Paula James turned off the engine and checked her appearance in the mirror. She tied her blonde hair up in a tight bun and clipped it to the back of her head with a black crocodile clip.
“I need to get my roots done on my next day off,” she moaned as she touched the widening dark parting on the top of her head.
“Book me in, will you, Paula?” Her partner laughed. “When did you last go?”
“I made detective two years ago and I haven’t been to the hairdressers since,” she pulled a face in the mirror. “I’ve done it with Tesco home kits since!” They laughed.
“It’s so hard to find the time.”
“This is a life style, not a career, but it is what I want to do.” When her friends were out enjoying themselves, Paula was usually busy chasing bad guys. Some of them had stopped ringing her altogether. She had had to sacrifice a lot to be a detective. Her relationships rarely lasted more than a few weeks, as she couldn’t commit enough of her time to keep her boyfriends interested.
“Nice house,” Sharon Gould commented. Sharon held the same rank as Paula. “Let’s get this over with.”
“What did the Governor say about the ring?” Paula wanted to clarify the latest information they had.
“There was a small gold sovereign on the index finger.”
“Well that should help us to narrow it down.” Paula opened the door and climbed out of the silver Ford Focus. Sharon followed her and they met at the boot of the car. The driveway was white gravel; it crunched beneath their shoes as they approached the house. It was a red brick building with a slate roof and a three-car garage attached to the left hand side. A weeping willow tree to the left of the front lawn caught their eye. The leaves were gone and the bare branches looked naked without them. “She doesn’t have any kids, though?”
“There are none in the missing person’s report.”
“Who filed it?”
“Her father.”
“I like the waterfall,” Paula pointed to a feature on their right. Water trickled down a stone gulley into an ornamental pond. As they approached, the water glistened with bright reds and golds. “Look at the size of the koi-carp.”
“They’re monsters,” Sharon laughed. “I wonder why nobody eats them,” she mused.
“You wouldn’t get them on your plate.”
“I could try. I love fish.”
They walked toward the house and Paula guessed it had at least five bedrooms, maybe six. The front door opened before they reached it, and a small man with thinning grey hair greeted them. He was immaculately dressed in a pale grey suit with a silver tie.
“Detective James?” He stepped out of the front door and closed the gap between them. “Is it about Lou? Is there any news?”
Paula held out her right hand. “I’m Detective James, Mr. Parker. We spoke on the telephone earlier.”
He shook her hand and she noticed his grip was weak and his palm was clammy. The whites of his eyes were red and he looked tired. There were liver spots on his hands and face. Paula put him at about sixty-five.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he said in a well-educated voice.
“I’m Detective Gould,” Sharon introduced herself.
“Hello.” He shook her hand. “Is there any news about Lou?”
“Could we talk inside, Mr. Parker,” Paula smiled and tried to make him relax.
“Yes, sorry. I am forgetting my manners. Please come in.” He stepped aside and allowed them to enter his home. They walked into a wide hallway, tiled with polished white marble. A pine staircase led to the upper floor. A large picture window allowed the daylight to flood in. “Come in here, please.” He opened a white panelled door and guided them into a long through room, which had double patio doors at one end and a bay window at the other. Well-manicured lawns surrounded the building. Paula wondered how long it would take to cut them. “Please sit down, would you like some tea?”
Paula sat on a black leather armchair, her body sinkinginto the thick padding. There was a picture of a pretty girl on the coffee table next to her, sitting on a grey pony with an older woman holding the reins. Paula thought the woman looked like the girl’s mother.
“Is this your daughter, Mr. Parker?” Paula asked. She picked up the heavy silver frame which contained the photograph. The girl looked like the one in the missing person’s picture they had in their file, but younger.
“Yes.” He took the picture from her and looked at it. His mind seemed to drift as he stared at it, tears forming in his eyes. “Yes, that’s my Lou with her mother. She was only eighteen then. I took it at the stable where she keeps her pony, Yoyo. A silly name for a horse, but she insisted. He is still alive, you know. She rarely visits him nowadays, but he’s still there in good health, costs me a fortune in livery bills!” He tried to sound cheery but his eyes said something different. “That’s her mother, Gill. She died of breast cancer six years ago. It broke Lou’s heart and she was never the same girl after that.” This time a tear broke free from his eye and trickled down his cheek. He quickly wiped it away. “Is there any news about Lou?”
“I’m sorry about your wife. We don’t have anything new to tell you, Mr. Parker, but we need to ask you some questions and look around her room. It could help us find her,” Paula lied.
“Look around her room, what for?” Mr. Parker looked perturbed.
“We don’t know, Mr. Parker, but sometimes we find things that may have been overlooked and they lead us to where the missing persons are.” Sharon smiled and tried to calm him. “Did Lou have any children of her own?”
“No, why?”
“Just routine, Mr. Parker.”
“I see, well if you think it might help.”
“When did Lou go missing?” Paula checked her details as she spoke.
“Eleven days ago today. She took a shower, got changed and left without saying a word.”
“Had you argued, Mr. Parker?” Paula asked.
“Yes, constantly since her mother died.” Tears filled his eyes again and his voice broke as he explained. “She went off the rails, I’m afraid. Drink and drugs, cocaine, you know how it works, I’m sure, being detectives.”
“What did you argue about?”
“Money, as usual.” He tutted and rolled his eyes. “I’m a wealthy man, Detective James, and Lou tries to spend my money faster than I can earn it.”
“Paula, please call me Paula.”
“Paula it is, then, and you are?” He turned to Sharon.
“Sharon.”
“Paula and Sharon. I’m Robert, but everyone calls me Bob.” He tried to smile again but the pain was still in his eyes.
“You were telling us about the argument, Bob.”
“Yes, I was.” He walked to the patio doors and looked out at the grass, his hands clasped behind his back. “When Gill died I set up a trust fund for Lou, in case anything happened to me. Everything would go to Lou, of course, but you know how long these things can take, and I didn’t want her to struggle while they managed the estate. Lou couldn’t cope with her mother’s death, she became angry and bitter. She was out partying all the time, drinking herself into all kinds of trouble. Then along came the cocaine and the men. God knows how many different men I’ve seen creeping out of here in the morning, some days there were more than one.”
He turned to face them and he wiped his eyes. There was a painful silence before he continued.
“It was terrible watching my baby girl losing her dignity and self respect. I tried to help her. We went to grief counselling at first, which didn’t help her at all. She just became more depressed. The more depressed she became, the more she drank. I sent her to rehab three times in the last two years, but she slipped back into the gutter every time.”
“I’m sorry about Lou, Bob. It must have been very difficult for you. What made you report her as missing? Could she have stayed out partying with her friends?” Paula hoped Lou was drunk somewhere, high as a kite on cocaine, but alive. She didn’t want her to be the woman who had been butchered in Jamaica Street. Robert Parker seemed to be a nice man. Finding out that someone had strung his daughter from the rafters of a derelict building and tortured her to death would break his heart.
“No. You see, she always came home. I never chastised her for bringing men home because it was better than not knowing where she was. It was the lesser evil for me.”
“I see. You said you argued about money before she left,” Paula prompted him.
“Yes. I found out that she was taking money from her trust fund. She had spent thousands of pounds. I give her a generous allowance every month but she has squandered it on drink and cocaine. Gill would be spinning in her grave if she could see what her precious daughter has become.” His voice cracked again and he took a crisp white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped his eyes.
Paula swallowed hard. If he had known why they were visiting him, he wouldn’t have said that. His daughter had possibly become the victim in a horrific murder investigation.
“Do you have any recent pictures of Lou?” Paula asked. They wouldn’t help in identifying the body, but they might help them to find witnesses who had seen the victim before she was murdered.
“Yes. I’ll dig some out for you. I’m sure there are some on a disc we took at Christmas. We managed to spend a few hours together on Christmas day, before she rushed off to a party, of course.” He headed for the door which led into the kitchen. “Would you like some tea while I’m in here?” He called. Paula heard drawers opening as he rummaged for his camera.
“Tea would be good, please, Bob,” Paula answered.
“What do you think?” Sharon whispered.
“It doesn’t look good given she always came home after a night out. Eleven days is a long time to be out partying.” Paula had a bad feeling about it. She stood up and followed Bob into the kitchen. It was a modern design fitted with new appliances that looked unused. “Did Lou have any close friends we could speak to?”
Bob took his camera from a drawer and turned it on. He scrolled through the pictures while he thought about Paula’s question.
“Not really. All her close friends from university moved away and the others stopped talking to her when she began behaving badly. Here is a picture of her taken at Christmas.” He showed Paula the screen. Louise was a pretty woman with long auburn hair. The same colour as the victim.
“She’s a pretty girl.” Paula chose her words carefully, making sure she didn’t use the past tense. “What about boyfriends?”
“There were many, I’m afraid. Before she left she was seeing a foreign chap, Turkish, I think.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Should I be worried, Detective James?” His eyes looked into her, searching for the answer, and the softness in his voice was gone.
“We’re just trying to find her, Bob,” Paula lied again. She wasn’t sure if he could sense there was something wrong, but she couldn’t let him know anything about the victim unless they were sure it was her. “Did you know his name?”
“Salim. She called him Sally when she spoke to him on the telephone. I always got the feeling he was supplying her with cocaine. She asked if he was bringing Charlie to the party one night. I didn’t think anything of it until I realised she was taking drugs. Then I realised who Charlie was. I felt like a fool, of course. I found some in her handbag once when she left it in the living room.”
“Do you mind if I look into her bedroom, Bob?” Sharon was listening to the exchange from the doorway.
“I don’t see why not if you think it will help to find her. It’s the second bedroom on the left. I haven’t touched anything. She was very particular about me going into her room, especially when I’d challenged her about the cocaine in her handbag. She called me a snoop and insisted that I keep out of there.”
Sharon went to check the bedroom while Bob made three cups of tea. He looked lost.
“What can you tell me about Salim? She wouldn’t be the first woman swept off her feet by a handsome foreigner. Lou might be sat on a beach somewhere sipping cocktails,” Paula smiled, but she didn’t believe Lou was on a beach. She believed that her mutilated body was lying in the morgue. Bob passed her a mug of tea.
“Maybe she is. That is what I’m hoping, Detective James.” His tone changed and he stopped calling Paula by her first name. Maybe he could sense something wasn’t right.
“Paula, please.”
“Sorry, Paula. I have the feeling that there is more to your enquiry than you are telling me.”
“We need to check that we haven’t missed anything that will help us to find her. What do you know about Salim?”
“Not much. I never talked to him. He couldn’t look me in the eye when we he left in the mornings.”
“How did he leave, Bob?”
“Sorry. I don’t understand.”
“How did he leave the house, taxi, or did he drive?”
“Oh, I see what you mean. He drove a white Porsche of some description. They all look the same to me.”
“We’ll need to show you some pictures of the different models to see if you can identify what it was. It’s important.”
“I’m not sure you’ll need to do that. He had a private registration plate, SAL 1. I told all this to the investigating officers who took all her details at the time I reported her missing. Why didn’t they follow it up?”
“Maybe they hit a dead end, Bob, but we’ll double check anyway.” Paula sipped her tea and avoided eye contact with him. He was becoming suspicious; she could see it in his eyes. She wasn’t sure the investigating officers would have taken Lou’s disappearance seriously, as she was drinking, taking drugs and sleeping around. If the preliminary investigations had hit a brick wall, then they would have assumed Lou was partying somewhere.
“Why are you here, Detective?” Bob asked her in a crisp voice. He was regaining control of his faculties. The grief was subsiding momentarily. “You have found someone, haven’t you?”
“Bob we have to be sure that we haven’t missed anything that will help us in finding Lou. That is why we’re here.” Paula wanted to ask him about the jewellery, specifically if Lou had worn a sovereign ring. It would be too obvious now. He would realise they were trying to identify a body.
“Paula, could you come here a minute, please,” Sharon called down the stairs.
“Excuse me a minute, Bob. She may have found something of use to us.” Paula smiled, but it wasn’t returned. Bob sipped his tea and looked out of the window. A feeling of dread was creeping into his guts. Burying his wife had been the hardest thing he had ever done. He wasn’t sure he could bury his daughter too.