‘N-no problem.’
Jessamine saw him out. He’d opened the door no more than a crack when Munchie darted past him, making a break for freedom.
‘Shit,’ said Jessamine, grabbing the cat just in time. She scolded her, then put her back in the living room and shut the door. ‘We try not to let her out. We’re five floors up and she’s such a daredevil.’
A beat.
‘How did you get those names that day?’
Jitesh felt his stomach drop. She’d probably spent the whole time he’d been here building up to this.
‘Tasha and Theo. How did you know?’
‘I-I-I-I-I . . .’ He couldn’t get past the first syllable. Panic overwhelmed him. Did she know? Was she about to report him to the police?
‘Did you overhear something in News?’
‘I-I-I-I . . .’ He tried again.
‘For the life of me, I can’t figure it out.’
‘S-s-send me the file when its r-ready.’ His panic subsided a little. She genuinely seemed to have no clue as to how he’d accessed those names, but the exchange had rattled him. Wanting to get away before she could ask any more questions, he sloped off towards the lift ‘I’ll get to w-work as s-s-soon as I can.’
Friday 6 January
Present day
Jessamine
Pellicci’s in Bethnal Green. Jessamine pushed her way through the stained-glass door, took off her hoody and searched the café for O’Brien. He stood up from a table in the back corner and waved. Solid in a blue shirt and jeans, he looked trimmer than usual.
She’d been at the gym, trying to work off the nervous energy created by her impending podcast debut when he’d called to tell her he’d found someone willing to talk about Cassie’s case, but only if she came now, within the hour. Otherwise she risked the guy changing his mind. Not wanting to miss her chance she hadn’t bothered to change or shower and had jumped straight into an Uber. Now, as she wove her way over to him, she caught sight of herself in one of the mirrors on the wall. Her fringe was plastered to her forehead and the sweat patches under her sports bra had leaked through to her T-shirt, creating two dark half-moons under her breasts.
O’Brien took in her Lycra-clad legs and, blushing, averted his gaze. ‘Jessamine, this is Jimmy Laird,’ he said, gesturing to the man sitting opposite. ‘He’s an old friend.’
Jimmy had black hair, flecked with white, cut close to his scalp. Overweight, he was wearing a charcoal suit, the jacket pinioned across his belly by a single button.
The air was rich with the smell of fried food, and as Jessamine took a seat opposite Jimmy, her stomach growled. Her post-workout body wanted calories. She caught the waitress’s eye and ordered a sausage sandwich and a coffee.
‘Charlie said this is off the record,’ said Jimmy, shifting in his chair.
‘That’s right.’ The waitress placed the coffee in front of Jessamine and she took a sip. ‘I want to talk to someone close to the case, make sure I’m on the right track.’
Jimmy nodded.
‘Shall we start at the beginning?’ said Jessamine. ‘The first you heard of Cassie was when her husband reported her missing. Is that right?’
‘Luca Scolari. Thirty-one years old. He called it in around nine p.m. Said his wife had yet to come home from work and he was worried.’ Reciting the facts seemed to relax him a little. ‘Normally we wouldn’t get involved so early on, it had only been a couple of hours, but he said his wife had a history of mental-health issues and that he was concerned for her safety. That changed things.’
The waitress returned, this time with the sausage sandwich. Jessamine doused the inside with tomato ketchup and took a bite.
‘We put out alerts with her description and then we set about trying to work out the last time she’d been seen. We soon discovered she’d left her office early to go and collect her son from school.’ Jimmy had an odd voice. Every time he spoke it was accompanied by a strange clicking sound, like a metal flipper on a pinball machine. It seemed to catch and push the words up and out of his mouth. ‘This was confirmed by CCTV. She walks down Villiers Street towards Embankment and then, a little before she gets there, she disappears. After that we have no idea where she went or what she did.’
‘But?’ said Jessamine, already finished with the first half of her sandwich.
‘But the school said they never made any such call. A fact confirmed by Cassie’s incoming landline and mobile logs. She lied.’
Jessamine thought of the second phone the intern thought he’d seen Cassie with. What if someone had called her on it and tricked her into leaving her office by impersonating the school?
‘Cassie’s friend, Marnie,’ said Jessamine. ‘She said Luca was violent.’
‘Ah, yes, Marnie.’ Jimmy rolled his eyes.
Jessamine wondered what it was about Cassie’s friend that seemed to bother people so. Was it because she was a busybody or was there something more?
‘So, the domestic violence?’ said Jessamine, getting him back on track.
Jimmy hesitated. He seemed to be trying to find the right words. ‘That, alongside her mental-health history, was another reason we upgraded her investigation to high risk. There are a number of documented call-outs spanning a period of years, but on every occasion she decided not to press charges.’
Jessamine held her silence. Let him squirm, like a fish on a hook. Behind the counter in the corner, the espresso machine hissed and gurgled.
‘We checked out her husband’s alibi,’ he went on. ‘It’s solid. He was at work all day, then at Army Cadets. He’s a volunteer.’
‘Did Marnie hand in the date diary?’
‘She did.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Eventually.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
On this it seemed he wasn’t going to be drawn. Either the police had not found anything of significance in the diary and the piece of paper in the pocket at the back or he wasn’t willing to share.
‘What about Cassie’s Oyster card?’ she asked, trying to make sure he didn’t shut down completely.
‘Aside from her journey into town that morning, it hadn’t been used.’
‘How about her card history? Was that her usual route home, via Embankment?’
‘Typically, she caught a bus to Bank, then got on the Central Line. But we don’t think that’s significant because we don’t think she was headed for the Tube.’
‘The river?’
‘She’d been on antidepressants for years. Once, in the past, she tried to commit suicide.’
Jessamine was surprised. So far no one had mentioned that. Maybe because they hadn’t known.
‘She could easily have jumped in the Thames without anyone seeing,’ said Jimmy. ‘It happens more often than you might think.’
‘In a busy spot like that?’
‘Even there. And at this time of year, with the river at that temperature, she would only survive a few minutes. We’re waiting for a body to surface but sometimes they get caught on or under things. Those never reappear.’
‘What about her phone?’
‘It was last active at around two p.m. that day on Villiers Street so she had it with her. The only rub is that in the CCTV images she looks to be holding a mobile up to her ear but when we checked her phone log to find out who she was talking to there was no call that corresponded with that time-stamp. So either she was holding some other object against her face – a hairbrush or makeup maybe, the CCTV isn’t that clear so it’s possible – or she was very confused and thought she was talking to someone, when in fact no such call had been made.’
Jessamine thought of the second phone. The one the work-experience kid thought he’d seen. ‘Marnie mentioned getting a WhatsApp from Cassie nearly two weeks later. Did you cell-site that?’
‘We think Cassie composed it just before she disappeared but that she didn’t have any signal. In it she says she’s running late and asks Marnie to pick up Matteo. The message was held in a queue and
sent when the phone was turned back on thirteen days later. It came from somewhere in the Berkshire Downs, near the M4. Then it was turned off. I can get you the rough coordinates.’
‘You don’t think that’s significant?’
He sighed. He was starting to lose his patience. ‘I think it means that before she jumped she left her bag on the Embankment and someone stole it.’
‘I spoke to an intern at her office, who thought he might have seen Cassie with a second phone.’
This surprised him but, after considering it a moment, he dismissed it out of hand. ‘That would explain the phone she’s using on the CCTV but no other mobile accounts have turned up in her name, which meant it wasn’t registered to her, most likely a pay-as-you-go. Those we can’t trace.’
‘Is it possible she ran away? She could have been headed for Waterloo, across the footbridge.’
‘Of course. But we haven’t picked her up anywhere on CCTV and in that station we’d expect to.’
‘Isn’t it a little bit odd for her to just vanish?’
‘She didn’t vanish. A few of the cameras were faulty. It happens. We’re pretty sure she continued on, just wasn’t filmed doing so. She could have slipped down one of the many alleys that run off that street, or out through Victoria Embankment Gardens, the small park that leads off from there.’
Jimmy sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. He was done.
O’Brien coughed: a prompt. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’
The two men shared a look. Whatever he was alluding to Jimmy was reluctant to share. O’Brien held his gaze, staring him down until finally Jimmy shook his head. Surrender.
‘This is highly confidential,’ he said, leaning in close. ‘We haven’t told her husband this piece of information and we certainly haven’t released it to the press.’
He sat back again, as if he was having second thoughts.
‘Jimmy,’ said O’Brien, in a voice Jessamine had never heard him use before. A threat.
‘Fine.’ Jimmy held his hands up in defeat. ‘When Cassie went missing we sent out an alert, along with her photo, to every police station in the country. Standard procedure. Usually we never hear anything back but a few days ago we had a call from Kent Police. Vice. Turns out Cassie was picked up for soliciting there in broad daylight at the start of October. At the time she didn’t give her real name, which is why her caution never showed up on our system. But then the officer who brought her in recognised her from the picture we’d sent through. Says he remembers her because she was dressed so differently from any of the other women she was with.’
Jessamine thought again about the fact that Cassie might have had a second phone. Was it to facilitate some secret second life as a prostitute?
Jimmy looked at his watch.
‘One more question. Was Cassie in debt?’
He shrugged.
‘Minimal stuff on the credit cards, car loan.’
‘They were in arrears with her son’s after-school-club fees. Might she have turned to prostitution as a way of earning cash, to help fund her escape from her husband?’
He smiled sadly. ‘In my experience people seek out money for the things you’d expect. Drugs, gambling, extortion.’ He got up and pulled his jacket taut over the mound of his belly. ‘If that’s everything.’
O’Brien gave him another look.
Jimmy sighed and reached into his pocket. He brought out a USB stick and placed it on the table.
‘Thank you, Jimmy,’ O’Brien said, palming the USB, ‘for this and for coming here today.’ He offered his hand but Jimmy refused to take it.
‘You didn’t give me much choice.’
Jessamine scribbled her number on a napkin. ‘In case anything else comes up,’ she said, and handed it to him, waiting until he’d gone before she turned to O’Brien. ‘Thank you.’ She finished the last of her sausage sandwich and licked the ketchup from her fingers. ‘I don’t know how you got him to talk but I appreciate it.’
‘Aw, now, you know I’m always only delighted to help.’
Somehow Jessamine sensed that this chat with Jimmy had cost O’Brien more than he was willing to admit. She was touched. ‘Not the cheeriest bloke, is he?’
‘He’s on the defensive because of the domestic violence.’
‘How so?’
‘You know how it is. They’re supposed to risk-assess any women they come across in a DV situation but it’s mostly a tick-box exercise. It’s not their fault – they don’t have the resources. My guess, your woman Cassie had been assessed as at high risk but nothing had been done to help her. If the husband did do it, they’d be found culpable.’
Jessie considered this. ‘So,’ she said, nodding at his right hand, ‘are you going to tell me?’
‘What?’ He smirked, pretending not to know what she was talking about.
‘The USB?’ She thumped his arm. ‘Put me out of my misery.’
He reached under the table for his bag and slid a laptop onto the table. ‘The police released the CCTV stills of Cassie to the press. You’ve seen those.’ He plugged in the USB and waited for the file to appear on the screen. ‘But they also have video. Jimmy said they’ve been through it a hundred times and that there’s nothing significant. He’s probably right, but I thought it might help for you to see it.’ He turned the laptop to face her and came round to her side of table. ‘In case you notice something they didn’t.’
Jessamine pressed play and fixed her eyes on the screen. The video was jerky, the images grainy. She watched as Cassie emerged from the door next to the Vaudeville Theatre and made her way down the Strand, towards Villiers Street. Everything was much as it was in the still images, except for one thing. In the video it was clear that she had been walking at speed: she was obviously on her way somewhere in a hurry.
‘Well,’ said O’Brien, once she’d looked through the footage a few times. ‘Any use?’
‘Yes.’ She squeezed his arm in thanks. Under the cotton shirt she could feel the heft of his biceps. Dense, with a little flex, it reminded her of the crash mats at the gym this morning. She left her hand there a beat too long and O’Brien turned to look at her. When she still didn’t remove it, he smiled. A question. She removed her hand and sniffed at her armpits. ‘I must stink.’
‘You smell just fine,’ he said, returning to his side of the table. He gave her the USB and put the laptop away.
They sat there in silence. Jessamine noticed he’d had his hair trimmed, exposing an area of pink skin at the nape of his neck. A few seconds more and O’Brien startled. He reached down to his bag. ‘Almost forgot. I got you these.’ He placed two ceramic salt and pepper shakers on the table. One was in the shape of a small fat nun, the other a small fat vicar. Built into the section near their feet was a digital display containing the date, time and temperature.
‘They’re salt and pepper shakers and a clock, calendar and thermometer all in one.’
She laughed and thanked him. ‘How was your date?’ she asked, peering at the detail on the vicar’s face. ‘Susan. Going to see her again?’
‘Maybe. I’d like to think so.’ He moved his hands away from the salt and pepper shakers and the side of his wrist caught the nun, knocking it onto its side. A pile of salt spilled from her wimple onto the table. He tutted and gestured at the mess. ‘You know why it’s unlucky?’ Jessamine shook her head. He righted the shaker and grabbed a pinch between his fingers. ‘Judas Iscariot spilt some at the Last Supper. It’s supposed to symbolise lies and treachery. But if you throw some over your left shoulder it will blind the devil waiting there.’ He smiled at Jessamine and winked. ‘For luck,’ he said, and tossed the tiny white granules into the air.
Jitesh
Jitesh sat at his desk, headphones in. He wanted to check through the podcast one last time and then he’d upload it to iTunes. But, first, a quick scan through Meera’s social media.
Ever since he’d bumped into her outside the café he’d been checking on her
daily, sometimes twice, searching her posts and photos for clues. He wanted to know if she had met up with Kishor again, if he needed to worry. But when he looked he saw that she still hadn’t updated her Facebook or Instagram. Jitesh wondered if he should send her a message, warning her against his old classmate, just in case. But how could he do that without sounding weird? It wasn’t like he could tell her the reason for his concern. He couldn’t tell anyone.
He was too ashamed.
Trying to put all thoughts of Meera and Kishor out of his head, he replaced his headphones and pressed play. Jessamine’s voice filled his ears, softer and more measured than it sounded in everyday conversation, but her brisk vowels and strict Mary Poppins enunciation meant it was still unmistakably her.
A Friday afternoon in late November. Central London. A woman leaves work early to go and collect her son, who has been taken ill at school. She makes her way down the Strand, towards the Tube, and then, just before she reaches Embankment, she disappears. Her name is Cassie Scolari and even now, months later, no one knows what happened to her. Did she vanish of her own accord or did something else happen? My name is Jessamine Gooch and you are listening to Went/Gone.
Jessamine had told Jitesh that she’d decided on this as the title of the series because of something she’d noticed in the articles that had been written about Cassie’s disappearance. Some of the journalists had said that Cassie ‘went’ missing while others had described her as having ‘gone’ missing. Jessamine said that ‘went’ implied that Cassie had had some control over the event – in other words, she had chosen to disappear of her own volition. Describing her as having ‘gone missing’ implied she had been removed against her will. As far as Jessamine was concerned, the dichotomy between the two turns of phrase encapsulated the crux of the case.
Once Jessamine had established the facts of Cassie’s disappearance she moved on to her initial theories about what might or might not have happened. Finally, she threw the case open to the listeners.
When it comes to the disappearance of Cassie Scolari, I have lots of questions. Too many to list now. But here are some of the more pressing ones. Why were her son’s after-school-club fees in such arrears? What was she using that money for? Was it her only way to accrue cash secretly, cash she then used to run away? Or did she need the money for something else? How and why did she manage to vanish so completely from CCTV that day? And finally why, nearly two weeks after she first disappeared, did her phone send that WhatsApp message to Marnie? Most likely she composed it just before she went missing and the message was held in a queue until the phone was switched back on and found a signal. But who turned on the phone and why? This is where I turn the case over to you, the listeners. If you think you can help, please, get in touch. Maybe you took a picture or a video in or around the Embankment area on the day Cassie was last seen. Send it to us. Maybe you have information or even just a theory that hasn’t occurred to us yet. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.
The Dangerous Kind Page 19