The light was starting to fade when Moss and Peterson caught up with Erika in a coffee shop on Chiswick High Road. She’d spent a frustrating hour sitting by the window, watching the light fade on a day that had seemed so long, but in which she felt she’d achieved nothing. It wasn’t like her to go roaring in on an interview and balls it up – especially not with the parents of the victim.
The café had been quiet when Erika had arrived, but had now filled up and was bustling with fashionable singletons, and a pack of yummy mummies who’d marked out a corner of the coffee shop with a barrier of expensive buggies.
Peterson and Moss bought coffee and sandwiches, then came over to the table to join Erika.
‘Look, thanks for stepping in there; I don’t know what happened. My judgement was off,’ explained Erika, feeling embarrassed.
‘No probs,’ said Peterson, tearing open a sandwich box and taking a huge bite.
‘Diana Douglas-Brown was out of order, but then again, it wasn’t the best day of her life, was it?’ agreed Moss, taking a bite of her sandwich.
‘Yeah, but I shouldn’t have . . . Anyway. What else can you tell me?’ asked Erika. She waited for a moment whilst they both finished chewing.
‘Simon and Diana don’t know why Andrea was in South London,’ said Moss. ‘She’d arranged to go the cinema with David and Linda, the brother and sister. They waited for her at the Odeon in Hammersmith, but she never showed up.’
‘Were the brother and sister at home?’
‘Yeah. David, he was asleep upstairs. Lady Diana didn’t want to wake him.’
‘Wake him? Isn’t he in his twenties?’ asked Erika.
‘David had been awake since the early hours, apparently,’ said Moss. ‘They’d been taking it in turns to watch the phones throughout the night, in case Andrea called. It seems she’s gone missing before.’
‘When? Do we have a record?’
‘No. They never reported it. A couple of years back she went AWOL over a long weekend. Turned out she went off to France with some guy she’d met in a bar. She came back when she maxed out her credit card.’
‘Did you get a name of the person she ran off with?’
‘Yeah, a Carl Michaels. He was a student at the time. It was nothing dodgy. A dirty weekend, with the added bonus that Andrea had a platinum Visa card,’ said Moss.
‘Did you see the sister, Linda?’ asked Erika.
‘She came in with a tray of tea. We thought she was the maid. Looks very different to Andrea: frumpy, a bit fat. She works at the mother’s florist-s,’ said Peterson.
‘And how did she react to the news?’ asked Erika.
‘She dropped the tray, although . . .’ Moss hesitated.
‘What?’ asked Erika, wishing again that she didn’t have to hear this all second-hand.
Moss looked at Peterson.
‘It seemed a bit cod, the way she reacted,’ he said.
‘Cod?’ asked Erika.
‘You know, like bad acting. I don’t know. People react in all sorts of weird ways. The whole family seems a bit screwed up if you ask me,’ said Peterson.
‘Then again, whose family isn’t screwed up?’ added Moss. ‘Plus, you throw money into the mix and everything gets heightened.’
A phone began to ring, and it took a few moments before Erika realised it was hers. She pulled it out and answered. It was Isaac, telling her that the bad weather had slowed everything right down. The results of the autopsy would be ready in the morning.
‘I really wanted them to ID the body tonight,’ said Erika, when she came off the phone.
‘It could work in your favour. It’ll give Sir Simon a chance to cool off,’ said Peterson.
‘Did he say anything else?’ asked Erika.
‘Yeah, he wants Sparks back on the case,’ said Moss.
They carried on chewing in silence. It was now dark. Car headlights crawled past, illuminating the incessant snow falling outside.
8
Erika, Moss, and Peterson arrived back at Lewisham Row just after seven pm. They went straight to the incident room, which was full, the police officers waiting expectantly to share the day’s findings. Erika sloughed off her long leather jacket and went to the huge bank of whiteboards lining the back of the room.
‘Okay, everyone. I know it’s been a long day, but what have we got?’
‘How did you get on when you met the family? How did Sir Simon take to you, DCI Foster?’ smirked Sparks, leaning back in his chair.
On cue, Chief Superintendent Marsh pulled open the door to the incident room. ‘Foster. A word.’
‘Sir, I’m just briefing everyone on the day’s events . . .’
‘Okay. But my office, the second you’re done,’ he barked, and slammed the door.
‘So it went well, I take it?’ needled Sparks, his nasty smile tinted with the white-blue of his computer screen. Erika ignored him and turned back to the white board. Beside Andrea’s photo were pictures of Linda and David. She noticed with interest that Andrea and her brother were very attractive, but Linda was overweight and matronly, with a pointed nose and a whiter complexion than her siblings.
‘Are the kids all from the same parents?’ asked Erika, tapping the board with her marker pen. This took the incident room off guard.
Sergeant Crane looked round in surprise. ‘We assumed yes . . .’
‘Why did you assume this?’ asked Erika.
‘Well, they seemed quite . . .’
‘Posh?’ asked Erika. ‘Never forget, we look at family first and foremost as suspects. Don’t let yourselves be blinded by the fact that they live in an expensive area of London and have influence and power. Crane, you can look into the children, but of course, be discrete. Now, we know that Andrea was due to meet David and Linda at the cinema last Thursday, the eighth, but she never showed up. Where did she go? Was she meeting a friend, a secret lover? Who was looking specifically into Andrea’s life?’
A small Indian woman in her twenties stood up. ‘PC Singh,’ she said. She came to the front and Erika handed her the marker pen.
‘Andrea’s been in a relationship with twenty-seven-year-old Giles Osborne for the past eight months; they’d recently got engaged. He owns Yakka Events, an upmarket events and party planning company, based in Kensington.’
‘Yakka Events. What does Yakka mean?’ asked Erika.
‘It’s the aboriginal word for work. It says on the company website that he spent his gap year in Australia.’
‘Learning how to serve canapés and champagne from the aborigines?’ asked Erika. A flicker of a smile passed through the incident room.
‘He’s privately educated. Comes from a wealthy family. He has an alibi for the night Andrea went missing.’
‘I’ve already interviewed him; we found this out last week,’ interrupted Sparks.
‘What about the records for Andrea’s phone, and social media? I take it those have been requested?’
‘Yes,’ said Singh.
‘Where are they?’
‘I’m on it. I requested them this morning, so we’re hoping to get them in the next twenty-four hours,’ said Crane.
‘Why weren’t they requested before, when she became a missing person?’ asked Erika.
There was silence.
‘Worried you were prying into the lives of the influential rich people?’
‘I made the call not to go ahead and request those,’ said Sparks. ‘The family were still under the impression that Andrea had taken off somewhere; they were monitoring her social media accounts and sharing information with us.’
Erika rolled her eyes. ‘I want those records the second we have them, and anything that gets pulled off the phone hard drive,’ she said to Crane. ‘Now, Sparks, you seem full of the joys of late winter. What did you manage to find with the CCTV?’
DCI Sparks leaned back in his chair with a creak. ‘Not good news, I’m afraid. Until a couple of days ago, three of the CCTV cameras on the London Road were down. So we’ve got nothing around the train station forecourt, or leading up the high street to the Horniman Museum. Course, the back roads aren’t covered either, so we’re blind to the events on the night of the eighth.’
‘Shit,’ said Erika.
‘We have got her coming off the train at Forest Hill Station at—’ Sparks flicked through his notes ‘—9.06pm. She comes off the train, goes along the platform and leaves past the ticket office. It was unmanned, and only a couple of other people got off at the same time.’
‘Can we find out who they are? Maybe they walked up with her.’
‘I’m already on it,’ Sparks finished.