Say You're Sorry(128)
Drury appears, sleep-stung.
Blake is still talking. “The owner of the house died in 2009, but Martinez did a deal with the son to keep the lease going.”
“Why does a man need two houses?” asks Drury.
“Exactly my thoughts, boss.” Blake looks pleased with himself. “The son said something else. His old man had an early-model Land Rover. It was kept in the garage of the rented house.”
“Where is it now?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“So Martinez could have had access? That explains why his Lexus is so bloody clean.”
The DCI is fully awake and moving. “Briefing in fifteen. I want a dozen officers with me. Get me aerial maps of the street and the house. See if the council has a floor plan.”
“It’s Christmas, boss.”
Drury curses. “OK, but get me a child protection officer. I want one with us.”
The mood in the incident room has been completely transformed. Exhausted bodies are energized. Tiredness has been forgotten.
Watching and listening, I realize how much I stand apart from these officers. I am an outsider, a civilian. On top of this I’m a psychologist, a profession they mistrust. They imagine that I’m constantly reading their body language, probing for weaknesses or hidden meanings, like a man with x-ray eyes who can peer into the depths of their souls. Such fears are irrational and baseless, but it doesn’t change the reality. Some people cannot relax around a police officer or a priest or an abortionist; the same is true of a psychologist.
Drury’s mobile rings again. He answers it. Hurried. Irritated. It’s the chief constable.
“Yes, sir, I’m on top of this. We have a good lead on where Piper Hadley might be… North Oxford… That’s right, sir… We can link him to the abandoned factory and to both girls… I understand your concerns, sir, but things are under control… In the next hour… As soon as I know.”
Casey emerges from the lift. His tweed jacket has beads of rain on the shoulders and his wet hair looks even more like a helmet than usual. He has spent all morning in the search area, marshaling volunteers. Most of them now want to go home for Christmas dinner.
“What do you want to do, boss?” he asks, flexing the cold from his fingers.
“See how many you can keep in the field,” says Drury. “Call it off when it gets dark.”
The briefing is over. The team assembles downstairs. Vehicles standing ready, engines running. Drury takes the lead car, dressed in a bulletproof vest, a man completely in charge. He hasn’t asked for my help. Hasn’t spoken to me. This is his show.
My mobile is ringing. It’s Ruiz.
“What’s the difference between a snowman and a snow woman?”
“Snowballs,” I say.
“You’ve heard it.”
“Noah had heard it.”
Ruiz sighs and tries to think of another joke.
“Any news?” I ask.
“I should set up my own detective agency.”
“You hated being a detective.”
“Yes, but I was pretty good at it. I found Emily Martinez. She’s with her mother.”
“You talked to her.”
“Yep. She arrived at the hostel yesterday around lunchtime. It took a while to convince Amanda Martinez to trust me. She thought I was working for her husband.”
“What did Emily say about the fight?”
“It was just as Martinez described it.”
“So he was telling the truth.”
“About that much anyway,” says Ruiz.
He continues talking as I watch a bus pull into the parking area carrying volunteers returning from the search. They disembark wearing mud-stained boots and creased white overalls. As they walk towards their cars, they remind me of emaciated snowmen.
As the image occurs to me, I get a tingling sensation in my fingertips.
“I got to go,” I tell Ruiz.
“What’s up?”
“Maybe nothing.”
Climbing the stairs, two at a time, I reach the incident room. DS Casey is on the radio organizing refreshments for the search teams that are still at the scene. I wait for him to finish.
“The CCTV footage from the Bingham festival—where will I find it?”
“It should be on the database,” he says.
“Can you call it up?”
He logs me into the nearest terminal, linking me into the Police National Computer, a vast database containing the details of every known offender and “person of interest” in the UK: their names, nicknames, aliases, scars, tattoos, accents, shoe size, height, age, hair color, eye color, offence history, associates and modus operandi. It also hosts the case files of active investigations, allowing detectives to cross-reference details and search for links.