had been poisoned, it would’ve left a trail, wouldn’t it? An investigation: interview notes, post-mortem reports, door-to-doors, findings and conclusions.
She powered up the office computer and logged in. Sent a search creaking its way through the system. Sat back and waited for the results to come in. And waited. And waited.
Urgh...
Where was the Dunk when you needed him? He could always get this sodding stuff to work.
‘Ahem?’
She sagged. ‘What now?’
The Bloodsmith settled onto the edge of her desk and rummaged through the printouts of Benedict’s essay. ‘One thing occurs to me that you appear to have overlooked, Kiddo.’ He held up the first sheet of A4. Three or four smudges around the outside of the page were ringed in red. ‘Want to take a guess?’
‘I never thought losing my marbles would be this annoying.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I’m a manifestation of your subconscious, remember? So if I’m sitting here, annoying you, it’s because you’re trying to tell yourself something.’
A long breath rattled out of her. ‘Go on then.’
‘How many smudges do you see on this page?’
‘Four. I circled the bloody things.’
‘Exactly. Four smudges, all around the outside of the paper.’ He placed the printout in front of her and held up the next one. ‘What about now?’
‘Three.’
‘Well done.’ That sheet went beside its mate. ‘And this one?’
She snatched the third printout from his hands. ‘Are you finished?’
‘OK.’ He nodded. ‘Let’s approach this another way: remember when Benedict came in here, on Wednesday, and he was really struggling to smooth out the article he’d torn from the newspaper?’
‘Well, it can’t have been easy — they broke his left arm, and he’s left...’ She looked down at the sheet of paper, crumpled up in her fingers. ‘Benedict Strachan’s left-handed.’
‘And if there’s one thing we know about the world, it’s that it’s really not set up for left-handed people. When right-handed people write, their hand moves away from the letters they’ve just put down; a left-hander’s has to drag its way across everything they’ve written. But we’re supposed to believe an eleven-year-old Benedict can write twelve sides of A4, in a timed exam, and not smudge at least some of the words in the middle?’
‘Benedict Strachan didn’t write this.’ That’s why it felt so out of character: the frightened little boy in the interview room didn’t fit. It wasn’t him. She sat back in her chair. ‘Son of a bitch.’
The Bloodsmith poked her in the shoulder, voice bitter as battery acid. ‘Argyll lied to you. All that nonsense about how troubled Benedict was, about the eugenics and racism, when he’d faked the whole thing!’ Another poke. ‘Argyll thinks you’re an idiot. Thinks you’ll believe his lies.’ Poke. ‘Bet he’s laughing at you, right now. He’s sitting in his office, laughing, telling all his friends how he put one over on stupid, moronic, gullible old Lucy McVeigh.’ Poke. ‘Are you going to let him get away with that?’
The poking finger came up again, but Lucy slapped it away. ‘Bastard.’ She dragged out her phone. One unread text message, a missed call. Neither was from Argyll, so she went straight to her contacts and found his number. St Nick’s assistant headmaster was about to get a nasty shock.
‘That’s right: call him.’ The Bloodsmith smiled his wolf-like smile. ‘Tell him we’re coming for him. Tell him we’re going to make him suffer, the way we made Dr Christianson suffer. Tell him—’
‘Shut up.’ She jabbed the button, setting it ringing.
Argyll must’ve been hovering over his phone, because he picked up almost immediately. ‘Lucy? How lovely to hear from you so soon. Did the lure of my canard et échalotes au vin prove too much to—’
‘Were you in on it?’
Silence from the other end of the phone.
The computer finally chugged out a response to her query.
‘In on what, Lucy?’ Doing his best to sound reasonable. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re—’
‘Bet you thought you’d been so clever.’
Turned out there had been an investigation when Mum died — the screen was full of links to file numbers and document IDs. Sodding hell. The police didn’t investigate when someone died of breast cancer, they did that when there were suspicious circumstances. They did that when someone was murdered.
What if Charlie was right?