Good Girls Don't Die Read Free Page B

then, and left her house about nine o’clock on the Friday morning. I was here teaching by ten.’ He spoke with fresh confidence, though Grace had a hard time imagining him dominating a lecture hall. ‘So I’m sorry,’ he went on, ‘but I have no idea what might have happened to her since then.’ He picked up his satchel again. ‘Have you spoken to Student Services?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then, as I say, I really can’t help.’ Matt looked from one to the other of them with an apologetic smile. ‘If that’s all you wanted, I hope you don’t mind, but I really am very late.’
    Grace and Lance accompanied him out, and he hurried off with a departing flutter of his hand.
    ‘Well, he was a charmer, wasn’t he?’ Lance observed as they emerged onto hot concrete.
    ‘He liked a student enough to sleep with her, but couldn’t care less where she is now,’ said Grace. ‘So much for pastoral care.’
    The windless air, heated by sunlight reflected off the surrounding expanses of glass, lay heavily along the walkways and within the engineered social spaces. It would soon be the end of term, the end of the academic year, and Grace imagined there was already a feeling of winding down, of lassitude, about the place. She wondered if Polly was happy here.
    Earlier, as they’d walked across the park, Lance had pointed out a group of tower blocks and said they provided student accommodation. Grace thought that if the architecture felt so unyielding even with today’s blue sky and greenery, then it must be pretty bleak in winter. It certainly explained why Wivenhoe was a popular place to find digs. Maybe she, too, should have looked there for a place to live, even though it would have meant a longer journey to work.
    ‘Fancy something to eat?’ Lance interrupted her thoughts.
    She followed his gaze and saw there were several cafes and a couple of shops – a mini-market and a bookshop – amongst the more office-like buildings. ‘Sure,’ she replied, realising that she was now both hungry and thirsty.
    They bought sandwiches, water and coffee and found a place where they could sit in the shade. The surrounding picnic tables and fixed concrete benches were filling up. The students in their colourful shorts, dresses and T-shirts were like an excitable flock of exotic birds, and Grace listened dreamily to the rising chatter. She allowed herself togive in for a moment to her tiredness, reminding herself that she was here now: she’d made it, and could afford to relax a little, unclench her shoulders and breathe more freely.
    ‘So Pawel Zawodny’s a peeping Tom,’ said Lance.
    ‘He was perfectly open about saying he’d heard them having sex.’
    ‘But what was he doing sneaking around upstairs? The washing machine’s in the kitchen.’
    ‘True,’ Grace agreed. ‘But Dr Beeston is the one who appears to feel compromised, not Polly’s landlord.’
    Her attention was caught by a young man standing in the open doorway of the bookshop. He seemed a bit too neatly dressed, and somehow too
poor
, to be a student. He had that same undernourished look as the procession of thin, pale-skinned, restless youths she’d watched come and go in custody over the years. But, just as she was thinking how odd a figure he cut in this setting, the young man caught her eye. He gave her a pleasant smile before disappearing after some customers into the gloom of the shop. That explained it, she thought: he must work there.
    ‘But what if Pawel’s a voyeur?’ Lance stole back her attention.
    ‘More likely just opportunistic.’
    ‘Except sometimes voyeurism is a preparation for sexual violence,’ he said, munching on his baguette.
    Grace smiled. ‘You’ve been reading the FBI studies.’
    ‘Yeah, I went to a lecture by an expert from Quantico,’ Lance told her. ‘Why, you think they’re wrong?’
    ‘No, but they’re working backwards from known serial killers. Doesn’t mean that all voyeurs are planning to abduct