Four Versions of Sarah

The Service Entrance The duty manager had already told the story twice by the time Tess Harcourt reached Rivet Assembly Hall. Both tellings, according to the uniformed sergeant who met her, had included an apology about the bins. ‘Why the bins?’ Tess asked. ‘He was meant to bring them in earlier. Forgot. Went out at closing and found her.’ The sergeant was standing beneath a large iron canopy with a clipboard tucked inside his coat. From the main entrance came the last of the reunion guests, most of them waiting in pairs for taxis that could not get close to the building. A woman with a silver evening bag kept asking whether anyone had seen her coat. Beyond her, a man was protesting that his car was in the rear car park and he ought to be allowed to collect it. Two constables were being patient with him, though their patience had a noticeably different quality. Tess asked for the duty manager's name and the sequence of calls. Daniel Mercer, the sergeant told her, was inside with an officer; he'd telephoned at 23:17, the first patrol had reached the hall at 23:24, and the ambulance crew had subsequently confirmed the woman's death. Nobody believed the emergency response had moved anything beyond what was necessary, although that still needed checking against the ambulance notes. He handed her the incident log as he spoke, keeping one thumb over the pages that wanted to lift in the damp. At twelve minutes past midnight on Saturday, Tess was still wearing the jumper she'd pulled on over her nightclothes when the call came. She'd been brushing her teeth in the upstairs bathroom, looking at a darkening strip of grout beside the bath and promising herself she would sort it out on Sunday. The unfinished job had travelled with her all the way here. She checked the sergeant's times against the log before passing it back. ‘Has anyone accounted for everyone who was out there before the first officers?’ she asked. ‘Mercer says nobody uses the recess during an event. Deliveries finish before the guests arrive. We've kept staff available.’ ‘Says nobody,’ Tess said, and opened her notebook to a fresh page. ‘We'll establish who could.’ He accepted the correction. They went in through a side entrance that opened on a corridor with a tiled floor and an earnest row of safety posters. A cleaner's yellow bucket stood beside a half-filled sack of table linen. Someone had put a paper sign on the wall for the reunion: CLASS OF 2007, THIS WAY, with an arrow drawn in blue marker. The arrow led in the opposite direction from the activity around the service door. Rivet Assembly Hall had once made metal fittings. Now it hired out rooms for weddings, conferences and the sort of corporate gathering that needed exposed brickwork as proof of character. The conversion had left a long interior corridor around the east side of the building, and the main stair met it at an awkward angle. An officer stood by a grey metal door, keeping a record of each person who went through. At the service door she checked the entry record. The officers had logged the scene-preservation team and ambulance personnel, with times; the sergeant was waiting on outstanding staff accounts. She stayed inside while the scene team finished photographing the approach, then followed the marked route into the yard. Outside, the air had the stale warmth of a day that had never quite turned cold, with a fine drizzle beginning to gather on the paving. A security light above the door illuminated the threshold and two steps. Then the wall turned sharply to the right. Beyond it was a strip of old service yard, narrow enough that two people passing would have had to make room. A low brick wall separated the recess from a fenced area containing bins and discarded wooden display boards. The security light reached the first few feet. Someone had brought portable lamps; their beams made the wet brick appear newly varnished. Sarah Beckett lay against the base of the low wall. She wore a dark green dress and one black shoe, with the other a short distance away where a strip of gravel met the paving. Her left arm was caught beneath her. The first ambulance crew had placed a disposable covering over part of her body to check for life, and Tess made herself note where the covering now lay, outside the scene boundary, rather than imagining what had happened in the gap before the call. Sarah had visible injuries to her head and face. Beside her shoulder lay a loose stone, one edge darkened, although the portable lamp shifted the colours whenever someone moved it. Tess kept away from the edge of the working scene, resisting the old, treacherous urge to build an argument out of how a body happened to be lying. There might have been more than one blow. The stone might have been moved before the attack or during it. For now she could record what was present and leave the why alone. The crime-scene manager, a broad woman with her reading glasses on a chain, joined Tess at the perimeter. She introduced herself as Vicky Shaw and indicated the existing approach route with a gloved hand. ‘First officers came from the door and stopped there. Paramedics crossed here and here; we're recording their movements. The duty manager says he entered through the same door, turned the corner, came about two steps into the recess, then backed out to call. One first officer checked for a pulse before the ambulance arrived. We've started photographing the access route and the immediate scene. The stone stays where it is until we've captured the relationships.’ Tess asked about the other loose paving. Vicky indicated several old repairs along the edging, some close enough in size to the stone to be relevant. She wanted them photographed and measured before anyone committed to a weapon identification, and she was still waiting to hear when the forensic pathologist could attend. There would be no post-mortem that night; the scene team had hours of work before it could release the body. Back at the door, the sergeant stood with his log open, expecting further questions. Tess asked for the paramedics' identities and the detail of what they'd done, then for the venue's recording system to be protected against routine deletion before anyone tried playing footage on a manager's telephone. The cameras covered the main entrance, the bar, the inner corridor and the side-door threshold, he said, but according to Mercer none could see round the corner. Tess wanted that verified from the originals, including the clock settings. The sergeant had already warned the owner against circulating screenshots on WhatsApp, which spared them a familiar argument. Tess found Daniel Mercer at the end of a trestle table in a room the staff seemed to use for meals and paperwork. His event waistcoat was still buttoned over a shirt stained with coffee. He had a glass of water in front of him and had set it so precisely on a paper coaster that the coaster's edge had begun to curl. When Tess introduced herself, he glanced at the door as though he hoped the officer stationed outside had finally come to tell him he could go home. ‘Mr Mercer, I'm Detective Inspector Harcourt. You've had a difficult night. I need you to take me through what happened once more, starting before you opened the service door. The timings can be approximate. If you don't remember something, tell me.’ ‘I know. They've said.’ He rubbed the condensation off the glass with his thumb, then caught himself. ‘Sorry. I don't mean to be rude. I've told them I should have been out there by half ten.’ ‘Was that your scheduled round?’ ‘Usually. The conference people leave a mess, but tonight was alumni and they were mostly sensible. I was checking two missing champagne flutes with the bar staff, and then we found an extra case of white open in the wrong storeroom. We had to count it. It sounds ridiculous now.’ ‘It sounds like what you were doing. When did you go out?’ ‘Just after eleven. Quarter past, something like that. The kitchen had left the cardboard out again. I went to tell them and then realised I might as well bring the bins inside. One of the wheels sticks; that's why I have to go round the side. Otherwise you can get them from the other gate.’ ‘Tell me what you saw.’ ‘Her shoe first. It was near the edge. I thought somebody had dropped it. A lot of shoes get left at weddings, and I was—’ He looked at the constable, as though the absurdity of misplaced wedding shoes might require a witness. ‘I was going to pick it up. Then I looked round the corner.’ He described seeing a woman on the paving, first calling out to her and then stepping towards her. He had thought she might be drunk. When he saw the blood he moved backwards, went inside and made the emergency call. He had not moved Sarah, he said. He did not think he'd touched her. But there was a moment when he had leaned down, before the blood registered, and he could no longer be certain whether his hand had brushed the wall. Mercer began to qualify his account of whether he'd touched the wall, and Tess gave him time. He moved his hands in a small, frustrated demonstration: one reaching forward as he had done when he saw the woman, the other pulling it back. His cuffs were still damp. She asked him to repeat the movement later for the scene team. There was no need to take him back into the recess now. ‘Can you show us the route you normally take on a closing round? Later, with an officer, not now. We also need the staff rota and any deliveries or maintenance work this week.’ ‘Of course. Am I in trouble?’ ‘For not putting the bins away at half ten? No. We need to establish who could have been in that area and when.’ ‘One of the committee women was looking for a quiet place for a telephone call. I told her she'd get better reception by the front.’ ‘Which woman?’ ‘Don't know. Green necklace. She was older than most of them. I could try the photos. They've all been taking photographs since six.’ Tess wrote down a woman asking for somewhere quiet, distinguishing that from anyone actually having used the service yard. She noted the green necklace and asked Mercer to point the woman out if she appeared in the photographs. On the next line she wrote door, chain, bin route, leaving room for the answers that would come from staff and footage. The notebook was cheap, its cover bent where she'd sat on it in her car. The better ones were always vanishing from her desk. When she asked about Sarah, Mercer looked down at the coaster again. He had checked the woman's name against the guest list only after the ambulance came. Sarah Beckett. Thirty-nine. An alumna of Calderwick University, and one of the reunion's expected guests, not a venue employee. He had greeted her shortly after eight and found her pleasant. He couldn't tell Tess whether she had been drinking. A glass had been in her hand at one stage, perhaps wine, perhaps something non-alcoholic. He was sufficiently confident to remember the colour of the glass and not sufficiently confident to remember the contents. ‘Did you see her with anyone in particular?’ Tess asked. ‘Quite a few. That's the point of the evening, really.’ ‘Anyone she went out of her way to meet?’ ‘There was a woman who kept following her about. Adele, I think. No—sorry, that sounds worse than it was. They were friends. Adele was upset at one point and I wondered if I should fetch a chair.’ ‘What time?’ ‘Before ten, I think. The bar was busy. I'd need to look at the till times.’ ‘Was Sarah upset too?’ ‘I couldn't see her face from where I stood.’ Mercer had also seen a man arguing with Sarah in the bar corridor. His lanyard said Joel Serrano; Mercer remembered the name because he'd stumbled over it while directing the table allocation earlier. They hadn't been shouting above the music, but their discussion had been fierce enough that a server changed course with a tray. When Tess asked what they'd said, he admitted he hadn't heard a word. He'd been watching the glasses and trying to keep somebody else's party running. And then, an older woman with silver hair had sat with Sarah on the mezzanine, both bent over sheets of paper. Mercer had asked if they needed a quieter room. They had said no, thank you. When he tried to name the older woman, he picked up the guest list and found her after running a finger through three pages. ‘Dr Fenella Price. She used to teach here. I remember because she said she wasn't meant to be at the school-leavers thing at all, but a former student had invited her.’ ‘School leavers?’ ‘Sorry. University. I organise sixth-form balls as well.’ He turned over another page. A little after ten, he had seen Sarah with a dark-haired woman beside the stairwell. He thought her name might have been Rebecca. They had been laughing at something involving a photograph on a phone. He had wondered whether they were going to take a picture together and whether it would be his job to stand there and do it. In the end they had hugged and moved away before he reached them. ‘Is that your own recollection, Mr Mercer, or has someone told you since?’ ‘My own. I remember the woman in the red coat putting the phone away.’ ‘Sarah was wearing green?’ ‘The other woman had a red coat. Or burgundy. There are probably pictures.’ Tess returned him to what he himself could remember. She asked him to keep his first account separate from anything he'd since been told by guests, and arranged for an officer to take a fuller statement while the details were fresh. She wanted his account of the group by the stairs, the bar corridor and the mezzanine. A guest's photograph or the tills could settle a time; Mercer's impressions of how people had felt could not. Back in the main hall, the lights had been turned up. The reunion's rented furniture seemed suddenly too small for the empty space: clusters of standing tables, chairs in ill-judged circles, half-drunk glasses collected on two trolleys. A projected photograph of Calderwick University's old library remained frozen on a large screen. Someone had stepped in front of the projector and left a wavering human shadow over a picture of a building that had since been demolished. A detective sergeant named Nadia Sethi was waiting beside the stage with the organisers' contact sheets. Nadia had been called in from home and had tied her hair back without bothering to smooth it. Her jacket smelled faintly of the takeaway bag she'd left in the passenger footwell. ‘I've started getting names without asking anyone to tell us who the killer is,’ Nadia said. She'd put the organisers' contact sheets in two piles, the ones with usable telephone numbers and the ones that apparently expected everyone to remember each other's mothers. ‘People are disappointed. One man brought his own theory on the back of a drinks menu.’ ‘Anything urgent?’ ‘One of the committee says Sarah had arranged to catch up with a few people. Doesn't know how many or why. Someone else says she was terribly upset in the bar, but it turns out they're talking about Adele. Two guests saw Rebecca with Sarah. One says they were laughing, the other thought Sarah was crying. Neither can yet give us a reliable time.’ ‘And Joel?’ ‘The server recognised him when we showed the guest-list photograph. He's left. We're reaching him tonight.’ Tess watched the constable at the main door decline another request from the man who wanted his car. He had been standing there for twenty minutes and had just remembered that a charger was inside it. A conversation about a phone charger seemed to be escalating into a matter of principle. ‘Let's be careful what we're saying to people,’ Tess said. A constable by the main doors was still explaining to the man with the car why the rear yard was closed. ‘They're witnesses unless we have grounds to do more. Get the details we need tonight, and ask them to keep their recollections to themselves until we've spoken to them. Some of them will need telling twice.’ ‘Already got three who want to give us their statements together. Best friends, apparently. They didn't know her till tonight.’ ‘Separate rooms, then.’ Nadia handed her a list. Sarah's name was ticked in pencil. Beside Adele Morgan, somebody had written very close. Joel Serrano had ex? in the margin. Fenella Price had lecturer. Rebecca Lyle had friend since halls. The notes were hurried and helpful in different proportions. Tess took a photograph of the page for the inquiry record before anyone improved it. ‘Who knew Sarah had arranged meetings?’ ‘Committee member says she'd been fussing about timings. She thought Sarah was avoiding her ex. We need to ask Sarah's own people. We're still identifying next of kin.’ ‘Then that's the priority. Let's make sure somebody is with them when they hear.’ Nadia's work phone interrupted them. A uniformed officer had located Sarah's handbag behind reception, left there by a guest who thought she would come back for it. The desk worker had opened it looking for identification before police arrived; that had to be recorded, along with anyone else who'd handled the bag. Tess asked for it to be secured and for a careful account from the reception staff. Nadia added the action to a paper list already marked with coffee circles from someone's mug. In a small room beside the old loading bay they met the first investigating officer, who took them through what had been done. Emergency medical care had been attempted and then stopped; the ambulance service would provide its own notes. The route through the side door had been kept clear. Two staff members had crossed the corridor after the original call, and their clothing and reasons for doing so were being logged. The loose paving stone had been noted and photographed in place. There were no claims about its origin beyond what the photographs could support. At the scene update Tess took the notes that might prove fragile by morning: the door camera, with a clock possibly six minutes fast; a running order printed in two different versions; guests whose wine glasses had outnumbered their conversations with Sarah; and a stretch of service yard absent from the venue's own map. She asked for the oldest copies of the paperwork, not whatever corrected version the organisers could produce now. Someone had already offered to tidy a spreadsheet for the police. At a quarter to two she stepped out under the canopy to call the senior officer overseeing the overnight response. She gave the facts they had, the immediate preservation priorities and the likely breadth of the witness enquiry. ‘Have you got an obvious suspect?’ he asked. ‘Not yet,’ Tess told the senior officer when he asked for a suspect. She had names worth interviewing and a possible paving-stone weapon still to be examined. Sarah appeared to have arranged several separate conversations in the last hour of the reunion, but the order and purpose were both uncertain. The officer said he would be in for the morning briefing; Tess gave him the outstanding preservation requests before ending the call. He said he'd be at the morning briefing. Tess finished the call and returned to the main hall, where the screen had finally been switched off. The room looked less impressive without its pictures. Nadia was seated at a table with two guest-list printouts, trying to make sense of a handwritten change in the running order. ‘Adele says Sarah was terrified,’ Nadia told her. ‘Short account, nothing formal yet. Joel's answered his phone and says Sarah was furious with him. Fenella's been contacted at her hotel; she says Sarah was perfectly composed. And one of the organisers keeps insisting Sarah was laughing with Rebecca a few minutes before she left.’ ‘A few minutes according to whom?’ ‘According to him. We'll sort it out.’ Tess sat opposite Nadia with Mercer's list between them. From somewhere behind the temporary partition came the rumble of glassware going back into crates. One of the catering staff had given up on a squeaking trolley and was carrying them by hand. A felt-tip pen lay uncapped beside a photograph of the university's demolished library, its blue ink spreading through the tablecloth. Nadia began to mark the four names on a clean sheet, then stopped and looked to Tess for the order. ‘Individual accounts,’ Tess said. ‘Ask what Sarah did and what she said. Don't offer them frightened or angry or happy in the question. We can worry about the descriptions afterwards.’ Nadia drew four separate boxes while Tess returned to the staff list and began identifying who might have seen the side door. She had asked an officer to fetch the staff-room sign-in book; if it existed, she wanted it photographed before a helpful manager decided to rewrite the untidy bits. They would still be at the hall when the morning cleaners came in.