‘No.’ This time the question was answered by Rose, who was leaning forward in her seat. She looked at Roy and Daphne before continuing, almost as if seeking approval. ‘I last saw her yesterday afternoon. She works for me in my jewellery shop on Leigh Broadway.’
That explained the dazzling amounts of diamonds on every part of her body. And now that she mentioned it, he noticed the jewellery on her in-laws. That they’d all probably been gifted them over the years made him less than impressed about them anymore.
‘Do you own Whitaker’s, just next to Tangerine, on the Broadway?’ he asked.
Rose nodded, her face filling with pride. ‘Guilty as charged.’
‘Ah, nice. I’ve seen it, often walk by it, but never been in. Always been a bit put off by the…’
‘By the prices?’
Tomek turned shy. ‘Yeah. And the fact, until recently, I’ve not had anyone to buy for.’
But now Abigail had come into his life, now she had just been given her big promotion, and now she had a birthday coming up in the next couple of weeks… he might have to change his habits.
‘It’s not that expensive,’ Rose explained. ‘We cater to all kinds of budgets. You should come in sometime, and if you can help us find Angelica, I’d be happy to give you the same discount I’ve given the rest of the family.’
Angelica.
The name appeared in his mind in bright red letters.
‘Angelica. Right. Where were we?’ He consulted his notes. ‘You were in the middle of explaining why you were the last person to see Angelica…’
‘Because she works for me,’ Rose explained, stroking the hair tucked behind her ear. ‘She works with me during the off season.’
‘Off season?’
‘During the winter months, when they don’t need her as much. She’s a flight attendant. For TUI.’
Tomek scribbled the note in his book.
‘A flight attendant?’
‘Yes,’ answered Roy with a semblance of pride. ‘She was incredibly good at her job, but with companies like that, their busiest months are in the summer, so understandably, when things are quieter, they don’t need a lot of the staff so they have to let them go. It’s not a completely reliable income, and it means that six months of the year she’s out of work and needs a job, but we’re fortunate to have Rose in the family who is kind enough to give her a job for the rest of the year. We have tried over the years to convince her to move companies, move to a more… respectable, and secure line of work in the industry…’
‘…but the competition for those roles is so fierce that only a handful of people get selected every year, as I can attest,’ added Daphne. As she said it, her back straightened, and her crow’s feet disappeared as her expression was replaced with self-pride.
Rose leant forward and pointed to her mother-in-law. For Tomek’s benefit, she explained, ‘Daphne was a flight attendant for BA her entire career, and Roy was a pilot.’
‘That’s how we met,’ Roy added.
Tomek’s eyes fell to the man’s cufflinks, which he rubbed absent-mindedly with his fingers.
‘Of course, we would have loved for her to join the family tradition, as it were, and for her to join the BA crew – I even reached out to a few of my former colleagues to see if they could put in a good word or bump her up the list – but she refused. Said she wanted to do things her own way.’
Tomek was reminded of a conversation he’d had with Kasia a few weeks before. The two of them had been in a café, enjoying a spot of breakfast and a coffee, when Tomek had joked about her powers of deduction and becoming a police officer. She had then point-blank told him no, and that her dream was to one day open a coffee shop. Tomek had no problem with that. It was her life. She was free to make the choices she made – within reason, of course – and if she needed to make mistakes along the way, then he would always be there for her. But for the Whitaker family, Tomek sensed it wasn’t the same. He sensed that they’d had many arguments over Angelica’s choices, and that she had constantly felt as though she hadn’t lived up to her parents’ expectations. Tomek didn’t want to have the same relationship with his daughter.
‘Can you walk me through what happened when you last saw Angelica?’ Tomek asked, directing the question at Rose.
‘Of course,’ she said as she brushed a piece of fluff from her skirt so that it looked almost immaculate, brand new. ‘We were working in the shop. It was a quiet day, as were the last couple, and so I told her she could leave a few minutes early. She was going out last night, and she wanted to get ready. Besides, there isn’t much for me to do at the end, anyway. The longest part is taking all the jewellery out of the windows and putting it all in the safe.’
Tomek nodded, but he didn’t care about any of that. He asked where Angelica had been going the night before.
‘Out with a group of friends.’
‘How many?’
‘Four of them in total, including Angelica.’
‘Do you know their names?’
‘Only first names. Bit weird if she’d been talking about them in their full names, don’t you think?’
‘Quite. Did she tell you how she knows them?’
‘From work. They’re all flight attendants,’ she answered. ‘They all met at TUI, but I think she said something about them all working for different companies now. They got split up over the years, but they’ve all managed to stay in touch with one another – if I’m not mistaken, one of them may have been a friend from school as well.’ She turned to Roy and Daphne. ‘Elodie… I think her name was. Does that ring a bell for either of you?’
Their expressions were blank. They looked at one another, then shook their heads slowly. It was clear to see that they knew very little about their daughter’s life, that perhaps they had shunned her for her choices, and that Rose was, out of the three of them, the person who knew her the best.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Tomek continued. ‘I’m sure we can find them somehow. Did she tell you where they were going?’
‘Memo Night Club in Southend. Do you know it?’
‘I might be old, but I’m not that old. I’ve arrested a couple of people outside there as well, so I know it fairly well.’
While the club might have changed a bit on the inside since Tomek had last been, he was almost confident that the type of male customer that attended it hadn’t.
‘When you said goodbye to her last night, how did she seem? Angry? Upset? Excited?’
