took it out. In a barely legible scrawl, it said, IOU ?10. JJ taking me to meet band, need money for train. X Seth.
This was new, she was sure of it. She needed to run this past Julia and Kathy, but who knew when they were going to be up to that? Stepping to the far end of the kitchen, she pulled out her phone and called Stacey back at the office. ‘I’m at Seth Viner’s house,’ she said. ‘Something’s come up. The person who was talking to Seth on Rig was called JJ, right?’
‘Yes. The initials, not spelled out.’
‘I think Seth arranged to meet him at the station.’
‘Bradfield Central?’
‘It doesn’t say. But we should start there. Can you have another look at the CCTV?’
‘Sure. If I’ve got a specific time and place to look at, I can try enhancing it with the predictive software and see what happens. Thanks, Paula, that’s a real help.’
Paula closed her phone and squared her shoulders. Now all she had to do was find the real tea.
Sam was at the door of the Lexus before the woman had even turned off the engine. He’d been waiting for three hours for Angela Forsythe because he wanted to catch her on the back foot rather than pussyfoot his way past receptionists and PAs. He wasn’t about to make a hash of his big chance because his witness was forewarned and forearmed.
One of the curiosities about the Barnes file was that the report of Danuta’s disappearance had come not from Nigel, her husband, but from Angela Forsythe. She’d been the house lawyer at the private bank where Nigel Barnes, his wife Danuta and Harry Sim had all worked before Danuta had chosen motherhood over climbing the greasy pole. If anyone knew what the scoop was between Harry Sim and Danuta Barnes, chances were it was Angela. And the good thing about lawyers was that, even when they changed jobs, you could always track them down via the Law Society. As soon as Sam had discovered the connection between the two adult bodies in the lake, he’d been on to Stacey, asking her to find Angela for him. She’d got straight on it. For some reason, she never hung about when he asked her for stuff. He reckoned it was because she’d identified him as the one on the team with ambition, the one who was going places. And she wanted to make sure her career went meteoric alongside his.
And so, thanks to Stacey, he’d been staking out a personal parking space in the converted 1920s cigarette factory that had recently become one of the most desirable addresses in Bradfield. Only minutes’ walk from the heart of the city’s office district, it sat in its own park with a view across the canal to the restored Victorian merchant area where wool and cloth dealers had done business and taken their more public pleasures.
Angela Forsythe looked startled to see a well-built mixed-race man looming over her car. Her first reaction softened as she took in his suit, his smile, but mostly his warrant card. Still with the engine running, she lowered her window a few inches. A faint aura of something floral and spicy floated across to Sam. ‘Is there a problem, officer?’
‘I hope not, ma’am,’ he said, opting for the excessive respect that he suspected might appeal to this expensively groomed woman with the tired lines round her eyes. He thought the dark green suit and cream shirt were well chosen, making her look sober but stylish. ‘I wondered if I might talk to you about Danuta Barnes?’
A lesser woman would have gasped, he thought. But this one was trained not to give much away. ‘Have you found her, then?’
It was a question he didn’t really want to answer. He wanted the element of surprise intact when he confronted Nigel Barnes, and years of dealing with human duplicity had taught him not to trust witnesses, even if they seemed virulently hostile to the suspect. ‘We’re pursuing a new line of inquiry.’ He smiled.
She wasn’t taken in. ‘It’s all right. I’m not going to tell bloody Nigel,’ she said, winding up the window and turning off the engine. She opened the door and slid out, her short but shapely legs almost knocking Sam out of the way. ‘You’d better come up,’ she said.
The flat was on the third floor, the original metal-framed Art Deco windows augmented by an additional plain glass panel to muffle any noise from outside. The living room was like Angela Forsythe herself - warm, colourful and sophisticated. He suspected she considered her effects carefully. She waved him to a comfortably overstuffed sofa and settled in a wing chair opposite. Clearly there was to be no hospitality or small talk. ‘Danuta was my best friend,’ she said. ‘I imagine your file tells you I was the one who reported her missing?’
‘That’s right.’
She nodded, crossing her legs with a whisper of friction. ‘Nigel said he hadn’t called the police because he thought she’d left him. Supposedly there had been a note but he’d been so upset that he’d burned it.’
All of which Sam knew already. ‘That’s not what I wanted to ask you about.’
Her eyebrows rose. She pushed her bobbed dark hair behind one ear, her head tilting to one side. ‘No? That’s interesting. ‘
‘I wanted to ask if you knew Harry Sim.’
The name demolished her lawyer’s guard. ‘Harry Sim? What in God’s name has Harry Sim to do with Danuta?’
Sam held his hands up, palms facing her. ‘Ms Forsythe, I’m pursuing a new line of inquiry. I really don’t want to disclose any details at this point. Not because I think you might be in cahoots with Nigel Barnes, but because I don’t want to prejudice people’s responses in any way. So I would really appreciate it if you could indulge me by answering my questions even if they seem strange or pointless to you.’ He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this polite. Carol Jordan would have to give him credit for this.
Her smile was wry. ‘You’re rather good at this,’ she said. ‘With a bit of work, you could be a lawyer. Fine, Mr Evans. Fire away. I will do my best to answer you as objectively as possible.’
‘How do you know Harry Sim?’
‘He worked at Corton’s. I was already there when he joined us, so it must have been around ‘91 or ‘92. Danuta and Nigel were account service managers and Harry was in investments. He worked for both of them, dealing with their client deposits.’
‘What was he like?’
She chewed her lower lip for a moment, considering. ‘He wasn’t really a team player, Harry. Limited social
