Alex Barclay - The Caller

Magda nodded to the photo in front of Stan.

‘That was the first photo we hung,’ she said. ‘It’s Robin Embry, Julia’s son.’

‘Really?’ said Stan.

‘Yes,’ said Magda. ‘Poor boy. Killed in a car wreck.’

‘How is Mary?’ said Stan.

‘She’s OK,’ said Magda. ‘It’s all very hard for her. Not just the loss, but David is linked to so many of her memories of when she was well and now he’s gone, I think she feels there’s no-one left in the world who knew her when she was stronger, no-one who knew the real Mary.’

The receptionist paged Dean Valtry and offered Danny and Joe seats they declined. Valtry came out almost immediately, his smile on, his arm extended.

‘Good morning, detectives. There’s a conference room on the second floor,’ he said. ‘You can use that. It’s all set up. There’s water, a coffee machine. I got in some doughnuts… I mean, also some pastries, Danishes…’

‘Yeah, thanks,’ said Danny. ‘We appreciate it.’

‘How do you want to do this?’ said Valtry.

‘Just send them up one by one, go by the list. No need to tell them anything else.’

Valtry nodded and walked to his office.

‘I hate the doughnut thing,’ said Danny as they stepped into the elevator.

‘What are you talking about? You love doughnuts,’ said Joe, pressing the button for the second floor.

‘Exactly,’ said Danny. ‘Once people get the cop/doughnut thing confirmed, they go straight to thinking all their other ideas were right. Before you know it, we’re all fat, dumb, lazy and racist.’

‘And sleeping around on our wives.’

‘There’s got to be some perks to laying my life on the line every day.’

‘Yeah, I really feel my life is in imminent danger right now,’ said Joe.

‘Hey, anyone could walk into this conference room today and-’

‘See how quickly a box of grease and sugar can disappear.’

‘Well it sure as hell ain’t hanging around my gut,’ said Danny, patting his flat stomach.

Joe looked at him. ‘Yeah, you’re so hot right now…’

They stepped off the elevator and noticed someone was already waiting outside the conference room door – a small, bookish Asian girl in rimless glasses, with long shiny hair in a ponytail and a snug white lab coat. She wore pale panty hose and brown don’t-fuck-me shoes.

‘That’s our guy,’ said Danny under his breath.

Joe laughed. The woman jumped.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Joe. ‘Did I frighten you? Come on in.’ He opened the door.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I was a million miles away. And I hate any, uh, official stuff.’

‘I don’t think you have anything to worry about,’ said Danny.

She sat down quietly with her hands in her lap until Joe and Danny had poured coffee.

‘Let me take your name,’ said Danny.

‘Ushi Gahr.’

‘OK, Miss Gahr-’

‘Ushi.’

‘Ushi, something has come to our attention and we were wondering if you could help us out.’

‘I’ll try,’ she said.

‘Have you noticed anything suspicious at work in the past few weeks?’

‘Suspicious?’ She thought about it. ‘No.’ She shook her head firmly once.

‘Anything out of the ordinary?’ said Joe.

‘Like what?’

‘Like anything you don’t see every day, something that might have surprised you?’

‘I can’t think of anything,’ she said.

‘Anything that made you feel uncomfortable?’

‘No.’

‘Is there anyone you work with who may have been acting strangely in any way?’

She smiled. ‘I wish,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid they’re a dull bunch. Quiet, hard-working, not a lot of partying. We’re nerds. I mean, I’m the wildest, I would say. Just to put it into context for you.’

Joe smiled. ‘OK. Does everyone get along well?’

She nodded. ‘I guess so. As long as you don’t eat food from the fridge labelled with anyone else’s name, there’s no conflict.’

‘What kind of boss is Mr Valtry?’

‘Fair,’ she said. ‘Enthusiastic about the craft. Everyone he employs here graduated top of their class. Mr Valtry is not someone I would ever have a long conversation with or even a conversation that was in any way other than one sided, but he is not unpleasant.’ She paused. ‘I hope that doesn’t sound too negative.’

‘To me,’ said Danny, ‘it sounds like how most people describe their bosses.’

‘I guess so.’

‘So,’ said Joe. ‘Mr Valtry – he’s very skilled at his job?’

‘The work he presents to us is beautifully crafted,’ she said.

‘Is he strict with his standards?’ said Joe.

‘Yes, but that’s before he hires anyone. He’s not going to hire anyone in the first place who is not 100 per cent accurate. And once he has that, he doesn’t need to hold anyone’s hand.’

‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘I think that’s everything. Thank you very much for your time.’

Ushi walked to the door, but stopped as she was closing it behind her.

‘Ask him,’ she said. ‘Get Mr Valtry to show you how the machines work. It’s very interesting.’ She gave a small smile and left.

Over three hours, fourteen more employees came through the door, none of whom had seen or heard anything unusual.

‘Now,’ said Danny, flicking through his notebook. ‘Why the fuck would I want to see Dean Valtry make me some teeth?’

‘Well, Ushi seemed like a very bright young lady,’ said Joe. ‘She either loves her job a lot or she’s making some sort of point.’

‘And if it was just about her job, she would have invited us over to her lab bench wouldn’t she?’

‘Exactly.’ Joe dialled reception. ‘Hi, it’s Detective Lucchesi in the… OK… thank you, yes… nearly – could you put me through to Mr Valtry, please? Thank you. Oh yeah, they were good.’ He pointed at the doughnuts. Danny took that as an invitation.

‘Hello, Mr Valtry,’ said Joe. ‘We’re all done up here. There’s just one more thing – could you give us a quick tour around the laboratory before we go, just so we can get a sense of what exactly it is you do? It might throw something up we hadn’t thought about.’ He nodded. ‘That’s great. We’ll be right down.’

The laboratory was small with three rows of work benches and three technicians at each one. At the back was a shared bench with most of the larger equipment.

‘OK,’ said Valtry. ‘Listen up, everybody. You’ve met our two detectives already – Detectives Lucchesi and Markey. I’m going to give them a quick run-through of what we do here at the lab, so if you don’t mind, I’ll be stopping at different benches along the way, depending on what stage of the process you’re at. Anyone doing a wax-up?’

A girl at the back of the lab raised her hand. ‘OK,’ said Valtry, walking down to her. Joe and Danny followed.

Valtry turned to them. ‘Here’s how it works. When you’re in the dentist’s chair and he takes an impression of your teeth, he sends that to us. We pour plaster into it and let it set so we have an exact model of your mouth, like when you see those joke chattering teeth.’ He held up a grey plaster model of a bottom set of teeth. ‘There’s a tooth missing here and I need to make a new one, so I start by constructing it in wax. We use a wax pot that keeps the wax liquid and then we dip in a spatula and build up the wax from there.

‘We take the individual wax tooth and put it in this.’ He held up a small clear plastic container. ‘Then we fill that with a material kind of like plaster and let that get hard. We screw off the base, then put it in the oven. We run the temperature up to maybe 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, the wax is melted away and when we look inside the plaster, there’s a little hole there in the shape of the tooth where the wax used to be.’