The Dangerous Kind

by Deborah O'Connor

  A knock at the door and a gawky boy, a few years older than Sarah, peered into the room. ‘Can I get you a drink? Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Tea, white, two sugars,’ said Stuart, still preoccupied by the tickets.

  The boy looked to Jessamine. ‘Coffee, black. Thank you,’ she said, then got out her phone and notebook. When she looked up again, the boy was still there.

  ‘That will be all, Jamie,’ said Stuart, loudly. Jamie startled and, after fumbling with the handle, closed the door.

  ‘Intern,’ said Stuart, as if that were explanation enough. He picked up a plastic ruler from his desk and began bending it back against the heel of his palm. ‘Tell me, how can I help?’

  ‘I’m investigating Cassie’s disappearance. Depending on how it goes we might do a programme about her on Radio 4.’

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded approvingly. Radio 4 was serious, respectable. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘I’m trying to build a picture of what she was like and how she was on the day she went missing.’ Jessamine placed her phone on the table in front of her. ‘Mind if I record our conversation?’

  He waved the ruler in agreement.

  ‘Let’s start with the basics. How long had Cassie worked here?’

  ‘Four years, give or take. If I remember correctly, she’d been a stay-at-home mum, came back to work once her son started school. She dealt with accounts admin, invoices, that sort of thing.’

  ‘What kind of employee was she?’

  ‘Until recently? Reliable, hardworking, friendly, although she kept herself to herself. She never came out for drinks on a Friday or anything like that, but she had a kid, had to get back for him.’

  His responses were quick. Like Marnie, he’d been primed by his conversations with the police.

  ‘Until recently?’

  ‘In her time here she’d taken maybe all of two days off sick. But then in the last few months she was off loads.’

  ‘How many days exactly?’

  ‘Let me see.’ He brought up something on his computer. ‘In total she called in . . .’ he counted the list of columns on his screen ‘. . . eleven times.’

  ‘Did you have cause to talk to her about it?’

  ‘There’s been a lot of bugs going round and everyone’s been off. Plus it wasn’t like her. I believed her absences to be genuine.’

  Jessamine wondered if Cassie had been ill or if she had stayed away from work for some other reason. Maybe the violence at home had escalated in recent months. Bruises in the wrong places might have raised awkward questions from her colleagues. Alternatively, if she had been headed towards a breakdown, maybe her absences were linked to her depression, a run of days when she hadn’t been able to face the office.

  ‘Could I have a printout of that?’ She motioned to the document he had open on the screen.

  ‘Sure.’ He hit return, and from under his desk she heard the click and whirr of a printer.

  There was a knock at the door and Jamie entered with their drinks. They thanked him and he left them to it.

  ‘Tell me about the day she went missing.’

  ‘Everything that morning was normal. She was normal. Talk to the people who sit near her and they’ll tell you the same thing.’ He reached down to the printer and handed her a sheet of A4 listing the dates of Cassie’s absences. ‘Then just after lunch she came into my office. She said she’d had a call from her son’s school, he wasn’t well, and she needed to leave to collect him. I told her that was fine, wished her son well and she left.’

  ‘Do you have a log of her incoming landline calls?’

  ‘I can give you the same thing we gave the police.’

  ‘I don’t know how far back the police went but could I get the last two months’ worth?’

  Stuart hesitated slightly. It seemed his goodwill had limits. ‘Leave me your details. I’ll have them sent on.’ He got to his feet. ‘If that’s everything?’

  ‘Of course. Thank you for your time.’ Jessamine stopped the recording.

  Stuart saw her to Reception and was about to say goodbye when Jessamine turned to him. ‘Can I see Cassie’s desk?’

  ‘The police have already gone through it.’ Jessamine held her silence. He sighed and shook his head in defeat. ‘This way.’

  She followed him through the office and over to an empty desk in the corner. Apart from one or two people, the place was deserted, most staff having cleared out for the Christmas holidays.

  Jessamine motioned to the chair. ‘May I?’

  ‘Sure.’ He checked his watch. ‘Is it okay if you see yourself out?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She sat down and surveyed the desk. It was unremarkable and contained only a screen, a keyboard and a small picture of Matteo. A few members of staff stopped what they were doing, distracted by her presence. Jessamine waited for their curious glances to abate, then she leaned down and opened the drawer pedestal. The contents were paltry. A stapler, a few packets of ketchup, two stray paperclips and a tin of lip balm.

  She leaned back in the chair, looked out of the window and tried to imagine herself as Cassie that day. The right edge of the window was fringed by what looked like purple tinsel, overhanging from the hoarding on the Vaudeville Theatre next door. Beyond that, on the Strand, she could see the top deck of buses going past.

  Jessamine stood up and pushed Cassie’s chair back under the desk. Cassie was an elusive figure. Aside from Matteo and Luca she had no family, few friends, and although she had worked in the same place for the last four years, her boss seemed to know virtually nothing about her, except that she was a mum.

  She headed for Reception and had just reached the bottom of the stairs when she heard footsteps.

  ‘Wait.’

  She looked back.

  It was Jamie, the intern. He stood there blushing, a pack of padded envelopes under one arm. ‘You’re here about Cassie, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked back towards Reception, as though he was worried about being overheard. ‘I used to get her coffee. I get everyone coffee. Or at least I try to.’ He fiddled with the corner edges of the envelopes.

  ‘Jamie, is there something you wanted to say?’

  ‘I might have imagined it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Once or twice, when I was near her desk, I thought I heard another phone.’

  Jessamine felt her neck tense. It used to happen all the time when she worked in news and stumbled across a new lead. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to shuck off the muscle memory. ‘Another mobile?’

  ‘Yes. There’d be one mobile on her desk, the one with the picture of her son on the back, and another ringing in her bag on the floor.’

  ‘Ever see her answer it?’

  ‘This one time I think she was going to but then she saw me watching and left it to ring out.’

  If what Jamie was saying was true, Cassie had had a second phone. Why? Because her husband monitored her usual mobile use and she wanted to make and receive calls without him knowing? Because she was having an affair? Or because she was trying to plan her escape?

  ‘Mention any of this to the police?’

  Jamie’s face mottled red. ‘I didn’t want to send them on a wild-goose chase. I’m not completely sure.’ He shifted the padded envelopes to the other arm, then back again. ‘But I keep worrying, what if it’s important?’ Once more he shifted the envelopes from one arm to the other but he misjudged and they fell to the floor. Jessamine watched as they slid down the stairs and landed in a pile at her feet.

  Jitesh

  Jitesh positioned the stepladder beneath the TV bracketed to the wall and held it steady while Malcolm climbed to the top. Every meeting room, studio and corridor had a television. Tuned to various BBC channels they were all kept on mute so as not to distract the people working below. This screen displayed twenty-four-hour rolling news.

  Jitesh had just passed Malcolm a screwdriver when, through th
e glass, he noticed a woman hustling out of the lift. Jessamine Gooch. He’d seen her picture on the wall. She was one of the presenters and, although she wasn’t famous-famous, he knew from the trophy cabinet next to the controller’s office that she’d won awards, lots of them. She wore a brown wrap dress that complemented her figure and there were sweat marks under her arms. He watched as she barrelled into the meeting room where he stood and took a seat next to the man with the glasses.

  ‘Morning, all,’ she said, grabbing a script from the pile in the middle of the table.

  Jitesh noticed the man register the cut of her dress. Jessamine met his gaze, defiant, and held it. Then she stared down at the man’s wedding ring. He seemed to shrink in on himself. Only then did she look away.

  ‘Before we talk about tonight’s show, I’ve been wondering,’ she said, rummaging in her bag, ‘what if we were to investigate a live case?’

  Her accent was brittle, her delivery brisk. She enunciated every syllable. Jitesh was reminded of Mary Poppins, carpet bag in hand.

  ‘What – you mean like an unsolved?’ chipped in the younger woman in the striped shirt.

  ‘Exactly. Something the police weren’t able to solve. There’s a story I’ve been looking into. A missing woman. We could do it as a special.’

  The man sucked in his cheeks. ‘Those things are a bloody minefield.’ He shook his head. ‘Contempt of court issues, libel issues . . .’

  Jessamine slapped her script on the table. ‘Or maybe it’s exactly what this show needs,’ she said meaningfully. ‘A breath of fresh air?’

  ‘Maybe we should talk about this later,’ said the man, signalling the presence of the two other women with his eyes.

  At the top of the stepladder Malcolm was busy adjusting the wires that fed into the TV. For a moment the screen went dark, then flickered back to life, but it seemed the action of turning it off and on again had switched off the mute function. Sound leaked into the room: a scream of sirens and the sombre cadence of a reporter halfway through a piece to camera.

  The production team stopped what they were doing and glared at Malcolm.

  ‘My apologies,’ he said, muting the TV. ‘Won’t be much longer.’ He gave Jitesh a wink. Malcolm thought the producers and presenters were silly and relished any opportunity to puncture what he thought of as their up-their-own-arse importance.

  The production team went back to marking up their scripts but Jessamine’s attention seemed to have been caught by something on the TV. Jitesh followed her gaze and saw a reporter, microphone in hand, in front of a blue and white police cordon that whipped and bucked against the breeze. To the reporter’s right, scattered across the pavement, were blood-stained clothes and abandoned bits of gauze. Meanwhile, in the background, people in forensics suits were taking photos.

  There was a cough and Jitesh looked up. Malcolm was done. Jitesh held the stepladder steady while he descended, then followed him out into the corridor.

  ‘I’ve replaced the fuse but I’ve got a feeling there’s something bigger at play. I’m thinking mice. There could be a nest. They get behind the walls and destroy the wires. I’ll get Facilities to look into it.’

  While Malcolm went off in search of lunch, Jitesh found a nearby hot desk and set to work logging the fix.

  From where he sat he had a clear view of the meeting room. Jessamine was still staring at the TV. She had a strange expression on her face, as though what she was seeing frightened her. She kept craning her head to one side, as if she was trying to see something just out of shot. The man with the glasses stopped what he was doing and said something to her. She replied and refocused her attention on her script, but within a few seconds she was back to looking at the screen.

  Jitesh submitted his log and then, with a bit of time to spare, he opened Facebook and went to Shanae Roberts’s page. He liked to keep an eye on the comments people posted there: it made him feel he was protecting her somehow, keeping watch. He scanned her wall. No one had posted anything since yesterday. He clicked on her profile pic. Lying on a sofa with her legs crossed, arms behind her head, she looked like the girl he’d seen chatting to Kishor at the party: eyes shining, neon pink and orange Nikes catching the light. Even in repose, her posture had an en garde tension, as though at any moment she might produce a fencing foil from behind her back and pounce.

  He felt his breathing quicken. A tightening in his chest. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have a panic attack, right here at work. He closed the tab and looked around, searching for distraction. In the meeting room Jessamine was still fixated on the TV. What was it about the news report that had caught her attention?

  Curious, he got rid of Facebook and brought up the BBC news site.

  It didn’t take long to match up the images he’d seen on the TV screen with the stills on the homepage. The story was time-stamped to an hour or so earlier.

  Breaking News: Pregnant Woman Stabbed Seven Times

  A pregnant woman is dead after she was found with stab wounds to her neck, back and abdomen. The victim was heard screaming after she was attacked outside the Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham this morning at around 9 a.m. Officers were flagged down by passers-by at around 9.10 a.m. after the woman was stabbed multiple times with what is thought to have been a knife. A 29-year-old man has been arrested by West Midlands police on suspicion of murder. The woman was cared for by local people until an ambulance arrived and took her to Birmingham City Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The baby has been born and is ‘doing well’, police have said.

  Jitesh had just finished reading the article when the glass door of the meeting room opened. The production team filed out and over to a bank of desks in front of where he sat. The two younger women deposited their notebooks, then wandered off in the direction of the staff kitchen. Jessamine took a seat in front of her computer and called up the news story that was on his screen. She pushed her face close, scanning the text, and then, apparently unable to find what she was looking for, picked up the phone and tapped in a three-digit extension.

  ‘Elaine. It’s Jessamine . . . Yes, yes. How are you?’ She waited a beat. ‘Listen, I saw a story on the news.’ She stopped again. Jitesh got the impression that while she wanted to get straight down to business she had to be polite and let the other person shoot the breeze. Finally, she got her chance: ‘The one about that murder in Birmingham, the pregnant woman. Do you have any details on the names of the people involved?’ She sat up in anticipation. ‘You don’t.’ She slumped. ‘I understand,’ she said, her voice wavering. She hung up. ‘Bloody hell.’ She seemed to be on the verge of tears.

  She picked up the phone and was busy searching the directory when the man from the meeting approached. ‘What just happened in there? I told you about the show being under threat in confidence, then you swan into a meeting alluding, not very subtly, to the need for a whole new format.’ He softened, his anger spent. ‘Verity and Arshdeep are just kids. They shouldn’t have to worry about this stuff, that they might lose their jobs. Not until we have something more concrete.’

  Jessamine shrugged.

  ‘Look,’ he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘I know you’re upset. About us. But you’ve got to stop acting out. What with the way you were during the Alice Dunford show the other week,’ he said, ‘and now this.’ He placed a tentative hand on her arm. ‘We’ve got to find a way to work together.’

  Jessamine stared at his hand until he removed it. ‘Mick, not everything is about you.’

  He waited a second, unconvinced. ‘We’ll make those changes to the script you wanted,’ he said, when nothing more was forthcoming. His posture was one of exhausted defeat. ‘Get it back to you this afternoon.’

  She nodded, and as soon as he was gone she dialled another number.

  Jitesh looked back at the news article. Why was she so interested in the story? If she thought she knew the people involved, why couldn’t she just call a friend or family member? It didn’t ma
ke sense. Maybe the local paper would have more information. He brought up the Birmingham Mail. It had dedicated its entire homepage to the murder but it too was missing any names of the people involved. Jitesh checked the by-line. The piece had been written by a journalist who claimed to have been first on the scene. Sam Gardiner. Judging by her phone call, Jessamine seemed to think the reporters knew more than they were letting on. That they had information they weren’t yet able or willing to broadcast.

  Jessamine was now on the phone while simultaneously trawling the internet. The sweat patches under her arms were expanding and her face was flushed. Once more she seemed on the brink of tears.

  What if he were to put her out of her misery? This could be his post-Meera-hack act of kindness. It would set things straight.

  After a quick check to make sure no one was looking, he typed the journalist’s name and the title of her newspaper into the search box. He decided to focus on the journalist’s Apple account. To access it he’d need three things: her email address, her date of birth, and the answers to two out of her three security questions. If he answered all of those correctly, he’d be able to reset her password, and once he’d done that, he’d be able to see everything, her emails, photos, iMessages.

  Locating Sam Gardiner’s date of birth and email address turned out to be easy. Her gmail address was provided by a quick Google search and her birthday was on Facebook. That got him past the first two steps of the password reset. Then it was time for her security questions. What was the name of her first boss? What was the name of her favourite sports team? What was the name of the street where she grew up?

  These were a little trickier to crack. Tricky, but far from impossible.

  Sam’s LinkedIn profile told Jitesh where she’d started her career, as a parliamentary researcher for her local MP, Chris Woolfson. Jitesh typed the politician’s name into the first box and was rewarded with a blue tick. Next up was Sam’s favourite sports team. This was simple. She’d declared her love for Manchester United in many of her Facebook likes and groups. Another blue tick. An empty box asking him to create a new password appeared on the screen.