Кара Хантер - Close to Home

And so, from decided contempt, Quinn ends up in grudging admiration. And all the more so when a few minutes later one of the forensics team calls him over and lifts something from the skip. Something light enough to lift in one hand and tightly wrapped in sheets of newspaper.

***

When I get to the John Rad, it’s almost dark. I spend ten minutes driving round in circles looking for the right department, and another ten finding somewhere to park. Inside, the corridors are deserted, apart from the odd weary nurse and cleaners pushing trolleys of mops and buckets. Up on the second floor, a motherly woman at the nurses’ station asks me if I’m a relative.

‘No, but I have this.’

She looks at my warrant card and then warily at me. ‘Is there some sort of problem we don’t know about, Inspector?’

‘No, nothing like that. The father – Mr Gislingham – works for me. I just wanted to see how Janet is.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she says, reassured. ‘Well, we won’t know for certain for a while, I’m afraid. She had severe abdominal pains and some bleeding earlier today, so we’re keeping her in.’

‘Could she lose the baby?’

‘We hope not,’ she says, but her face belies her words. At Janet’s age, the odds probably aren’t good. ‘We just don’t know yet. At this stage, there isn’t much we can do but keep her comfortable and trust Nature to right itself. Do you want to see Mr Gislingham for a moment? You did make all this effort to get here.’

I hesitate. I haven’t been in a maternity ward since Jake was born. We have a video of the birth – his tight little face hollering for his first air, his tiny fists opening and closing, and that tuft of dark hair he never lost even though they all told us he would. I’ve hidden the tape in the loft. I can’t bear the happiness. Its unbearable fragility.

The nurse is eyeing me, her face full of concern. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Sorry. I’m just tired. I really don’t want to disturb them.’

‘Last time I looked, your colleague was asleep in the chair. But let’s have a quick peek. He may be glad of a friendly face.’

I follow her down the corridor, trying not to see the cots, the dazed new dads. Janet’s in a room on her own. When I look through the glass panel in the door the curtains are drawn and she’s asleep, one hand curled round her belly and the blanket balled up in the other. Gislingham is on the chair at the end of the bed, his head thrown back. He looks dreadful, his face grey and shrunk in shadows.

‘I won’t disturb him. That’s not going to do any good.’

She smiles kindly. ‘OK, Inspector.’ She pats me on the arm. ‘I’ll make sure to tell him you were here.’

She chose the right profession – she’s just the person you’d want around you if you’d just had a child. Or if you’d lost one.

***

16 April 2016, 10.25 a.m.

94 days before the disappearance

Shopping parade, Summertown, Oxford

Azeem Rahija is sitting in his car outside the bank. On the opposite side of the road, the Starbucks is busy with Saturday shoppers. Azeem can see Jamie at one of the tables. He has a cup in front of him and a canvas bag at his feet. He’s drumming his fingers on the table and he keeps looking up at the door.

Azeem lights a cigarette and winds down the car window. Across the road, a man pushes open the coffee-shop door. Mid-forties. Tight jeans, a leather jacket. He’s talking on a mobile phone and gesturing a lot as he speaks. Two women at the corner table clock him as he goes past and he squares his shoulders a little. Jamie stares fixedly at him until he finishes the call and sits down, slinging the jacket over the back of the chair.

Azeem has no idea what they’re saying but it’s obvious it’s not going well. The man keeps shaking his head. It looks like Jamie is asking him why. Then there’s a long moment when neither of them says anything. The man gets up and points at the cup in front of Jamie. Jamie shakes his head. The man shrugs then turns and goes up to the counter to join the queue for coffee. He stops on the way to talk to the women at the corner table.

Azeem watches as Jamie reaches into the man’s jacket and takes out the mobile phone. He glances up to make sure the man isn’t watching but he’s far too busy flirting with the women in the corner. Jamie taps at the screen for a while. Then he smiles. It’s not a nice smile. He puts the phone back where he found it and when the man comes back some minutes later, Jamie gets up. The man makes a perfunctory attempt to get him to sit down again, but Jamie just brushes him off. He picks up his bag and makes his way through the tables to the door. He stops on the pavement a moment to light a fag, then dodges between the cars to the other side of the road. Azeem sees the man in Starbucks sit back in his chair and take a deep breath, then pick up his coffee spoon. There’s no mistaking the relief on his face.

Jamie taps on the window and Azeem leans over and opens the car door.

‘Bloody sodding shitty bastard,’ says Jamie through gritted teeth, chucking his bag in the back seat.

‘I told you, man. Wankers like him. Dey only care about demselfs.’ Azeem watches a lot of American TV.

‘Yeah, right,’ says Jamie. ‘I could do without the sodding I told you so’s .’

Azeem shrugs. He hasn’t seen his father in years.

Jamie takes a deep draw on his cigarette and looks across at Azeem. ‘I did for ’im though. Good and proper.’

‘What, you mean the phone?’

Jamie grins, his eyes narrowing. ‘Yeah. The phone. Didn’t even have a bloody password on it. Stupid twat.’

The two of them laugh and then Azeem starts the engine and pulls out screeching into the traffic, only just missing the rear bumper of the black Nissan Navara parked in front of them. A small boy in the back seat watches them go, then turns to look again at the man in the Starbucks window.

He’s moved over to the corner table.

***

In the incident room the following morning, there are no jokes, no banter, in fact not much of anything. The muted room goes utterly silent as I take my place at the front. They probably think I’m bearing bad news.

‘I suspect most of you already know that Janet Gislingham was taken into hospital yesterday. If I hear anything – anything at all – I’ll let you know, but at the very least we should assume that Chris will be off work for the next few days, so we’ll need to make sure we have cover. Quinn, I’ll leave you to sort that out.’

Quinn gets up from where he’s been perched on the edge of his desk. ‘Boss, I also need to bring everyone up to speed with what happened last night. We got a call from a woman who saw a man in high-viz clothing dumping something in a skip the afternoon Daisy disappeared. She thought it was suspicious because there aren’t any builders on that site yet. Anyway, we checked it out and recovered a package wrapped in newspaper. The Guardian , to be precise. Dated the day before, July eighteenth.’

‘What was it?’

‘A pair of extra-large cut-resistant gloves. The sort builders wear. Grey plastic stuff on the palms and fluorescent orange on the back. And there’s blood too, I’m afraid. As well as some other stains on the back that are a reddish colour that I think are something else. Forensics are testing them now.’

I look around the room. ‘So just when we thought Barry Mason might be looking less likely as a suspect, he’s right back in the frame.’

‘There’s another complication too.’ It’s Everett this time.

‘I just got off the phone with David Connor. You know – Millie’s father? He’s been talking to her again, and she told him something she hadn’t told them before. About the day before the party. When the kids went round to the Connors to try on their costumes. Apparently Daisy begged Millie not to tell anyone.’