‘Hang on,’ Simon says, raising his hand in some pointless attempt to restore order. ‘Let’s take a step back. Who is Sean?’
‘Amber knew him. Called him a friend from her old life in Oxford. But I reckon he was her dealer.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I dunno,’ Caden mutters. ‘Because he looks and acts like one.’
Simon rolls his eyes, but privately he logs it. Making quick-fire judgments about people might be frowned upon in some circles, but not the police force. It’s been helpful too many times to ignore its value.
‘And you say he confessed all this while he assaulted you,’ Jodie says, hands on her hips, disbelief leaking out of every word. ‘That’s very convenient. The guy who beats you up, suddenly announcing that he was at the scene of the murder that you’re in the frame for. And had an issue with the victim. I suppose there weren’t any witnesses to this admission?’
‘It’s not my fault he dragged me down an alleyway.’
‘If he killed her, why would he come after you?’
‘I dunno. You’re the feds. You work it out.’
Simon feels a buzzing in his pocket and fishes his phone out of his jacket pocket. He looks at the screen, then walks out into the corridor. ‘Yes?’
‘We’ve ID’ed the suspect from the CCTV, sir,’ Raj says. ‘His name is Sean Russo. I’ll send you his address.’
‘Thanks, Raj, that’s good work.’
‘There’s more, sir.’
‘Oh?’ Simon says, lifting his nose. An embarrassing habit he’s picked up on the job.
‘Do you remember the social worker telling us about that incident with Amber’s sister when they lived in Oxford?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s him, Sean Russo.’
‘What?’ Simon’s pulse quickens.
‘Yeah, he’s the kid who threatened Jess. Why they had to move.’
‘So he came after them,’ Simon whispers.
‘Looks that way, sir.’
Simon breaks into a broad smile. Yes, it means the suspect was on their radar from day one, but that’s policework – finding a needle in a pile of shiny needles. He wonders if Caden was right about the rest of it: Sean supplying Amber with drugs, and how that played its part. And with Jess missing, he must be in the frame for that too.
‘Jodie and I will head over their now,’ he says. ‘Get a response team to meet us there. And send CSI too.’
‘Will do. And talking of CSI, they’ve compared the sample of Ms Salter’s hair with those found on the victim and believe it’s a match, so no breakthrough there. But the results of that partial from the victim’s clothes are back from that swanky lab, so that might give us something. I’m heading over there now.’
‘Keep me updated. And let’s keep our fingers crossed that it belongs to Sean Russo.’
AFTER
Monday 13th May
Sean
Sean slams his mum’s bedroom door closed. What has he done?
What the hell would his mum think about him tying up a social worker in her bedroom?
It’s the coke he took when he got back from Towersey. He shouldn’t have touched it; he was wound up enough. But the baggie was sitting there, on the work surface, calling to him, just like it was last Friday night when Amber went dark on him, blocking him on all her socials. Without his mum around to hide stuff from, it’s too easy. He’d cut a couple of lines this morning, and instantly felt better for it, so cut a couple more. But then Rose’s wife turned up, screaming his name through the letter box. And then everything went south.
At least he remembered to put the piece of tape back over her mouth. It had lost some of its stickiness, but he pushed hard – hard enough, he hopes, to keep her quiet.
Sean drops onto the sofa and instinctively reaches for his pipe. He pulls a few buds out of a Tesco carrier bag, packs them into the bowl, and reaches for his lighter. As the thin curls of weed catch alight, he drags on the pipe, and feels the pleasure of sweet smoke entering his lungs. This is what he needs. Something to calm his nerves. He leans back against the soft cushion, closes his eyes, and pretends there isn’t a middle-aged woman tied up in his mum’s bedroom.
Not that she could tell him off for it anymore.
The memory of finding out his mum was properly ill is like a horror movie imprinted on his brain. And however much weed he smokes, it doesn’t fade. He’d been back at school for a couple of weeks and was hating every minute of it. Just him and a few other dumb kids from his year resitting their maths and English GCSEs. He’d already decided that he couldn’t stick it, that no exams were worth the shame of being associated with those thick twats, when she messaged him.
Which was a shock. His mum worked at the school, as a cleaner, and when she first started, she’d say hello to him when they passed each other in the corridor. She even asked him about his tea once; jeez the embarrassment. But he’d always fully blank her, so it didn’t take her long to work out what the deal was, and she kept her head down after that. So when she messaged asking him to meet her by the ground-floor fire exit that afternoon, he knew it was bad.
She’d been sick, she told him, when he found her leaning against the heavy door. A few times. She’d done it outside the fire exit, and was sure no one saw her. And it was a watery sick, she said, so she knew it would soak into the grass. But she was scared. Not of the nausea, or whatever was causing her to be so ill in the first place, but that she would vomit somewhere in the school. Make a mess in the place that she was paid to keep clean.
Sean never liked to show his violent side in front of his mum – a trait he reckoned he’d inherited from his dad if the rumours about the badass Jed Brown were true – but he was angry that day. The truth is, the image of his mum being sick grossed him out, along with the chance any one of his mates might have seen her doing it. But it was her fucked-up priorities that really got to him. His mum had been trodden on all of her adult life – first by her dad when her own mum got sick with cancer, then by Jed, who’d pretended to be her saviour until Sean came along and ruined the vibe. And then by a long line of employers as she took anything going to keep on top of the bills.
Lizzie the cleaner. Making everyone’s life better, but still treated like scum.
Sean was about to remind his mum that she owed the school nothing, when Mr Rose walked past. Sean’s new English teacher and a patronising dickhead. His mum tried to smile at the guy, even though she clearly felt terrible, her insides all messed up from the bowel cancer she didn’t yet know she had. But he didn’t smile back. He asked her why she was chatting to a student when the library was a mess, and the staff loo had run out of toilet paper. Sean started to tell him why not, but his mum interrupted – even apologised, for fuck’s sake – and explained that she wasn’t feeling great but that she’d pass his message on to the after-school cleaning team.
