Guilty Conscious, Oliver Davies [small books to read TXT] 📗

said, sitting on the side of my desk. “I remember World War II and a green dress.”

“It’s about a girl who makes a mistake, gets someone blamed for a crime they didn’t do, and the years that follow,” he told me. “Put simply, the title’s a big clue.”

“Feeling sorry for doing something that hurt someone,” I said.

“Or being accused of something you didn’t do,” Mills countered for the sake of argument. He sat down, flicking through to see the pages that had been dog-eared over time, bits underlined with pencil, little notes in the margin.

“How guilt refined the methods of self-torture,” he read aloud, trailing off as he flipped the pages this way and that, looking up at me beneath his brows. He put the book down and pulled out another, but I stopped him, handing the journal,

“Take a look,” I said. I pulled my chair over to his desk, sitting in front of him with my tea, watching him scan a few of the images.

“I know this one,” he said, leaning forward and showing me. Edward had tried to copy one of the faces, but it was the postcard that Mills tapped.

“By Artemisia Gentileschi, one of my mum’s favourites. An Italian Baroque painter, very accomplished, in fact—”

“Mills,” I interrupted.

“Sorry. Anyway, this is one of her most famous paintings. Judith Slaying Holofernes. I don’t know the full story; I think it’s Biblical. But a lot of historians say that the man is actually another artist, Tassi, who raped Artemisia. This was her revenge after he walked free.” Mills reached up and scratched his neck, grimacing at the impressive yet graphic painting.

“And that’s what Edward chooses to draw?” I asked. “The man being killed?”

Mills leant back in his chair, blowing out a long breath. “I don’t know many others and this,” he tapped some of the other books, “I don’t know much about this.”

“I thought you liked philosophy.”

“I know a bit and pieces, but for really studying it, we’d need an expert.”

I hummed, thinking for a while. “How about an expert that also knew Edward?”

Mills looked up. “Professor Altman?”

“He might have encouraged some of this reading,” I pointed out. “We can see what he might have to say about it. About the parts that Edward seemed particularly fixated on.”

Mills nodded and rose to his feet. “Though if all we learn is that Edward felt guilty over what happened with Stella, that doesn’t help us find our killer.”

“It does if he wasn’t the only one feeling bad about it,” I countered, emptying my mug a few big gulps and grabbed my coat. “Fiona might not have been the only one on the fence. There might have been other people on Edward’s side who then realised they backed the wrong side. And with Stella’s death weighing on them…” I shrugged. “Worth looking into.”

“Lead the way then, sir,” Mills replied, pulling his coat on.

Nineteen

Thatcher

We got in touch with the university before we left, making sure that Altman wouldn’t be mid way through a lecture or tutorial when we arrived and leant that he had two hours open this morning that we decided to make use of. It was slightly annoying to be heading back to the university after only just leaving it, and I wondered if I should have had had Mills meet me here in the first place. But it was done now, and as I drove us through the streets to the campus, Mills had another quick scour through the materials I had gathered. I glanced over once to see him reading through the exchanged notes with the unnamed classmate.

“From last year,” Mills muttered, noting the date in the upper right-hand corner. “Why would he keep these from last year?”

“I’m guessing whoever he was talking to is the reason for that.”

“Most likely one of his friends,” Mills pointed out. “Charlie or Freya, perhaps. But why keep them?”

“Some people do hang on to things like that,” I said. “Sentimentality.”

“You didn’t go to his room this morning and bring these back on suspicion of sentimentality,” Mills said pointedly as I parked in the campus car park.

I switched the engine off and turned in my seat.

“What if it’s Billie?” I asked resignedly. “We knew they had some classes together. One of them is from a psychology lecture, which we knew Billie took. She said they were close. Maybe he kept them because of her.”

“Because he missed her as his friend or because he wanted to keep them as a reminder?” Mills asked. “Like Billie with her threats, she wanted him to remember what happened. This could have been him doing it himself. Clinging onto the past.”

“A perfectly plausible theory, Mills. One that only Billie will be able to prove or disprove.”

“Could we ask someone else?” he suggested. “See if they recognise whose handwriting it is? This might not mean anything to Billie, they’re just scribbles. And even if they are hers, him still having them doesn’t tie anything back to her.”

It didn’t, I knew that it didn’t, but it stuck me with. The feeling of guilt, the self-torture Mills quoted from the book before. If Edward was making himself feel bad, was holding this guilt over his head, then that changed what had happened with Stella. That might mean we learnt the truth about what happened that night. Only it could very well mean that someone got there before us. Someone who decided Edward had to pay for it. And as much as that person could be Billie, she’d had months, over a year, to think about that revenge. Why would she resort to something so desperate? Someone else was tied into all of this and figuring out what Edward knew was our best hope at learning who that person was.

I said as much to Mills, and he nodded in agreement before opening the car door and climbing out, holding onto the bag of findings securely. It was always so much easier when we were on the same page, and luckily for us,