Ghigau 27

27. Tuesday 18th

Sam Tate sat at her desk sipping her drink and fanning herself ineffectually with a sheaf of papers. Some clever-dick had told her that hot tea would cool her down more efficiently than a cold diet-coke; it wasn’t working, and she could already feel the back of her neck prickling with sweat.

    Tench sat beside her on his faux-leather chair that rolled on castors and had worn a groove in the linoleum between their desks. Every time he shifted his big frame, the chair squeaked and groaned in complaint. The faint aroma of male perspiration coming off him, mingling with the smell of her tea, made Sam feel mildly bilious.      

    DI Conway crossed the office, carrying a thermos full of iced apple-juice, to calls of ‘Dying of heatstroke here boss!’ and ‘Can I wear my trunks in tomorrow boss?’ He ignored them and closed the door to his air-conditioned office without hesitating.

    Tench snorted. “He’s a high-and-mighty one isn’t he.” He smiled as he said this, but there was a hint of something resentful below the surface.

    Sam said ruefully, “Yeah, but a smart one.”

    Tench’s response was just a gruff “Huh.”

    The two of them had been poring over information from the cctv tapes for an hour or more. After taking advice, they had confirmed that the Mercedes model was indeed not the same as Alan O’Donnell’s. A call to Mercedes headquarters in the UK had been met with a demand for an official written request to obtain the names and addresses of all domestic buyers of this particular model since its introduction a year earlier, which turned out to be only sixteen purchasers. Conway was making that happen as they spoke. Tench had expressed surprise at the low number of sales until he was informed of the price, between ££200,000 and £300,000.

    “Definitely some rich twat then,” he said, throwing his pen down on the desktop and leaning back so far in his chair that Sam worried it would collapse. 

    “Maybe, but not necessarily,” Sam said thoughtfully, “it could be a limo company or a big corporation or an embassy, something like that.”

    Tench nodded, “You’re right. I guess I was letting my dislike of rich twats colour my judgment there.” 

    “You hate rich people?” Sam said, raising her eyebrows.

    “I said dislike. Why? Have you got a soft-spot for them then?” Tench said, his expression made clear exactly what he thought about that.

    Sam ignored the jibe. “I think bringing bias to the table is a mistake for a police officer.” Sam said,

    Tench coloured up immediately. “Maybe you’re biased.”

    “Against what?” Sam wasn’t in the mood to be challenged.

    “Oh, I dunno, fat detectives, men in general,” Tench spread his palms.

    It was Sam’s turn to flush. “That’s bull-shit.”

Someone sniggered behind them. Tench stood and pushed his chair back a little too hard so that it span round and waltzed away into the aisle. He grunted something unintelligible and lumbered off towards the men’s bathroom.

    “Why don’t you two get a room?” Some wag from the burglary squad quipped.

    “Fuck off, was Sam’s response, without turning her head. 

    She tutted to herself, ‘why do I let him annoy me like that’ she fumed silently. It wasn’t as if she cared what Tench, or anyone else for that matter, thought of her. She was confident in her own abilities and considered herself a good copper. But somehow she found herself on the wrong end of these kind of exchanges too often. Was she biased? Did she allow the fact that she found Tench’s stone-age views and outdated policing methods distasteful, to colour her judgement? Did it affect her ability to trust him? These were questions she found difficult to answer. She shook her head, sloughing off her low mood, and turned back to her paperwork, opening her notebook to read what she had written after her visit to the Booth’s house.

    Catherine Booth’s interview had not turned out as Sam expected. Once the dam had broken, she had talked without pause for almost an hour. It was a confession of a sort, but not one that Sam intended to do much about.. Catherine’s revelations about her feelings for her missing friend and her admission that it was she who had sent the messages, had surprised Sam, but somehow they were not a shock. 

    Sam’s perception of Catherine was of an oddball, a woman who had never found it easy to fit in anywhere; her university, her marriage, her friendships, all were challenges to her, rather than experiences to be savoured or enjoyed.  She appeared to endure life rather than embrace it. Every decision she had made since the age of eighteen had really been about Nikki. Finding a way to be near the object of her affection had shaped her life. Sam could not conceive of living in such a way, waiting for someone else to take away all your pain, she preferred to be the architect of her own future, whatever the result. 

    Catherine’s obsession had led her to do some awful things. She had tried her best to place doubt in Nikki’s mind about her marriage, even when Nikki was still reeling from the shock of losing a son. When Catherine had recounted her recent visit to Lenny’s, Sam immediately saw that, even with Nikki missing and in who-knew-what danger, Catherine had been unable to resist flirting with Lenny, tempting him to be indiscreet in his wife’s absence. It really was unforgivable behaviour, but it wasn’t criminal.

    For Catherine, the moment she had kissed Nikki, and shown her how she really felt, had been the most dramatic event in her life, Sam suspected this wasn’t true for Nikki Talbot. In fact, she guessed that Nikki had already known on some level how Catherine felt and had tolerated it; perhaps because she either pitied, or cared about Catherine as a friend and didn’t want to embarrass her.  She may well have even suspected it was Catherine Booth who was sending her the messages.

    No; Catherine probably had nothing to do with Nikki’s abduction, if indeed that is what it was. On this detail, at least, Sam was satisfied, Catherine Booth was unpleasant and immoral but she was a spectator rather than a combatant.

    Sam shifted the papers on her desk. Tench had returned from the bathroom but gone back to his own desk and was apparently deep in concentration on his own work. Sam wished it didn’t bother her that they irritated each-other sometimes. Still, there were more important things to worry about.

    The more they looked in to Nikki’s disappearance, the less sense it made. Nikki was well liked, had no enemies, was successful in business and had a good marriage. She wasn’t in debt or secretly ill. There had to be an angle that Sam was missing. The only extraordinary thing about the Talbot family was the death of their son a year previously, and Nikki Talbot seemed to have recovered as well as anyone might have been expected to after such a traumatic event. Anyway, there was no history of depression and the daughter Lydia was clearly very dear to both parents. 

    And what if this was all a complete non-starter? What if Nikki Talbot knew exactly what she was doing when she got into that car, and there was no crime here at all? But then, why have false number plates if you have nothing to hide? Why not call and let your husband know where you are? It was baffling.

    As Sam read over her notes from the interview, she lingered over one sentence that she had underlined twice. ‘Interviewee states emphatically did not send the email signed B52’    

    This jarring fact stood out from the rest of the interview. Despite Catherine’s oddness, Sam’s instinct for character told her that this denial was not a lie, or a case of self delusion. So who had sent the cryptic message? And was it significant at all?