Кара Хантер - In the Dark

He prints the picture then takes it along to the incident room, where Erica Somer is standing by the pinboard. She has a red marker pen and she’s putting a ring round some of the netsuke on the sheet of photos.

‘What’s so special about those?’ asks Gislingham, peering a little closer.

She turns and smiles briefly. ‘Mainly the fact that they’ve gone missing. Though there’s one that’s really rare, apparently – that one: Ivory netsuke in the shape of a nautilus shell ,’ she says, reading from a print-out, ‘ by Masanao, one of the great Masters of the Kyoto period. Height, five centimetres, length, six centimetres. Value, twenty thousand pounds .’

Gislingham whistles. ‘Who knew.’

Somer steps back from the board. ‘Uniform are circulating these pictures to art dealers and antique shops. You never know, someone may recognize them. What have you got?’ she says, looking at the paper in his hand.

‘This?’ he says. ‘It’s a picture Hannah Gardiner put on her Facebook page in August 2014. It’s her and Rob at the Cowley Road carnival. I was looking for connections she might have had down there and found this.’

There’s a noise behind them and Everett bangs through the door. She looks tired.

‘The Banbury Road is backed up all the way to Summertown. On a Sunday ,’ she says, dumping her bag on a table. She turns to look at them, and at the picture Gislingham is pinning to the board. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a photo of Hannah,’ he says. ‘Look.’

He points and Everett comes over to join them.

‘I’m trying to decide if she’s really as happy as she looks or if it’s just for the camera,’ says Somer, turning to Everett. ‘What do you think?’

But Everett is looking at something else.

Or rather, someone else.

***

When Quinn gets down to reception the girl is standing at the window, looking out on to the street. She turns to see him and comes over but he takes her quickly back to the window, out of earshot of the desk.

‘Where the hell did you go?’

‘Got a text from my mate saying I could sleep on her sofa for a couple of days.’ She looks up at him, smiling, all blue eyes and come-on. ‘Did you bring my knickers?’

Quinn looks over his shoulder; the desk sergeant is looking in their direction, clearly intrigued. ‘You can’t say things like that,’ he hisses. ‘Not in here. You’ll get me bloody fired.’

She shrugs. ‘OK, I’ll go then.’

He grabs her by the arm. ‘No, don’t do that. We need you to make that witness statement – I need you to.’

She studies him, head on one side. ‘OK,’ she says eventually.

‘I’ll have to ask you other stuff too. Like what happened the day Hannah went missing. And before that as well. It’s important you tell the truth, OK?’

‘OK,’ she says, frowning slightly.

‘No, I mean it. All the truth. And there’s another thing.’ He swallows. ‘Give your address as that mate of yours’ place. Where you’re staying now. Don’t say anything about staying over at the flat.’

She looks at him for a long moment, at the anxiety he’s completely failing to conceal, and she smiles. ‘Sure. You were only trying to do me a favour, right? Nothing actually happened .’

‘No,’ he says quickly. ‘Of course it didn’t.’

***

I’m in the room next to Interview Room Two, watching a video feed of Quinn questioning Pippa Walker. She seems unperturbed by the surroundings or the heat. Quinn, on the other hand, is visibly sweating into his Thomas Pink shirt.

‘Let’s go over it again,’ he says. ‘When I saw you at Mr Gardiner’s flat, you said you’d had a row and he’d caused the bruising you have on your wrist – that’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yeah. But I don’t think he meant it. Not like you mean, anyway.’

Quinn shifts in his seat. ‘It’s still assault, Miss Walker.’

She shrugs. ‘If you say so.’

‘And you’ve been in a relationship, you and Mr Gardiner?’

She sits back and crosses one leg over the other. ‘Yeah. Have been for a while.’

‘Since before Mrs Gardiner disappeared?’

The girl looks taken aback. ‘No. I mean, I think he fancied me, but nothing actually happened .’

She stares at Quinn, a tiny smile playing about her lips, and Quinn looks quickly away, fiddling unnecessarily with his papers.

‘Are you absolutely sure,’ he says, not looking at her, ‘there was nothing between the two of you before Hannah disappeared?’

She looks blank. ‘No. I just told you.’

He shuffles his papers again. ‘On the day Hannah disappeared, she phoned you first thing in the morning.’

‘Yeah, but I never got the message till later. Look, I told the police all this already.’

But Quinn isn’t letting go. ‘But when you did hear it, nothing struck you as odd?’

She shrugs again.

‘Hannah sounds annoyed – why was that?’

She rolls her eyes, as if she can’t believe he’s so dense. ‘I hadn’t turned up, had I? I was throwing up. So she was going to have to take Toby with her for that interview she was doing. She hated doing that. She thought it was “unprofessional”.’

‘Mr Gardiner couldn’t have taken him?’

‘On the bike? I don’t think so.’

‘And even later, after you knew Hannah had gone missing – nothing struck you as odd about the call?’

She frowns. ‘But all that happened later. She was OK that morning, wasn’t she?’

Quinn sits there for a moment, then gathers his papers and leaves the room. The girl reaches down and gets her mobile out of her bag.

The door bangs open and Quinn comes in, chucking his jacket over a chair.

I glance over at him. ‘What was all that about?’

He loosens his tie. ‘Can’t they just for once get the sodding temperature right in this place?’

‘Quinn, I asked you what’s going on. Between you and that girl.’

He puts his papers down. ‘Nothing, boss. There’s nothing going on, I swear. I just don’t think she’s telling us everything, that’s all. I think she’s hiding something.’

‘Actually, boss, I think he’s right.’

It’s Gislingham, at the door. ‘You both need to see this.’

He puts a photo down on the table in front of us.

‘I found it when I was looking for reasons why Hannah might have been in the Cowley Road. It’s her and Rob at the 2014 carnival.’

I stare at the picture. Hannah is smiling, holding the camera, Toby cradled against her. Rob is behind them, gazing into the middle distance, but with one arm close round her. It looks like love, but as I know only too well, pictures don’t need to be photoshopped to deceive. Control can so often look like cherishing.

‘There,’ says Gislingham, pointing. ‘At the back on the left.’

‘The girl with the blonde hair?’

‘It’s a bit difficult to be sure with the shadow across her face, but I think it’s her. I think that is Pippa Walker.’

Quinn whistles. ‘Shit, you could be right.’

‘And Rob Gardiner is staring straight at her.’

I look at the picture, and then at Gislingham. ‘When did she tell us she first met the Gardiners?’

‘I just checked her original statement,’ says Gislingham, quietly triumphant. ‘She said it was October 2014. Two months after this picture was taken.’

‘Right,’ says Quinn, and makes to go. But I hold him back. On the video feed, the girl is looking at herself in her make-up mirror.

‘I want a woman in there with you this time.’

‘What?’ he says. ‘Why?’