Eve shook her head.
‘Or payday loans?’
‘I’ve heard of them.’
She took a while to jump across the chasm from fiction to fact using deduction as a bridge. ‘Are you saying …?’ She stopped abruptly as though she had just reached the edge, was teetering and wasn’t sure whether she wanted to take the next big step, diving over the cliff. ‘Is that what they did? Is that what he did?’
Joanna nodded then glanced at Mike. He was looking intrigued, almost fascinated at the metamorphosis taking place in front of their eyes as the alteration in her husband’s status sunk into Eve Glover. They were watching her unravel.
She was initially quiet as she digested the information. ‘So the clients he was meeting …?’
‘People who owed money to the firm.’
Eve frowned. ‘People who were really hard up?’
‘Yep.’
Eve swallowed. ‘I’ve heard that those loans can never be repaid,’ she said quietly and slowly, ‘because the interest rates are so high.’
‘It’s how they make their money.’
Eve worked her chin, clearly upset. ‘So Jadon …’
Korpanski butted in. Joanna could have killed him. ‘I wouldn’t be too hard on him, love.’ But Eve’s eyes were hard and unforgiving as she faced the sergeant. ‘He said he was in financial management.’ Again, for some inexplicable reason except, maybe, male loyalty, Korpanski tried to defend the missing man. ‘Well, he was …’ he caught Joanna’s eye and ended lamely, ‘… in a way.’
Joanna couldn’t even be sure Eve had heard him. Her face was frozen. And she was angry. ‘Do you think this has any connection with his disappearance?’
‘It’s one theory we’re working with.’
‘Someone who owed him money and was … desperate?’
‘Well, now we know the truth it’s one possibility we’ll work with. We already have uniformed officers doing house-to-house calls.’
Eve stood up, agitated, and crossed to the window. ‘Kidnap?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ Joanna repeated awkwardly, not pointing out the obvious fact that there had been no kidnap demand and there was another possibility. Eve’s mind was tracking away, trying to place facts in order, one step in front of another.
‘He was lying,’ she said finally. ‘Just lying.’ Then she turned around and spoke with, considering, surprising dignity, smiling. ‘I stuck up for Jadon,’ she said. ‘I tried to be exactly what he wanted me to be, at some cost to myself. I sacrificed …’ And here she stopped, her blue eyes wide open, horrified.
Joanna imagined then that she understood. Eve had sacrificed her beauty salon business for her marriage.
Eve continued, ‘I thought, when I married him, that I was really very lucky.’
Mike Korpanski took one heavy step forward. ‘It’s just the job he did,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t change the man.’
Her eyes were full on him as she responded. ‘Doesn’t it, Sergeant?’
Maybe the question was just too deep for any of them to answer.
TEN
10 March, 8 p.m.
Monica Pagett was deep in thought. Over the weekend she had been handed a list of activities. Brooklands, apparently, offered sherry and quizzes, Scrabble mornings, shopping trips, even a concert or two. She didn’t like to admit she was tempted.
She recalled fetching in a bucket of coal and slipping on the icy path. She recalled the bitter cold and frosty mornings, the trips into Leek to Wednesday’s market day, trips which became increasingly difficult.
She missed her cottage high up on the moors, 500 metres above sea level, exposed to the most brutal of elements, summer and winter alike. In Brooklands, she mused, one would not know the seasons, would be unable to tell whether it was summer or winter, hot or cold, wet or dry. The place would maintain a year-round temperature and atmosphere. Out there the seasons dictated your activities – sheep dipping and shearing, apple picking, bottling and pickling, harvesting the fruit, the silage and haymaking. There was always something to do. In here she would simply be filling in time between today and the grave.
She sat immobile. Then she rang her bell.
‘Stephanie,’ she said decisively, ‘no time like the present. In the morning I want you to contact someone called Wendy Bradshaw. You’ll find her telephone number in my diary. Go on, dear,’ she said. ‘My diary’s in my handbag. Just get it. I know you’re not going to be pinching my purse.’
Joanna was poring over the list of the nineteen clients Jadon Glover visited regularly on a Wednesday night. She pictured the small flats over the shops, the huge mill, the narrow streets and small terraced houses. She studied the map of the area, taking in the child’s playground, surely deserted last rainy Wednesday night. Had the weather been fortuitous? She read through the list of names, none of which was known to her – a good sign. Not a petty criminal among them. These were the families under their radar – honest, decent, hardworking people who paid their taxes, insured their cars and worked. And were poor.
She tossed the list over to Mike. He went through it as carefully as she had and agreed, looking back at her, his face dubious. ‘Don’t see anything obvious here.’ He tried to lighten her mood, grinning. ‘No known serial killers, Jo.’
She folded her arms and sat back in her chair. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got to grin about, Korpanski. All I see ahead is a great long list of people to question and not one sodding answer.’
His grin simply widened. These days it was hard to ruffle his feathers.
The initial report had come through on the Mitsubishi. It was clean. No blood or any other signs of assault or trouble. ‘So,’ Joanna said, sitting back in her chair, ‘the car was parked, locked and left. He expected to return to it. Whatever happened to Jadon Glover happened after he left the vehicle.’
It was what she’d expected.
The lab was waiting for further instruction. ‘Fingerprints?’ she asked without much hope.
‘Just Mr Glover’s and his wife,’ the lab responded. ‘So what now …?’
‘Just hang on to it,’ Joanna said and put the phone down.
9 p.m.
For once she was first home and when she rang Matthew he was still half an hour away. He’d been delayed. ‘Just enough time to make some supper,’ she said and rifled around in the fridge. She started chopping onions and peppers, slicing bacon, opened a tin of tomatoes and put the pan on for the pasta. Just cheese left to grate. She heard Matthew’s car outside and pulled the cork from a bottle of Rioja.
‘Hey.’ He looked tired but happy. No trace of the traumas of the other night. It was always difficult to know whether to bring up a sticky subject so she searched his face and found only placid contentment as he ate his supper. They both needed to unwind so they sat together on the sofa and watched a film.
The little boy with the strange name, Jadon Glover and his cronies, Eve, Karl Robertson, the inhabitants of the crooked streets, even Kath Whalley were so very far away.
Tuesday, 11 March, 8 a.m.
But now Jadon had been missing for almost a week. It was time to get serious, step up the enquiry. Time to get focused.
She called a briefing to collate at least some of the information gathered by the teams who had been working their way around the area. A map was pinned to the wall so they could trace Jadon’s usual route, starting with Mill Street. The families in the flats over the sixties’ shops were largely pensioners. The flats belonged to a housing association and the rents were affordable.
The houses on the other side of the road were different – terraced mill workers’ cottages privately owned and well maintained. Joanna knew the area though not well. Little of their work was centred around these streets apart from one incident almost three years ago which had changed the geography of the place. A child had been knocked down on Nab Hill Avenue, which had then been used as a chicken run by drivers wishing to take Macclesfield Road to avoid the town centre. Since t
hen Nab Hill Avenue had been blocked off with concrete bollards and was now a dead end.
In most other respects the streets were the same as they had been in Victorian times. Their families were proud of them. They were uniform, a door, one window to the side and two above, and yet they were individual, each one sporting something different – a hanging basket, a UPVC front door, neatly draped curtains, French blinds. Some had been rendered with stone, others painted gaily. Some were obsessively neat, others less so. In general, this area where Jadon Glover would have collected his dues was not somewhere the police visited. These were reasonable, hardworking families who caused little trouble – not even the odd domestic. Poverty or a struggle to survive might well be a feature of their lives but crime was not.
PCs Paul Ruthin and Bridget Anderton gave their report first. Glover had visited all six of the Mill Street people on Jadon’s books, ending with a lady called Astrid Jenkins who told them Glover generally put her last on the Mill Street list and he had called, as always, at 7.25 p.m. ‘He apparently whizzed round his clients,’ Bridget said.
‘She originally borrowed eight hundred pounds to help her granddaughter put a deposit down on a house. She didn’t tell her family she’d borrowed the money. At the time she worked as a cleaner in the clothing factory but eight months ago she had a stroke and since then she’s no longer been able to work.’ She hesitated. ‘She’s been paying it off for nearly two years.’
‘At a rate of?’ Joanna asked sharply.
‘Fifteen pounds a week. And she hasn’t quite paid off half of it yet.’
Among the assembled officers there were a few dropped jaws but just as many set faces. This was the reality of life below the wire, under the radar and in the crooked streets.
‘What did she think of him?’ Joanna was curious.
PC Paul Ruthin took up the answer. He was a relatively new officer who still lived at home with his widowed mother. A mother who was not above ringing the station and complaining if she thought her boy was being worked too hard. It didn’t do a lot for his reputation. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘She just reported events without really showing any emotion.’
‘No resentment? No anger?’
‘No. She was just factual. It was as though that was what she paid and that was that.’
‘Did she have any idea when the debt would be paid off?’
‘She said it was under review but that as interest rates were changing all the time it was hard to work out.’
Joanna let out an expletive. ‘Arithmetic is hardly my strong point, Paul, but even I can work out this simple sum. She’s already paid off twice her original debt. Surely it’s coming to an end?’
The PC’s eyes were hard but he was smiling. ‘I don’t think that’s how it works. She just said that he helped her out, came to her rescue when she needed it. No one else would and her granddaughter was expecting a baby.’
He and Bridget gave brief descriptions of the other families in Mill Street. Astrid Jenkins was, it appeared, typical of Glover’s clients, and as she’d been the last to see him on Mill Street they quickly moved on.
Joanna turned to Jason Spark and Dawn Critchlow. ‘And after that?’
Dawn Critchlow moved forward to use the whiteboard. ‘We worked on the other side of Macclesfield Road. We didn’t find everybody in, ma’am,’ she said, ‘so our facts are patchy. We don’t know in what order Jadon called on his clients last Wednesday; neither do we know whether he visited in the same order each week. Geographically the logical order would be to pass Big Mill, turn into Wellington Place,’ she moved her finger up the map, ‘up to Britannia Avenue, cut through the children’s play area, turn into Barngate Street, cross through to Nab Hill Avenue and then return down the hill back to Sainsbury’s. He could have done it the other way around – started at Nab Hill Avenue and finished at Wellington Place, or even swapped the order round a bit.’
‘Right,’ Joanna said, glancing at the sheet.
‘Because the story is a bit patchy,’ PC Dawn Critchlow continued, ‘we thought we’d spend tomorrow trying to collate all the information and then make a fuller report in the morning briefing?’ She looked anxiously at Joanna who was nodding, her attention still on the list of names and the geography of the streets. Finally she turned to look at them, still nodding and frowning. ‘That seems a good idea, Dawn and Jason,’ she said. ‘Continue with your house to house and get back to me if you find anything that seems to hold a clue as to what’s happened to Jadon Glover and at what point he vanished from view.’
She took a good look at Jadon’s photograph. How would she describe him? Bold, audacious. He looked smart but she had the feeling that his apparent super-confidence was only skin deep. Scratch the surface and you would find something and someone quite different. The question was: what? And who? Was it vulnerability she was sensing or something else?
She threw the next question wide open to the floor. ‘Did any of you get closer to learning at what point Jason disappeared?’
Dawn Critchlow tried to answer. ‘According to our clients’ statements,’ she said, ‘it appears that he got at least as far as Britannia Avenue. There is CCTV of someone crossing the children’s play area towards either Barngate Street or Nab Hill Avenue but we can’t be sure whether it’s Jadon or not, and none of the inhabitants of those two streets confirm that he visited them on that night.’
‘OK.’
She threw the next question wide open to the whole room. ‘Have any of you unearthed anything suspicious in Jadon’s disappearance?’
Again she looked at a sea of blank faces and shaking heads. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘keep on with the investigation of Glover’s known movements, focus on this area …’ she put her hand over the map of the four streets, ‘… and let me know at once if you find anything out.’
They shuffled out.
But when the officers had left she shared her thoughts with Mike. ‘Both Eve and Jadon seem to be an enigma,’ she said. ‘I just can’t get a handle on either of them. They seem unreal – plastic. Where did they come from? We have no background. No family. Only a few friends at their wedding? Two of hers and his dubious colleagues with partners? That big flashy wedding in Italy. So where were their family? Why do neither of them appear to have a past? Where are their previous relationships, children, ex-partners? Were Jadon’s colleagues and their partners in on the secret? Were they sworn to secrecy to keep Eve from knowing what her husband really did? That far from being a professional man, a financial advisor, he was scum, preying on people on their beam ends?’ She could feel her anger rising. ‘Were Scott, Jeff and Leroy’s partners kept in ignorance too? Did they share Eve’s naivety? Or was it only Eve who was left out and why? Why was she singled out? Was she so vulnerable? Or so fickle that her love, admiration and devotion for her perfect husband depended on him being a financial advisor rather than a Shylock?’
Korpanski, too, was frowning. ‘Maybe our Mr Glover thought she’d dump him if she found out what a shit job he did.’
‘Maybe …’ She sensed there was more depth to this story and struggled to grasp it. She looked squarely at Mike. ‘Was he so very vulnerable? Is she so very beautiful?’
Like all men Korpanski knew when he was caught out. He looked embarrassed. ‘We-ell,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of paint.’
She giggled, took pity on him, let him off the hook and moved back to her topic. ‘Maybe instead of focusing on the exact point where Glover disappeared from view we should be delving a little more into backgrounds.’
Korpanski made a face.
‘Rather than focusing on where he is perhaps we should be asking where he’s come from? Where does she come from?’
‘If you think so, Jo.’ Mike was patently dubious. His usual approach was less circumvent, less subtle. He liked to charge in, blast out questions, bully his suspect into submission, caution them, charge them, secure a conviction and move on to the next case. Slap hands together. Job done.
Unlike
his senior officer he didn’t spend hours merely thinking, musing, tossing ‘dumb’ ideas around. DS Mike Korpanski was a man of action. ‘What that might have to do with things I don’t know. I mean, what does it matter, Jo?’ he grumbled. ‘What’s it to do with all this?’ He wafted his hand around the maps and diagrams, timelines, photographs, questions.
She followed his gaze and felt a quick moment of apprehension. She always felt that CS Gabriel Rush peered over her shoulder, ready to criticize any unnecessary or spurious action – or lack of. And he was more likely to share Korpanski’s methods than hers.
Everyone in the force knew that it was all too easy to waste thousands on a red herring in an investigation. It happened all the time. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m just confused. This man’s disappeared from practically the centre of a busy market town. OK, it was a rainy night. It was dark. It seems nobody was around but we’ve lost trace of him as though he’s dropped through a wormhole.’ She frowned. ‘We’ll see what Jason and Dawn dig up from the other side of the road when they’ve revisited and found a few more people in. Then we’ll try and piece it together.’ But a vision of Big Mill swam, unwelcome, into view. ‘Then there’s that bloody big derelict factory sitting like a trap plumb in the middle of our search area.’ She took a sly look at Korpanski who was scowling, shoulders tipped forward as though he was about to enter the wrestling ring. Could she risk a joke? ‘Don’t suppose the Tardis is parked somewhere inside?’
Korpanski didn’t laugh. But his face softened.
So she continued, ‘Is he in there? Have we missed him? Tripped over his body?’ And when she still had no response, she carried on musing. ‘What do you really think’s happened, Mike?’
He didn’t even hesitate. ‘Bloke like that, Jo? Has to have done a runner. None of these …’ He turned and looked at the board. ‘These people were made monkeys of, intimidated by our money lenders for a couple of years. I just can’t see one of them committing cold-blooded murder all of a sudden and successfully disposing of the body. Why now? No,’ he said, even more certain of his opinion. ‘Glover’s probably been setting it up, salting bits away. He’ll be in Spain or Turkey or somewhere.’
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