Equinox

Chapter 28

Oxford: 29 March, 9 a.m.

As John Monroe turned along South Parks Road, he reflected how ugly the building that housed the Psychology Department was.

He had been up since before dawn, sifting through the details of the case. On his home computer he had reviewed, for what must have been the hundredth time, the essentials of the case. Four murders, almost certainly the same killer, someone working alone, almost definitely a man. And what did they have? A scrap of DNA, no match; in fact, no match to anyone on file anywhere, it seemed. And then there were the ritualistic aspects, the coins, the removed organs. Laura Niven and Philip Bainbridge were convinced of an occult connection. And then there were the murders of 1851. There had to be a link.

What did he know about those murders? Monroe had gone back through the files, had spent almost every spare minute for the past week going over all the details. Three girls and a male student had been murdered in the year of the Great Exhibition. An Irish labourer had taken the rap, but it was well known by crime historians that Professor Milliner had been intimately involved, that the man had connections with the occult, that he had been involved in some black-magic group, that the university authorities had closed ranks. Within a year of the murders, Milliner had taken a professorship in Turin and the Milliner family vanished completely from the Oxford scene. Now, with the recent murders, it had emerged that all the girls had volunteered for some tests at the University Psychology Department shortly before the start of the academic year.

Monroe drove into the car park. Ahead of him he saw Rogers getting out of his car close to the main doors of the building. But as he spun the steering wheel to slip in next to the inspector's car he was startled by a Morgan sports car backing out of a parking bay way too fast. Monroe glared at the driver, but he seemed oblivious to anything but the road ahead. With a jolt, Monroe realised that he recognised the face.

'I got his number,' Rogers said, as soon as Monroe joined him.

'It was Cunningham, I'm sure of it.'

Rogers looked startled. 'I'll run a check on the plate.'

'You do that/ Monroe snapped and turned towards the doors.

Outside term time the building was relatively quiet. The reception area consisted of a few chairs arranged around a table. Along one wall ran several rows of lockers and pigeonholes. Next to them there was a large noticeboard covered with posters for forthcoming gigs and sports programmes. Alongside these was an old copy of The Daily Information — a news-sheet that went out to every part of the city, announcing entertainments and exhibitions and listing private sales. Monroe strode to the desk where a fat woman in a floral dress sat studying a computer screen. After she had ignored him for twenty seconds he rapped his knuckles hard on the counter. She glared up at him.

'DCI Monroe, Thames Valley Police,' he said, flashing his ID. 'Here to see Dr Rankin — if it's not too much trouble.'

The woman seemed singularly unimpressed. 'C4. Lift over there. Don't think he's here yet. .'

'Yes, I am, Margaret.'

Monroe turned to see a tall, bony man, a faint smile breaking across his face. 'Arthur Rankin,' he said, shaking Monroe's hand. He acknowledged Rogers with a nod.

'You'll have to excuse Margaret,' Rankin said as he escorted them to the elevator. 'You get used to her after the first five years.' The lift had a strange, earthy smell and it took Monroe a moment or two to realise that the odour was coming from the professor.

'I meant to be here earlier,' Rankin said as the elevator came to a halt on the fourth floor. 'Bloody car wouldn't start. So I walked across the park — quite pleasant, actually. Didn't rain, for a change.'

Rankin's office was tiny, a paper-lined cocoon in white, brown and grey. The single mean window looked out onto a bleak concrete quad. There was not a glimpse of the famous dreaming spires. Rankin took off his coat and cleared some papers and books from the two chairs facing his desk. 'Please, sit down,' he said. 'Apologies for the mess -1 can never seem to get things straight in here.'

'That's OK, professor. No need to stand on ceremony. We just have a few quick questions,' Monroe replied as he settled into a chair.

'How may I help?'

'We're interested in the psych tests conducted on a list of forty-seven female students in late September last year. What can you tell us about them?'

For a moment Rankin looked puzzled. He had a high forehead and when he frowned, it looked like he was wearing a headband of worms. Then his expression brightened suddenly. 'Ah, you mean Julius Spenser's tests.'

Monroe said nothing.

Rankin gave a quick cough and began looking through some papers on his desk. Then he stood up slowly and walked over to a wall of shelves. Crouching down, he lifted a huge pile of folders and loose sheets and dumped them on his desk. Licking a fingertip, he began to riffle through the pile. A few moments later he stopped.

'Yes, knew it was here somewhere.' He handed a green folder to Monroe. 'Spenser was a clever chap, had plenty of good ideas.'

'Was?' Rogers asked.

'Yes, left us before Christmas. Got offered a rather tasty number in Boston; MIT, I believe.'

'What was he doing exactly?'

'IQ studies was his thing,' Rankin said and looked out the window to the grey horizon. 'Not my bag, I'm afraid, a bit too dry for my taste.'

'What did the tests involve?' Monroe asked, quickly scanning the pages in front of him.

'He had his own system, quite an unorthodox slant — believed that IQ was directly related to the physical connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, the corpus callosum. You're aware of the idea of the split brain?'

Monroe nodded. 'Vaguely, layman's stuff.'

'Back in the 1960s research appeared to show that the two halves of the brain were very different. The left brain is the analytical side, the right is the imaginative, 'artistic' hemisphere. Roger Sperry won a Nobel Prize for coming up with the idea.'

'And Julius Spenser was developing these theories?'

'He was a Sperry disciple. Studied under him at Caltech in the late 1980s.'

'Dr Spenser did what, exactly?' Rogers asked. 'How did he conduct his tests?'

'Well, it's all there.' Rankin nodded his head towards the papers on their laps. 'He had a sample of around fifty: forty-seven in the end, I think. They were all young women in this phase.'

'This phase?'

'He conducted a similar set of tests on young men the month before. The girls spent most of the day on written IQ tests, then physical manipulation tests, response and reflex analysis, spatial-awareness experiments. They also had full medicals and brain scans.'

'Medicals?' Monroe frowned.

'Yes, it was a key element in Spenser's proposal. He reckons IQ is directly related to physical parameters.'

'What did the medicals involve?'

'Well, now you're asking. I wasn't present myself. In fact, I wasn't even in Oxford that day. But Spenser obviously submitted his research schedule for approval a month or two earlier. Let's take a look.'

Monroe handed back the folder. 'Yes, yes, here we are,' Rankin said after a few moments. 'CAT scan basically, full-body spectrum. The girls did the psych tests here, then went over to the John Radcliffe. Expensive stuff, but Spenser was very good at getting grants.'

Monroe remained silent as he leafed through the material and handed it to Rogers a page at a time.

'So, I take it Spenser wasn't working on his own?'

'No, no. He was always there, of course, a good supervisor with excellent management skills. He had three assistants for the tests and then another three, young female post-docs at the hospital conducting the ah. . body searches.' He gave the policemen a lopsided grin. 'Analysis of the results was done by young Bridges.'

'Bridges?'

'Malcolm, Malcolm Bridges — on his way to becoming a fine psychologist, that one.'

'And Malcolm Bridges works here?'

'Yes, but he spends all his spare time at the Bodleian with Professor Lightman, the Chief Librarian. He's a dedicated young chap. Don't honestly know how he fits it all in, actually.'

'Is he here at the moment?'

'Should be. Let me think. It's Friday' He looked at his watch. 'I'll buzz him.' He picked up the phone and tapped in three numbers. 'Nope, not there yet, I'm afraid.'

'No problem.' Monroe stood up. 'We'll get in touch with him. I'd be grateful if we could take this file with us, Dr Rankin. We'll guard it well, and make a copy.'

'Yes, yes, certainly,' Rankin said quickly. 'Is there anything. .?'

'Yes, actually, there is one other thing, Dr Rankin. Do you have anything to do with a young man named Russell Cunningham?'

Rankin looked at him blankly.

'I saw him earlier, leaving the car park in a very flash sports car.'

'Cunningham? Yes, yes, indeed. I can't say I know the boy, he's a first-year. Seen him in his car, of course, who hasn't?' Rankin laughed.

'You've probably heard of his father,' Rogers said.

'Quite right, yes … the library man, the famous philanthrope. Come to think of it, I think Bridges is Russell's supervisor. But what's he got to do with anything?'

Monroe extended his hand, ignoring the question. 'Thank you very much for your time, Dr Rankin. And for these.' He tapped the folder clutched to his chest.

Monroe and Rogers exited into unexpected bright sunshine. Beyond the car park they could see rugby goalposts and a squad of players in hooded tops running around the field.

'I want to see Malcolm Bridges at the station a.s.a.p.,' Monroe said. 'Get back to the station and drag Greene away from whatever he's doing. I want him to go through this list of girls. I want to know the whereabouts of all of them and I want each of them interviewed, understand?'

Rogers nodded.

'Meanwhile, I'll get a warrant. I think it's time to pay Mr Russell Cunningham a little visit, don't you?'