by M. R. Hall
‘It was a complete bolt from the blue,’ Mrs Crosby said. ‘She seemed perfectly happy. She had a good job, a new boyfriend—’ She stopped mid-sentence and glanced at her husband, who seemed to have been struck by the same thought. She let him take over.
‘We think she might have been seeing an Asian chap last year,’ he said, as if it was a source of great shame. ‘My wife was visiting one day last October and saw him leaving her flat. She said he was just a friend, but . . . you know. One has an instinct.’
‘Do you know who he was?’
‘Salim something, I think. She never mentioned a surname.’
‘What did he look like?’
Mr Crosby turned to his wife, who said, ‘Mid-twenties, a little older than Anna Rose. Perfectly respectable,’ adding apologetically, ‘quite good-looking, really.’
Mr Crosby said, ‘Christ, I knew we should have said something. What the hell has she got herself mixed up in?’
Mrs Crosby put a calming hand on her husband’s back. ‘I don’t think it was still going on. She was really taken with Mike. They met at work.’
‘At Maybury?’
‘Yes . . . He was her first line manager, her boss, I suppose. She started a two-year training programme last September – the graduate programme.’
‘This Asian friend, do you know anything more? Was he involved politically in any way?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Mr Crosby said. ‘I’ve never heard Anna Rose talk politics in her life.’
‘What are her interests?’
‘Having a good time, as far as I could make out,’ he said. ‘Stunned us both completely when she went straight into a job. She only took physics because she thought there would be less competition getting onto the course.’
‘Did she do well?’
‘Not particularly,’ Mrs Crosby said. ‘A 2:2. She was lucky to get on the graduate scheme at all. She’d always talked about going off travelling for a year.’
‘Her looks probably helped,’ her husband said. ‘Men would do anything for her.’
Jenny glanced at the few tasteful black and white family photographs arranged on a polished walnut bureau. Anna Rose in her late teens had shoulder-length blonde hair and a twinkling, mischievous smile that spelled trouble. She was more elemental, less refined than her adoptive parents.
Jenny said, ‘How did she end up in this job? It sounds almost out of character.’
Mr Crosby shrugged, seemingly at a loss to explain it other than as just another of his daughter’s many surprises. His wife said, ‘She got on very well with one of her tutors – Dr Levin. I had the impression that she pushed Anna Rose in that direction. Pulled a few strings, probably, but Anna Rose would never have admitted to taking someone else’s help.’
‘She was very independent?’
‘Oh yes,’ Mr Crosby said. ‘And headstrong. It didn’t matter how wrong she was, she was always right.’ His tone suggested he’d already made up his mind about what had happened: his feisty, naive daughter, too good-looking for her own good, had got involved with some damn-fool foreigner. If she wasn’t already dead, she was certainly beyond any help they could offer.
Mrs Crosby said, ‘Does this mean there will be a criminal investigation?’
‘Of course there will,’ her husband snapped. ‘It’s bloody obvious. She’s up to her eyes in something.’
‘You don’t know that, Alan,’ she protested, pained by his anger.
‘You know how impressionable she is. She’s been like it since she was small.’ He turned to Jenny. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Mrs Cooper – we were amazed she survived her teens. Expelled from two good schools, God knows how many unsuitable boys. She was always getting into trouble.’
Mrs Crosby, succumbing to tears, said, ‘That’s not fair—’
Jenny said, ‘I’ve no reason to talk to the police at the moment. But I would like to look around your daughter’s flat, and also talk to Mike Stevens.’
Jenny left the Crosbys’ home with a set of keys to Anna Rose’s flat and Mike Stevens’s mobile number. She called him from her car, hoping to meet him later that morning, but he answered from a hotel room in the Lake District. He was on a week-long business trip to the nuclear reprocessing plant at nearby Sellafield. There was nothing to be gained from staying at home, he said: Anna Rose’s parents had followed up every one of her friends and acquaintances they knew, who were far more than he did. They had only been together for a little short of three months.
Jenny said, ‘I know this is going to sound a little strange, Mr Stevens, but would Anna Rose have had any access to radioactive material, caesium 137 for example?’
She was met by what she interpreted as a stunned silence. When Mike Stevens found his voice, he said, ‘Why would you ask that?’
‘It’s just that traces of that substance have turned up in another case I’m investigating.’
‘A death?’
Jenny said, ‘Don’t panic. There’s no connection with Anna Rose apart from the caesium. I just need to know if any could have escaped from your plant.’
‘God, no. Do you know anything about the nuclear industry? Everything’s dealt with by robots.’
‘You’re saying it’s impossible for her to have got hold of such a substance?’
‘You’d have as much chance. What is this? What’s she meant to have done?’
‘Nothing. It’s probably just two unconnected events. One more question – what do you know about an Asian friend of hers called Salim?’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Her mother saw him leaving her flat last October.’
‘Where the hell is all this coming from? Anna Rose doesn’t have a friend called Salim. She was seeing me last October.’
‘Sorry to have troubled you, Mr Stevens. Mr or Mrs Crosby will fill you in. Try not to worry.’
‘Hey—’
She hung up and dialled Alison’s home number. It rang seven times before she answered with a cautious hello.
‘I thought you might be at church,’ Jenny said.
Alison ignored the comment.‘You’re alive then, Mrs Cooper. Half of Bristol’s trying to get hold of you. Everyone thinks you know something.’
‘Not yet, but I’m working on it. Has it hit the news yet? I haven’t heard anything.’
‘Not a squeak. There must be some sort of blackout.’
‘I don’t know if that’s frightening or reassuring. I need to get hold of a dosimeter.’
‘A what?’
‘Andy Kerr’s number will do.’
Andy took her call from what sounded like a gym with bad pop music and weights clanking in the background. There was obviously no girlfriend to keep him occupied on a Sunday morning. He still had the dosimeter in his lab coat pocket, he said, but the entire mortuary building had been sealed off while it was being decontaminated. He wasn’t expecting to be allowed back in before mid-week. He would have called Sonia Cane, but he’d heard she was writing a report complaining that he’d acted improperly in not informing the Health Protection Agency immediately he discovered radiation on Mrs Jamal’s body.
‘What’s she frightened of?’ Jenny said.
‘Same thing as me – getting sacked. I’ve already been told not to discuss it with anyone, not even you, apparently.’
‘I won’t tell. So where can I get a dosimeter?’
‘Today?’
‘It’d be helpful.’
Andy sighed. ‘I’ll make some calls.’
Jenny picked up the badge dosimeter from the junior radiographer working the Sunday shift at the Vale. He didn’t ask any questions and Jenny didn’t offer any explanations. He had a queue of casualties waiting, and in his line of work the badge was a standard and unremarkable piece of equipment. It was nowhere near as sophisticated as Sonia’s handheld device: a small piece of photographic film contained in a credit-card-sized badge with a colour key. When exposed to radiation the film would turn a steadily darker shade of green.
> It was less than a fifteen-minute drive to Anna Rose’s flat in a new build not far from Parkway station on the northwest edge of the city. An area punctuated by business parks, industrial estates and arterial roads, it was charmless but convenient for the motorway, and less than twelve miles to Maybury. The block was a three-storey building wedged into a far corner of the estate. Every inch of narrow roadway was lined with parked cars. There wasn’t a space to be had, so Jenny left her car blocking a turning circle.
There were two keys on the ring the Crosbys had given her. The first opened the door to the confined communal hallway, the second unlocked the door to Anna Rose’s flat. Jenny checked the dosimeter: it remained the lightest shade of green.
She entered a small, conspicuously orderly one-bedroom apartment. The door opened straight from the outside landing into a kitchen-cum-living room furnished with a few items of simple modern furniture. A window looked out over a fenced-off area of scrub that had been cleared for development which had never happened. The dosimeter remained unchanged. She moved around the room, glancing over a shelf unit laden with university text books, opened drawers, checked the bathroom and thoroughly searched the tiny bedroom, poking the dosimeter into every corner, but it stuck stubbornly at no hazard.
She was both relieved and disappointed, and a little weary. She sat down on one of the two chairs at the small pine dining table and took stock. It was what she hadn’t found that was most interesting. There was no suitcase or rucksack, no computer, camera or mobile phone. No wallet or toothbrush. There were empty hangers in the wardrobe, only a few pairs of socks and underwear in the chest of drawers. There were no signs of forced entry at the front door. The pile of mail on the kitchen counter and the few items she had picked up from the mat were unremarkable – bills or junk. Unlike Nazim and Rafi, it seemed that Anna Rose had packed and left deliberately.
Jenny tried to avoid the temptation to speculate, but she had an instinct she couldn’t ignore, a sixth sense that told her this room belonged to someone who was alive, still in the game. It didn’t smell dead; the atmosphere was disturbed but not leaden.
She scanned the room one last time for any hint of a clue. There was nothing. No notebooks, no scraps of paper, no rubbish in the bin. Virtually no trace of Anna Rose except her textbooks and a number of paperbacks lined up on the shelf beneath them. Jenny glanced at the titles: all light, slightly risqué fiction aimed at young women and a couple of trashy celebrity biographies. Anna Rose might be intelligent, but she couldn’t be called cultured. It seemed odd to Jenny that a bright young woman would have no intellectual curiosity beyond her narrow subject, yet the syndrome felt somehow familiar. She turned her attention to a framed poster – the only object approaching a piece of art in the flat. She had barely noticed it before: from a distance it looked like a crude cartoon rendering of the Mona Lisa. Up close it was a collage of hundreds of photos of a younger, barely clad Britney Spears striking provocative poses. It was clever, Jenny thought, and imagined it appealing both to the scientist and the party girl in Anna Rose: sexy and serious at the same time. She was reminded of her visit to Sarah Levin’s home: the young academic who spent her days with her head in particle theory but came home at night to MTV and glossy magazines. They struck an attitude, these young women: took a whole lot of things for granted Jenny’s generation never had, but felt strangely shallow and unformed for it. What did they believe in? What then did they have to fall back on in times of crisis? She checked the dosimeter one last time and locked the apartment door behind her. The radiation trail had gone cold, but she left the building certain of her next move.
There was no reply to the doorbell at Sarah Levin’s apartment. Jenny waited outside in her car for over an hour and tried to order the theories invading her mind into a series of credible possibilities. Given that each one had to begin with the theft of radioactive material, it wasn’t easy.
It had started to rain and she was feeling both tired and in need of a pill when a powder blue Fiat 500 pulled into a space across the street. Sarah Levin jumped out carrying several upmarket carrier bags and headed for her front door. Jenny beat her to it, intercepting her on the pavement.
‘Dr Levin – I need to ask you some more questions.’
The young woman was surprised and affronted.
‘Now? Are you joking? I’m only calling home for five minutes and then I’m on my way out again.’
She made for the front door. Jenny pursued her.
‘It’s about Anna Rose Crosby. I understand you knew her well.’
Sarah Levin stopped and turned, irritated.
‘I’ve got friends who are lawyers – they couldn’t believe that you came to my house. What do you think you’re doing?’
‘She’s missing.’
‘I heard.’
‘Do you know why that might be?’
‘Why would I know? I was her tutor, not her friend. I really have to get on.’ She fished her keys from her pocket.
Jenny said, ‘Her family were very surprised she got on the graduate scheme at Maybury. They said you might have pulled strings for her.’
Sarah Levin sighed theatrically and flicked back her long blonde hair. ‘I write references for all my students. I have no idea what any of this is about, and as you don’t seem inclined to tell me, we’ll leave it there, shall we?’
Jenny was about to hit her with the whole story – Mrs Jamal, the caesium 137, all of it – but an instinct told her to hold fire. There was panic in Sarah Levin’s defiant expression, and anger. Jenny had her denial and if need be she could use it against her later.
Calmly, Jenny said, ‘You seemed rather alarmed when I mentioned her name.’
‘That wouldn’t have anything to do with me being door-stepped?’
‘You have no idea what might have caused her to disappear?’
‘This is ridiculous. None at all.’
‘When were you last in contact?’
‘I don’t know. Last summer.’
‘You’d say that on oath?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs whoever-you-are, I’ve had enough of this. You can ask me for a written statement, but you can’t interrogate me out in the street. I’m not stupid.’
She went through the door and pushed it hard shut behind her. Her scent hung briefly in the air. If Anna Rose was pretty, Sarah Levin was beautiful. It wasn’t simply her looks, it was chemical. Not a man or a woman would pass her without glancing back either in lust or envy. From the photographs she had seen of him, Jenny assumed that Nazim had had something of that quality, too. He was certainly better looking that Sarah Levin’s current partner. She could imagine Nazim falling hopelessly in love with her, no matter what religious principles might have stood in his way. And for a girl who could have had anyone, he must have been one of the more interesting propositions.
Jenny hurried back to the car and pulled out her phone.
‘Alison, it’s me.’
‘I know, Mrs Cooper. I can tell from the ring,’
‘There was no radiation at Anna Rose’s flat.’
‘Oh. Is that surprising?’
Jenny disregarded the sarcastic tone. ‘I’ve just spoken to Sarah Levin again. I’ve had a thought – can you get hold of her medical records?’
‘What, without her consent?’
‘Yes.’
Somewhere in the background Alison’s husband called out for her over the sound of a yapping dog. She shouted at him to hold on, then returned impatiently to the conversation.
‘Isn’t that a bit irregular, Mrs Cooper? Aren’t you meant to ask the witness?’
‘Sod the protocol, just get them.’
Jenny had driven across the city and was staring out through a streaky windscreen at a foggy dual carriageway when it occurred to her that there was one other person who linked both Anna Rose and Nazim Jamal: the gawky Professor Rhydian Brightman. She knew little about how universities worked, but thought it safe to assume that in a closed institution professional
relationships would be intense and not much would go unnoticed by colleagues. Brightman must have discussed the inquest with Sarah Levin, if only out of concern for the reputation of his department. He must have heard about Anna Rose, and if strings had been pulled on her behalf, it was more than likely he had done some of the tugging.
She pulled into a filling station just short of the M4 motorway and made some more calls. Eventually she tracked down a porter in one of the halls of residence, who relished telling her it was more than his job was worth to give out the private number of a member of staff. Jenny lost patience and told him that unless he called back with it in five minutes he could expect a visit from the police.
It was Brightman himself who returned her call and asked tentatively how he could help. Jenny apologized for disturbing his weekend and asked if they could meet.
‘What is it you want to know, Mrs Cooper? I really have no light to shed on what happened to those two young men.’
Jenny said, ‘Nazim Jamal’s mother was found dead on Thursday.’
‘Oh. Poor woman.’
Jenny paused, weighing her next move. What the hell, why not hit him with it? He’d hear it sooner or later. ‘It seems she may have had a visitor shortly before her death. And there were traces of caesium 137 on her body. The block of flats where she lived has been evacuated.’
He was silent for a moment. ‘Well, I really don’t know what to say . . .’
Jenny said, ‘I’ve only a few questions. It won’t take long.’
‘Maybe it’s best if you come to my office.’
Professor Brightman was waiting for her on the steps outside the physics department dressed in a scruffy anorak and carrying a battered leather briefcase. Making awkward small talk, Jenny followed him through cold, deserted corridors to his office: a tiny, cluttered room on the second floor overlooking the street. Clearing her a chair, he apologized for the temperature – economies meant that the heating was turned off on Sundays. They sat on either side of the desk in their coats. Jenny could barely feel her toes.
Agitated, Brightman pushed his thick glasses up his nose. ‘Do you mind if I ask what manner of conversation this is, Mrs Cooper? My employers would normally expect me to inform them if I were being questioned by the authorities.’