Human Remains (41 page)

It takes a while for me to relax in here, but when that feeling comes it feels good. They have nothing they can charge me with, despite their best efforts, despite their crass need to try to humiliate me into saying something incriminating. I couldn’t incriminate myself even if I wanted to, because I’ve done nothing – NOTHING – wrong. I know it and they know it. It is deeply satisfying, this warm thrill of vindication spreading through my whole body. I sit down in my favourite armchair and let myself daydream, picturing the beauty of the transformations I’ve observed and loving them, loving them all.

‘Sod it,’ Sam said, after half an hour of sitting in the car with nothing at all happening. He turned on the engine.

‘Thank goodness. Can we go to the police station now, please?’

He looked at me closely. ‘Are you OK? I’m sorry, I didn’t think – seeing him again…’

‘It’s not that,’ I said, quickly, although I’d just about had a heart attack when Colin had looked up the road directly to where we were sitting. ‘I need to get back to work…’

‘I told you,’ he said, heading back towards the main road, ‘they won’t be expecting you; you’re still supposed to be on compassionate leave. And besides, we need to catch up with someone far more important.’

As it turned out, Lindsay Brown lived just a bit further down the hill towards the town centre from Colin. It was a fairly substantial house that had been divided into flats. Lindsay and Audrey shared the bottom floor.

‘Oh,’ she said, opening the door before we’d even had a chance to knock.

‘Lindsay?’ asked Sam. ‘I’m from the
Chronicle
. You spoke to one of my colleagues, I believe?’

‘Yeah, um… I’m just on my way to work.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, looking genuinely apologetic. ‘I thought I’d be able to catch you before you left.’

She hesitated, one hand on the door, looking from Sam to me and back again. ‘Well, you’re here now. I can spare five minutes. You want to come in?’

The living room was neat, all the furniture old and mismatched but cosy nonetheless, the kitchen through a big arch. Last night’s washing-up in the sink. ‘Do you want a drink?’ she asked. ‘Tea, or something?’

‘That would be wonderful, thank you. Do you mind if I use your loo?’

‘At the back,’ she said, filling the kettle, and Sam scuttled off down the corridor. I sat awkwardly perched on the edge of a sunken sofa. ‘You go around in pairs, do you?’ she asked me, over the noise of the water boiling.

‘Oh, um – no. I’m just – er – shadowing him.’

She looked baffled. ‘What – like work experience?’

‘Kind of.’

Clearly I looked far too old to be doing work experience on a newspaper, but to tell her the truth would take far too long.

By the time Sam came back Lindsay had placed three mugs of tea on the table, along with a bowl of sugar and some spoons. I was ravenous all of a sudden and was on the verge of asking if she had any biscuits.

‘Do you mind if I…?’ As well as the notebook and pen he’d fished out from his canvas bag, Sam waved his phone at Lindsay. ‘I’m just really bad at taking notes, I always miss things…’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Thanks.’

He found the voice recorder function on the phone and put it on the coffee table in front of her.

‘Have you and Audrey shared the flat for long?’

She cradled her mug of tea and, looking at how relaxed she was, I could have easily predicted her answer.

‘No, just a few months. My last flatmate went travelling. Audrey answered an ad – in the
Chronicle
, in fact. Must have been… erm… February? March?’

‘Did you get on well?’

‘Yeah, I guess. I didn’t see much of her, to be honest.’

‘She went out a lot?’

‘She was round at her boyfriend’s, most of the time. She didn’t sleep over there that often, but I was usually in bed by the time she got in.’

‘That would be Vaughn Bradstock?’

‘Yes. Funny old thing, he was. But they seemed to get on, until last week, that is.’

‘They had a row?’ Sam shifted in his seat, took a gulp of tea.

‘They split up. I think it was all her idea.’

‘Do you know why she finished it?’ I asked.

Sam shot me a look of surprise – it was his interview, after all – but I felt like a spare part and, besides, I was curious.

‘She said he was just a bit dull. She liked him a lot, but I think she was looking for a bit more – excitement? He collects stamps, for God’s sake. Who collects stamps in this day and age?’

‘Was she really upset by it all?’ I asked. ‘I mean – do you think she was depressed?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. She had a bit of a cry and then started planning a night out with her friends.’

I frowned at this.

‘So when did you last see her?’ Sam said then, getting back to his list of questions.

‘Friday. She was going out after work – someone’s birthday, I think. She was quite excited about it. She wanted to go out on the pull.’

‘You saw her go?’

‘Yeah. She was all dressed up; she looked gorgeous. I remember thinking she was quite likely to pull looking like that.’

‘But she didn’t come home?’

‘I went away for the weekend, to see some friends in York. When I came back on Sunday evening I knew straight away she hadn’t been back. The clothes she’d tried on before going out on Friday were all over the bed still.’

‘And you rang the police?’

‘I sent her a text and tried to call her, but her phone was switched off. I thought about ringing Vaughn but then I thought, maybe she was with some other bloke. I didn’t want to involve him.’ Lindsay put her empty mug down on the table and looked pointedly at her watch.

‘Sorry,’ Sam said. ‘Just one more question – so when did you report her missing?’

‘I rang her at work first thing this morning. At Arnold’s – that’s where she works. I wanted to just check she was OK; after all, she hadn’t taken any clothes with her… or anything like that. And they said she hadn’t come in – she’s always very punctual. The girl I spoke to was really worried when I said I hadn’t seen her. So after that I phoned the police.’

‘Do you know who that was? The girl you spoke to?’

‘Cheryl, I think she said. I seem to remember Audrey talking about her, I think they got on well. Cheryl said she’d last seen her walking up the hill on Friday night. She didn’t want to wait around for a taxi. She was walking up the hill on her own.’

‘Can we please go to the station now?’ I said, when we were back in the car.

Sam was sitting in the driver’s seat. He hadn’t turned on the engine; he was staring straight ahead with his hands on the steering wheel.

‘Sam?’

‘Don’t you want to go and talk to Cheryl?’ he asked. His eyes were bright with excitement. I hadn’t seen him like this before. Had he been like this when we’d sat and had coffee in town, the first time we’d met? I’d been so full of suspicion then – maybe he’d toned it down.

‘I want to go and make sure they’re looking for Audrey,’ I said.

‘Try ringing them again,’ he said, turning on the engine at last. ‘If there’s anyone there, I’ll drop you off on the way.’

There was still no bloody answer, of course, from anyone. They were all in the morning meeting, which was where I should be by now. I wondered what would happen if I failed to turn up for work. Would they even notice?

Arnold and Partners took up the whole of the second floor of a building behind the Market Square, overlooking the back of the bingo hall that had been a cinema when I’d been a teenager. We found a space in the Pay and Display car park and walked across to the building.

‘Is this what you do all day?’ I asked. ‘You wander around and pester people?’

‘I’m not pestering anyone,’ he said. ‘Am I?’

‘Hmm.’ I had my arms crossed over my chest. At the bottom of the hill I could see the roof of the police station, covered in aerials and antennae, all Sixties grey concrete and pebbledash.

‘If anything I should be in the editorial meeting,’ he said. ‘But technically it’s my day off, so they won’t miss me.’

‘Why are we doing this on your day off?’

He stopped, then, and turned to face me. ‘I’m starting to wish I’d just dropped you off at the station first thing.’

‘So am I!’

We stared at each other.

‘Don’t you want to help find Audrey?’ he asked.

‘It’s not our job to find Audrey!’ I exploded. ‘Why don’t you trust the police to do it?’

‘I’m willing to bet they haven’t got as far with this as I have,’ he said, still perfectly calm.

‘They can only work with intelligence received,’ I said. ‘And at the moment I’ve got crucial stuff to tell them, and I’m farting around outside an accountants’ with Nancy Drew.’

I could tell by his expression that he didn’t know who Nancy Drew was. ‘Or the Hardy Boys, or whatever they were called,’ I said, lamely.

‘You don’t have to come in with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick you up later if you want. Just send me a text. Or… whatever.’

‘Fine,’ I said, giving him a backward wave and stomping off down the hill, trying to look purposeful.

The morning meeting was just finishing when I arrived. Trigger and Kate piled back into the office talking and laughing without even registering that I was sitting at my desk. ‘Did I miss much?’ I said, in the end, as much to remind myself that I was alive and breathing as anything else.

‘Nah,’ said Trigger. ‘The DI’s got his knickers in a twist because the Chief might put in an appearance this afternoon. Clear desk policy and ties on, you know. Welcome back, by the way. Are you – er – alright?’

As if I’d been off with the flu or something.

‘Thanks,’ I answered. ‘I’m much better now.’

Kate had gone next door, presumably to round up her mates for a coffee break.

I found the incident log, by searching for Lindsay Brown and the address where Sam and I had had tea this morning.

That was it. That was literally it. Nothing further on the report. It didn’t mean nothing was happening, of course, just that the log hadn’t been updated since – I looked at it again – 9.15 this morning.

Something else was bothering me, too. Keith Topping had said they hadn’t got very far with the Automatic Number Plate Recognition database because there weren’t cameras in the right places, and the time window was just too big to provide a useful dataset. But this window of time was much smaller… and there was an ANPR camera on the main road heading away from the Market Square.

I opened the ANPR software and started filling in a query. The field for the vehicle registration number I left blank. I isolated the cameras to be included down to just one – Baysbury Road, northbound. And the time – what time had Cheryl Dann said goodbye to her?

I pulled out my mobile phone and sent a text to Sam.

While I was waiting for a response I put in an experimental time period for the search just to see what came back: 11pm to 12 midnight. Just one hour, one camera, and the system reacted as if I was forcing it to do manual labour. The processor on the workstation started whirring alarmingly. I opened up the Police National Computer in another window and performed a search for vehicles linked to Mr Colin Friedland of Briarstone, giving DI Frost as my authorising officer.

It seemed he had a Fiesta, blue in colour.

A minute and a half after I’d started the ANPR query, it came back with 1,759 hits. I put the registration number of Colin’s Fiesta into the search results box.

No results.

My phone bleeped with a response from Sam.

I didn’t bother to reply. I felt cross that Colin’s car hadn’t been on the Baysbury Road that night when I’d fully expected it to be. And yet… there was something else. I felt so close to it, the thrill of being right and the possibility of finding something that might be useful. Something that might make a difference…

I went back to the query and changed the time parameters to ten minutes either side of midnight.

This time the data came back quite quickly: 259 results. Still a lot, but the likelihood was that, if Audrey had got into a car after leaving her friend, it would have gone past that camera.

I added a filter to the results for vehicles that had any alerts on them. This was unlikely to bring up anything interesting, after all, but the alternative would be to look through each of the 259 vehicles one by one in the hope of coming up with something. Fifteen alerts. I scrolled through them: No Insurance… No MOT… No Tax… several were flagged by the main office, so were likely to be linked to known offenders. Some of them probably with a curfew that meant they shouldn’t have been out at that time of night and were therefore most likely up to no good.

Theft of Number Plate.

I clicked on the crime report number and to access the details. The owner was identified as Mr Garth Pendlebury, and the theft had taken place in Wright’s Way, the road that ran behind County Hall. Mr Pendlebury worked at the council, and had noticed the theft when he returned to his car after finishing work on Thursday evening. No suspects. No other vehicles targeted in the area. The vehicle was identified as a white Volvo V40 estate.