Marion shook her head. ‘No bloke. Not yet anyway.’
‘Let’s take it from the top,’ Alex said. ‘You first, Jerry.’
‘OK. I’ll try and keep it simple.’ He didn’t glance at his notes. His memory was sharp. He leant back in the chair, put his hands behind his head, closed his eyes and started talking. ‘Edwina worked from seven last night till about twelve-thirty this morning. Did you know Thursday, Friday and Saturday night are known as “fight and accident nights”? They need extra staff. The pathology place hired her as a dogsbody to help with the rush work for A&E. Nothing fancy about her job but sometimes they need someone to dash over to the hospital to pick up a sample rather than wait for the normal couriers. Someone to answer phones. Simple stuff. She’s been there about eight months after doing a “return-to-the-workplace” course. They reckoned she was pretty hopeless at first, but she did whatever they asked or at least tried to. Worked as long as they needed her, then one of them escorted her to her car and waited till she drove away. The owner insisted. Last night it was Jared Edgar’s turn. I woke him up and talked to him. Young, thirty-three. He was adamant. She got into her car and drove away in the usual direction. No different from normal.’
‘Did Edwina say anything to him about going somewhere after work? Meeting someone, perhaps? Did she seem in any way different last night?’ Alex prompted.
‘No, no and no. There were two pathologists on duty last night. Neither of them knew anything. Both said much the same thing. It was a busy night. Not much time for chatting, and Edwina was different from the young things they’d had working there before. At the end of the shift, she was ready for bed. Dog tired. They assumed she’d be going straight home. She certainly didn’t say she was going anywhere.’
‘What about the owner? Is he in the picture at all?’ Alex could feel the gloom settling over him.
‘Nah. Her, actually. Mei Nguyen. She runs the place. Husband is a neuroscientist. Went to their place in Remuera. Flash as. Mei Nguyen heard about this “back-to-work” course on the radio and thought it was a good idea to try someone from there. Before Edwina they’d always had students earning extra money on the weekends, but the turnover was high. She said they were pleased with her. Edwina was slow to catch on but she was keen and reliable. Not crash hot on the computer though. They sorta worked around it somehow.’
‘Wait, what you’re telling me is you’ve got nothing? Right?’
‘Sorry, Boss.’
‘Come on, Jerry, there must be something? Something tiny that didn’t sit right with you? Struck you as odd.’
Jerry was silent for a moment. ‘Nah. Sorry. I’ll go through them again with a fine-tooth comb but so far, they’re squeaky clean. Oh, by the way, none of them could ever imagine Edwina going to a nightclub. The other thing they said quite seriously too, was that Edwina was a very nervous driver. She’d had her licence for a few months and kept to set routes. You know—her house, to work, to the supermarket. None of them could believe she’d driven to Pierce’s Park.’
Marion nodded her head. ‘Mrs O’Brien said the same. More forcibly. Insisted it couldn’t be Edwina because there was no way Edwina could have driven there.’
Shit, thought Alex. Maybe it isn’t Edwina? ‘Marion, we need the identification now. Where the hell is the priest? Christ, maybe we’re on the wrong track?’
* The body was Edwina’s. There was never any serious doubt, just the teasing hint of confusion. It was late afternoon when the priest was able to find a moment in his Sunday schedule to identify
the body.
Alex, Jerry and Marion were tired. Night closing in and they’d been at it for hours. Alex ordered food. Vietnamese rice paper rolls for Marion, beef and vegetable noodles for himself and Jerry—double serve for Jerry. No one was happy. Alex had been hoping for something from Edwina’s workplace. A friend at least. Now all he had to focus on was the pathology business itself.
‘They use drugs there, don’t they, Jerry?’
‘Yeah,’ Jerry said, his attention on the food. He was a messy eater, bits of noodles stuck to the tabletop. Marion, in her kinder moments, referred to him as a ‘vigorous eater’. ‘Sure they do. It’s a pathology practice.’
Alex nodded. Grunted. Drugs. It had to be. Had Edwina stumbled across something she shouldn’t have? It was the last place she’d been seen. So many cases Alex had dealt with involved drugs. The city was swimming in the stuff. People smoking, inhaling, growing, injecting and dying. It had to be checked out.
‘Get some uniforms to help tomorrow. Go through the company's records. Find out everything. Pick the whole damn company to bits. If they are doing something with drugs, even fiddling the books, find it.’
‘On it, Boss.’ Jerry stopped eating. ‘Drugs. Yeah. Would be a good little cover operation. If it’s there, I’ll find it.’ He nodded to himself and started eating again, wrapping noodles around a plastic fork and shovelling them into his mouth.
Alex could hear the smile in his voice. Jerry might stand one hundred and eighty-eight centimetres tall, play rugby in the front row and stare at you with piercing jet-black eyes and a crooked nose, but a lot of it was an act. When it came to records and computers he was agile and fast. ‘Hey, by the way Jerry, is there any way we can pick up Edwina’s car at the first intersection? Do we know which way the car turned? Was there anyone else in the car? There might be CCTV somewhere. After all, it’s close to the hospital.’
‘I’ll check it out, but don’t hold your breath.’
* Marion cleaned up, took the rubbish to the bin away from the office, came back with three cups of instant
