Leaman beamed. Incident rooms were his speciality.
‘Ingeborg, you get a front-line job, checking the two universities and all the private language colleges to see if any Japanese students have stopped attending in the past three months. Sometimes these things don’t get reported. And Paul …’
‘Yes, guv?’
‘You’re on hotels. Examine the registers for yourself. Don’t just ask the reception people. Japanese names are pretty easy to spot. Get the details of all of them who stayed here and when they checked out.’
‘Isn’t some of that confidential?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Data protection.’
‘Don’t talk to me about data protection. You’re in CID, doing a job, trying to trace a missing person.’
John Leaman said, ‘Strictly speaking, she isn’t missing. We know where she is.’
Diamond didn’t appreciate the logic. ‘She’s missing from somewhere, clever clogs, has to be. It’s our job to find out where, college, hotel, tour group. That’s how we’ll find her name.’
‘Precisely,’ Leaman said. ‘It’s the name that’s missing, not the person.’
‘Any more lip from you, John, and you’ll find yourself on knicker duty.’ He addressed the team in general. ‘Anyone here clued up on music?’
‘Depends what sort,’ Halliwell said.
‘We don’t know what sort. We have one musical note.’
‘Personally, I like the Big Band sound.’
‘Big Band. What’s that – Glenn Miller? Duke Ellington? You’re just the man to conduct this big band. I need an office manager. It’s backroom, I know, but how could we manage without you?’
Halliwell gave the grin of a man who’d spoken once too often.
‘Ingeborg?’ Diamond said.
‘You already gave me a job, guv.’
‘Yes, but what’s your taste in music?’
‘I’m into roots.’
‘What on earth …?’
‘Folk, Celtic, blues, country and western.’
Paul Gilbert added, ‘When it’s not rock, jazz or classical, it must be roots. Me, I go for modern rock.’
‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ Diamond said. ‘I had a weekend in Vienna and visited Beethoven’s house, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert.’
‘We have a wide spectrum, then,’ Leaman said. ‘I enjoy decent music of all kinds, but for preference I’m a Savoyard.’
‘I thought that was a variety of sausage.’
‘Gilbert and Sullivan,’ Leaman said, not appreciating the laughs.
‘The thing is, why did she choose to get a musical note glued to her tooth? Is she a performer? If so, we’d probably have heard. When a musician goes missing, people notice. It gets in the news.’
‘She doesn’t have to be a musician,’ Halliwell said. ‘She could be a music lover, just like any of us. I’m not sure if the tooth tattoo is going to help us much more now we know she’s almost certainly Japanese.’
Ingeborg had been doing some lateral thinking. ‘Guv, is it just a coincidence that you asked me some weeks back to get some background on that Japanese tourist who was found in the canal in Vienna?’
‘Must be,’ he said to cut her off, wanting to confine the discussion to what was happening in Bath. ‘Better get started on this, boys and girls. Until something bigger comes along, it’s the best way to defend our jobs. All the apparatus of an incident room. Computer back-up. Whiteboard. Photos. Action files. Big wheel – that’s me. Let’s get this show on the road.’
After that, no one had any other option than to look busy. Paul Gilbert remarked to Ingeborg as they headed for the door, ‘Looks like the boss is coming out of his Swedish detective phase.’
‘We can hope,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t put money on it yet.’
8
‘One more time. She won’t be back for ages.’ Tippi Carlyle, in her bed facing Mel, ruffled his hair and smoothed her hand across his cheek and jaw. ‘She’s at Weight Watchers until seven and she always goes for a McDonald’s after.’
‘It’s her house and you’re her daughter.’
‘The apple of her eye.’
‘Okay, which makes it worse if she comes home early and finds me in bed with the apple of her eye.’
She wriggled and her nipples skimmed his chest. ‘You can’t deny you’re up for it.’
‘I don’t want to upset her and nor do you.’
‘Come on, big boy. Have another bite of the apple.’