‘A while now. Months. That’s pretty normal – a lot of my subjects sit on my books for years. But if you want the truth, the pressure on Goldrab’s been upping lately. In the last couple of weeks my clients are getting a bit pushier about him.’
‘Do you mean Mooney?’
Steve put down his cup and stared at her. ‘How do you know that name?’
‘I think I must have heard you talking to him on the phone.’
‘Then forget it. Please. Forget it.’
She gave a nervous little laugh. ‘You’re scaring me now.’
‘Well, maybe you should be scared. Or cautious, at least. Goldrab is a nasty man, Sally. Very nasty. And the fact he’s walking around free and not banged up on some life sentence is only a matter of fluke. Seriously, forget you ever heard that name. Please. For both our sakes.’
12
‘There are cats at your back door.’
Zoe was sitting at the table looking at the post-mortem photos of Lorne, distractedly rubbing her aching jaw, when Ben came into the living room, fully dressed, doing up the cuffs on his shirt. She hadn’t heard him get up, hadn’t heard him come down the stairs. He’d had less than five hours’ sleep but he was immaculate. He put his forehead to the glass door and peered down at the cats. ‘They’re eating.’
Zoe packed the photos into her courier’s satchel and put it next to the front door. She switched the kettle on. ‘Coffee?’
‘You’ve fed them,’ he said curiously. ‘They’ve got saucers out there.’
‘So?’
‘It’s kind of you. A secret kind habit.’
‘It’s not
He turned and gave her a long look. As if she disappointed him and was solely responsible for driving all the fun and light out of his life. She shook her head, half cross with herself. Last night when she’d gone to bed he’d been asleep. Or pretending to sleep – she hadn’t been able to tell. But their conversation about children had allowed something thin and cold and cunning to come in from the dark and slide silently between them. She knew it, he knew it. She made the coffee, banging around, spooning instant granules into mugs and slopping a little milk in.
‘There,’ she said, handing him one of them. ‘Do you want anything else?’
Ben was silent for a while. He looked at the mug, then at her.
‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘Zoe, I’ve been thinking…’
There was a pause. He started to say something, then changed his mind.
‘What, Ben? Spit it out – you’ve been thinking about what?’
Something in his eyes dimmed a little. He shrugged, half turned towards the window. ‘About the phone call.’
‘The
‘The one Lorne had with Alice. There’s something in it that’s important. Something that didn’t come out when Lorne was reported missing.’
Zoe didn’t move. He’d sidestepped. He’d ducked saying it, whatever ‘it’ was. She stood, tipped her coffee into the sink, found her car keys in her pocket. ‘I’m taking the car today,’ she said. ‘Do you want a lift in or are you going to drive yourself?’
13
The superintendent at Bath was in his late fifties. He had curly blond hair kept very short and the sort of skin that burned easily. He’d started life in Firearms, then come over to CID and regretted the move to this day. He still wore a blue and yellow National Rifle Association pin in his lapel, had a wall covered with photos of himself in the firing range and seemed to hold every member of his team responsible for his big life-mistake. That morning he looked as if he’d far rather be at the club shooting the crap out of some ‘advancing Hun’ than standing at the helm of the biggest murder case that had hit the city in years.
‘This is a nasty, nasty crime. Very, very serious. I don’t need to tell you that – you’ve all seen the post-mortem pictures, you know what’s going on here. But I want to remind you to keep clear heads on this. Concentrate. There are lots of things to cover. Most of them you probably know, but let’s put them in a bundle so nothing’s missed.’ He held up his coffee cup to indicate the points outlined on the whiteboard behind him. ‘To summarize. Lorne – popular girl, very pretty, as you can see. Big circle of friends – though so far no one’s saying anything about boyfriends. First thing I want to run through is the list of items to flag up for the search teams. Bits and pieces here, but mostly things missing from Lorne’s personal effects.’
He pointed to the picture from the mortuary of Lorne’s bloodied left ear. The killer had ripped her earring out, leaving the lobe sliced from midway to bottom. A photo of her other ear showed the remaining earring intact. ‘Number one, an earring. Quite an unusual design. Apparently it had been bought for her in Tangiers by her father. See this filigree? So…’ He nodded in the direction of the DCs ranked at the back of the room, arms folded across their chests. They had been taken partly from the ranks at Bath station and partly from the Major Crime Investigation Unit. ‘One of you. Get that added to the search list.’
Zoe stood near the front, her hands in the pockets of her black jeans. Her tongue was thick with last night’s wine, her muscles twitchy with all the coffee she’d drunk this morning to jump-start the day, and her jaw was still hurting from having the tennis ball in her mouth. Ben was leaning against the desk next to her, his arms folded. Usually on the way in to work she’d keep up with his car on her bike, sidewinder him in traffic. Today, as she drove in to work, she’d kept her distance behind his car, feeling she suddenly didn’t have the right to fun and games and flirtation.
‘Her phone’s missing. Switched off. But I’m comforted to know that Telephony at the bureau has got a watch on it. Am I right?’
The sergeant who headed the team’s intelligence cell nodded. ‘Vodafone are a nice network,’ he said, ‘the only one in the UK that do live cell site analysis. The moment that phone is switched on they’ll get a ping on it and we’ll know.’
‘Except,’ said the superintendent, ‘chances that’ll happen are, let’s be realistic, zero. More likely he’s slung it, so I hope it’s been added to the search-team briefings. It’s an iPhone, white.’
He set his cup down and picked up a girl’s fleecy pink gilet. With his finger stuck through the loop at the neck he dangled it in front of the officers. ‘Mum is adamant she was wearing something like this when she left home. It wasn’t among what we recovered from the crime scene, so put an asterisk next to that for the search teams. And, last, there’s a tarpaulin, which you’ve seen in the photos – we’ve trawled around the barge owners down there and they’re all saying the same thing. It’s standard stuff for a barge, a tarp to cover the wood and coal and what-have- you – but still no one’s missing one. They get a lot of overnight moorings in that stretch of the canal, casual since you don’t pay for the first twenty-four hours, so bear that in mind. Have a word with all the boathouses and someone speak to British Waterways to find out what the water bailiff saw moored there overnight. Someone get photos of the tarp distributed – and the fleece. Either get Exhibits to have another photo of the earring done or get the PM one Photoshopped so it hasn’t got the dead ear attached. Then get it to the press office – the media can have both of these. Ben? Zoe? Can I leave it to you to decide how best to divvy that up?’
Zoe nodded. Ben held up his thumb.
