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
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.
