‘We got talking and something just clicked. It was as though…’
‘Do you know where Isobel works?’ Kim asked. She hadn’t meant to cut him off so sharply, but she’d already established there was nothing in their meeting that would help her at all.
‘I picked her up from 157 Plaza in Erdington, but I never went inside.’
Kim made a mental note. It was a starting point at least.
‘Her address?’
Duncan coloured further and Kim could see that his inability to help was as troubling to him as it was to her. She noted that he went to bite the inside of his lip and stopped himself.
There was something this man was not telling her. She quickly replayed their conversation so far and remembered something he’d said earlier.
‘You said that Isobel replied to your texts when she could. What did you mean?’ she asked.
He looked to Isobel regretfully and lowered his voice.
‘She’s married, Inspector, that’s why she insisted on secrecy, and I respected that.’ He squeezed Isobel’s hand. ‘Please don’t judge her. She told me straightaway, and I chose to continue seeing her, but she was beginning to talk about leaving her husband. She hadn’t been happy for a long time. They separated a week ago, and Isobel was planning on speaking to him about divorce.’
‘Was he abusive?’ Kim asked, thinking about the scars on her wrists.
Duncan hesitated, as though it pained him to be discussing her most intimate secrets behind her back.
‘I think he’d been physical with her, the odd push and shove…’
‘That’s why you called the police and the hospital?’ Kim clarified.
He sighed heavily. ‘Yes, I was worried that she’d told him it was over and he’d hurt her.’
Kim had no feelings either way about the secrecy and deceit. People spun their own webs, and she couldn’t get caught up in them all.
His eyes travelled up and to the left, recalling something. ‘She did say something about shopping in Wolverhampton, so…’
Kim smiled her understanding and made a mental note.
His hand had not left Isobel’s. His thumb stroked her skin tenderly.
‘Do you know how she got those scars on her wrist?’ Kim asked.
He shook his head. ‘I first saw them on our second date, but she covered them quickly. Eventually she admitted they were from a long time ago, but I didn’t push her. I knew she would tell me when she wanted to.’
He let out a breath. ‘Inspector, I am so sorry that I can’t be more help.’ He looked back to Isobel and his face softened. ‘But I will be here if you need to ask me anything else.’ He squeezed gently on the hand. ‘If she can hear me, I want her to know that I’m here for her and that I’m not going anywhere.’
He turned back to face Kim fully. ‘Although it was only a few months I felt like we were getting along very well. I had high hopes for us… still do in fact.’
Kim couldn’t help but think about the inconvenient husband that would need to be dealt with first. If Isobel woke up, she would need a lot of help. It would not be a fast recovery.
‘Can I take the mobile number you have for her?’ Kim asked, taking out her own phone.
He recited it and Kim keyed it into her phone.
‘Do you think she’ll make it?’ he whispered with a tremor in his voice.
‘I spoke to the doctor and he…’
‘Won’t commit to a damn thing,’ Duncan said, shaking his head.
Obviously he’d had the same conversation with Doctor Singh as she had.
She passed the man a card from her pocket.
‘If you think of anything at all that might help, however irrelevant you might think it is, give me a call.’
Duncan slipped the card into his pocket and she offered him a smile before she turned away.
Kim hoped to God he came up with something – because at the moment she was feeling as though she had no clues at all.
Thirty-One
Kim stepped out of the hospital into a twenty-four-degree wall of heat. The clouds had cleared, and the sun was shining proudly in the sky.
Bryant was parked on the double yellows across the road with a face like thunder. She stood still as he brought the car around to the entrance.
She jumped in as he used a tissue to wipe at his forehead.
‘No air conditioning in this thing?’ she asked, buckling up.
He wound down the passenger-side window. ‘There you go.’
‘Who pissed on your chips?’ she asked.
‘It’s this damn heat,’ he said, pulling out of the hospital grounds. It wasn’t the heat that was bothering him at all. It was a morning of inactivity. He was a police officer with a keen brain and a gift for solving puzzles. Not a chauffeur.
‘So our girl’s name is Isobel Jones and that’s about it.’
He glanced her way as he approached the traffic island for the second time that day.
‘Really?’
‘Yep, that’s it. The guy in there has been seeing her for a few months and got worried when she stood him up.’
‘So he knows very little about her?’
‘Yeah, but I do have a mobile number.’ She swiped her screen as her mobile began to ring. ‘Stace, I was just about to call you. Can you write this number down?’
She recited the number she’d keyed in.
‘That’s the number of our victim two whose name is Isobel Jones. Update the board and start looking at 157 Plaza building in Erdington. She may have worked there. Also check the electoral roll around Wolverhampton – there would be a husband listed too. And check the logs and see if we got a call yesterday morning from a Duncan Adams. I know how that sounds, but it’s all we’ve got.’
‘Jeez, boss…’
‘I said I know, Stace. You’ve got a lot on your plate so if you need me to call Dawson back…’
‘Boss, I’m perfectly capable of doing my job, but I called you because there’s something you need to know.’
A beeping sounded in her ear. She pulled the phone away and checked the screen.
‘Hang on a sec, Stace, I’ve got Kev trying to get me.’
She switched calls to Dawson. Whatever he had to tell her took priority. He was at site.
‘What is it, Kev?’ Kim said into her phone. ‘We’re on our way back to West—’
‘Yeah, boss. You might want to take a detour,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked, putting him on loudspeaker.
‘Something a bit strange going on over here. It’s a bit chaotic at the minute. Machinery is arriving. Identifications are being checked. Looks like Woody has blown a month’s budget on this one…’
‘Kev…?’
‘Sorry, boss. The phone has been going mental. The press has discovered the facility and the shit is hitting the proverbial fan.’
Kim frowned at Bryant, who had glanced to his left. Unfortunate but not wholly unexpected. Only a fool would have expected it to stay secret for much longer.
‘There was so much going on that I didn’t even notice at first…’
‘Notice what?’ Kim asked. Whatever he’d missed sounded important.
‘She took a call – I was right beside her. She screamed “No comment” and slammed the phone down. Next time I looked she was no longer here.’
‘Kev, you’re not making a whole lot of—’
‘It’s Catherine Evans, boss. She seems to have just disappeared.’
Thirty-Two
The uneasy feeling in Kim’s stomach did not lessen the closer they got to Catherine’s house.
It began as soon as Dawson had told her that Catherine had fled her place of work and continued to swirl when she had returned to her conversation with Stacey.
The fact that Catherine Evans was living under a false identity had scattered Kim’s thoughts in a dozen directions. Whatever had happened must have been serious and how the hell was it linked to a call from the press?
All she knew now was that she needed to find Catherine and get answers to some of these questions.