The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4) (6 page)

She was clutching a two-inch-thick folder containing paperwork regarding Caitlin Finch, and the first thing she did was to return it to her desk, slotting it back in its own section of the deep drawer containing a zigzag of suspension files. She gave the front of the drawer a hard push and it slammed home with a satisfying snap. But that did nothing to dissipate her deep-seated frustration.

‘Good day then?’

The voice belonged to DC Kincaide. She turned to find him standing in the doorway, with a fairly convincing look of concern slapped on his face. Perhaps this was one of those rare moments when he was genuinely interested.

Unlikely.

She continued to scowl. ‘Crap, actually.’ She avoided any further eye-contact and squeezed past him into corridor.

‘I’ve got time for a coffee?’

She pretended she hadn’t heard and just kept walking, hoping to make it out of earshot before he offered the almost inevitable jibe about women and their PMT. She might have felt compelled to retaliate. Gully decided she needed a cigarette, even if it was just a metaphorical one.

Outside was overcast and cold, but the air felt clearer for it. She stood by herself and leaned against the brickwork, a few feet away from the wall-mounted ashtray. There she let herself seethe for as long as it would have taken to smoke two Rothmans King Size.

Frustration ruled her some days; she didn’t know how to tread the fine line that ran between saying too little and too much, and sometimes found herself embarrassed by her own abruptness. When she remembered, she stayed quiet until she had thought her words through, but there were always people, like Kincaide, who made her feel pressured into saying the wrong thing.

Like the court officials too. From the moment today when the delays started, she’d had that same anxiety; if she’d attempted to make a case for proceeding, she was nervous of it exploding into a full-scale rant about Caitlin Finch being a liar and wasting everyone’s valuable time. So instead she had spent most of those six hours stewing.

She shot a dirty look at the ashtray, and the slot underneath it where genuine smokers posted their half-extinguished dog-ends. So much for a cigarette break: perhaps it was the lack of nicotine, but it really hadn’t done very much for her at all. She turned towards the rear entrance and spotted Gary Goodhew entering the car park from the footpath on Warkworth Terrace.

‘You look happy,’ he said. In essence it was the same comment as Kincaide’s, but Gully knew that this time it would have no side to it.

‘Wasted a whole day in court. That Finch girl had everyone running after her.’

‘Come on, Sue, that’s exactly what you were expecting.’

‘No, I said I wasn’t looking forward to going to court, and you said, “What’s the worst that can happen?” I wasn’t
willing
it. I was so wound up that I came out here.’

‘The virtual cigarette break?’

Gully must have looked bemused, so he carried on without waiting for her to answer.

‘Don’t we all do it at some time or another? You know, taking ages to get coffee, or a lost twenty minutes in the records archive or standing out here trying to imagine a bad day disappearing up in smoke. There’s a bench just across the road from the station, on Parker’s Piece, and I used to sit there regularly, until Marks moved his office and gave me a rocket for looking like I wasn’t busy.’

‘I suppose you told him you were out there thinking?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And he bought that?’

‘Not for a second. And I promise you, you don’t want one of his lectures on the shortage of police resources and the impact caused by wasted man-hours.’

‘But Caitlin Finch wasted more of them.’

‘You know my grandmother?’ It was a rhetorical question. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘she’s a big fan of all that karmic balance stuff. She would argue that Caitlin Finch is wasting everyone’s time because she is wasting her own, and that your wasted day will be rebalanced by something worthwhile.’

‘And you buy into all of that?’

‘I can’t decide. Logically no, but I don’t feel comfortable totally dismissing the concept either.’ Goodhew smiled, while simultaneously managing to look serious. ‘Especially when it provides such a useful tool for avoiding the virtual fag break.’

Gully nodded. ‘Yes, it would be justice if Caitlin Finch really did get pregnant one day and suffer the worst case of morning sickness on record.’ They walked through to the downstairs lobby together, and then Gully headed for the stairs, pleased to note that Goodhew was following the same route. ‘I get so wound up sometimes,’ she confessed. ‘I’ve worked so hard making sure that I’ve been thorough with every item of paperwork, but I can’t stop feeling that it will all go wrong at the last minute. What if I’ve missed something?’

Goodhew halted in his tracks, waiting until she stopped too. ‘Did you stub out your imaginary cigarette? And did you do anything with the imaginary butt?’

Gully shrugged, then admitted, ‘I imagined putting it in the bin. Is that what you mean?’

‘Exactly. So you do have an eye for detail, you finish the job, you’re thorough . . .’

‘That’s bollocks.’

‘. . . and slightly unhinged. Would you feel better if I go through the stuff with you and prepare you for any questions you might get asked?’

Gully wondered whether saying, ‘Yes,’ would be like asking for help. She hated the idea because, whatever needed doing, she wanted to be the one to work it out. She didn’t even like reading an instruction manual, which was about the most anonymous help she could possibly receive. Even so she heard herself ask, ‘When?’

‘Now? There’s an hour till the end of our shift, and I can work on a bit longer if that suits you.’

She knew the offer arose out of Goodhew’s diligence rather than any sudden desire to spend his off-duty time in her company, but still Gully felt the familiar warmth of her cheeks suddenly reddening. Luckily that happened frequently enough to go unnoticed.

Once back at her desk, she retrieved Caitlin Finch’s file and placed the contents in a stack between them. Goodhew read through the papers, occasionally stopping to ask her questions.

By the time he reached the last page Gully was close to believing that she would be able to deliver a statement and be comfortable with any cross-questioning that followed. ‘Thanks, Gary, I really appreciate it.’

Perhaps she should buy him a drink just to say thanks properly, but she hesitated. She didn’t want him to read anything into it, but then again, she wouldn’t read anything into it if a male friend made the same offer to her. Unless she suspected that he really liked her.
Damn, damn, damn
, why did she always make things more complicated than they needed to be?
Do you fancy a drink?
No, she needed to steer away from the word ‘fancy’ and probably also the expression ‘quick one’. She decided that
Have you got time for a half?
probably indicated the right ratio of colleague/friend and was about to try it out loud when the phone began to ring.

It was Sergeant Norris, on the front desk. ‘Who’s up there at the moment?’

‘Just me and Goodhew.’

‘You’ll do, Sue. Pop down, if you don’t mind. There’s a Jamie-Lee Wallace here, concerned about a missing housemate.’

‘I’ll be right there.’ She put down the phone.

‘Okay?’

‘Yes. Someone’s lost his lodger – probably run off with the rent money.’

Goodhew re-stacked her papers, then pushed his chair back from the desk. Gully quickly left the room before she could start debating with herself whether to wait for him to walk with her down the stairs.

All the way to reception her thoughts stayed on Goodhew. It was a crush undoubtedly, one that had hung on for too long now, and had more to do with her lack of boyfriend than the reawakening of teenage hormones which managed to hit almost every time they were alone together. And the main result was that she felt very angry with herself.

Gully banged at the reception door with the heel of her hand. It swung open in a wide arc that gave her a full view of the waiting area, and simultaneously reminded her of the dangers of making assumptions; Jamie-Lee Wallace was no irate male landlord on the hunt for a missing tenant, but a young woman aged about twenty, whose long dark hair was tied up in a neat braid. She wore jeans and a burgundy hoodie, and although her clothes looked newly laundered there was still something unkempt about her appearance.

The girl stood uneasily in the waiting area, surrounded by empty seats, and as soon as she spotted Gully she hurried towards her. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’ She spoke calmly and clearly, her voice at odds with her worried expression.

Plenty of people remained restrained in the face of fear or pain, and Gully fully expected her next words to begin:
It’s probably nothing but . . .

She was wrong.

Jamie-Lee grabbed her hand like she was about to shake it, but instead held on to it, as if she was determined to keep Gully close. ‘One of the girls in our house-share is called Shanie. I think she might be dead.’

Sergeant Norris had initially used the word ‘missing’ and, between Gully leaving her desk and arriving at reception, it seemed that Jamie-Lee Wallace had upgraded the girl’s status to ‘dead’.

‘Missing or dead?’ Gully asked sharply. ‘Which is it?’

‘Missing. She’s missing – but I’m scared she’s dead.’

Gully guided Wallace into an interview room and directed her towards the nearest chair.

Jamie-Lee began to speak before either of them was seated. ‘I live in a house in King Street, where I’m a student and so are the others. There are seven of us in the house; six of us moved in together at the start of October, and Shanie arrived at the start of this term—’

‘Hold on.’ Gully dumped her notebook on the table, sat on the chair beside it and didn’t speak again until she had her pen poised ready to write. ‘I need to start with some basic details.’

Jamie-Lee nodded.

‘Your full name?’

‘Mine?’ The girl looked surprised for a moment. ‘Jamie Leonora Wallace.’

‘Date of birth?’

‘First of November, 1992.’

It was Gully’s turn to look surprised, for up to that moment she had assumed Jamie-Lee was closer to her own age, and a half-decade adjustment suddenly made a big difference to the way she viewed this young woman. True, there was nothing overly mature in her features; the maturity was all in her manner. When Gully spoke again, she let her voice soften a little. ‘And your friend Shanie’s full name?’

‘Shanie Faulkner – that’s all I know. I guess it’s short for something.’

‘What’s her date of birth?’

‘I don’t know that either. But she’s twenty-two, and her birthday fell just before Christmas.’

‘Do you have a home address for her?’

Jamie-Lee shook her head. ‘She’s from Merrillville, Indiana. Due to go back there next month, I think. Look, you can check all of this with her college, can’t you?’

‘Tell me when you last saw her.’

‘I already told you, on Friday night, the sixteenth – about midnight, I think. We were in the kitchen playing poker and she got annoyed . . . nothing really, just bickering, but she stormed out of the house. None of the others have seen her since.’

‘The other people in your house-share, you mean?’ Gully wrote the word ‘occupants’ on a new line and double-underlined it. ‘Aside from you and Miss Faulkner, who else is currently living at that address?’

‘Meg DeLacy, Marcus Phillips, Libby Brett, Matt Stone . . . and Oslo. He’s Norwegian, his first name’s Gunvald. I think his second name’s spelt G-J-E-R-T-S-E-N because I’ve seen that on his post, but he’s happy with “Oslo”.’

‘And all these people were present when she left?’

‘Yes, except Libby. She was upstairs, but everyone else was together in the house.’

‘Did Shanie give you any indication of her plans for the weekend?’

‘No, I doubt she really had any. She has a degree in software design, graduated last year but she’s continuing to study. She’s still attending her old university in the States, but she was given the chance to come here for thirteen weeks, and wanted to make the most of the opportunity. Shanie doesn’t go out much – in fact, she seems to have made a point of avoiding anything in the way of a social life. I like her but she’s a bit of a boff. I reckon she doesn’t really know how to just let her hair down and have a laugh, so I don’t think it would have happened accidentally either.’

‘No boyfriend, then?’

Jamie-Lee snorted, “‘Proud to be a virgin”, apparently.’

‘Apparently? You don’t think she was, then?’

‘Sorry, that was my personal comment on that philosophy. The rest of us don’t walk round wearing T-shirts that say either
Glad I lost it
or
Ashamed to be a slapper
. She wouldn’t have morphed into some kind of reckless party person overnight. She likes rules and structure and nothing much that’s frivolous.’

‘I see,’ Gully said slowly. ‘So if there had been a sudden change of plan . . .’

Jamie-Lee nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, she would have told us, and definitely contacted her course tutors, since it would need to be something pretty catastrophic for her to miss any of her classes.’

‘Catastrophic?’

‘
Dead
was an exaggeration, I know, but it would still have to be something serious. I mean, something out of her control, which is preventing her from getting in touch with us.’

Gully kept the rest of her questions brief. Jamie-Lee Wallace didn’t strike her as someone who was readily prone to panic; instead she came across as pragmatic, the kind who provided an ear for other people’s problems. From Gully’s experience, people like that only sought help when they genuinely felt there was trouble.

‘What happens now?’ Jamie asked.

‘I’ll go back to the house with you, find out whether any of the other housemates can provide any more information.’

‘They can’t.’

‘I still need to ask, and I’ll need access to her room. Who has a key?’

‘The landlord, I suppose.’

‘No one else?’

‘I don’t know – maybe Rob. He’s Matt’s dad, and he sorted out the lease, so he has all the details.’ Jamie suddenly looked defeated. ‘I should know these things myself, as I’m the one who always organizes any repairs. But I just ask Rob, as I don’t even know the landlord’s name.’