Ghigau 7 part 2

Five minutes later Sam was in DI Conway’s small, but well organised, office, waiting for him to finish a call. On the wall were the hallmarks of a successful career, from graduation photo to the King’s Police Medal. At forty-seven he had time to make Superintendent, possibly higher. He was a career policeman, always eying the next level of promotion, keen to be off the streets and behind a desk. She, conversely, had just wanted to catch bad people, people like the ones she grew up with. An hour spent at her desk, filling out endless reports, was torture for her. Sam had fought hard to get to this point in her career — only a quarter of sergeants in the police were women, that figure dropped even further if you counted only detectives — and she resented every minute she wasn’t out there catching criminals. 

    While she waited for Conway to finish his call she wondered if a black man found it hard mixing in the institutionally racist upper echelons of the police force, for in Sam’s opinion they were racist, and sexist and every other ‘ist. The public face of the force was increasingly woke but the private one was as deeply asleep as ever. She acknowledged this fact to herself whilst at the same time understanding that it was woven in to the very fabric of policing. Dealing with the worst members of society, with the murderers and child abusers and wife beaters inured you to prejudice; to a detective it just wasn’t important who you were, or why you did what you did, only that you did it. Should the police care why two young parents beat and starved their two year old child to death? Or just make sure they were caught and punished for their crime? In her mind the ‘why’ was for social workers and politicians to worry about. She was only concerned with the ‘who and the ‘how’.

    “Have you read the file yet?” Conway’s phone call was over and his intelligent eyes were focused on her, and possibly her coffee stain.

    She wondered how he could kept his shirt buttoned and tie on without expiring from the heat.  “Not yet, but I know the name, at least I had occasion to visit a Talbot family last year. I don’t know if it’s them.” She became conscious of feeling queasy, and made a mental note never to drink Prosecco again.

    “It is.” There was a tone in his voice she couldn’t identify. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. The Talbot’s son Jamie was killed last year. You were the attending officer when they got the news.

    “That’s right, I was.” Samantha nodded. The memory had come in to focus now. Delivering the worst news any parent could ever receive. It had been traumatic, for them and for her. It was her final duty as a uniform before her transition to detective.  “What’s happened? Is this to do with the son?”

    “No, it’s the mother, Nikki Talbot.”

    Samantha raised her eyebrows questioningly, “And?”

    “She’s missing. The husband called it in last night. She’d been missing 24 hours at that point.”

    “I remember her, didn’t seem the type to go awol. Strong character as I remember, even in the circumstances she held it together pretty well.” Sam hesitated. “Soo… I’m just wondering why you needed to brief me sir? Is there another angle to it?” She knew that Conway wouldn’t be involved unless there was something more than just a missing person going on.

    Conway paused to think, pressing his fingertips together and pursing his lips. “Mrs Talbot called in a report a month ago. She said she was being stalked and was concerned for her safety. We were in the process of getting Paladin involved.”

    “Did she know the stalker?” Samantha knew that Paladin was the non-profit organisation that worked with the police to combat stalking, and support victims.

    “That’s where it gets difficult,” Conway shrugged. “Everything was anonymous. Cyber stuff only; unsolicited messages on her social media accounts, sexually graphic emails from anonymous addresses. But she was convinced the person knew her because there were intimate details of her life contained in some of the messages.” He added,  “And she specifically did not want the husband to know about it.” 

    This detail jarred her senses, it didn’t fit. she frowned. “Did she suspect her husband of being involved?”

    “Apparently not, she wanted him kept out of it due to his fragile state of mind after the death of the son. Not for any other reasons — according to her.” He paused, “However…”

    “However?” Sam said.

    “That doesn’t mean he isn’t involved in her disappearance, in fact it doesn’t mean anything as far as I’m concerned.” Conway stood and paced slowly. “If something has happened to her, what I don’t want is the force coming off badly by being seen to have reacted too slowly to the stalking report. I want you to investigate her disappearance and establish whether the husband is involved, without letting him know about the stalking, understand?”

    Now she understood why Conway was involved, he didn’t want anything embarrassing happening on his watch. 

    Samantha let out a loud ‘Sheeeshh’. “That’s going to be bloody hard sir, I mean the stalker could be anyone and could be her abductor for all we know, if in fact she has been abducted. What if the husband’s not involved at all?"

    “Look, she may well have just upped sticks and left him, or maybe she’s gone to the mother’s for a rest. But my instinct tells me not. That’s what I want you to find out.” Conway gave her a winning smile. “Read the file. Get Tench to do the leg work, you go and see the husband.” He returned to his desk papers by way of dismissing her, commenting to her back as she left the office, “You have a mark on your blouse by the way.”     

    She faltered but decided to ignore it. Why don’t you ever mention Tench’s sweaty armpits? She thought.

    She read the MISPER file first. There was a statement from Lenny Talbot; she remembered him, tall, good looking guy, rangy build with nice eyes. He had been devastated, only just holding it together when they sat down in their big living room to hear the worst news possible. The wife, she recalled, was more composed, but only just. Samantha had seen the pain in her eyes and how her hands shook uncontrollably. It was a job no officer wanted to do, to bring news of a child’s death, and so it generally fell to the lowest on the pecking order. A family liaison officer always attended as well, but Sam remembered hers was useless that day, offering platitudes and cups of tea with equal lack of effect. 

    Sam had tried to practice her short speech in front of her bathroom mirror that morning, the one that would change lives forever, but that quickly became surreal. She had been nervous and a little unsure of herself when she knocked on the Talbot’s door. In the event, it was the uniform that saved her.  It was an armour without which the pain would seep across from them to you, and you’d be lost.

    Sam read the file. Nikki Talbot had disappeared two days ago. She’d visited a client then left to walk home at around 5pm. That walk took twelve minutes, fifteen if you dawdled. She never got home. Somewhere between Chalk Farm and Primrose Hill she vanished in to thin air. “That’s assuming you made the journey at all,” Sam said quietly to herself. “Perhaps you had other plans; to leave your husband and daughter, start a new life, run off to Paris with some starving artist?”

    But not you, thought Sam, why would you? 

    A successful business, a happy marriage, as far as could be seen at this point. The loss of a child might trigger actions that would otherwise seem irrational, but Sam didn’t like that idea either. It was almost a year ago. Why now?

    The husband, Lenny Talbot, had reported his wife missing after exactly 24 hours. The couple had swapped school pick-up duty that day so he’d collected their daughter Lydia and taken her home but the wife never returned home that evening.    

    Sam leafed through the paperwork, there wasn’t much; a professionally shot photograph of Nikki showed a pretty face, high cheekbones, dark eyes beneath arching brows, neatly plucked, and long, thick glossy-brown hair cut in a fringe that shadowed her eyes; the husband’s statement along with handwritten, rough transcripts of calls he’d made, to the client Nikki had been visiting, ‘Exa’  (Sam tutted disdainfully at that name) and her business partner Hermione Patterson, hospitals, relatives, friends — none had yielded anything out of the ordinary. The thing that wasn’t ordinary was that unbeknownst to her husband, Nikki Talbot had reported a possible crime a few weeks before her disappearance.  In Sam Tate’s mind, the chance of those two things being unconnected was remote. She didn’t believe in coincidences. She wondered about Nikki’s life. It had probably been a nice comfortable one until Sam had knocked on their door and smashed it to smithereens. Was Nikki’s disappearance the last stage of a long decline that started that day? Again, this jarred her senses, her gut told her not.

    A warning marker had been placed on the PNC and the case was already entered on COMPACT — Sam felt guilty at seeing this as it must have been Tench who’d got this done before handing the file over. 

    Next she read the original stalking complaint from Nikki. There were twenty or so printed sheets of paper with emails, Instagram and Facebook messages. She scanned the pages. Most of the messages were non specific, consisting of romantic endearments — you are my sun, my moon, my princess blah blah blah — some were more angry and had references to ‘that pathetic husband of yours’. Some were filled with pornographic descriptions of what the sender would like to do to Nikki Talbot, given the chance. One even mentioned Nikki’s business saying it ‘wasn’t going to give her the life she deserved’. The running theme was — Nikki wasn’t living the right life, she was wasting herself on people who didn’t appreciate her.  ‘No one loves you like I do’

    She would ask Tench to gather anything he could on the social-media and email accounts the messages were originating from, not that she expected much. It could take months to get info out of these tech companies, especially if they were hosted abroad, and when it finally came, it often amounted to nothing.

    The first thing she needed to do was talk to the husband.