report that she was abducted from her apartment in the early hours of this morning.'
'She can't have been.'
Tina was taken aback by the firmness of his response. 'Why not?'
'Because she phoned me from Gatwick airport at eleven o'clock last night. She was just about to board a plane to go on holiday. I could hear the noise in the background so she was definitely at the airport. Who was it who reported this?'
'A friend of hers,' Tina answered, aware of the doubt in her own voice.
'Well it sounds to me like her friend was playing some sort of joke. Jenny's been talking about this holiday for weeks.'
'Do you have a mobile number I can get her on? So I can speak to her just to satisfy myself that everything's all right?'
He came back to the phone a few seconds later. Tina wrote down the number and thanked him. 'I'm really sorry to have bothered you, sir,' she added. 'The person who made the abduction claim wasn't the most reliable source. As it happens, the doorman of her building said she was off on holiday to Spain, but unfortunately we still have to follow up every report otherwise we wouldn't be doing our job. I hope I haven't caused you too much distress.'
Brakspear said that he understood and that she hadn't, and Tina ended the call.
She immediately rang the number he'd given her for Jenny but an automated voice told her that the phone was currently switched off and that she should try again later. Somehow, she'd known that might happen.
According to everyone she'd talked to bar Rob Fallon, Jenny Brakspear wasn't missing, she was on holiday. Except it seemed she was holidaying in different places. The doorman, John Gentleman, had said it was Barbados, but when Tina had suggested to Jenny's father that he'd said Spain, Roy Brakspear hadn't contradicted her.
It could have been an innocent oversight, of course. After all, the poor guy had been half asleep. But taken along with everything else, her uneasy feeling remained, bolstered by the fact that Jenny's father had been so adamant that his daughter couldn't have been abducted. Tina wasn't a parent, but she was pretty damn sure that if a police officer had rung her in the middle of the night to give her the same news she wouldn't have been anything like as confident as him, and would have demanded further investigation.
But he hadn't.
And Jenny wasn't answering her phone.
Tina knew her boss, DCI Knox, wouldn't allow her to put too much time into this. They had way too much on at the moment, and without anything concrete to back up her case it was inevitably going to end up on the backburner. She'd keep trying Jenny's number, and would call her work too, when she got the chance, to see if they could verify the story. But right now that was the best she could do.
She yawned again and rubbed her eyes. Only another hour and a half of the shift before she finished and it became someone else's problem. Just enough time to file a report.
But first, there were a couple of things she needed to do.
Reaching into the bottom drawer of her desk, she pulled a stainless-steel hipflask from her make-up bag and slipped it into her jeans pocket, resisting the urge to take a slug then and there. Then, popping an unlit cigarette into her mouth, and ignoring the guilty voice in her head that told her she couldn't keep on like this, she got up from her desk and headed to the toilet.
Monday
Nine
I slept badly, and I slept late, not waking up for the final time until gone eleven o'clock. Straight away I recalled the previous night's events, but this time they felt like a bad, strangely distant dream. Bright sunlight filtered in through the curtains, and outside I could hear the sound of traffic. I lay staring at the ceiling for several minutes, relieved at the normality of the scene but still unable to extinguish the memory of the man trying to cut my throat in the underground car park, and the nagging question of what had happened to the girl I'd been planning to make love to only
'She can't have been.'
Tina was taken aback by the firmness of his response. 'Why not?'
'Because she phoned me from Gatwick airport at eleven o'clock last night. She was just about to board a plane to go on holiday. I could hear the noise in the background so she was definitely at the airport. Who was it who reported this?'
'A friend of hers,' Tina answered, aware of the doubt in her own voice.
'Well it sounds to me like her friend was playing some sort of joke. Jenny's been talking about this holiday for weeks.'
'Do you have a mobile number I can get her on? So I can speak to her just to satisfy myself that everything's all right?'
He came back to the phone a few seconds later. Tina wrote down the number and thanked him. 'I'm really sorry to have bothered you, sir,' she added. 'The person who made the abduction claim wasn't the most reliable source. As it happens, the doorman of her building said she was off on holiday to Spain, but unfortunately we still have to follow up every report otherwise we wouldn't be doing our job. I hope I haven't caused you too much distress.'
Brakspear said that he understood and that she hadn't, and Tina ended the call.
She immediately rang the number he'd given her for Jenny but an automated voice told her that the phone was currently switched off and that she should try again later. Somehow, she'd known that might happen.
According to everyone she'd talked to bar Rob Fallon, Jenny Brakspear wasn't missing, she was on holiday. Except it seemed she was holidaying in different places. The doorman, John Gentleman, had said it was Barbados, but when Tina had suggested to Jenny's father that he'd said Spain, Roy Brakspear hadn't contradicted her.
It could have been an innocent oversight, of course. After all, the poor guy had been half asleep. But taken along with everything else, her uneasy feeling remained, bolstered by the fact that Jenny's father had been so adamant that his daughter couldn't have been abducted. Tina wasn't a parent, but she was pretty damn sure that if a police officer had rung her in the middle of the night to give her the same news she wouldn't have been anything like as confident as him, and would have demanded further investigation.
But he hadn't.
And Jenny wasn't answering her phone.
Tina knew her boss, DCI Knox, wouldn't allow her to put too much time into this. They had way too much on at the moment, and without anything concrete to back up her case it was inevitably going to end up on the backburner. She'd keep trying Jenny's number, and would call her work too, when she got the chance, to see if they could verify the story. But right now that was the best she could do.
She yawned again and rubbed her eyes. Only another hour and a half of the shift before she finished and it became someone else's problem. Just enough time to file a report.
But first, there were a couple of things she needed to do.
Reaching into the bottom drawer of her desk, she pulled a stainless-steel hipflask from her make-up bag and slipped it into her jeans pocket, resisting the urge to take a slug then and there. Then, popping an unlit cigarette into her mouth, and ignoring the guilty voice in her head that told her she couldn't keep on like this, she got up from her desk and headed to the toilet.
Monday
Nine
I slept badly, and I slept late, not waking up for the final time until gone eleven o'clock. Straight away I recalled the previous night's events, but this time they felt like a bad, strangely distant dream. Bright sunlight filtered in through the curtains, and outside I could hear the sound of traffic. I lay staring at the ceiling for several minutes, relieved at the normality of the scene but still unable to extinguish the memory of the man trying to cut my throat in the underground car park, and the nagging question of what had happened to the girl I'd been planning to make love to only
Similar Books
