forgotten. I should go. I’m already late.
On my way to the car, I salute the mortuary.
“Good night, April. Good night, Janet.”
I don’t get an answer, but I bet April is still smiling.
6
Sharp means sharp, and today no one is sharper, smarter, or more bushy-tailed than me.
Not long into Jackson’s morning briefing, I get my moment of glory.
He summarizes the result of the meeting at the mortuary yesterday, then adds, “Fiona Griffiths will be getting her notes onto Groove as soon as she can. Right, Fiona?”
“Already done, sir,” I say.
“You’ve done it?” He doesn’t believe me.
“All done. I didn’t want to waste time.”
He raises his eyebrows—which have turned shaggy before their time, so the gesture is a bit of a signature look for him. Either he’s impressed or (more likely) he doesn’t believe that I’ve done a decent job. But I have. I came in early and whizzed through it. I learned to type at Cambridge, and I’m blitzkrieg fast.
“Okay. Good. That means you lot can read all about it.”
Jackson delivers a few other nuggets—the most important of which is that we’ve now got the full case files from Social Services up on the system—then hands over to Ken Hughes. Hughes summarizes the first batch of findings from the door-to-door work. Eighty-six Allison Street had accrued a good bit of hostility from its neighbors, being variously described as a drug den, a squat, a place taken over by the homeless, and much more.
“Putting aside more fanciful ideas,” says Hughes in his depressive, and ever so slightly hostile, monotone, “the general picture seems to be this.”
He tells us that the house had been rented for some years, then fell vacant around two years ago. Landlord not yet traced. For some time, it just stood there, getting quietly damper and older. Then the back door was forced, possibly by kids out to cause trouble, possibly by a drug dealer wanting a place to operate from, possibly by a homeless person wanting a roof for the night. In any case, once the back door was gone, the house began to attract trouble.
From the visual evidence, the house had certainly been used as a squat for a period longer than the Mancinis’ few weeks of residence. It was highly likely that drugs had been taken in the house for some considerable period. If drugs were used there, they were probably dealt there too. If drugs had been bought and sold there, then it was likely enough that there were women selling themselves for drugs, although the place wasn’t remotely nice enough to have prospered as even the most basic of brothels. (At this point, there’s a muttered comment from one of the lads nearest Hughes, and there’s a burst of hard male laughter. Hughes catches the comment and glowers at the culprit, but we girls, standing at the back and edge of the room, are excluded from what would most certainly have been an extremely hilarious observation. Ah well.)
So much for the background. Specifics. Janet Mancini had definitely been seen around the place for the past several weeks. Farideh, the girl I’d talked to at the convenience shop, had reported seeing Janet several times. She remembered her hair—which meant nothing, because Janet’s hair color had been widely mentioned in the press—but she also correctly described some clothing and an item of jewelry that had been found at the house. She also—and this was a clincher—remembered selling Janet a frozen Hawaiian pizza whose wrapper featured in the long inventory of the rubbish that had been found at the house.
“Hawaiian, sir?”
This question from Mervyn Rogers, who has been taking notes. His pen is poised and his face is serious.
Hughes is suspicious, because he thinks Rogers is taking the piss (which he is), but he’s not sure enough to make a thing out of it, so he just confirms the pizza identification and moves on. A little ripple of amusement runs round the room and includes us girls this time. We’re
On my way to the car, I salute the mortuary.
“Good night, April. Good night, Janet.”
I don’t get an answer, but I bet April is still smiling.
6
Sharp means sharp, and today no one is sharper, smarter, or more bushy-tailed than me.
Not long into Jackson’s morning briefing, I get my moment of glory.
He summarizes the result of the meeting at the mortuary yesterday, then adds, “Fiona Griffiths will be getting her notes onto Groove as soon as she can. Right, Fiona?”
“Already done, sir,” I say.
“You’ve done it?” He doesn’t believe me.
“All done. I didn’t want to waste time.”
He raises his eyebrows—which have turned shaggy before their time, so the gesture is a bit of a signature look for him. Either he’s impressed or (more likely) he doesn’t believe that I’ve done a decent job. But I have. I came in early and whizzed through it. I learned to type at Cambridge, and I’m blitzkrieg fast.
“Okay. Good. That means you lot can read all about it.”
Jackson delivers a few other nuggets—the most important of which is that we’ve now got the full case files from Social Services up on the system—then hands over to Ken Hughes. Hughes summarizes the first batch of findings from the door-to-door work. Eighty-six Allison Street had accrued a good bit of hostility from its neighbors, being variously described as a drug den, a squat, a place taken over by the homeless, and much more.
“Putting aside more fanciful ideas,” says Hughes in his depressive, and ever so slightly hostile, monotone, “the general picture seems to be this.”
He tells us that the house had been rented for some years, then fell vacant around two years ago. Landlord not yet traced. For some time, it just stood there, getting quietly damper and older. Then the back door was forced, possibly by kids out to cause trouble, possibly by a drug dealer wanting a place to operate from, possibly by a homeless person wanting a roof for the night. In any case, once the back door was gone, the house began to attract trouble.
From the visual evidence, the house had certainly been used as a squat for a period longer than the Mancinis’ few weeks of residence. It was highly likely that drugs had been taken in the house for some considerable period. If drugs were used there, they were probably dealt there too. If drugs had been bought and sold there, then it was likely enough that there were women selling themselves for drugs, although the place wasn’t remotely nice enough to have prospered as even the most basic of brothels. (At this point, there’s a muttered comment from one of the lads nearest Hughes, and there’s a burst of hard male laughter. Hughes catches the comment and glowers at the culprit, but we girls, standing at the back and edge of the room, are excluded from what would most certainly have been an extremely hilarious observation. Ah well.)
So much for the background. Specifics. Janet Mancini had definitely been seen around the place for the past several weeks. Farideh, the girl I’d talked to at the convenience shop, had reported seeing Janet several times. She remembered her hair—which meant nothing, because Janet’s hair color had been widely mentioned in the press—but she also correctly described some clothing and an item of jewelry that had been found at the house. She also—and this was a clincher—remembered selling Janet a frozen Hawaiian pizza whose wrapper featured in the long inventory of the rubbish that had been found at the house.
“Hawaiian, sir?”
This question from Mervyn Rogers, who has been taking notes. His pen is poised and his face is serious.
Hughes is suspicious, because he thinks Rogers is taking the piss (which he is), but he’s not sure enough to make a thing out of it, so he just confirms the pizza identification and moves on. A little ripple of amusement runs round the room and includes us girls this time. We’re
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