‘Karen Gilbert,’ shouted Alice from Amanda’s office. Hilary and I looked up to find her hanging in the doorway. ‘Do you have a number for her?’
I knew who Karen was – the woman Jane saved from the Sandman.
I had to shake my head. ‘I don’t. But I know where she is.’ I leapt to my feet. ‘I had to visit her, remember? She went to stay with friends. I don’t have their number or their address, but I remember where their house is and can find it again. What the heck were their names?’ I racked my brains, tugging at my hair and demanding it dredge up the information I so desperately needed.
‘Is she important?’ asked Alice.
I nodded my head, puffing out my cheeks and closing my eyes as I tried to connect the dots. The names of her friends wouldn’t come, but even if they did, I might not be able to get a number for them. It was going to be easier to go there.
To answer Alice’s question, I said, ‘Karen Gilbert saw the Sandman. She knows what he looks like. In the limited window of time we have to find him, we are bound to come up with a few options for who it might be. If she can point the finger at one of them for definite, well …’
‘You need to find Karen Gilbert,’ Alice concluded.
Amanda called out, ‘There’s no number for Karen that I can find in this file.’
Would there be a number on the invoice Jane filed? I spun the chair around and got up, crossing the office to the back room beyond where we kept equipment and hardcopy files. Behind me, Hilary slipped in the chair to carry on looking through Jane’s notes.
Passing me, Jagjit went to the board to start adding notes.
I found the file I wanted in the back office, checked the contents, and took it with me. As we close each file, we write a short report about the case, the persons involved, the outcome, etcetera. It was an additional work burden I often questioned the validity of, but this was not the first time one of us wanted to look something up and found the information easily to hand.
It was filed on the computer system too, but this was swifter with everyone already using the electronic database.
Coming back through the main office space with the file open in front of my nose, I glanced up to see Jagjit write a name on the board: River Tam.
Seeing the name jogged my memory and I stopped to stare at the name. ‘She’s the one victim Jane found that she was certain the Sandman killed.’
Jagjit wrote down the location where she was found. ‘It was two years ago. Jane’s notes suggest there are many others, but she admits to guessing. She found River Tam talking about being sung to in her sleep on a website for insomniacs.’
‘I’ve got a printout of the whole thread here,’ yelled Amanda so we would hear her. ‘It sounds exactly like what happened to Karen Gilbert.’ I heard her get up and come to the door of her office. ‘You should see her and Karen side by side.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘What?’
‘They could be twins,’ she told me, gesturing with her head for me to see.
Hurrying across the office, Jagjit and Hilary on my heels, I asked, ‘Are they?’
Amanda shook her head. ‘No. However, if you look at some of the other victims Jane believes to have identified … well, see for yourself.’
On the screen of Amanda’s monitor was a series of pictures. Each was of a woman while still alive with the exception of River Tam. River had been arranged in death so she appeared to be sleeping peacefully. That she had been abandoned in a muddy field notwithstanding, there was nothing about her appearance that suggested she was dead.
What drew the eye though, was how similar the women all looked. Their ages ranged from late twenties to early thirties, each had shoulder-length brown hair and their features were similar too – high cheeks bones and full lips. They were attractive women and every last one of them was missing except River Tam, who we knew to be dead, and Karen Gilbert, who was in hiding after a lucky escape.
Beneath each picture, Jane had noted the date they went missing, their age, and the location where they lived.
‘Is there a map showing these?’ I asked, my voice a sudden noise in the otherwise silent office.
Amanda leaned forward to click the mouse, bringing a fresh tab up. Efficient as always, Jane had marked each point on an interactive map. Scrolling over the little red dots showed who had gone missing from which location.
Jagjit made an uncomfortable noise as if his stomach were squirming. ‘They are all from Kent,’ he observed.
I let my eyes flit across the screen, performing a swift count. ‘Twenty-seven,’ I announced with a grimace.
Amanda straightened up and stood back from the desk. ‘That Jane found so far. There could be many more.’
‘Or some of these might not be his victims,’ added Alice. ‘Isn’t that right? We don’t know for sure.’
‘It’s moot,’ I argued. ‘Whether they are or not, the Sandman has Jane and plans to kill her. We have to work out where he has taken her, or where he will take her, or who he is.’
My words acted like a shock to get people moving again, all five of us going in different directions with different approaches in mind. I was heading back
