by Cara Hunter
She wants to seize the book and bury it somewhere. She doesn’t want that book staring at Fiona Blake every time she comes in here – because – because –
Five minutes later there’s a noise behind her and she turns to see Fawley at the door. He’s staring round at the room, just like she did.
‘Looks like she’s a bright kid,’ he says eventually. ‘Henry James isn’t your usual fifteen-year-old reading, is it?’
Somer shakes her head and holds up a sheet of paper. ‘I just found this letter on the desk. It’s from Vogue – they’ve offered her work experience for this summer. I can’t even imagine how much competition there must have been for something like that.’
The flutter of unease Somer’s had all morning has sharpened into foreboding. It shouldn’t make a difference, that Sasha is clever and likes poetry and is interested in the world, but it does. It does.
‘Are those hers too?’ Fawley says now, walking over to a cork board hanging by the window. It’s thick with photos, but they’re very different to the ones her mother has downstairs: Sasha and her friends, grinning, sticking their tongues out, making rabbit ears behind each other’s heads. And beside the snaps and selfies, a scattering of sketches: what looks like the view across Port Meadow, a bowl of oranges and pears, a pair of pink stilettos, one lying on its side.
And suddenly Somer sees what Fawley’s getting at. ‘Oh, you mean the shoes?’
He shrugs. ‘And the Vogue thing. And the fact that Faith lives barely a mile from here.’
She joins him, and they stare in silence at the drawing.
‘An interest in fashion isn’t much, by way of a link,’ she says eventually. ‘Not when you’re talking teenage girls. And Faith is three years older, at college –’
‘Just look at her,’ he says. ‘Sasha, I mean.’
And she knows what he’s getting at. It’s not just the hair or the facial resemblance. It’s only a hunch – an intuition – but something tells her Sasha is the girl Faith has always wanted to be. Pretty in a happy, effortless, unforced way. Confident about who she is, content in her own skin, and barely able to imagine what it might feel like not to be. Even as her anxiety sharpens for Sasha, Somer still finds her heart aching for Faith.
‘I’ll give Faith a call and ask her if they’ve ever met,’ she says at last. ‘Being so nearby, I suppose it’s possible.’
‘And get me a list of all male employees under thirty at those building firms we’ve been looking at. It’s possible one of them is this older boyfriend Sasha’s mother is apparently unaware of.’
Somer didn’t know about him either, not till this moment. But this is the Fawley she knows – the Fawley they all know. The one who finds unseen connections, the one who gets there first.
She glances at him. ‘You think there really could be a connection with what happened to Faith?’
‘Yes,’ he says heavily. ‘I’m afraid I do.’
But she can’t read his expression. Resignation? Apprehension?
‘Update DS Gislingham, please,’ he says. ‘And then go through this room with a fine-tooth comb. Look for anything from her father, and any sort of diary. Basically anything that might give us some names – male names. And take that laptop in for Baxter to look at, but make sure you get Mrs Blake’s written permission first.’
‘Where are you going, sir?’
‘To Headington, to see Isabel Parker. The school have sent her home. Let’s just hope she remembers something Patsie doesn’t.’
He stops at the door. ‘And tell Gislingham I want everyone back at base at 6.00. If there’ve been no other developments.’
He doesn’t need to spell it out.
* * *
* * *
Back at the incident room, the atmosphere is dense with anxiety. They know the stats – how quickly the clock runs down on abduction victims, how low the chances are of finding them alive once twenty-four hours are passed.
Gislingham is at the front, collating the Sasha material on a whiteboard. A new one, set up next to Faith’s. Close enough that they can start drawing lines between them if they need to, but not touching, not yet, because Gislingham is superstitious, and he’s not alone. No one wants these two cases to be connected. No one.
‘There’s no sign of Sasha on the speed camera on Cherwell Drive last night,’ says Quinn, looking up and catching his eye. ‘I’m going to call the bus company – see if they have CCTV in that vehicle.’
Baxter glances up. ‘Good luck with that,’ he says heavily.
Gis turns and looks for Everett. ‘Anything on her mobile yet?’
‘I’ve asked for the call log,’ she says. ‘But the phone is definitely off.’
‘When was the last signal?’
‘Last night, at 9.35 in Summertown. Must have been just before they got on the bus.’
‘Isn’t that rather an odd time for her to turn it off?’ says Gis.
Ev shrugs. ‘Perhaps her battery was low.’
‘I’ve trawled her social media,’ says Baxter, ‘and Patsie’s right – looks like Sasha’s father did find her through Facebook. There’s a Jonathan Blake living in Leeds listed among her Friends, but he must have contacted her privately after that because he hasn’t posted anything on her page.’
‘What about boyfriends – blokes her own age – anything standing out?’
Baxter shakes his head. ‘Most of Sasha’s feed is about the four of them – the girls, I mean. They call themselves the “LIPS”. Lots of kiss emojis and stuff. As far as I can see those four are all but joined at the hip. Can’t see blokes getting much of a look-in.’
Ev looks across at him. ‘Just because it’s not there doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening. Kids know their parents stalk them online. They’d put stuff like that on WhatsApp or Snapchat – somewhere like that. Somewhere private.’
Gis sighs. ‘I’ve got that coming too, have I?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Ev with a smile. ‘Your Billy’s only two – I reckon you’ve got a good ten years yet.’
Gis walks round and stands behind Baxter’s chair, looking at his screen. Then he bends down, as if to take a closer look. ‘What about the Parrie stuff?’ he asks in an undertone.
Baxter glances up. ‘There’s Wikipedia for starters, but that doesn’t have much on the MO. But you can find that too if you’re prepared to dig a bit – the usual true crime sites and bloggers who think they know better than we do. And a whole bunch of conspiracy theorist tossers, of course – Parrie’s very popular with them.’
Gislingham makes a face. ‘Now there’s a surprise. What about the trial transcripts?’
‘Just come through. Though I’ve not found much yet. I’ve had to drop it pro tem, with all this about Sasha Blake.’
‘Fair enough, but keep on it, yeah? I’ve got a bad feeling about this, and the last thing we need right now is Gavin Parrie coming back to bite us on the arse.’
* * *
At Windermere Avenue, Somer is still working her way through Sasha’s bedroom. She’s trying to leave everything as she found it, so that if Sasha comes home she won’t feel her space has been violated. And all the more – and it’s a thought that ices her spine – if she’s already been violated in a far worse way. But however carefully she searches, she’s still prying, still an intruder, still betraying this girl she’s started to like. The clothes in the wardrobe are the same things she wore once – things she could easily see Faith Appleford wearing or talking about on one of her vlogs: the clean lines, the preference for plains over patterns, the one or two retro pieces that must have been shrewd selections from charity shops, the more expensive things carefully chosen to have as many different uses as possible. Every object in the room says something about this girl – a postcard from her grandparents in the Algarve, a picture of a little boy with a bucket and spade tucked into one of the paperbacks, a handwritten note on the back, faded to sepia, Weston-Super-Mare 1976. There are annotations in the books, too – Keat
s’ ‘To Autumn’ is ‘unbelievable’, ‘glorious’, but Endymion only gets ‘flabby’, underlined twice. And there are six gleeful exclamation marks alongside a passage describing how a phrenologist who examined Thomas Hardy’s head declared he would come ‘to no good’. All this brings a smile, but it’s not what Somer is looking for. There’s no notebook, no diary, no secret stash of sexy underwear, no pictures on the board of anyone who might be her boyfriend, and after an hour of searching, Somer is tempted to wonder if such a boyfriend even exists. But as she knows full well, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. They haven’t got Sasha’s phone, and they haven’t even started on her laptop. And those are fine and private places to hide a love that dare not tweet its name.
She takes one more look under the bed, then goes to stand up but her bracelet snags on the carpet and she has to kneel down again to untangle it. And it’s only then that she realizes there’s something under the bed after all – what looks like a lipstick, rolled over to the far corner. There’s no reason to retrieve it – it can’t possibly be relevant to anything at all – but something makes her lie down on her back and reach out an arm.
And that’s when she sees it.
* * *
Adam Fawley
4 April 2018
14.55
Isabel Parker’s house is unexpected. One of those impossibly gorgeous stone houses in Old Headington, a colour-supplement enclave you can barely believe has survived so perfectly, surrounded by the noise and sprawl Headington’s now become. But if the house is unexpected, it seems I am not. Or if not me, precisely, then someone like me. The woman who opens the door is probably the same age as Sasha’s mother, but Botox and an expensive hairdresser are doing a pretty successful job of masking it. She has a grey marl T-shirt, black leggings, silver flip-flops and bright-red toenails. She introduces herself (‘It’s Victoria but everyone calls me Tory’; believe me, there really is no answer to that) then leads me through the big slate-flagged entrance hall to a kitchen almost as large as the Blakes’ entire ground floor.
The girl at the long wooden table is doing something on an iPad. Outside, in the garden, a man with a long ponytail and a Crocodile Dundee hat is weeding the flower beds.
‘This is Detective Inspector Fawley, Isabel,’ the woman says. ‘He wants to ask you about Sasha. So turn that thing off and pay attention.’
She shoos at the iPad, as if it will just fold itself up and flap away, like some sort of stiff electronic crow.
Isabel rolls her eyes behind her mother’s back, and I catch her eye and endeavour to look conspiratorial, but I’m probably just freaking her out.
Mrs Parker turns to the worktop and the gleaming Nespresso machine. She hasn’t asked if I want anything.
‘I’ve just been talking to Patsie, Isabel,’ I say. ‘So obviously I wanted to talk to you as well. Perhaps you can take me through what happened last night?’
The girl shrugs. ‘I already told the other bloke. The fat one.’
‘I know, but it would really help if you could tell me as well.’
‘We went for a pizza in Summertown – that place on South Parade.’
‘Patsie said you got on the bus about 9.45. What time did you leave the restaurant?’
Another shrug. ‘Nine? Just after? We just hung out for a while after that.’
Like teenagers do. Like I did.
‘Then Patsie got off the bus in Marston and Sasha in Cherwell Drive?’
‘Yeah. And I stayed on till Headington.’
‘And you got back home when?’
‘Dunno. Half ten maybe.’
I turn to Mrs Parker. ‘We were out last night,’ she says, flushing slightly as if I’ve accused her of chronic child neglect. ‘But we were back by 11.00. Isabel was in here raiding the fridge.’
The girl is looking at her iPad again.
‘Patsie said the bus was really crowded – a bunch of foreign exchange students, she thought.’
Isabel looks up at me. ‘Yeah, so?’
‘Did you see where Sasha went when she got off the bus?’ She looks back at her screen and I dip my head, trying to catch her eye.
‘Isabel!’ says her mother sharply. ‘This is important – your friend is missing.’
The girl looks at her, and then at me. I’ve seen that look before. And on better liars than this girl.
‘OK, Isabel,’ I say, ‘whatever it is, you need to tell me. Right now.’
She looks distressed. ‘But I promised –’
‘I don’t care. I need to know.’
She sighs loudly. ‘Look, I think Sash was going to meet her boyfriend, ’K? She’d told her mum she’d be sleeping over at Patsie’s but when we were at the pizza place she changed her mind. I reckon she was going to see him. She didn’t actually say that, but that’s what me and Pats thought. She made us promise not to tell her mum.’
I can’t say any of that comes as much of a surprise. But it doesn’t do anything to shift my unease.
‘Did she get a call or a text or something – just before she changed her mind?’
She shrugs. ‘Maybe. Yeah, actually I think she did.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘I told you, she never said. She wouldn’t even admit she had a boyfriend. But there was definitely something going on – she’s been super secretive for, like, days and days.’
There’s a flush to her cheeks now. Her mother smiles. ‘Don’t worry, darling. You’re doing really well, isn’t she, Inspector?’
‘Does the name Ashley Brotherton mean anything to you, Isabel?’
Her eyes widen. ‘No, should it?’
‘Or Faith Appleford?’
‘No.’
I sit forward a little. ‘Now, this is really important. I know you said before that you didn’t see what Sasha did after she got off the bus. Can you think about that again and tell me if there’s anything you remember now?’
I hold her gaze. She knows what I’m saying: I’m prepared to bet you lied the first time, but I’m giving you another chance.
The flush deepens and she nods. ‘I think there might of been someone parked there. Meeting her, I mean. We kept asking where she was going and she just kept smiling and saying we’d find out soon enough.’
‘But you didn’t see anyone when she got off the bus?’
She shakes her head. ‘I just saw her running up the road and looking, just like, really really happy.’ Her eyes fill with tears. ‘She will be OK, won’t she? I know I should have said something but I promised –’
Her mother rushes to her and wraps her arms about her, stroking her hair. ‘It’s all right, darling, you weren’t to know.’
I wait a while, and then a little longer, and when Isabel finally seems calmer, I ask her if she still has the bus ticket.
She sniffs a little. ‘I think I chucked it.’
Her mother touches her gently on the shoulder. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and see if you can find it? It might still be in your bag.’
‘But I already told him what time it was –’
‘It’s not that,’ I say. ‘The ticket will have other information on it as well as the time. Who the driver was – stuff like that.’
She flicks her pink-tipped fringe out of her eyes. ‘OK,’ she says eventually. ‘I’ll have a look.’
When she comes down five minutes later she hands me a shred of paper.
‘This is all I could find.’
It’s crumpled and the ink has run but it’s still legible.
‘That’s great, Isabel. That’s exactly what we need.’
* * *
When the lights change, Gislingham signals left and pulls up behind a squad car at the bottom of Windermere Avenue. He’s on his way to meet Ev at Summertown High but he thought he ought to drop in and see how the house-to-house is going. He’s not expecting much – he’s not expecting anything, frankly, because if there’d been any news on Sasha, they’d have called him to say so – but he doesn’t want
it to look like CID just hand off all the shit jobs to uniform.
He spots the sergeant in charge a few yards away, talking to a female officer. Gis knows him pretty well. He’s a safe pair of hands.
‘Anything new, Barnetson?’ he says, drawing level.
The man looks up and shakes his head. ‘We’re pretty much done here. We’ve spoken to everyone between the Blake house and the bus stop. A couple of people recognized Sasha from the photo, but only because they’d seen her round there before. No one remembers seeing her last night or noticed anyone acting suspiciously.’ He gestures at a clear plastic sack at his feet. ‘We’ve trawled the gutters and verges too, but all we’ve found is the usual crap. I’ll get it sent over to forensics but I’m not holding my breath.’
Gis looks down at the sack. Fast-food wrappers, beer cans and bags of dog shit. ‘Alan Challow’s going to love you.’
Barnetson gives a wry smile. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It might make a nice change from rotting corpses.’
‘So what now?’
‘There’s a team starting on the fields either side of the Marston Ferry Road. I’ll pop over there later but the last I heard they hadn’t found anything either.’
Gislingham looks up at the sky. The wind has just got up and there’s rain in the air.
‘Hope they remembered their wellies,’ he says.
* * *
Jayne Ayre @NotthatJaneEyre 15.07
#Oxford folk, does anyone know anything about something happening on Cherwell Drive? There’s a bunch of police cars parked up there.