Cross and Burn (3 page)

R
ob Morrison glanced at his watch again, then pulled out his phone to double-check the time. 6:58. The new boss was cutting it fine if she wanted to make a good impression on her first day. But before he could settle into his smugness, the clatter of heels on floor tiles alerted him to an arrival from the street door rather than the underground car park. He swung round and there she was, mac shimmering with raindrops, shoes splashed with dirt. Marie Mather, his new opposite number. Director of Marketing to his Director of Operations.

‘Morning, Rob.’ She shifted her laptop bag to join her handbag over her shoulder so she could free up a hand to shake his. ‘Thanks for taking the time to get me settled in.’

‘Might as well start off on the right foot.’ He squeezed out a half-smile that took the sourness from his face. ‘Since we’ll be yoked together like horses in the traces, pulling the mighty chariot that is Tellit Communications.’ He enjoyed the flash of surprise as the extravagance of his sardonic comment sank in. He liked to upset people’s general assumption that a man who ran the operations side of a mobile phone company must be a stranger to culture. ‘You didn’t drive in?’

She shook the sparkle of rain from her thick blonde bob and gestured with her head towards the street outside. ‘We’re only five minutes’ walk from the tram terminus so I always get a seat. It’s a better start to the day than fighting the rush-hour traffic.’ When she smiled, her nose wrinkled, as if she’d smelled something delicious. In terms of aesthetics, Rob reckoned she was a distinct improvement on Jared Kamal, her predecessor. ‘So. What’s the drill?’

‘We’ll sort you out with security passes. Then I’ll take you up to the main floor and give you the guided tour.’ As he spoke, Rob steered her over to the security desk, a hand on her elbow, aware of a spicy floral aroma that clung to her in spite of the tram and the Bradfield rain. If she was as good at her job as she was at brightening the place up, Rob’s working life was set to improve exponentially.

Minutes later, they emerged from the lift straight on to the main sales floor. At this time of day, the lighting was dim. ‘Staff operate the lighting levels at their own pods. It gives them the illusion of control and it gives us a quick and easy way to spot who’s actually working.’ Rob led the way across the room.

‘Somebody’s early.’ Marie nodded towards a pool of light in the far corner.

Rob rubbed his hand over his chin. ‘That’s Gareth Taylor.’ He arranged his features in a standard expression of sorrow. ‘Lost his family recently.’ Personally, he was over Gareth’s grief. Time to move on, get a life. But Rob knew he was in the minority on that one so he kept quiet around the water cooler, content to grunt supportively when colleagues went into one of their ‘Poor Gareth’ spasms.

Marie’s expression softened. ‘Poor bloke. What happened?’

‘Car crash. Wife and two kids, died at the scene.’ Rob forged onwards, not a backward glance at his bereaved colleague.

Marie broke stride momentarily then caught up. ‘And he’s in here at this time of the morning?’

Rob shrugged. ‘He says he’d rather be here than staring at the walls at home. Fine by me. I mean, it’s been three or four months now.’ He turned and gave her a dark smile. ‘We’re fucked if he starts claiming his TOIL though.’

Marie made a noncommittal noise and followed him into a generous cubicle at the end of the room. A desk, two chairs. A couple of whiteboards and a paper recycling bin. Rob gave a cynical little bow. ‘Home sweet home.’

‘It’s a decent size, at least.’ Marie put her laptop on the desk, tucked her bag in a drawer and hung her coat on a hook on the back of the door. ‘Now, first things first. Where’s the coffee and what’s the system?’

Rob smiled. ‘Follow me.’ He led her back into the main office. ‘You buy tokens from Charyn on the front desk. Five for a pound.’ As they grew closer to his workspace, the light from Gareth Taylor’s pod revealed a door tucked away in a nearby alcove. It led to a small room furnished with a pair of coffee machines. Rob gestured at a series of bins that contained little plastic pods. ‘You choose your poison, slot the pod in the machine and pay for it with a token.’ He rummaged in the pocket of his chinos and produced a red disc. ‘Have your first one on me.’ He handed it over as if conferring a great honour. ‘I’ll let you get settled in.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘One or two things I need to deal with before the hordes arrive. I’ve arranged a meeting with key personnel at half eight in the small conference room. Ask anybody, they’ll direct you.’

And that was it. He was gone, leaving Marie with an array of beverage choices. She opted for a cappuccino and was pleasantly surprised by the result. She stepped back into the main office, where there were now three or four illuminated work stations. She decided to start getting to know her staff and moved towards Gareth Taylor, consciously applying a warm smile.

He glanced up as she approached, his expression startled. His fingers flew over the keyboard and as she rounded the corner of his partition, she had the impression of a computer screen quickly refreshing. It looked like Tellit resembled everywhere Marie had worked, with employees who liked to feel they were scoring points by doing their own thing in company time with company resources. Human nature, the same all over. It was a tendency that didn’t bother Marie, so long as productivity was acceptable and nobody took the piss.

‘Hi. I’m Marie Mather. The new marketing director.’ She held out a hand.

Gareth accepted the handshake with no enthusiasm. His hand was cool and dry, the pressure firm but not aggressive. ‘I figured that’s who you must be. I’m Gareth Taylor, one of the screen and phone grunts.’

‘I prefer to think of you as frontline staff.’

Gareth raised his eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t change the reality.’

‘You’re in early.’

He shook his head, sighing. ‘Look, I know Rob will have given you the bullet points. Coming to work is the only consistent thing in my life right now. I don’t want sympathy. I’m not like him with his “pity me, my wife left me” shtick. I just want to be left alone to get on with things, all right?’ His voice was tight with frustration. She could only imagine how hard it was to deal with other people’s well-meaning interference on top of such a devastating loss.

Marie leaned forward and peered at his screen. ‘Message received and understood. So what are you working on?’

She’d hoped he might at least smile. Instead, he scowled. ‘It won’t mean anything to you till you’ve got your feet under the table. I’m implementing a strategy to switch silver surfer customers to long-term contracts. And I think we’re doing it wrong, so maybe you might want to come back and talk to me about it when you’re up to speed.’

There were two ways of taking Gareth’s brusque response. For now, Marie elected to avoid confrontation. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’ She sipped her cappuccino. ‘I’m always happy to hear from my team.’

Tonight, when she relaxed with a glass of white wine while Marco cooked dinner, she’d enjoy telling him about this encounter. As they often did, they’d set up some light-hearted wagers about how it would go with her new colleagues. Would she win Gareth over or would he be determined to remain alienated? Would Rob’s obvious desire to flirt cross the line to the point where she’d have to bring HR into the picture? She and Marco loved to play their little game of speculation, sometimes even using their fantasy workplace lives to spice up their own bedroom games.

It was harmless fun, Marie thought. Completely harmless.

T
orin’s adolescent inability to disguise his anxiety was immediately obvious to Paula. Luckily for her, maintaining a cool façade under pressure took more skill and effort than he had at his command. Normally she’d have offered him a drink to settle him down, but Skenfrith Street was alien territory for her and she didn’t know how long it would take her to rustle something up. The last thing she wanted was to keep her new boss waiting any longer than absolutely necessary.

Technically, she should probably have sorted out a so-called appropriate adult before she questioned Torin. But she reckoned she was more than appropriate enough. And it wasn’t as if he was being interviewed about a crime. Paula gave Torin an expectant look. ‘When did you start to worry there might be something wrong?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’ He frowned.

‘What time does she usually get in from work?’

He raised one shoulder in a shrug. ‘About half past five, but sometimes she’ll do the shopping on the way home, so then it’s more like quarter to seven.’

‘So it’s fair to say that by seven, you were beginning to worry?’

‘Not worry, exactly. More like, wonder. It’s not like she’s not got a life. Sometimes she goes out with one of her mates for a pizza or a movie or whatever. But if she’s doing that, she usually tells me in advance, in the morning. Or she texts me if it’s more, like, spontaneous.’

Paula wasn’t surprised. Bev McAndrew had struck her as a sensible woman. ‘So did you text her?’

Torin nodded, chewing the corner of his lower lip. ‘Yeah. Just, you know, what’s for my tea, will you be back soon, kind of thing.’

Standard teenage-boy stuff. ‘And she didn’t respond?’

‘No.’ He fidgeted in his chair, then leaned forward, his forearms on the table, his hands clenched together. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t really worried, more, like, pissed off.’ He gave her a quick up-and-under glance, checking whether he was going to get away with a mild swear word in front of a copper.

Paula smiled. ‘Pissed off and hungry, I’m guessing.’

Torin’s shoulders relaxed a degree or two. ‘Yeah. That too. So I looked in the fridge and there was leftover cottage pie from the night before, so I nuked it and ate it. And still nothing from my mum.’

‘Did you call any of her friends?’

His head reared back slightly in a gesture of incomprehension. ‘How would I do that? I don’t know their numbers. They’re all in her phone, not written down anywhere. I mostly don’t even know their names.’ He waved a hand in the air. ‘And there’s no way to look up, like, “Dawn from work”, or “Megan from the gym”, or “Laura that I was at school with”.’ He had a point, she realised. It used to be when someone went missing, you checked their address book, their diary, the list of numbers by the phone. Now everybody carried their whole lives around with them and when they disappeared, so did the means of tracking them.

‘No relatives you could call?’

Torin shook his head. ‘My gran lives in Bristol with my auntie Rachel. Mum hasn’t spoken to my dad this year, and anyway, he’s doing a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He’s an army medic.’ A note of pride, Paula thought.

‘What about work? Did you think of ringing there?’

He glowered. ‘They only answer the outside line during regular opening hours. In the evening, the pharmacy’s just for hospital emergency prescriptions. So even if I’d rung, nobody would have picked up.’

Paula cast her mind back to her own early teens and wondered how unnerved she’d have felt if her staid and respectable parents had gone inexplicably AWOL. In the circumstances, she thought Torin was doing pretty well not to lose control in the face of what probably felt like pointless questions that only served to slow down the process of finding his mother. It was that understanding of other people’s points of view that had helped Paula develop her skills as an interviewer. Now she needed to keep Torin on side, make him feel someone cared about his plight so she could extract enough information to do something useful.

‘So what did you do?’

Torin blinked fast and furious. Ashamed or upset, Paula wasn’t sure which. ‘I went on my Xbox and played Minecraft till I was tired enough to go to sleep. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘You did well. A lot of people your age would have panicked. So what happened this morning?’

‘I woke before my alarm went off. At first I thought it was Mum moving around that had woken me, but it wasn’t. I went through to her room, and the bed was still made.’ He chewed his lip again, dark eyes troubled. ‘She hadn’t come home. And she just doesn’t do shit like that. One of my mates, his mum sometimes stops out all night without telling him. And that geezer on the front counter there, you could tell he was thinking, “Poor mutt, his mum’s a slapper and he’s the last to know it.”’ He was on a roll now, words tumbling into one another. ‘But I’m telling you, my mum’s not like that. She’s really not. Totally. Not. Plus it’s, like, a house rule. We always text each other if we’re going to be late. Like, if I’ve missed the bus or somebody’s parent’s late picking us up. Or she’s been held up at work. Whatever.’ He ran out of steam abruptly.

‘And so you came down here.’

His shoulders slumped. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else to do. But you lot don’t care, do you?’

‘If that was true, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, Torin. Usually, we wait twenty-four hours to start a missing person inquiry, it’s true.’
Unless there’s a vulnerable individual in the picture.
‘But not when it’s someone like your mum, someone who has responsibility for a child or an old person, for example. What I need to do now is take down some details about you and your mum so I can set the ball rolling.’

A tap at the door interrupted Paula’s flow. Before she could say anything, the front-counter officer stuck his head round the door. ‘DCI Fielding wants to know how long you’re going to be.’ He didn’t do any kind of job of hiding his self-satisfaction.

Paula dismissed him with a pitying look. ‘I’m interviewing a witness. It’s what I’m trained to do. Please tell the DCI I’ll be with her as soon as I’ve finished here.’

‘I’ll pass the message on.’

Torin gave him a look of contempt as the door closed. ‘You in the shit now? For talking to me?’

‘I’m doing my job, Torin. That’s what matters. Now, I’m going to need some background information.’

It didn’t take long. Torin, fourteen. Pupil at Kenton Vale School. Bev, thirty-seven, chief pharmacist at Bradfield Cross Hospital, divorced eight years ago from Tom, currently serving at Camp Bastian. Torin and Bev shared a semi-detached house at 17 Grecian Rise, Kenton, Bradfield. No known reason why Bev wasn’t where she should be. No history of mental illness or depression. No known financial pressures, other than the ones everyone in the public sector lived with these days.

Paula jotted down mobile numbers for mother and son then put her pen down. ‘Have you got a picture of your mum?’

Torin fiddled with his phone, then turned it to face her. Paula recognised Bev from the picture, which wasn’t always a given with smartphone snaps. It was a head shot, apparently taken on a sunny beach. Thick blonde hair, mid-blue eyes, oval face with regular features. Pretty but not drop-dead gorgeous, a face animated by a cheery smile complete with laughter lines. Seeing the picture reminded Paula that she’d found Bev attractive. Not that she’d exactly lusted after their dinner host. More of a private acknowledgement that Bev was her type. In the same way that Carol Jordan was. A particular configuration of features and colouring that always caught her attention. Not, interestingly, a match for Dr Elinor Blessing. Paula knew her partner was beautiful; her heart always rose at the sight of her fine black hair with its threads of silver, and the laughter in her grey eyes. But it hadn’t been Elinor’s looks that had tweaked Paula’s attention when they first met. It had been her kindness, which trumped blonde every time. So yes, there had been a moment when she’d appreciated Bev’s appeal. And if she’d noticed it, chances were that she wasn’t the only one.

‘Can you email that to me?’ She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and wrote down her mobile number and email address, tore it out and passed it to Torin. ‘Has she got any scars, or birthmarks, or tattoos? It makes it easier for us to check with the local hospitals in case she’s had an accident and been brought in without her handbag.’

He glanced at the scrap of paper Paula had given him then met her eyes again. ‘She has a tattoo of a bluebird on her left shoulder. And she’s got a scar on her right ankle where she broke it and they had to put a pin in.’

Paula made a quick note. ‘That’s very helpful.’

‘What are you going to do about my mum?’

‘I’ll make some phone calls. Talk to her colleagues.’

‘What about me?’

It was a good question. Torin was a minor and she knew she should phone the social services department and get a case worker assigned to him. But Bev might prove Paula’s professional unease unfounded. She might still turn up, embarrassed and awkward after an unpredicted night on the tiles. Then unpicking the process set in train by the social workers would be a nightmare for mother and son. She’d be stigmatised as an unfit mother and he’d be classified ‘at risk’. It might even have an impact on her job. Paula didn’t want that on her conscience. ‘Why don’t you just go to school?’

‘Like normal?’

She nodded. ‘Text me when you get out of school and we’ll take it from there. Hopefully, she’ll have turned up at work and that’ll be the end of it.’ She tried to reassure him with a smile that matched her voice.

He looked dubious. ‘You think?’

No.
But, ‘Chances are,’ was what she said as she stood up and eased him out the door. She watched him as far as the front entrance, his shoulders hunched, his head down. She wanted to believe Bev McAndrew was fit and well and on her way home. But convincing herself would have required a triumph of hope over experience, and Paula didn’t have it in her.

She turned away, momentarily nostalgic for her old team. They would have understood exactly why she was bothering with Torin and his barely missing mum. But that was then. Instead she had DCI Fielding to face. She’d heard good things about Fielding’s conviction rates and this was definitely a team she wanted to hitch her wagon to. But already she’d kept her new boss waiting. It was far from the perfect start she’d hoped for. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late to redeem herself. She’d simply have to try that little bit harder.