Cross and Burn (6 page)

B
y late morning, Marie had a list of questions for Rob Morrison. In her experience, there was no point in holding back out of a misplaced sense of politeness. She needed answers so she could make a start on the strategic developments she’d been hired to initiate and see through. Worrying whether Rob would take her enquiries as subtle criticisms wasn’t helpful. If his finer feelings were going to stand in the way of progress, he’d better develop a thicker skin, she thought. And quickly.

So she double-checked the handwritten list she’d made – always better to write down a list of questions; they had a tendency to stick in the mind that way and they were less likely to fall through the cracks during the discussion – and bustled across the open-plan area to Rob’s office.

Marie scanned the room as she went, taking note of who had their head down, talking on the phone or frowning at their screen, and who was staring into space or leaning back in their chair chatting to the person in the next carrel. She wasn’t about to start anything as crude as a time-and-motion study any time soon, but it was never too soon to begin gathering impressions of the staff. Gareth, for example. He might well be one of the most productive employees, but right now he was paying no attention to work. He was half-turned away from his screen, chatting to a smug-looking bloke in a pink shirt and khaki chinos, hair immaculately groomed. Even from across the room she could make out the Ralph Lauren Polo logo. She’d have put money on him reeking of aftershave or cologne. She hadn’t noticed him earlier when she’d been introduced to the floor, and she thought she would have if he’d been there. She knew his type and she didn’t like it.

Dismissing him from her mind, she walked through Rob’s open door to find him at his computer, mouse clicking as furiously as if he was in the throes of some annoying computer game. ‘Have you got a minute?’ she asked.

He immediately stopped what he was doing and before she could possibly have seen his screen, he closed the window he was working in. ‘Sure. Is there a problem?’

‘I need to go through some of our procedures,’ Marie said, drawing a chair up at right angles to his desk. ‘I want to be clear how we’re doing things at present so I can work out where we can make strategic improvements.’

He nodded enthusiastically, rubbing his chin then tugging his earlobe. He was, she realised, one of those people who can’t stop touching their face. It made her want to avoid touching anything he’d touched. He smoothed one eyebrow and scratched the side of his nose. ‘Makes perfect sense,’ he said.

They had barely made a start when Ralph Lauren Man swaggered into the room. He let his eyes slide over Marie, lingering on her breasts and her legs before turning his attention to Rob. ‘Are you up for tonight?’ he said, his tone almost accusatory rather than inviting.

Rob gave him what appeared to be a warning frown. ‘Nige, I’d like you to meet Marie Mather, our new Director of Marketing. Marie, this is Nigel Dean. He’s one of the boffins from upstairs. Software development for our data-gathering systems.’

Nigel inclined his head towards her. ‘We’re Big Brother,’ he said. ‘The one that is watching you, that is, not the one that you watch on your telly. We manage data for everything from your local supermarket to speed cameras to mobile phone networks. I could track you from your front door to the office without your knowing.’

Rob laughed nervously. ‘Pay no attention to him, he likes to wind us all up, does Nige.’

Creep
, she thought. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said mildly, not making it clear which one she was responding to.

‘I was just making sure Rob’s coming along tonight. A bunch of us are going out to celebrate landing a tasty new contract. We’re going to Honeypots, do you know it?’

You didn’t have to be a lad about town to be aware of Honeypots, Bradfield’s biggest and brashest lap-dancing club. Marie would rather have nailed her hand to the wall than spend an evening there. Not for the first time, she counted her blessings and was grateful for her Marco. ‘I never go out on a school night,’ she said.

Nigel raised one side of his mouth in a sneer. ‘You ladies and your beauty sleep. Another time, maybe. On a Friday?’

Marie gave her sweetest smile. ‘I’ll bring my husband. He likes a good laugh.’ She gathered her papers and stood up. ‘Rob, perhaps we could finish this when you’re free?’

Twat
, she thought as she marched back to her office. It didn’t seem to matter where you worked, you couldn’t escape them.
More’s the pity.

T
he mobile incident room was bedlam with the volume turned down. A constant stream of police officers, CSIs and civilian support staff tramped in and out, covering all the bases from grim and grumpy to crass and chirpy. One look told Paula it was the worst possible place to examine evidence that might end up as a key plank in a court case. Clearing it first with Fielding, she left the crime scene and headed back to Skenfrith Street to find a quiet corner. And if she was honest, she wanted to put some distance between herself and the dead woman.

During her years with Carol Jordan’s Major Incident Team, Paula had confronted a wide range of the hideous things human beings could do to one another. The things she’d seen had disturbed her nights and her days, but she’d always managed to put them in a box in her head where they couldn’t contaminate the rest of her life. She’d known what it was to be at risk herself, and she’d lost colleagues to the job. It was only by chance that she’d escaped the act of violence that had destroyed Chris Devine’s future during the hunt for Jacko Vance.

All of this horror she’d got through. Maybe a few extra drinks on the bad nights, a spike in her cigarette consumption on the bad days. Still, she’d absorbed the pain, dealt with the anger. Deep down, she’d learned to live with it. But today’s victim had messed with her head. There was no escaping that. The brutal beating on its own would have been hard to stomach, but she’d have got past that without too much trouble. The other thing – she could hardly bear to articulate the act, even in her head – was somehow infinitely worse. It was as if her killer wanted to deny her everything that made her who she was. Wrecked face, ruined body, not even any use for sex. He’d rendered her utterly worthless. It spoke of a contempt that chilled Paula’s heart. This, she suspected, was a murderer who wasn’t going to stop at one.

The rest of the team would be gossiping and speculating about it. She knew what cops were like. And for a little while she wanted not to be part of that. Putting together a profile of the victim based on the contents of her bag would be a good enough excuse.

In the unfamiliar territory of her new base, she managed to find the canteen and set herself up with coffee and the comfort of Jaffa Cakes. And because the canteen staff always knew what was what, she acquired directions to a small meeting room on the fourth floor where nothing was scheduled for the rest of the day.

Gloved and masked, her coffee and biscuits on a separate table, she finally addressed the dead woman’s life. The bag was businesslike – black leather, worn in but not scuffed, decent quality and capacious. It looked a bit like a scaled-down briefcase, with its neat compartments and pockets. Methodically, Paula emptied the contents on to the table, not pausing to study anything till she was sure the bag was completely empty. She was impressed with the relative absence of crap and made a mental note to clear her own bag of the accumulated detritus of everyday living.

She went with the obviously female stuff first. Lipstick, mascara, blusher, all own-brand from a chain chemist. Plastic folding comb with a narrow mirror in the handle. So, someone who cared about how she looked but didn’t make a fetish of it.

Pack of tissues, only a couple left. A small tin that had once held sweets but now contained four compact tampons. A couple of condoms in a plastic pouch. Blister pack of birth control pills, three remaining. So, almost certainly straight, probably single. If you were in a relationship, you generally left those things at home, in the bathroom or the bedside-table drawer. You weren’t going to spend the night in another bed on the spur of the moment.

Blister pack of strong painkillers. Paula frowned. She didn’t think you could get these off prescription. When she’d torn a muscle in her calf a few months before and she’d been in excruciating pain for a couple of days, Elinor had sneaked her a couple from the hospital, swearing her to secrecy. Paula had teased her about it. ‘Is one of your post-op patients on paracetamol tonight, then?’ Elinor had confessed that they were samples from a pharmaceutical rep.

‘All doctors have a drawer stuffed with freebies,’ she said. ‘You’d think we’d know better, but we self-medicate like mad.’

Was the victim a doctor? Or someone who had a problem with pain? Paula filed the question away for now and returned to the bag’s contents. Three pens; one from a hotel, one from a stationery supply chain, one from an animal charity. A bunch of keys – a Fiat car key, two Yales, two mortises. House, car, office? House, car, somebody else’s house? No way of telling yet. A couple of crumpled receipts from a Freshco Express in Harriestown revealed a taste for pepperoni pizza, chicken tikka pies and low-fat strawberry yoghurt.

The iPhone would be the treasure trove. Paula woke it from its slumber. The screen saver was a fluffy tortoiseshell cat lying on its back. When she tried to open the screen, it demanded a password. That meant the phone would have to go off to the technical team, where one of the geeks would unlock its mysteries eventually. Not like on MIT, where their own IT specialist Stacey Chen was always on tap. Stacey would have coaxed every last morsel of data from the phone in record time, speeding the investigation on its way. But here in her brave new world, Paula’s evidence would have to join the queue. No rush jobs here; the budget wouldn’t take the strain. Frustrated, she wrote a label for the phone and bagged it separately.

All that remained was a slim metal case and a fat wallet. She flicked open the case to reveal a short stack of business cards. Nadia Wilkowa was apparently the North West Area Representative for Bartis Health. There was a web address as well as a mobile number and email address for Nadia. Paula took out her phone and rang the number. The bagged iPhone did a jittering shimmy across the table before the voicemail cut in. ‘Hi, this is Nadia Wilkowa.’ There was a faint East European accent, but it had been almost completely painted over by polite Bradfield. ‘I’m sorry I can’t talk to you right now, but please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.’ A welcome confirmation.

Paula flipped open the wallet. Three credit cards in the name of Nadzieja Wilkowa; loyalty cards for Freshco, the Co-op and a fashion store group; a book of first-class stamps with two remaining; a tight bundle of receipts and forty pounds in cash. No photographs, no convenient address. She took a quick pass through the receipts. Car parking, petrol, sandwich shops, fast-food outlets and a couple of restaurant bills. She’d pass them on to the officer in charge of doling out assignments to the team. Someone else could go through them in more detail, preferably after they’d got her diary off her phone.

And that was it. It was all very well to live an orderly life, but it didn’t help detectives like Paula when you ended up dead. What they really needed was a home address. She opened the internet browser on her phone and navigated to Bartis Health’s home page. Their offices were located in a town in Leicestershire she’d never heard of. Their business model appeared to be based on producing cheap generic versions of drugs whose patents had expired. Plenty of uptake but tight margins, Paula suspected.

She called the number on the contact page. The woman who answered the phone was rightly suspicious of her request for information but agreed to call back and ask to be connected to the extension perched on a corner table. Paula had little confidence in the capabilities of the system, but she was happy to be proved wrong less than five minutes later. ‘Why are you asking about Nadia? Has something happened? Surely she’s not in any kind of trouble,’ the woman asked as soon as they were connected.

‘Do you know Nadia well?’ Paula was careful with her tense.

‘I wouldn’t say well. I’ve met her a few times. She’s a very friendly, open sort of person. And they think very highly of her here. But what’s happened? Has she been in an accident back home?’

‘Back home?’

‘In Poland. She emailed… let me see, it must be three weeks ago? Anyway, she said her mother had been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and she asked if she could have compassionate leave to go home and be with her mother for the surgery. Because her mother’s on her own now, with her dad being dead and her sister in America. It was inconvenient, but you don’t want to lose somebody that’s as good at her job as Nadia, so the boss said yes, she could have a month.’ The woman stopped for breath.

Baffled, Paula said, ‘You’re sure about that?’

‘I opened the email myself,’ the woman said. ‘And I had to email her only last week with a query about a customer’s repeat order. She answered me the same day. She said her mum was making a slow recovery but she’d be back next week.’

It made no sense. Had Nadia made an unscheduled early return? Or had her killer sent the emails, pretending to be her, covering up the fact that she’d never left Bradfield? Was it an elaborate sham, a scam to cover Nadia’s disappearance? But the woman was talking again, cutting through Paula’s racing thoughts. ‘So has something happened to Nadia? Is that why you’re calling?’

Paula closed her eyes and wished she’d asked someone else to make this call. ‘I’m very sorry to have to tell you that Nadia has died in suspicious circumstances.’ It was true without being anywhere near the whole truth.

A moment’s silence. ‘In Poland?’

‘No. Here in Bradfield.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘We’re still making inquiries,’ Paula said, stalling.

‘That’s terrible,’ the woman said, her voice faint. ‘I can’t believe it. Nadia? What happened?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t go into details. But we need help. We don’t have any addresses for her. Home or work. Or a next of kin. I was hoping you might have access to that information?’

‘Let me get Nadia’s personnel file on the screen,’ the woman said. ‘She worked from home, so there’s no office as such.’ One less place to take apart looking for answers to the questions raised by Nadia’s death.

Ten minutes later, Paula had every scrap of information Bartis Health knew about Nadia. There wasn’t much, but it was a start. She had an address in the Harriestown district. She also knew that Nadzieja Wilkowa was twenty-six years old and had worked for Bartis for eighteen months. She had a degree in pharmacology from the university in Poznan and spoke excellent English. She visited head office every two or three months. Her territory covered the North of England and she had been one of the company’s most successful sales reps. The next of kin she’d given was her mother, with an address in Leszno. A place Paula had never heard of, let alone been able to point to it on a map. She wasn’t sure of the process involved in informing overseas next of kin, but she knew there would be one. At least that was one death knock she wouldn’t have to deal with herself. Or the interview to ascertain whether Nadia had been in Poland recently.

Paula checked her watch. What she should do now was pass on Nadia’s phone to the techies, scoop up a couple of junior detectives and turn over her flat in a bid to find how her life intersected with her killer. But she was conscious of the promise she’d made to Torin McAndrew and that she’d done nothing to fulfil it. She had a few hours before the boy would be texting her. Nadia was dead, and Torin was very much alive.

In one sense, it was no contest. But Paula had been drilled by Carol Jordan that her duty was to speak for the dead. And as well as speaking for the dead, she also had a responsibility to the living. A killer was walking free and it was her job to find him before he killed someone else. What could be more important than that?