‘Yes.’

‘What type of person is she on a night out? Or in general?’

‘Why’s that important?’ Daphne asked.

‘Well…’ Tomek paused a beat. ‘If she’s gone out to a nightclub with friends, and she’s got talking to someone at the bar, then she might have gone back with them.’

‘Oh, no. No, no, no. Not our Angelica. She’s the life and soul of the party, yes. Very outgoing, always talking to people, always wearing a smile on her face – it’s a part of the job, it gets ingrained into you – but she’s not easy.’

‘Nobody’s implying she is, Mrs Whitaker.’

Daphne slapped her husband on the arm. ‘Tell him, Roy. He’s got it wrong about our Angelica.’

Roy looked down at his lap, spun the plane cufflink a handful of times, sending it into a downward spiral, before replying. ‘Absolutely,’ he said, though the intonation in his voice belied his choice of words. ‘Our daughter was a saint… she was an angel.’

‘You wait until Johnny’s back,’ Daphne added, as she began wagging her finger at Tomek, as if he was the one she should be pointing her anger and frustration towards. ‘He’ll be able to tell you all about what she’s like. He’ll tell you the same thing as we have.’

‘Who’s Johnny?’ Tomek asked with a shrug. His patience was beginning to run a little thin.

‘Angelica’s brother, my husband,’ answered Rose.

‘Where is he now?’

‘Away for work. Dublin. He’s on his way back this afternoon. He managed to get an early flight back to Southend Airport after I told him what’s happened.’

Tomek offered her a thankful smile. Of the three of them, she was the one who most wanted to help, who was prepared to be honest about Angelica and what might have happened to her. Whereas her parents were blinded by their own relationship with their daughter. Tomek knew which of the family members he would lean on for information going forward. At the end of the meeting, he informed them of the next steps: that they would send a team out to her home; that they would monitor her phone; and that they would speak with her friends and anyone from the night before. But more importantly, he told them he’d keep them in the loop. They would be on a need-to-know basis, and as SIO, only he would choose what information they needed to know.

CHAPTER TEN

Tomek took the mug of coffee with thanks and set it on his knee delicately. He wasn’t in the mood for it, but had just accepted it out of politeness. Out of the two of them, it was the person he’d come to meet that needed it more. Elodie Locket’s first words to him had been, “Fuck me, I’m so hungover.” And she looked it with the haggard face, the burst blood vessels in her eyes from lack of sleep, the messy hair, the colour that had washed out of her face thanks to the dehydration. If that wasn’t enough, then there was still last night’s make-up on the twenty-nine-year-old’s face, clumpy and streaked. He didn’t want to know what her pillow looked like, though in the background, he heard the sound of a washing machine mid-cycle and presumed she was already one step ahead of him.

Elodie was dressed in a pair of fancy, strawberry and banana-emblazoned Primark pyjamas, with a knitted shawl wrapped around her. She lived in a house share with two other girls and a man, all of whom had let them use the living room for their discussion. The place gave Tomek student house vibes, with the scuff marks on the walls, the yellow recycling crate filled with empty vodka and beer bottles, and the mould in the corners and on walls that none of them had been arsed to do anything about. The house was a state, but Elodie, on the other hand, wasn’t. Beneath the hangover and clumpy make-up, she looked well put together, and from the way she was perched on the edge of the sofa, and wrapped the shawl around herself, was trying to come into contact with as little of the furniture and atmosphere as possible. Tomek got the impression she didn’t want to be there any more than he did. And he was willing to bet money that hers was the cleanest room of the lot.

‘I’m here to speak with you regarding your friend, Angelica Whitaker,’ he started, setting the coffee down on the floor. As he pulled out his pen and notebook, he saw an insect crawl towards the mug from beneath the sofa, like one of the toys from Toy Story, lurking in the shadows.

‘Angelica? What’s happened to her?’

‘She hasn’t turned up to work at her sister-in-law’s this morning. Her family has reported her missing. I just want to ask you a few questions about last night, and about your relationship with Angelica. Plus anything you can tell me that you think might be important.’

As he spoke, Elodie’s hand flew to her mouth, and she began to breathe heavily, her small frame heaving with each breath.

‘Oh, my God. She’s missing?’

‘We’re trying not to jump to any conclusions,’ he answered. ‘In most scenarios like this, the person in question usually turns up at some point, unharmed and safe, if not a bit confused.’

‘But you don’t think that about Angelica, do you?’

Right now, Tomek didn’t know what to think.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because you’re speaking to me. Because of last night. You think something might have…’ And then she broke down in a flood of tears, her body shuddering and convulsing – and not because the heating was off in the house. Tomek leapt off the sofa and hurried to the bathroom, immediately wishing he hadn’t. He yanked the toilet roll from the holder and hurried back, passing it to her, apologising for not knowing where the real tissues were.

‘There aren’t any,’ she said, sniffling.

A minute or two passed as Elodie cried into the tissues, smearing the tears and make-up across her face. When she was finished, she looked like a female version of the Joker; black smudges the size of oranges surrounded her eyes, and traces of lipstick he hadn’t noticed before smeared her cheeks. He was starting to have doubts whether she was as put together as he’d originally believed. When she finally calmed down, she leant forward, resting her elbows on her knees, staring into the toilet paper in her hands, playing with it, tearing it apart in her fingers.

‘Tell me about last night,’ Tomek said gently. ‘Take as much time as you need.’

‘What… what do you want to know?’

‘Everything. Start from the beginning.’

Before she did so, she snorted the snot away from her nose, cleared her throat, and sat upright, composed.

‘Come on, El,’ she told herself. ‘Come on. You’ve got this.’ She gave a shake of her head, slapped her cheeks a couple of times, and then suddenly her face fell flat, as if she’d become a different person. The shuddering had stopped, the rapid breathing, the tears, the sniffling – she had even stopped playing with the tissue paper. Somewhere in her brain, she had flicked a switch and now she was the epitome of calm and resolve. ‘We’d arranged it ages ago. It’s one of our things. Right before the new summer holiday season starts, we spend the couple of weeks beforehand going out and celebrating, enjoying ourselves because we know we won’t be able to for the next couple of months. The season’s so full on that we aren’t always able to catch up or meet up, and it’s even more difficult when some of us are in different countries. We have these nights as our last hurrah, if you want to call it that. And last night was no different. It was me, Ange, Xan, and Zoë. The four horsewomen, we call ourselves. We’ve been together for years. Ange and I went to school together and went into the industry at the same time. Then we met Xan and Zo when we were working with TUI. Fortunately, most of the time we’re all based at Southend Airport or Stansted, so we’re never too far from one another during the off season.’

‘Where did you go last night?’ Tomek asked.

‘Memo, in Southend.’

‘What time did you get there?’

Elodie pulled out her phone and unlocked it. For a few seconds, she scrolled through the device, searching for her answer. ‘Ten fifty-three,’ she said. ‘Zoë and I went in first to get the drinks while the others wanted to get cash out.’

‘What time did you leave?’

More checking of the phone. This time, she flipped the screen round to show him. ‘One fifteen am,’ she said. On the screen was her Uber app, with the name of the driver, the exact time they’d been picked up, and the route they’d taken home. Tomek reached out for the device and took it from her. He observed the map, noting all the local landmarks and the points at which they’d stopped.

‘Am I right in thinking you dropped Angelica off first?’

Elodie nodded. ‘She lives closest.’

‘And the rest of you?’

‘I’m the farthest away. Well, actually, no, that’s not true. Xanthia lives the farthest away, but she stayed round Zoë’s last night because she’s all the way out in Chelmsford and none of us earns enough money to be able to pay for the cab all the way back to there.’

Tomek passed the phone over to her. He wondered how Chey and Rachel were getting on, speaking with Angelica’s other friends.

‘Were your friends all as drunk as you?’ he asked.

Elodie slotted the phone between her leg and the side of the sofa and wrapped her shawl around her tighter.

‘We were all pretty drunk. We’d had a couple at the Last Post before going to Memo. But out of all of us, I’d say Ange was the drunkest. I mean, I’ve seen her at her worst, and she was very near that.’

‘At her worst, how?’

Elodie’s eyes fell to the floor, where she hesitated, lost in thought. ‘These guys just kept buying her drinks. About four or five of them. I’d lost count at one point, stopped caring. But she was all over them, grinding, dancing.’