Before It's Too Late (6 page)

“How much does it cost for a confidential abortion?” Jackman asked.

“That depends on the duration of the pregnancy and the health of the woman. There are lots of factors to consider, but our prices start from £500 inclusive of consultation.”

Davies raised her brows. “Steep price for confidentiality.”

Jenny ignored her, looked back at her diary and flicked forward a few pages. “Then I received another call from him last night. He wanted some more information, a brochure. He said it was urgent.”

Jackman leant back, “Does your job often take you out to meet clients in car parks late at night?”

“As I said, we deal with people in very difficult circumstances. We offer a complete package of assistance and advice before, and counselling and support after, the procedure. My job is the initial contact.”

“A sales person?”

She cleared her throat. “I like to think I’m more than that. I make myself available to assist with any questions and provide information to enable clients to make an informed decision. Tom sounded upset, so I drove in and gave him some literature. He said he was going to talk to his girlfriend and come back to me in the next couple of days.”

“And that is all?”

She nodded. “I drove straight home. I was barely gone for half an hour.”

Jackman glanced at the ceiling. “What does your husband think of you popping out last thing at night to see a client?”

She fluttered her eyelashes. “Partner,” she corrected. “He’s used to it. All part of the job.”

“Did you see Min, or talk about her last night?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. In fact very few words were exchanged between Tom and I.” She met his gaze and held it a second. “This won’t become public knowledge will it? I don’t want the clinic compromised.”

Jackman stared back at her. “This is a missing person investigation. I’m not in a position to give any guarantees.”

Jackman closed the interview and wandered over to take a closer look at the photos on the dresser while Jenny gave her contact details to Davies. His eyes brushed several featuring two boys taken at various ages and rested on a row at the bottom in leather frames. These were recent photos taken of Jenny, dressed up for a night out. He picked up the one on the end. The frame was scuffed, as if it had been knocked. Jenny was at the front of a small group of women, her arm hooked around another woman’s shoulder, her free hand raising a glass to the camera.

Davies snapped her notebook shut, stood and handed over her card.

The door shook as it shut behind them. Jackman immediately heard the sound of locks being reapplied.

As they climbed into the car and battled with seatbelts, Davies shot Jackman a sideways glance. “What do you think?”

He wound down his window. The air was cool and fresh, a welcome respite after the stickiness of the day. “That Min has a major problem which gives her every reason to go off somewhere and mull it over.”

“So we’re wasting our time?”

“I’m not sure. What do you make of Jenny Walters?”

Davies was silent for a moment. “Bit overdressed and made up for her age. Could be her work face.” Her words trailed off.

Jackman ran his tongue across the back of his teeth in thought, said nothing.

“Maybe there was more to it?” Davies continued. “I imagine Tom’s handsome boy band look might catch her eye.”

Jackman thought back to the photos on the dresser. Jenny Walters certainly enjoyed a night out with the girls. And there wasn’t a photograph of her with her partner. He considered the CCTV footage from the evening before – their clandestine meeting. They didn’t know they were being watched yet there was no intimacy in their body language, no hint of familiarity between them. He paused to massage the pads of his hands into his weary eyes, before he spoke, “Tom was the last person to see her alive, right?”

“So far.”

“The fact that he was pressing for a private abortion could give him a motive. Where would he get that kind of cash?”

“Background checks showed his dad’s a doctor, mother a secondary school teacher. They live in Loxley Road, in one of the big detached houses at the far end. Can’t be short of a bob or two.”

“What if they refused to help? Or maybe he couldn’t tell them? I imagine they’d be very disappointed at their only son’s career ambitions being dashed at this stage in his studies.”

“Maybe she wanted to keep the baby and it became a problem?”

“In any event he chose to keep it from us. Why?” Jackman said. “I think we should keep a close eye on him. If he’s involved he might lead us to her.”

Jackman stared out into the night and percolated his thoughts. Arranging surveillance required authorisation from the assistant chief constable, organising a team of officers, a briefing. This wasn’t something they could set up instantly. And he needed something, right now.

“Tom Steele’s been dropped back home, right?”

Davies checked her watch. “Yes. I got uniform to give him a lift. He should have landed about the time we arrived here.”

“Right. Think we’ll get a couple of detectives to hang around and watch his house tonight. By the morning we should be able to get a surveillance team in place.”

Davies sat quietly, texting on her phone beside him, whilst Jackman made a few calls. When he finished, she pocketed her phone and inserted the key into the ignition. “Where to now?”

He narrowed his eyes, “I’m thinking the pub?”

“Wonderful idea!”

He turned his head to face her. “You don’t change.”

Davies smiled. “Oh, come on,” she cried, “give a girl a break. I don’t get out much these days.”

He gave a short laugh. “Okay, only if you promise to behave. We just need to make a quick detour first.”

He stared at the computer screen, his fingers navigating the keys like water rippling across the stones of a shallow stream. He moved quickly, typing each word like it was his last, although he knew he had all the time in the world. He was calling the shots now. He was making the decisions.

A last read through. A ragged breath, drawn tightly, sent a rush of adrenalin fizzing through his veins. He pressed the save button. The final piece of his plan was in place. Now it was time to execute it.

Chapter
Eleven

Jackman could hear Erik’s tail thumping as he pushed open his front door. He followed the sound to the living room.

Celia looked up from the sofa and flashed a wide smile that exposed a row of perfect white teeth. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hey!” Jackman bent down, encased his daughter in a hug and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

“Thought I’d surprise you,” she said. Her face was clear of make-up and decorated around the edge with messy strands of white-blonde hair that had escaped from the loose tie at the nape of her neck. “And I rescued this runt from Angela next door.” Erik was curled up beside her, tongue hanging out to the side, tail still beating the cushions.

Jackman rolled his eyes. “She’s meant to walk him, not babysit him.”

“Think she likes the company.” Celia’s yellow vest puckered as she stretched her elbows back to reveal a blue stud in her navel, just above the waistline of her denims.

“How was the drive up from Southampton?”

“Fine, apart from the dreaded roadworks on the M40. Took me almost three hours.”

Jackman suddenly remembered Davies who was hovering in the hallway. “Come on in, Annie,” he called.

Davies’ ashen face appeared around the doorway. “Sorry, didn’t want to intrude.”

Jackman waved her in. “Don’t be silly. Celia, you remember Annie Davies?”

Celia looked up and smiled. “Course. Nice to see you again.”

Jackman turned back to his daughter, “You eaten?”

“I ordered Chinese. There’s some crispy beef and noodles left in the kitchen for you.”

Jackman smiled inwardly at how his daughter had grown accustomed to his unsociable hours. She didn’t bat an eye that he wasn’t home when she arrived. But still the warm smile greeted him on his return. “Great, I’m starving. Have to go out again, I’m afraid. Got a case on.”

“Ahhh.” Celia turned her attention back to the television where a girl was playing a keyboard on the rooftop of a high rise.

“What are you watching?” Annie asked, as she squeezed herself into the gap at the end of the sofa.

“
Coyote Ugly
. Love this film.” Celia huddled up with Erik, who licked her forehead in pleasure. “Mum used to watch it.”

“Oooh, me too,” Annie said.

Jackman watched as both women became engrossed in the film. He was dying to ask Celia about her studies, how things were going in Southampton, but he could see that she was winding down from her journey. Plenty of time for that later.

A rumble in his belly sent him through to the kitchen. He opened a drawer, retrieved his mobile phone charger, the reason he’d called home, and placed it next to his car keys on the side. Although there was a drawer full of them at the station, he hated sorting through to find one that would fit his old phone that Celia affectionately called ‘the brick’.

Jackman emptied the remaining cold noodles over the crispy beef and called back into the lounge, “Want any food, Annie?”

“No thanks,” she said. “Got to get rid of these love handles.”

Both women chuckled together as he leant against the side and ate the noodles out of the carton. He glanced across at his daughter through the open door. She looked more like her mother every day – the same slender frame, long arms and giraffe neckline, that white-blonde Nordic hair. In fact, the only thing she had inherited from her father were the pale green eyes. ‘Striking eyes.’ Alice had called them. The eyes that had initially attracted her to him.

Striking eyes. His mind switched to Min Li. He reached for his phone and pulled up the photo Davies had sent him earlier.

He was still awaiting details of her father’s business from the Chinese authorities. The bureaucracy associated with international liaison irritated him. It would be quicker to take the eleven-hour flight and dig it up himself.

Jackman rolled his shoulders. During his early years in the police he had struggled to settle. He missed the excitement of his old career in the Royal Marines: the travel, the unpredictability, the camaraderie of his colleagues. Dealing with shoplifters, domestic disputes and petty theft just left him numb. But his first murder case had changed everything. Still in uniform, he was tasked with guarding the scene of a stabbing of a young man at a small corner pub in East London. He’d watched the detectives arrive, flash their badges, climb over the tape in their sharp suits. Their very presence demanded respect. And the relief on the uniform sergeant’s face at handing over the crime scene to them was palpable. That’s the moment when everything changed for him, when he discovered what he really wanted to do.

Officers like Reilly frowned upon Jackman’s ‘hands-on’ approach to investigation. In his view, senior officers were expected to sit behind a desk, bark orders at their team, set strategy for the case. But Jackman wasn’t interested in spreadsheets, targets and ticking boxes. Frankly, the bureaucracy and the politics of the senior echelons of the police force, the budgetary constraints and management meetings grated away at him. All he wanted, all he had ever wanted was to piece together the evidence to solve the crime and catch the really bad guys. Jackman took one last look at Min, slipped his phone into his pocket and forked another mouthful of crispy beef into his mouth. There had to be something there – hidden away in the background, something that he was missing.

Chapter
Twelve

A wet sponge touched my nose. I threw my eyes open. It was not a sponge. I shuddered, darted back. A rat. I opened my mouth to scream but only a hoarsely coated grunt gushed out. It was enough to scare the animal. It scrabbled up the walls in the half-light and disappeared from sight
.

I recoiled. Thoughts of it, sniffing at me, crawling on me as I slept made me wince. I hugged my arms into myself, my eyes scanning the surrounding walls for more creatures lurking in the shadows
.

Yet a part of me yearned for it. Yearned for some company in this black cavern
.

I scrunched my body together tighter. Why was I here? Apart from a cut to my head and a few bruises and grazes, I hadn’t been attacked. The silver bracelet my parents bought me for my eighteenth birthday still hung around my wrist
.

Surely I hadn’t been taken? My father was considered wealthy in China, but not by Western standards. Our apartment in Beijing was reasonably sized but not huge, and certainly not opulent – we still had my grandmother’s old sofa, the woven mat beside the fire that I played on as a kid
.

Kidnapped. The word made me shudder. Had my father upset somebody back home for his family to be punished in this way? It seemed unlikely, he was the most amiable person I knew. Or was it someone from the UK, who had spotted what they considered a rich Chinese girl, attempting to extort money from her family?