Sue, from a large, Indian family was staring across the small space a look of disbelief on her face. “You don’t know how old she is, your own niece?”
“Well no, not exactly, we don’t keep in touch that much, to be honest.”
“Are you not worried? Haven’t you done anything?”
“Fiona fusses a lot. She thinks the world revolves around her; well, in fairness, it used to – pretty much.” Tanya paused, she didn’t share this stuff, her past, and for certain Sue wasn’t the one to open up to. “Look, I just thought it would all be okay, but it seems not, yet. I’ll have to get back to her, obviously. We’re here now. You go in and bring them up to date. Ask Kate to confirm my appointment with Mrs Parker at…” She glanced at her watch. “Two. Give me a few minutes to deal with this.”
“Of course. Hey, listen, if I can do anything else, let me know, I’m really sorry about this. This is awful.” In the face of what she hoped was over re-action on Sue’s part, Tanya felt a nudge of unease. Surely this was just some sort of minor thing, it would all be over in no time.
She’d worked in missing persons. Missing kids, it happened over and over and then they turned up again when they’d got the sulk out of their system. But not always. She knew that better than anyone. Sometimes the ending was ghastly and heart-breaking and sometimes, far too often, there wasn’t an ending and families waited for years, always wondering if today would be the day that they found out what had happened, and why, and whose fault it all was.
She had a flash in her mind of the dreadful burned body they had just left. Somewhere, there must be someone thinking that woman was missing, maybe they were ringing around friends and relatives. Her throat constricted and she felt moisture on her palms where they gripped the wheel. She couldn’t remember Serena very much, but surely nothing could have happened to her, not to her sister’s child.
Chapter 8
Sue turned from the corridor into the incident room. Tanya raised a hand in greeting to the rest of them but hurried on past. In her own space she dropped her jacket and bag on the visitor’s chair. Charlie wasn’t there, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she took out her personal mobile to call Scotland.
“Tan, at last. I’ve been trying for hours, where the hell have you been?” Fiona sounded angry, but that had been expected, it was more than that though, there was a note in her voice that Tanya had never heard before. Her cool, ‘together’ sister sounded on the edge of panic. Tanya’s throat dried in response to the hint of hysteria.
“I’m sorry. It was work stuff. There’s been an incident and I just haven’t had a minute.” It wasn’t true, she could have, should have, made time, but she had simply not wanted to deal with this, with family stuff. She hadn’t wanted any part of a soap opera with her sister’s kids. She could tell though, that she had made an error of judgement. She didn’t compound it by asking the obvious but pointless question. There was no way Serena had come home.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay. Just tell me what’s happening. You’ve called the police – yes?”
“Well, of course I have. I called them yesterday, much good it did me. They just told me to wait, to give it time. They didn’t even come to see us for hours.”
“Okay, well they would just be following protocol, never mind about that. What is the situation right now?”
“They’ve taken some details. They sent a bloody kid to speak to us, a woman, well nothing more than a girl really. She made some notes and said they’d get back to us. They haven’t. You need to come. You need to sort this out. You worked in missing persons. You’ve got to come and sort this. Tanya, you have to get her back.”
“Fiona. You really need to calm down.”
“Calm down! Have you not heard what I’ve said? Serena is missing. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning. I have no idea where she is, and nobody is listening to me.”
“Yes, I see. I know it’s upsetting, it’s scary, but we have ways to deal with this, ways that work. I’m sure they have listened. Now, when you last saw her, what was the situation then? Had you had a row?”
And so it began, the question and answer session that she had been through so often before and never thought to be doing with her own family. Tanya found that she slipped easily into the routine, gathering the information, sorting what was important from what the girl’s parents thought mattered. Trying to work through the defensiveness of responses geared to hide family friction. Sorting truth from confusion.
The girl had left for college as usual. After the response from Sue Rollinson, Tanya was prepared for the horrified reaction when she had to ask exactly how old her niece was, where she went to college, what she was studying. She didn’t bother with apologies, it was what it was, and outrage wasn’t going to help. In response to the repeated demands for her to travel immediately to Scotland, she reacted as coolly as she could. Of course Fiona thought she should be there. She obviously believed that Tanya could simply waltz into another force’s offices and start dishing out orders, pulling rank, demanding special attention. It was what her elder sister would have done, and it was almost impossible to convince her that the police service didn’t work that way. Not at her level anyway. She wasn’t a Mason, obviously. She didn’t have high flying contacts, and even if she did they wouldn’t be able to do any more than the local force’s missing persons section were, undoubtedly, already doing.
The longer they talked the more unreasonable Fiona became and when, to Tanya’s disbelief, verging on horror, she began to beg and to cry Tanya knew that it was time to cut the call and try to do something that might be worthwhile.
“I’ll give them a call, Fiona. I’ll find out what’s happening and get back to you.”
“So, you’re not coming up here then. You’re not going to come even though your own niece is missing?”
“No, I can’t. I have just started a murder inquiry. There’s no way I can leave right now.”
“I see, so some dead stranger is more important than your own family?”
“No, that’s not it at all. I’ll see what I can do to help, but from what you’ve told me, she took clothes with her, she was at college as normal and she has taken money from her bank account. It sounds as though she has gone of her own volition. I know that doesn’t help you, but it does change the way that we look at things. She didn’t take her phone and that’s odd with a teenager, so she obviously doesn’t want you to be able to contact her. It doesn’t sound, well…” Tanya hesitated. “It doesn’t sound as though she has been taken by force.” Though she believed it as she said it, she sent up a silent prayer to a God she wasn’t sure she really believed in, that what she was saying was true.
Her sister’s voice was cool now, ice through the ether, “I would have thought that you, of all people, would know about grooming, about filthy old men luring away young girls. I would have thought that you would have taken this seriously. But no. I know we had problems in the past, Tanya. I know you have always felt jealous of me, thought I was favoured more than you.”
Tanya didn’t answer, she knew that had been the case for all her childhood and teenage years and what was more, she knew that Fiona was fully aware of the different treatment they had received. She had been the special, talented and gifted elder daughter and Tanya the also-ran. The inconvenient mistake, born when her parents thought they had finished with babies and were concentrating all their efforts on ensuring that Fiona had the best that they could possibly give her from their modest means.
She had clenched her fist so hard that, when she uncurled her hand later, there were red half-moons dug into the palms. Now though, she would not enter into a slanging match with her panicked, grieving sister. “I’ll do what I can. Fiona. I’ll get back to you very soon.”
“You’ve let me down. I know you don’t think much of family, but you have let me down.” And with that, the conversation was over. Tanya clicked off her phone and lowered her head into her hands. She didn’t need this extra pressure, not right at the cr
ucial start of what was almost certainly a murder inquiry. She didn’t hear Charlie come in and, until he spoke, hadn’t realised she was not alone.
“You okay?” he said quietly.
She jumped, sat up blinking at him, stared for a moment before she spoke, “No, not really, Charlie.” And she told him about Serena.
Chapter 9
Charlie hadn’t had time to react, except for the monosyllables of sympathy as he listened, when Kate Lewis knocked and pushed open the office door.
“Sorry to interrupt. You’ve got that appointment, boss, with Mrs Parker, and if you don’t leave soon you’ll not make it. She lives the other side of Oxford and if the traffic’s bad you’ll be late.”
“Right,” Tanya said, “yes, I hadn’t forgotten, thanks, Kate. Can you ask Sue to get ready to come with me? Will you take over the CCTV reviewing? It’s going to be staring at a dark wall mostly but if there was anyone around we need to speak to them as soon as possible. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“You and Sue okay now?” Charlie asked. “Only I know she was a bit antsy before. When you took over the other case.”
“She’s still being a bit of a bitch, to be honest, but I have to try and deal with it and ignoring her doesn’t seem to me to be the right thing to do. Actually, she was really lovely when she heard about Serena.”
Charlie nodded. “She’s got the makings of a good cop. Look, I’m not stupid, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea but, before, when we first took on the angels case, well, I think she had a bit of a thing for me. God, does that sound big-headed?”
“No, I believe you’re right. But at the end of the day, you’re married, you’re a daddy and she’s an adult. She just has to get over it. Anyway, I’m giving her a chance. If she doesn’t see it for what it is, I’ll have her moved. I don’t want to, but the case, the team, are what matter.”
“Absolutely. Look, you get off. Leave me the details about your niece and I’ll ring Edinburgh, see what I can find out and then at least you’ll have something to tell your sister. Sounds to me as though your niece has done a runner though. You know, if you take this to Bob Scunthorpe he’ll let you go I reckon.”
“I know, but I…” Tanya hesitated. “This is going to sound bad, but honestly, I just don’t want to go. I’d have to stay with them, I’d be a nuisance to the local bods and I don’t see what I can do. I can do better, more important work here. This woman, our victim, she deserves our attention. I was on the spot at the recovery, I saw first-hand what had happened, what she was reduced to – lying in that filthy water. Okay, we don’t know much yet, but I want to lead this case.”
As she spoke, she had emailed Charlie the notes made during the conversation with Fiona. “Thanks for this, Charlie. Also, could you send Dan and Paul over to the morgue? I’ve had a text from Dr Hewitt confirming that he’s going to do the post-mortem in about an hour. It’ll get the information back quicker if they attend, rather than waiting for him to write it up. Tell ’em I’m sorry. It’s not going to be nice...”
“Yep. No problem.”
“God, Charlie, I don’t know how I’d have been able to manage without you at the moment.”
“Of course you would. Ah, yes, later you need to tell me about you and Hewitt?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, Sue said he asked you out.”
“When? What the hell is she playing at? She’s talking nonsense.”
“Okay, okay, she just said that he commented that he wanted to meet up away from a crime scene. She’s probably making more of it than it was. I shouldn’t have said anything. Look, just forget it.”
“No, I bloody won’t. I’ll have a word with her. Stupid girl. Oh shit, look at the time. I’d better get off. Thanks again, Charlie.”
“No problem. Hey, take it easy on Sue, I didn’t mean to cause trouble, it was a joke.”
“Yeah but… oh, never mind. I’ll see you when I get back. What about a drink tonight. If we have a chance.”
“Cool, I should make the most of a week of being a bachelor, I’ll be back in full husband and daddy mode in no time.”
Chapter 10
Once they reached the main road on the way into the city Tanya relaxed into the drive, letting the sat nav guide her. She judged that, away from the office, this might be a time to clear the air between them.
“Couple of things we need to get out in the open, Sue,” she said. There was no response. “Okay?”
“Yes... ma’am.”
Okay, not a good start but she pressed on. She decided to get the small thing out of the way first. “I’ve been wondering what you meant. Something you said that puzzled me, about Simon Hewitt.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, I wondered why you made that comment about me, ‘Taking him up on it?’ Where did that come from?”
She was aware of the other woman staring across the small space between them.
“Are you serious? I mean, not wanting to be rude or anything, but really, are you?” Sue asked.
“Yes.” The sat nav indicated a turn, and for a few moments, there was quiet again.
Sue broke the silence. “Well, I reckon that’s what he meant. I don’t see how it could have been anything else. When he said about you only ever meeting up at crime scenes, and then he said something like, he’d have to see what you could do about it. I just understood that to mean that he wanted to see you away from work. Well, that’s what I would have thought and, to be honest, I wouldn’t turn him down. He’s a bit tasty, isn’t he?”
“Did he really say that?”
“Well, yes. Why would I say he did if it wasn’t true? It was when you were looking at the corpse, I think you’d bent down to get a closer look. You didn’t answer him, and he just sort of shook his head a bit and then carried on. You really didn’t hear him, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” It was all that Tanya could think of to say, she was replaying the scene in her mind and truly couldn’t remember the comment. “Shit, if he did say that and I just ignored him, well he’s going to think I’m a right bitch, isn’t he?”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe he thought he’d overstepped the line, with me standing there and all that. Maybe he just thought he’d been unprofessional, although he spoke very quietly, and he was only talking to you. I didn’t let on I’d heard.”
“Oh hell, that makes it worse, that makes me look like a right tight arse.” The sat nav interrupted again. Tanya glanced across the car, if bloody Sue was smirking that was it, she was out. But she wasn’t, she was looking down at the phone in her lap, reading an incoming message.
“Okay, I’ll have to sort this I suppose, but, and I wouldn’t have thought I’d have to say this, Sue, just to be clear, don’t go spreading this around. It’s personal and I don’t want people talking about me behind my back.” This was a chance now to test the other woman’s loyalty. “You haven’t mentioned it to anyone, have you?” The tension between them rose.
“I might have said something to Charlie. Just in passing. You know, him and me were quite close and we sometimes chat.”
“Right.” Here was the opportunity to settle the rest of the problem. “I know you were working together on the angels case before I was brought in. You didn’t make any secret of the fact that you resented my arrival. Me being made the SIO. Charlie was a total professional about it, scored big brownie points with me and more importantly with the DCI. You let it get to you. I’m going to speak plainly, Sue. I know that loyalty to colleagues is vital, but respect for the chain of command is just as important, probably more so actually. Don’t be under any misapprehension, in spite of what we are supposed to believe, women still have to work twice as hard to get as far as the men, in this profession as well as any other. We have to be aware all the time what sort of impression we are making. I don’t want to have a problem with you.
“Charlie is moving on and you have to as well. Let’s just get on and do our job. Let’s try to do right
by this poor bloody woman, whoever she turns out to be, and you concentrate on being the best you can be. You’ve got what it takes, but you really need to pull your finger out and stop behaving like a spoiled kid. Okay?” She waited, wondering if the next words from the other woman would be a request for a transfer.
“Yes, boss. Thanks.”
As she looked over she saw Sue Rollinson lift a finger and touch the corners of her eyes.
“I’ve been stupid, I know, but I dug a hole for myself and couldn’t get out. I fancied him something rotten you know. I still do,” Sue said.
“But there’s Carol and little Joshua,” Tanya said. “You have to have known it couldn’t go anywhere.”
To her surprise, Sue laughed.
“I’m a stupid sod sometimes,” Sue said.
“Yeah, I guess you are.” They had turned into a road of large detached houses. The sat nav told them that they had reached their destination. Tanya parked and turned off the engine. “Are we clear now, Sue?”
“Yes, boss. And boss, thanks. Right, I’ve had a message from Dan, preliminaries have confirmed it was a woman, she was young or at least youngish and she was dead before the body was burned.”
“Thank heavens for that at least.” Tanya reached for her bag and followed Sue out of the car and up the wide drive to the detached, mock Tudor house where the Parkers lived. There was a smart, low-slung sports car parked in front of the big double garage and a light shone behind the coloured glass of the front door. Tanya took a breath and raised her finger to the doorbell.
Chapter 11
Julie Parker was taller than either of the two policewomen – blond, blue-eyed and well turned out. She wore slim black trousers and a soft, white blouse with a pattern of butterflies. Tanya recognised the design immediately, she had seen it online, knew the price. She scanned down to the low-heeled shoes and had costed the whole outfit in moments. It was obvious that money was not an issue for this woman and that she treated herself well.
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