“How are you?”
She floors me once again with that innocuous question, her tone difficult to read, loading those three words with just enough meaning to bring them beyond the level of small talk, but not enough for me to be sure that she cares.
“I’m working the case,” I say. “The incident by the canal.”
Silence.
“I want you to stop speaking to my witnesses.”
“You have absolutely no right to tell me what to do.”
“What you’re doing is wrong. You know it.”
“How dare you?”
I don’t even have time to draw breath before she unloads eighteen months’ worth of resentment about how badly I treated her, how she deserved more, how I have no right, absolutely no right at all, to involve myself in her life now.
“Are you finished?” I ask when she finally runs out of words, because I’m ready to give a piece of my mind right back to her, but I’m saying it to myself because she’s hung up.
I’m still staring at my phone, working hard to resist the impulse to throw it across the room, when Woodley pokes his head around the door.
“There you are! The 999 recording has just been emailed to us. Are you all right, boss?”
“I’m fine. Have you listened to it?”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“If I say I’m fine, I’m sure I’m fine. Have you listened to the recording?”
“No. They only just sent it, and I was thinking about something else. When we were with Janet Pritchard in the portacabin, she had a phone with a glittery cover. Do you remember?”
“I do.”
“But the phone that rang when we were with her at her shop was an iPhone. It had that distinctive ringtone.”
“New phone?”
“Or she’s using two phones. One might be a burner. Explains why she didn’t use the Bluetooth in her car if she didn’t want to leave a trace of a burner phone.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud. It could be nothing, but there’s something that’s not sitting quite right with me about her and her partner.”
“Agreed.”
We go back to the incident room where Woodley has the link to the recording up on his screen. It sounds just as Janet Pritchard reported it.
“Hello, emergency service operator, which service do you require?”
“Ambulance.”
“I’ll just connect you now.”
A new operator comes on the line.
“What’s the nature of your emergency?”
“Somebody’s fallen in the canal and I don’t know if he can get out.”
“Where is this happening?”
“I’m down at Feeder Canal, at the lockups behind Herapath Street.”
“Are there any distinctive features around you?”
“They’re in the scrapyard. Hurry!”
“Thank you. I’ll send somebody along immediately.”
“The gates are locked.”
“Thank you. I’ll pass that information on. What is your name, address, and your own phone number?”
After Janet Pritchard provides her details, I click stop. By then it’s already possible to hear sirens in the distance as she’s speaking. Noah Sadler was lucky the emergency services were so close.
“Did you hear that at the end?” Woodley says. “Play it again.”
We listen again, taking turns using the headphones to drown out the background noise of the office, and both of us clearly hear that there’s something else there.
“It sounds like a third party,” Woodley says when he takes the headphones off, “unless one of the lads has a very deep voice. But I can’t make out what they’re saying.”
“Do you recall the witness mentioning anybody else?”
He shakes his head. “She specifically said nobody else was around.”
“Can you ask somebody to try and isolate it so we can hear it better?”
“On it.”
“And tell them I want it today.”
He’s already on the phone. A raised finger tells me that he’s heard and understood.
Fraser’s door opens and she shakes the hands of the two men who were meeting with her. Once they’ve gone, she beckons me in.
“A missing persons alert for Abdi Mahad has gone out as widely as possible,” she tells me as I settle down. “We’ve made no mention of the fact that he’s wanted for questioning. Priority is to treat him as a vulnerable minor.”
“I think he’s been pretty sheltered.”
Her expression’s grim. A child at risk will do that to you, and she and I have been in this situation before.
“We’ll do a televised appeal as well.”
“I’ve asked Noah Sadler’s family to keep quiet about his death.”
“Can we trust them to do that?”
“I think so. I hope so. The mother’s very angry, she wants someone to blame, but she knows it’s in her interest to keep quiet because it means Abdi’s more likely to come home and give us some answers.”
“Or she could get angry enough to vent all her emotions in the press and screw the case in the process.” Fraser’s mood is one of dark pessimism. I need to tread carefully.
“I don’t think she will.”
“But you think she holds this Somali kid responsible?”
“I think she might do, but it’s a first reaction. It’s her grief speaking. Her husband disagrees with her.”
“You should have leaned on the boy to talk, Jim.”
“I know. I played it safe because I didn’t want to be accused of putting too much pressure on him. Every time I saw him he was prostrate and mute. I didn’t know what else to do. And he comes from a loving home. He hasn’t got the profile of a troublemaker.”
“You could have leaned harder.”
I try to distract her.
“I’ve got my hands on a therapy journal that Noah Sadler wrote. There’s a couple of things in it that might be of interest, and I’ll keep digging.”
“Dig into Abdi’s family and the community also, but discreetly, and let’s see if that turns anything up. I don’t think we can avoid it any longer. Witness?”
“I’ve spoken to her. She said Emma posed as some kind of victim support worker to get her to talk.”
Fraser’s nostrils flare.
“The witness said she wouldn’t speak to any more journalists.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I’m not a hundred percent confident, but I’m hopeful. Any news from Janie?”
I don’t tell Fraser that I’ve just spoken to Emma. It would be an understatement to say that I don’t think she’d appreciate the outcome of that call.
“She’s spoken to the paper, but I gather that was something of a dead end. She’s pulling together a carefully worded press release about the canal incident. We have to hope nobody links that story with the appeal to find Abdi. I don’t want a manhunt on my hands.”
She stops banging things around on her desk and points the end of her pen at me.
“I’m very worried about the welfare of this missing lad, just as you are, and I want him found safely, but don’t avoid taking him seriously as a suspect because you think his mum and dad are nice. Remember, we’re under close scrutiny from all quarters now.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Woodley knocks on the door. “Sorry to interrupt, but they can look at the recording now, if we want to go up.”