Abundantly. Tomek laughed at the word choice. As though it absolved him of all guilt, like when a politician washed his hands of the blood of innocent victims and children because he didn’t pull the trigger, just sold the machine guns and explosives to the person that did.
‘I know that,’ Tomek responded, ‘but you have a duty of care over your customers and one of them, the girl we’re trying to find, was almost spiked last night, but her mates saw it and rescued her. Now, are you going to make the call or not?’
Tomek shot the man a hard, impervious stare. Marcus held it for a good two seconds before eventually relenting and reaching into his pocket for his phone. Less than a minute later, Marcus confirmed the staff member who’d been working on the bar last night would come straight in to talk with Tomek. He was only ten minutes away.
‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’
Marcus said nothing as he turned his back on Tomek and opened a door that looked as though it had been painted on the wall. In all his years of going there, he had never seen that before. It was like something out of a science fiction film the way it cut a hole into the wall.
Tomek followed the man in, trying to contain his excitement.
‘So this is where the magic happens,’ he noted.
‘No magic. Just business. No magic whatsoever. I’m not having you guys come in and drug test the place.’
‘Well, you see, now that you’ve gone and said that, all I wanna do is bring some guys and see what sort of classes we might find.’
Marcus’s eyes turned beady.
‘I’m joking. Just show me what you’ve got and then I’ll be on my way.’
Marcus didn’t need telling twice. The small room was an office, complete with oversized desk, crappy chair that had more holes in it than a cheese grater, a computer, two monitors and a small shelf containing overflowing folders that balanced precariously on the edge. It was cramped, confined, yet oddly cosy. Tomek wondered how many one-to-ones and personal reviews Marcus had conducted in there – either to intimidate or make a move. Shortly after, Marcus woke the machine, logged into his account, and waiting for them on the screen was a moving image of Angelica Whitaker on the dance floor, talking to a man, his face pressed right against the side of her head. Tomek recognised her instantly. Prior to his arrival, Chey had confirmed that they’d found Angelica’s social media accounts. She had three personal ones across the various platforms and an extra Instagram account she used as a travel blog, documenting her adventures across Europe for work. Each account had thousands of followers, with hundreds of likes on each post, and dozens of comments beneath. It would take a long time to sift through it all, and with a reduced workforce, Tomek had started to wonder whether things would fall behind. Or perhaps they might not need it. Perhaps right now he was looking at the person who knew where she was – the man touching Angelica’s waist, moving his hands lower and lower, until she shimmied away. Tomek felt a knot form in his throat; he always got an eerie feeling watching the moments before someone’s death or disappearance, as though he had the benefit of hindsight to do something about it. Sometimes he just wanted to scream at the screen. ‘Don’t go that way!’, ‘Don’t go home, go back to your friend’s house instead!’ It was like watching a horror movie where you questioned the token blonde victim’s idiotic decision to enter the dark room alone, and rolled your eyes whenever she was chased back out, later falling victim to a knife-wielding maniac in a costume or clown mask. Except this was different. This wasn’t entertainment. This was real life.
And Angelica Whitaker was still missing.
Tomek spent the next five minutes watching the footage. Of Angelica dancing, grinding with the man, just as her friends said she had. Of the man holding her close against his body, his hand hovering over her drink on several occasions. Then of her being pulled away from the creep, and the creep following her up the stairs like a lost puppy. Outside, the cameras had shown the girls leaving, getting into the back of the Uber, while the man had stayed put, left behind, abandoned. Tomek asked Marcus to focus the cameras on him as he’d headed back inside the club. The footage then showed that he’d stayed in the club for the next hour, stumbling across the dance floor, leering over the women, selecting his next victims, right until the lights came on and those he’d been dancing with realised what a mistake they’d made. Once everyone had made their way to the exit, the man stumbled down the high street, eventually disappearing out of sight. By the end of it, Tomek didn’t think the man was worth pursuing, but there would be no harm in sending someone along to speak with him. The only problem was finding his name and address.
‘How did he pay his entry fee?’
Marcus shrugged, unhelpful. Tomek told him to rewind until they saw the man arrive at the club. Together, they watched him pay with a debit card. Tomek made a note of the timestamp and asked to see his entry from a different angle. This time, it showed the man going up to the bouncers, handing across his ID, and the bouncer scanning it under a blue light. A second later, an enlarged version of the man’s driver’s licence exploded onto the screen, with a green tick overlayed on it. Tomek told Marcus to pause the footage and zoom in. For CCTV footage, which was famously of a lower resolution than televisions from the 1950s, this one was surprisingly high-tech, and Tomek was able to make out the man’s name with ease: Adam Egglington.
He took a photo of the man on his phone just as the employee turned up, hovering in the doorframe awkwardly. His cheeks were flushed and hot air expelled from his mouth and nose rapidly.
‘Here you go,’ Marcus said to Tomek, pointing to the young man who was no older than twenty-five. ‘He’s all yours.’
Without saying anything, Marcus pulled out a memory stick, copied the footage onto it, and passed it to Tomek. Before Tomek could thank the man, he ushered Tomek to the bar, and said, ‘You need me, I’ll be in here. Hopefully, you’ve got everything.’
Tomek sensed the manager wanted to add, “Because if you haven’t, you’ll have to come back another time.”
With that, Marcus shut the door firmly, leaving Tomek and the bartender alone at the bar. The young man’s name was Adrian, and he had worked at Memo for six weeks.
‘Thank you for coming down,’ Tomek told him.
‘I’m still under probation. I didn’t have much choice. Plus, you’re the police… so it must be serious. Has something happened?’
Tomek explained the situation. Adrian’s eyes widened as he listened, and he suddenly looked afraid, as though he was being the one accused of having something to do with Angelica’s disappearance.
Tomek showed him a photo of Angelica that Elodie had sent him, followed by another one that they’d found on Xanthia’s social media. It was a photograph of all four girls, posing and smiling at the camera, in the middle of the Last Post, their last stop before making it to Memo.
‘Do you remember seeing this woman in the black dress?’
Adrian took the phone from Tomek and inspected it. His lips pursed and his cheeks tightened. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But she doesn’t ring a bell. I mean, I served a lot of people last night.’ His hands shook nervously as he passed the phone back to Tomek. ‘They… they all sort of look the same, and we were super busy. I don’t remember serving her specifically.’
Tomek tried to calm the man’s nerves with a warm smile, but it was clear to see he was shaken up by the news that she’d gone missing, as though he was somehow responsible and was supposed to carry the burden of finding her.
‘What about this bloke? He was seen dancing with her and buying her drinks. It was also reported that he tried putting something in one of them.’
This time, Adrian recognised the man’s face instantly.
‘Yes. I remember him. Two girls came up to me with a drink I’d just poured and told me it had something in it. I didn’t know what to do so told one of the guys on the floor, but I don’t think they did anything about it… I got distracted by some other customers and completely forgot.’ He placed his hands on his head. ‘Oh God! I fucked up, didn’t I? I really fucked up. Fuck… I knew I should—’
Tomek placed a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. His rapid breathing immediately stopped, and he seemed to come to momentarily. Once he had controlled his breathing, Tomek said, ‘It’s okay. She wasn’t hurt. He didn’t hurt her. And he didn’t hurt anyone else. You did your job. Just… let it be a lesson for next time.’
‘Fuck…’ Adrian continued, still lost in his own thoughts. ‘That’s it. I’m gonna fuck up my probation. I’m gonna need to find a new job. I—’
Tomek placed a hand on his other shoulder. It was the best he could do to not slap the twenty-five-year-old across the cheeks.
‘Your job’s fine. If my interaction with Mr Rayner is anything to go by, I don’t think he cares all that much about what you did or didn’t do. Your job’s safe. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Acheck on the police’s internal database back at the station showed that Adam Egglington had previous. In the last two years, he’d been arrested for drunk and disorderly behaviour along Southend high street, with a further arrest for the same charge along the seafront, except in the latter he’d been found naked from the waist down, lying on the beach, staring into the moonlight, wiping sand out of places it was never supposed to be. And so the arresting officer had added public indecency to the charge sheet. The most recent arrest had come six weeks ago, and assuming he hadn’t moved in that time, Tomek hoped he was standing outside the right flat.
He knocked on the one-bedroom maisonette in Lee Chapel South, a short walk from Basildon Hospital, and waited. When there was no answer, Tomek took a step back from the porch, onto the overgrown front lawn, and looked up at the bedroom window. The curtains were closed, obstructing his view, except a small window had been left open at the top.
Tomek tried the door again. This time he peered through the window beside it, cupping his hands to his face, squinting. But it was no use. In one last attempt, before moving along to the neighbours, he crouched down, opened the letterbox, and just as he was about to scream Adam’s name, a violent, pungent stench assaulted his senses, knocking him backwards onto the slabs of concrete. The smell was so strong it stuck in his throat, and for a few seconds afterwards Tomek tried to cough it up but ended up gagging and dry heaving on the porch. It was the smell and taste of vomit, vomit that had been stagnating, putrefying, congealing for the whole day.
Tomek didn’t like the thoughts that were percolating, and decided to call for uniformed support. The dispatch controller over the phone told him it would be at least five minutes before they arrived. Five minutes too long.
