Marion nodded, gazed out the window.
‘Shit,’ said Alex. The others stared. He wasn’t one to swear. Not aloud, not in front of Marion. ‘Even the hairdresser was new and exciting. You see? Who’d think a hairdresser might be a new influence on her life? Rose hinted though, didn’t she?’ He glared at Marion. ‘She told us the first time we saw her.’
‘Yes, she did. I missed it. Didn’t have it in context. All right. I’ll see him too.’
Alex nodded. ‘I’m going to drop in on her children myself, Marion. I want to get a feel for the family dynamic. But first, I think I’ll visit the woman who runs the ‘return-to-work’ course. Edwina must have got to know the group well. There must be something there. Edwina’s life falls into the old and the new. We have to assume at this point it was something in the new that caused this.’
‘A man,’ said Jerry. ‘My pride’s a bit dented, I’ll admit, but my money’s still on a man.’
‘I’m inclined to agree, Jerry. But where did she meet him? Not on the internet for sure. Not at work. Not at church according to the ladies there. Everyone said the same thing. She wasn’t interested in men. I don’t know. Every which way we turn, nothing. You stay on the hospital and the company. They are both very much in it. The net is so wide we don’t know what we’re getting. Unless we narrow it down in the next few days, concentrate on something, we’ll be struggling.’
‘Her old life and her new life. The old and the new. Where,’ Marion mused, acid in her voice, ‘does Rose fit in?’
‘Well,’ said Alex, not looking at her, ‘she’s new, although she was born and raised in Ponsonby same as Edwina.’
‘Exactly. She’s old and new. A link.’ Marion swept up a bundle of papers and walked out of the office.
Jerry watched as Marion marched down the corridor, her tread heavy. Turned back at Alex. ‘Jesus. What have I missed?
* The woman who ran the ‘back-to-work’ course looked like no-one Alex had ever seen before. Short and square with dyed jet-black hair cut in sharp lines and angles. Her glasses were black rimmed to match her black suit and black high-heeled shoes. Her lipstick siren red. Against the white of her skin, she could have been an extra in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She sat straight-backed behind a large desk in her office and motioned Alex to a chair with one hand. He felt his hope drain away. This was not a woman who sat around drinking coffee and gossiping, picking up titbits of people’s lives.
‘I’m sorry to tell you, Detective Cameron,’ she said, her voice brittle, ‘but I know very little about Edwina Biggs. It wasn’t a particularly cohesive group, you see.’
‘In what way, Ms Marsden?’ he asked. Polite, patient.
‘Well, there were five in the group. Four of them were in their late thirties, getting back into the workforce after having children. They got on well together, bonded I’m sure, but Edwina was different.’ She tapped her pen on her desk. ‘I’ll be blunt.’
‘Please do,’ he said, feeling himself tense. It was taking all his concentration to keep his dislike of Ms Marsden hidden.
‘Truth is Edwina was a hopeless case. She was in her fifties and, as far as I recall, had only had one job in her life— unpacking fruit and vegetables. Not selling them. So she’d never even used a cash register. Trying to teach her about computers was like trying to teach her to fly to the moon.’ She sat back in her chair and glared at him.
‘So, did she learn to use a computer?’
‘The basics.’
‘Yet she got a job.’
‘Who else would want it? Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Running back and forth with samples and answering the phone, putting glassware in sterilizers, all for next to nothing. On occasion she had to look things up on the computer. I think she probably managed. I’m not sure if she was capable of entering anything into the database. You’d have to ask them, but I wouldn’t have let her near any computer of mine. God knows what she would have messed up. I was very thankful when this job came up. I can’t imagine what else we could have found for her. We’re not magicians.’ Ms Marsden put her pen down on the desk, sat back in her chair.
Alex felt his lips form into a thin line. Worked hard to put a polite smile on his face. Nodded in agreement.
‘How did she relate to the others?’
‘Ask them if you like, but I didn’t see any kind of friendship. They were very different. Edwina was not a well-educated person, Detective Cameron. It showed. It showed in every way.’
Alex stood up. ‘If you can give me the names of the other people on the course please, we’ll talk to them.’ He couldn’t manage a smile. Edwina might have been uneducated and rough around the edges, but she was his Edwina. She didn’t deserve to be judged by such a cold, unfeeling witch.
* Alex was still out of sorts when he knocked on the door of Edwina’s house. He forced a smile for the woman who answered. Rowena, the thirty-five-year-old daughter. As he stepped into the living room, he stopped
