Harriman pressed the very front of her lips together, but an imp’s smile curled both corners of her mouth. “FAX,” she said. “Cambridge. Right. In a tick, Superintendent.” And she added as a parting shot, “Charles went there, you know.”
John Stewart looked up, tapping the top of his pen reflectively against his teeth. “Charles?” he asked in some confusion, as if wondering whether the attention he had been giving to his report had somehow caused him to lose the drift of the conversation.
“Wales,” Webberly said.
“Whales in Cambridge?” Stewart asked. “What sort of whales? Where? Have they opened an aquarium?”
“Wales as in princes of,” Phillip Hale barked.
“The Prince of Wales is in Cambridge?” Stewart asked. “But that should be handled by Special Branch, not by us.”
“Jesus.” Webberly took Stewart’s report from him and used it to gesture with as he spoke. Stewart winced when Webberly rolled it into a tube. “No Prince. No Wales. Just Cambridge. Got it?”
“Sir.”
“Thank you.” Webberly noted with gratitude that MacPherson had put away his pocket knife and that Lynley was regarding him evenly with those unreadable dark eyes that were so much at odds with his perfectly clipped blond hair.
“There’s been a killing up in Cambridge that we’ve been asked to take on,” Webberly said and brushed away both their objections and their comments with a quick, vertical chopping motion of his hand. “I know. Don’t remind me. I’m eating my own words. I don’t much like it.”
“Hillier?” Hale asked astutely.
Sir David Hillier was Webberly’s Chief Superintendent. If a request for the involvement of Webberly’s men came from him, it was no request at all. It was law.
“Not altogether. Hillier approves. He knows about the case. But the request came directly to me.”
Three of the DI’s looked at each other curiously. The fourth, Lynley, kept his eyes on Webberly.
“I temporised,” Webberly said. “I know your plates are full at the moment, so I can get one of the other divisions to take this. But I’d rather not do that.” He returned Stewart his report, and watched as the DI assiduously smoothed the pages against the table top to remove the curled edges. He continued speaking. “A student’s been murdered. A girl. She was an undergraduate at St. Stephen’s College.”
All four men reacted to that. A movement in the chair, a question cut off quickly, a sharp look in Webberly’s direction to read his face for signs of worry. All of them knew that the superintendent’s own daughter was a junior member of St. Stephen’s College. Her photograph-giggling as she inexpertly punted both parents in an endless circle on the River Cam-stood on one of the filing cabinets in the room. Webberly saw the concern on their faces.
“It’s nothing to do with Miranda,” he reassured them. “But she knew the girl. That’s part of the reason I got the call.”
“But not the only reason,” Stewart said.
“Right. The calls-there were two of them-didn’t come from Cambridge CID. They came from the Master of St. Stephen’s College and the University’s Vice Chancellor. It’s a tricky situation as far as the local police are concerned. The killing didn’t occur in the college, so Cambridge CID have the right to pursue it on their own. But since the victim’s a college girl, they need the University’s cooperation to investigate.”
“Th’ University won’t gie it?” MacPherson sounded incredulous.
“They prefer an outside agency. From what I understand, they got their feathers ruffl ed over the way the local CID handled a suicide last Easter term. Gross insensitivity towards everyone concerned, the Vice Chancellor said, not to mention some sort of leaking of information to the press. And since this girl is apparently the daughter of one of the Cambridge professors, they want everything handled with delicacy and tact.”
“Detective Inspector Empathy,” Hale said with a curl of his lip. It was, they all knew, a poorly veiled attempt to imply antagonism and lack of objectivity. None of them were unaware of Hale’s marital troubles. The last thing he wanted at the moment was to be sent out of the city on a lengthy case.
Webberly ignored him. “Cambridge CID aren’t happy about the situation. It’s their patch. They prefer to handle it. So whoever goes can’t expect them to start killing the fatted calf. But I’ve spoken briefly to their superintendent-a bloke called Sheehan…he seems a decent sort-and they’ll cooperate. He sees the University implying this is a town-and-gown situation and he’s miffed about the idea that his team might be accused of prejudice against the students. But he knows that without the University’s cooperation, any man he sends in will spend the next six months sifting through sawdust in order to find sand.”
The sound of her light footsteps heralded Harriman. She presented Webberly with several sheets of paper on which the words Cambridgeshire Constabulary were printed along the top and in the right-hand corner a badge surmounted by a crown. She frowned at the collection of plastic coffee cups and foul-smelling ashtrays that sat on the table amid folders and documents. She clucked, tossed the cups into the waste bin by the door, and carried the ashtrays at arm’s length from the room.
As Webberly read the report, he passed on the pertinent information to his men.
“Not much to work with so far,” he said. “Twenty years old. Elena Weaver.” He gave the girl’s Christian name a Mediterranean pronunciation.
“A foreign student?” Stewart asked.
“Not from what I gathered from the Master of the College this morning. The mother lives in London and as I’ve said, the dad’s a professor at the University, a bloke short-listed for something called the Penford Chair of His-tory-whatever the hell that is. He’s a senior fellow at St. Stephen’s. A major reputation in his field, I was told.”
“Thus the red carpet treatment,” Hale interjected.
Webberly continued. “They’ve done no autopsy yet, but they’re giving us an initial rough estimate of the time of death between midnight last night and seven this morning. Face beaten in with a heavy, blunt instrument-”
“Isn’t it always?” Hale asked.
“-after which-according to the preliminaries-she was strangled.”
“Rape?” Stewart asked.
“No indication of that yet.”
“Midnight and seven?” Hale asked. “But you said she wasn’t found in college?”
Webberly shook his head. “She was found by the river.” He frowned as he read the rest of the information Cambridge Constabulary had sent. “She was wearing a tracksuit and athletic shoes, so they assume she was out running when somebody jumped her. The body was covered with leaves. Some sketch artist stumbled on her round a quarter past seven this morning. And, according to Sheehan, got sick on the spot.”
“Nae on the body, I hope,” MacPherson said.
“That certainly plays hell with trace evidence,” Hale noted.
The others laughed quietly in response. Webberly didn’t mind the levity. Years of exposure to murder hardened the softest of his men.
He said, “According to Sheehan they had enough evidence at the scene to keep two or three crime scene teams busy for weeks.”
“How’s that?” Stewart asked.
“She was found on an island, and it’s used as a general trysting place, evidently. So they’ve at least half a dozen sacks of rubbish to analyse along with their tests on the body itself.” He tossed the report onto the table. “That’s the limit of what we know right now. No autopsy. No record of interviews. Whoever takes the case will be working from the bottom.”