Robert Bryndza: The Girl in the Ice

The Daily Mail described Andrea as a “minor socialite”, which Erika was sure Andrea wouldn’t enjoy if she could read it, but it refrained from calling her “Andie” as the other tabloids had done. The paper had spoken to her parents, Lord and Lady Douglas-Brown, and to her fiancé, who had all pleaded for Andrea to get in contact with them.

Erika scrabbled in her leather jacket and found her notebook, still there after all these months. She noted down the name of the fiancé, a Giles Osborne, and wrote: Did Andrea run away ? She looked at it for a moment, them scrubbed it out ferociously, tearing the paper. She tucked the notebook in the back of her trousers and went to put her ID in the other free pocket, but paused, feeling it in her hand for a moment: its familiar weight, the leather case cover worn into a curve after years resting against her buttock in the back pocket of her trousers.

Erika went to a mirror above a row of sinks, flipped open the leather case and held it out in front of her. The ID photo showed a confident woman, blonde hair swept back, staring into the camera defiantly. The woman looking back at her, holding the ID, was scrawny and pallid. Her short blonde hair stuck up in tufts, and grey was showing at the roots. Erika watched her shaking arm for a moment, then flipped the ID closed.

She would put in a request for a new photo.

4

Desk Sergeant Woolf was waiting in the corridor when Erika emerged from the women’s locker room. He waddled along beside her, noticing she was a full head taller than him.

‘Here’s your phone; it’s all charged and ready to go,’ he said, handing her a clear plastic bag containing a phone and charger. ‘A car will be ready for you after lunch.’

‘And you’ve nothing with buttons?’ snapped Erika, when she saw a smartphone through the plastic.

‘It’s got an on/off button,’ he snapped back.

‘When my car arrives, could you put this in the boot?’ she said, indicating her suitcase on wheels. She moved past him and through the door of the incident room. Conversation fell quiet when she entered. A short, plump woman approached her,

‘I’m Detective Moss. We’re just trying to sort you an office.’ The woman had wiry red hair, and her face was so splattered with freckles that they grouped together in blotches. She went on, ‘All the info is going up on the boards as it comes in and I’ll have hard copies put in your office when—’

‘A desk is fine,’ said Erika. She went over to the whiteboards, where there was a large map of the Horniman Museum grounds, and underneath, a CCTV image of Andrea.

‘That’s the last known picture of her, taken at London Bridge Station boarding the 8.47pm train to Forest Hill,’ said Moss, following. In the CCTV photo, Andrea was stepping up into the train carriage with a shapely bare leg. Her face was fixed with an angry expression. She was dressed to the nines in a tight leather jacket over a short black dress, wearing pink high heels and carrying a matching clutch bag.

‘She was alone when she boarded the train?’ asked Erika.

‘Yes, I’ve got the CCTV video here that we took the image from,’ said Moss, grabbing a laptop and coming back over. She balanced it on a pile of files and maximised a video window. They watched the time-lapse video, a view of the train platform taken side-on. Andrea walked across into shot and into the train carriage. It only lasted a few seconds, so Moss placed it on a loop.

‘She looks really pissed off,’ said Erika.

‘Yeah. Like she’s off to give someone a piece of her mind,’ agreed Moss.

‘Where was her fiancé?’

‘He’s got a watertight alibi, he was at an event in Central London.’

Several more times, they watched Andrea move across the platform and into the train. She was the only person in the video; the rest of the platform was empty.

‘This is our Skipper, Sergeant Crane,’ said Moss, indicating a young guy with close-cropped blond hair who was simultaneously on the phone, searching through files and shoving a whole Mars bar in his mouth. He attempted to swallow as much of it as he could. Out of the corner of her eye, Erika saw Sparks put the phone down. He pulled on his coat and made for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked. Sparks stopped and turned.

‘Forensics just gave us the okay to go down to the crime scene. We need a fast ID, in case you’d forgotten, Ma’am?’

‘I’d like you to stay here, Sparks. Detective Moss, you’re with me today – and you, what’s your name?’ she asked a tall, handsome black officer who was taking a call at a desk nearby.

‘Detective Peterson,’ he said covering the phone.

‘Okay, Detective Peterson. You’re with me too.’

‘What am I supposed to do then, just sit here twiddling my thumbs?’ demanded Sparks.

‘No. I need access to all CCTV covering the Horniman Museum and surrounding streets,’

‘We’ve got it,’ he interrupted.

‘No, I want you to expand your window to everything in the forty-eight hours leading up to Andrea’s disappearance, and everything since, and I want a door-to-door around the museum. I also need anything and everything you can get about Andrea. Family, friends; pull bank details, medical and phone records, email, and social media. Who liked her? Who hated her? I want to know everything. Did she have a computer, a laptop? She must have had, and I want it.’

‘I was told we couldn’t have her laptop; Lord Douglas-Brown was very specific . . .’ started Sparks.

‘Well, I’m telling you to get it.’ The incident room had now fallen silent. Erika went on, ‘And no one – I repeat, no one – is to talk to the press or share anything in any capacity. Do you hear me? I don’t even want people saying “no comment”. Mouths shut . . . Is that enough to keep you busy, DCI Sparks?’

‘Yes,’ said Sparks, glaring at her.

‘And Crane, you’ll get the incident room running smoothly?’

‘Already on it,’ he said, swallowing the last of his Mars bar.

‘Good. We’ll reconvene here at four.’

Erika walked out, followed by Moss and Peterson. Sparks threw down his coat.

‘Bitch,’ he said under his breath, and sat back down at his computer.

5

Moss peered over the steering wheel at the snowy road ahead. Erika sat beside her in the passenger seat, with Peterson in the back. The awkward silence was broken periodically by the windscreen wipers, hissing and squealing as they passed over the glass, and looking as if they were gummed up with grated coconut.

South London was a palette of grimy greys. Decaying terraced houses slid past, their front gardens paved over for parking. The only dots of colour came from the wheelie-bins packed outside in clusters of black, green and blue.

The road turned sharply to the left, and they came to a halt at the back of a line of cars stretching around the first bend of the one-way Catford Gyratory. Moss flicked on the siren, and the cars began to mount the pavement so they could pass. The heating in the squad car was broken and it gave Erika a good excuse to keep her shaking hands deep in the pockets of her long leather jacket, hoping it was hunger making them shake, and not the pressure of the task ahead. She spied a packet of red liquorice bootlaces tucked into the slot above the radio.

‘Do you mind?’ she asked, breaking the uneasy silence.

‘Yeah, go ahead,’ said Moss. She put her foot down and they sped through a gap in the traffic, the back wheels lurching to one side on the icy road. Erika pulled a bootlace from the packet, pushed it into her mouth and chewed. She eyed Peterson in the rear view mirror. He was hunched intently over an iPad. He was tall and slight with an oval, boyish face. He reminded her of a wooden toy soldier. He looked up and held her gaze.