Wrong Place

by Michelle Davies

‘Did she say who the interview was for?’

  ‘I presume the Echo, but I can’t be sure. She was being very cloak and dagger about it.’

  ‘Did you mention this to DS Renshaw yesterday?’

  Audrey looked concerned. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t. The lady only wanted to know if I’d heard anything in the morning, like glass breaking. We didn’t talk about the day before.’

  ‘It’s okay. We’ll ask Della if she knows anything about it,’ said Maggie, experiencing a frisson of excitement. Discovering Sadie hadn’t been alone the evening before she was attacked put a new slant on the investigation and tracking down the reporter would now be a priority for the team.

  ‘I must say, it was a bit of a shock when I saw the reporter leave,’ Audrey said.

  ‘You saw them?’

  ‘Oh yes, it was a young woman. I watched her coming out of the house as I arrived home after bingo. It was about ten p.m. and my friend had dropped me off over there,’ Audrey pointed across the road, to a parking space on the opposite side. ‘We were saying goodbye when the girl came out of Sadie’s. She gave me the fright of my life!’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘You know Sadie has a daughter? Silly me, of course you do – she’s Della’s mum. Well, I’ve lived here as long as the Cardles have and this girl was exactly how I remember Helen before she went. Long dark hair, slim like Della is. Uncanny, it was.’

  ‘But it can’t have been Helen,’ said Maggie with a frown. ‘I mean, she would be much older now. You said it was a girl?’

  ‘When you get to my age everyone seems like a girl,’ Audrey laughed. ‘She was perhaps in her thirties. But I didn’t say it was Helen – only that it looked like her. Whoever the reporter was, she looked exactly as I imagine Helen would now.’

  29

  Maggie drove Della to the hospital in silence. She wasn’t about to share Audrey Allen’s sighting with her, not until it had been thoroughly checked out. She doubted Della would react rationally to the news that someone who resembled her long-lost mum had been seen visiting Sadie the night before the attack.

  And what if it actually was Helen? Maggie’s mind raced as she mapped out the investigation in her head. Starting points would be checking with the DVLA to see if Helen held a driver’s licence and tracing her address through her National Insurance number – if she had one. She may also have changed her name through marriage or by deed poll, which would take longer to look into. There were many avenues the police had to explore before Della was informed.

  A quick sidelong glance as they drove along the approach road to Mansell General also reiterated to Maggie that it would be cruel to mention the sighting to Della until they were absolutely sure of the woman’s identity. Della appeared diminished in the passenger seat next to her, her face pinched with worry and exhaustion. It wouldn’t be fair or responsible to heap more stress on her right now.

  After dropping Della off outside the hospital reception, Maggie drove back to the station. The open-plan office was fairly empty when she returned – no sign of either Renshaw or Nathan – so she settled down at her desk to write up Eleanor Bramwell’s statement, her priority with Umpire’s afternoon deadline looming. Yet as she tried to concentrate, pecking away at the keys of her computer, the image of Della slumped down in the passenger seat tugged at her mind. She needed to call the Echo to confirm whether it was one of their female reporters who had visited Sadie on Monday evening – and happened to coincidentally look like Helen – but it would have to wait until she had finished the statement. The only Echo hack she knew by sight was Jennifer Jones, the chief reporter, and it couldn’t have been her because she had light brown, curly hair and was more curvy than slight.

  The words on her computer screen swam in front of her eyes as she continued to type. Cursing under her breath, Maggie pushed her chair back roughly from her desk and stood up. She knew it wasn’t the question of the reporter’s identity that was bothering her – it was the question of what really happened to Helen after she went missing all those years ago. Della’s distress had hit a nerve – now Maggie couldn’t rest until she found out too.

  She strode across the office to a bank of six desks where the CID admin support assistants sat. The most senior of them, Pearl, was busy inputting a document, her chunky fingers flying unchecked across the keyboard as she chatted to the colleague next to her.

  ‘Hey, Pearl, have you got a minute?’

  Pearl was overweight to the point of morbidly obese and her eyes almost disappeared beneath her enormous cheeks as her face lifted in a smile. Her mouth was thickly coated in her signature bright red lipstick.

  ‘Always for you, Maggie,’ she said, her fingers still moving rapidly back and forth across the keys.

  ‘I need to dig out a case file for a miss per. It’s from quite a while back – August 1999. Any chance you could help me?’

  Pearl stopped typing and picked up a pen.

  ‘What’s the name?’

  ‘Helen Cardle.’

  Pearl’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is she to do with the robberies case? Isn’t the most recent victim a Cardle?’

  ‘It’s the victim’s daughter. She went missing from Mansell in August 1999. There’s no connection to the case, I just want to read the file.’

  Pearl gave Maggie a wry smile. ‘If it’s reading you’re after, I’ve got the latest Cathy Kelly novel in my bag.’

  ‘Okay, you’ve got me,’ said Maggie, grinning back. ‘I want the file because I’m curious. There are a couple of things about the break-in that are sort of linked to the daughter but she hasn’t been home for seventeen years. I’m hoping the file might shed some light on them.’

  ‘Don’t let DS Renshaw hear you say that,’ the assistant sitting next to Pearl said with a giggle. A pretty Asian school leaver called Omana who was the youngest in the department by about twenty years, she had a reputation for speaking her mind. Maggie liked her a lot. ‘She’s looking to tie this one up by catching the Con Couple and earning herself a pat on the back.’

  Pearl dug a fleshy elbow into Omana’s side.

  ‘Now, now. Let’s be nice about our new detective sergeant.’

  Maggie grinned. It was nice to know her dislike of Renshaw was shared.

  ‘Oh, come on, she’s so full of herself. Did you hear her going on about what happened at that federation do, to raise money for that PC who died? You know, the one in the accident?’

  Omana was referring to a traffic officer from Trenton killed two months earlier when his patrol car crashed while in pursuit of a stolen vehicle. Umpire had attended the benevolence fundraiser for the officer’s family and Maggie wondered what connection there had been between the dead officer and Renshaw that she was also invited.

  ‘All she’s done since is bang on about that bloke she hooked up with there. Reckons he’s some big hotshot in the force but she won’t tell us his name. “It’s complicated”,’ said Omana, mimicking Renshaw’s voice and making speech marks in the air with her fingers. ‘Apparently he’s taking her out somewhere posh tonight.’

  That would explain Renshaw’s chipper mood today, thought Maggie. The poor bloke had no idea what he was letting himself in for, whoever he was.

  ‘Do you think it will take long for you to track down the file?’ Maggie asked Pearl.

  ‘I doubt it, but if I come up against a brick wall I’ll let you know. You know what the bureaucracy in this place can be like.’

  ‘You could always get Renshaw to pull some strings with her hotshot,’ Omana chipped in.

  ‘And end up owing her a favour?’ retorted Pearl. ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Hey, she’s not that bad,’ Maggie suddenly felt obliged to say. The admins’ desks might be tucked away in the corner but the open-plan layout of the office still meant their conversation could be overheard and slagging off a senior officer could get them all into trouble.

  Pearl raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You of all people are defending her? The way she talks to you
?’

  ‘She’s being nice at the moment.’

  ‘Hmm. If she’s being nice it’s because she’s after something or she knows something you don’t. She’s like a slow loris, that one.’

  ‘A what?’ said Omana.

  ‘A slow loris. It’s one of the cutest mammals that exists, all big brown eyes and fluffy fur like a cuddly toy, but it’s one of the most poisonous too. When it feels threatened it shoots a toxin out of its elbows that can cause a fatal anaphylactic shock. My Jamie did a project on dangerous animals at school,’ Pearl explained to Maggie in an aside.

  ‘So it’s not Renshaw’s sharp elbows I should be worried about but her poison-spitting ones?’ said Maggie, amused.

  ‘Exactly.’

  30

  The boys had only been home from school for half an hour but were already driving Lou to distraction as they bickered over what television programme to watch before they did their homework. Scotty wanted Scooby Doo but Jude, with all the smug maturity of a big brother on the cusp of teenagehood, denounced it as a show for babies and flicked on a repeat of Ice Road Truckers, causing a major tantrum to erupt from the other end of the sofa. Then Mae joined in with Scotty’s wailing and the combined noise made Lou’s still-throbbing head feel like it was about to explode.

  It was a long time since she’d experienced such a brutal hangover. Her temples felt like they were being squeezed in a vice and the Nurofen washed down with Pepsi Max that she’d taken earlier – her usual fail-safe hangover cure – had done nothing to alleviate the pain. It hadn’t been so bad when the boys were at school as she’d managed a brief doze while Mae napped. But now her headache had returned with a vengeance and the only thing she knew would help was the bottle of Pinot Grigio chilling in the fridge. Hair of the dog, her second fail-safe cure for a hangover.

  She never drank before the kids were in bed as a rule, but with Jude wanting to stay up later the older he got she was becoming more inclined to bend it. A swift mouthful of wine as she cooked dinner did no harm, even sometimes straight from the bottle. Lou’s mouth watered at the thought of the wine in the fridge and she stole into the kitchen, leaving the boys to argue it out. She’d just opened the fridge door when her phone rang and she jumped guiltily, as if the person at the other end could see she was about to have a sly swig.

  It was Arturs, wanting to know if she could go out again that evening.

  ‘I really can’t. I can’t leave the kids again.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Lou,’ he cajoled. ‘They were fine, weren’t they? Just a couple of hours.’

  She liked the way her name rolled off his foreign tongue. The way he said it made it sound exotic. It made her sound exotic.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t risk getting into trouble.’

  ‘Because of what your sister said? So ask her to babysit. Problem solved.’

  He made it sound so simple but Lou knew that phoning Maggie to ask for her help meant having to listen to a lecture about her behaviour last night and about shirking her responsibilities. She didn’t want to hear it, not today. She was sick of everyone judging her. It was all anyone had done for the last six months since her idiot ex-husband got himself caught up in the Rosie Kinnock abduction, like it was somehow her fault.

  ‘I want to see you,’ Arturs breathed huskily down the line. ‘My work no good today when all I think about is you in my van.’

  A smile spread across Lou’s face. The sex really had been amazing.

  Keeping her phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder, she yanked open the fridge door, took out the bottle of wine, unscrewed the cap and swallowed a mouthful. Fuck it. If she wanted to see Arturs tonight she would. Jude could babysit again. He was doing fine before Maggie arrived.

  ‘Are you still there?’ asked Arturs.

  ‘Yes I am. So . . . where shall we meet?’

  31

  The Mansell Echo operated out of a shop unit on the side of town deserted by most retailers in favour of the new shopping centre. It was sandwiched between a T-shirt printing business on one side and a takeaway chicken outlet on the other. Hardly Fleet Street but Maggie knew the road well, because the dental surgery she’d gone to as a child was opposite the Echo, above an estate agent. The dentist, a lovely man called Mr Cope who had long since retired, had once appeared on Blue Peter and became something of a celebrity as a result. It didn’t take much to make it big in Mansell.

  The paper’s receptionist sat behind a polished wooden counter. She reacted coolly to Maggie’s request to see the editor, assessing her warrant card with something approaching disdain.

  ‘The editor’s not available.’

  ‘Can you get hold of him? I need to speak to him urgently.’

  ‘He’s not free right now.’

  ‘Any idea when he might be?’

  ‘No.’

  Maggie usually had patience in spades but after the morning she’d had, compounded by the stress of her row with Umpire, and from dealing with Lou and the children last night, her reserves were depleted.

  ‘Could you try to get hold of him?’ she snapped.

  The receptionist, who was matronly both in appearance and dress, gave a shrug. ‘Not right now, sorry.’

  Her name badge said she was called Joyce.

  ‘You don’t sound sorry, Joyce. Do you know what happens to people when they obstruct a police investigation?’ Maggie didn’t like resorting to threats but she was in no mood to be mucked around by someone clearly on a power trip.

  The threat worked.

  ‘He’s meeting with the advertising director,’ said Joyce huffily.

  ‘Interrupt him then.’

  ‘They’re not on site. The meeting is at our head office in Reading.’

  ‘Who’s his second-in-command?’

  ‘He doesn’t have a deputy editor.’

  It was like getting blood from a stone.

  ‘Do you think you could try to be a bit more helpful?’ said Maggie angrily. ‘Why don’t you just tell me who is available who can help?’

  The woman’s face mottled. She wasn’t happy being barked at. Maggie thought she was quite possibly the least suited person to be the welcoming face of a company that she’d ever come across.

  ‘We only have a small reporting team based here now. The production of the newspaper is done in Reading. I suppose I could see if our chief reporter is free.’

  ‘Jennifer Jones?’

  ‘Yes. She’s probably busy but she’s in the office at the moment.’

  Maggie had had a few run-ins with Jennifer during the past couple of years that she’d worked on the Echo and found her to be annoyingly persistent and inquisitive. Great qualities for a reporter, granted, but Maggie didn’t want to be badgered into giving too much away about the visitor to Sadie’s house on Monday evening if the person turned out to have nothing to do with the Echo. She’d have to be careful what she said.

  ‘Sure, I can speak to Jennifer.’

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Joyce sourly.

  Maggie remained standing and smiled wryly as Joyce put on a warm, friendly voice as she patched herself through to Jennifer and told her someone in reception wanted to see her.

  ‘It’s a police officer,’ said Joyce. ‘A woman detective.’

  The door separating the reception area from the rest of the building flew open less than ten seconds later. Jennifer Jones bolted through the open doorway with a grin on her face.

  ‘DC Neville, what a surprise! Have you got a story for me?’

  Immediately Maggie’s guard went up. Her mistrust of journalists, particularly Echo reporters, stemmed back to the inquest into Jerome’s death. The reporting of the hearing had been sensationalist, with the paper headlining their story ‘Boozed-up dad-to-be drank six pints before road death’, with no regard for how Lou and his parents would feel seeing it in print. The story itself wasn’t much better, painting Jerome as an unemployed waster who regularly indulged in daytime drinking and implying he was only marrying Lou
because he’d got her pregnant.

  ‘I don’t, no. The conversation we’re about to have is strictly off the record.’

  Jennifer’s eyes lit up. ‘Ooh, that sounds interesting. Follow me, we can use the editor’s office as he’s not here.’

  Maggie trailed Jennifer down a short corridor lined with blown-up images of Echo front pages, from its very first, published back in 1897, to a more recent one featuring TV personality and author David Walliams landing in a school playground in a helicopter for World Book Day. As they walked, Jennifer launched into a chatty monologue about why it was great when they could talk face to face with the police like this, as the reporting system for the force had changed and the Echo no longer had its morning briefing at Mansell police station but instead had to follow an online wire of news digests written by the press team at force HQ and of course that was fine but there really was nothing like talking in person, especially when you wanted to build contacts. She only ran out of steam when they reached a small office packed with desks and people who looked up with mild curiosity as they entered.

  ‘This is the newsroom but we also share it with the advertising and sales teams,’ explained Jennifer. ‘We don’t need as much space now the subbing and designers have been hubbed in Reading.’

  Maggie had no idea what that meant but didn’t ask her to explain. She wanted to be in and out as quickly as she could. She followed Jennifer into a small side room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls that gave an overview of the office.

  ‘We call this the Goldfish Bowl. Take a seat,’ said Jennifer, positioning herself in the editor’s chair behind his desk. She was tiny in stature, barely scraping five feet, and her boots only just reached the ground. There was something likeable about her – she had wild, Titian brown curls, a freckled face and wide smile – but Maggie didn’t trust her. Mindful of staying on her guard, she explained that she needed to check if any of the Echo reporters had been working on Monday evening.

  Jennifer’s eyes narrowed slightly and Maggie could see she desperately wanted to ask why the police wanted to know that, but instead sensibly provided an answer to the question. She must’ve sensed the reaction she’d get if she tried to interrogate Maggie now.