There are also weeds: unwanted, interlopers. There are dandelions, daisies, clover, moss. They infiltrate the pristine lawn Jackie and Keith set down when they bought the house: strips of turf rolled up like sacred scrolls, laid side by side to stitch themselves together over that first summer.
Jackie wages war on weeds. She wages war with a miniature pitchfork, secateurs and chemical weapons. She hoes, she scarifies, she pulls weeds from between the patio stones with clenched fists before they have time to settle. She rips, tears, snips, swears.
It’s a Tuesday morning in late September. It is the equinox. The day is as long as the night and the night is as long as the day. The temperature is moderate. There is dew on the grass and a thin covering of mist. It’s 6 a.m. Keith brings Jackie a cup of instant coffee with milk and sugar. Jackie is holding an arch-top folder and flicking through some of the documents held within.
Soon afterwards, she heads off to work, at a police station in central London. She goes to the office of her commanding officer for a quarterly review. She brings with her the notes and cases she wants to discuss and the details of the resources she thinks her team needs.
Michael Warbeck is sitting behind his desk, leaning back in his chair, looking at his phone and tapping on its screen with his two thumbs. He looks up briefly as Jackie walks in and then he says, “I’ll be right with you, Rose.” He continues to tap.
Jackie settles herself in the chair in front of his desk and places her bundle of documents on her knees. She begins to riffle through them and pulls to the top the ones that are most worthy of discussion.
“Right with you,” he says again. “I just need to …”
He trails off.
“You writing a novel?” Jackie asks. It’s rude but she’s too old to care. She can retire in just three years.
Warbeck chuckles in a hollow sort of way. She can tell that he’s affronted, but not enough to cause her any bother.
“Sorry,” he says with a toothy smile. “What can I do for you today?”
“It’s my review,” says Jackie.
“God, is it? That’s come around quickly.”
“Every three months.”
“Goodness me. It feels like you were here yesterday. You’ve obviously loomed large in my thoughts these last few months.”
“Sir, I’ve printed out some graphics to help you better understand the situation the department is now facing.”
Jackie finds that Michael Warbeck responds better to images than to words. Bullet points are also useful as they arrange the words into shapes, if words are needed at all. Since his promotion above her eighteen months ago, Jackie has become an expert in concision. She can now fit three months of her department’s work onto a single side of A4 paper.
She pushes the document across the desk. He picks it up, casts his eyes over it, then puts it down.
“I know,” he says. “Why don’t you set it all out to me here and now. Speak to me, Jackie.”
Jackie smiles. She expected this. She pulls some more notes from her folder.
“Sir, things are getting much worse. If there were a disease that made people disappear, we’d say we had an epidemic on our hands. Vulnerable young people are being reported as missing at a rate I’ve never seen before. Men and women. The men we suspect as suicides—that’s what the evidence points to, and on that score I’m not sure it’s something we as the police can do much about. The women, on the other hand, well, the evidence my team have collected points to sexual exploitation and trafficking. These are women from difficult backgrounds; many are first- or second-generation immigrants, some illegal immigrants; many have been on our radar before, either us the police, or social services; many grew up in foster care, and then they just disappear, and there’s no one around to do all that much about it.’
‘It doesn’t sound like it’s been a very productive few months. Any success stories? Found anyone?’
‘Sir, I’m afraid the people we find are people who would probably turn up anyway. I can’t say we’ve had much luck in uncovering the whereabouts of these individuals I’m talking about. What we need is better strategies for identifying these vulnerable people in the first place, and we also need to be working more closely with other teams within Serious Crimes—the Sexual Exploitation framework—so that we can do more to prevent grooming and trafficking.”
“Jackie, Jackie, stop there for a second.” Michael Warbeck holds out a hand. “I know that’s where you wanted to be. We all know that. You had your heart set on Sexual Exploitation. But it just didn’t work out with the arrangement of personnel we had available. We needed you on Missing Persons. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. Now, I hope you’re not using this as an opportunity to segue into that line of work.”
“No, sir. My priority is to find people who are reported to us as missing, it’s simply that better links with other teams would help us achieve that. Let me give you an example.” She riffles through her papers and brings out a case file. “This is Cheryl Lavery, sir, a.k.a. Debbie McGee.”
“As in the wife of Paul Daniels? The one from Strictly Come Dancing?”
“Yes, sir. That’s her nickname. She and her man were known to go around Soho performing magic tricks. Hence the names. He’s Paul Daniels.”
“I see.”
“One way or another, Cheryl Lavery has been known to social services and the police for a while. She’s a drug user, she’s spent a long time without a fixed address, she has been convicted for shoplifting, public indecency and solicitation. Finally, she was reported missing about three months ago. Now, we don’t know for sure, but we suspect she has fallen victim to a
