Tomek noted the time and action on the board. ‘Right. So she either switched it off herself, it ran out of battery, or someone else switched it off for her. Do we have any eyewitness reports of her leaving the house at that time?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘Nothing yet. From what I’ve collated with uniform, and from the neighbours I spoke with myself, nobody saw her or heard her. It was the middle of the night. Everyone was asleep.’
‘Right. And what about home security footage? Anyone come forward with that?’
Chey and Rachel shook their heads in unison, wearing the same apologetic look on their faces.
‘Anything else?’
Another synchronised shake of the head.
‘So she just… disappears?’
Tomek ran his fingers through his hair and scratched the back of his head, acutely aware that both had their eyes on him, him in the driving seat, leading the investigation. Two pairs of expectant eyes waiting for him to tell them what to do. He wasn’t sure he liked that. He didn’t have any ideas. Before, when someone else had been running the investigation, he’d been able to come up with the answers, with the solutions without issue. Possibly because he hadn’t had the burden of someone’s life on his shoulders – that he in some way felt one step removed – or possibly because it had been an ego thing, a chance to prove himself to Victoria and Nick. But now he’d done that, now he’d shown that he was capable, he felt like he was falling at the first hurdle, and he had no idea which way to go next.
Come on, Tomek, he told himself. You either shut the fuck up and keep stumbling forward, no matter what’s in the way, or you turn around now and head back to the starting line.
He decided the second one wasn’t an option.
‘We’ve got a window of seven hours where she could have gone missing. The two possibilities as I see it are, one: she left the house during that time and hasn’t returned yet, or two: someone went to her house. It’s as simple as that.’ He turned his focus to the board again, created a circle in the middle of what was left of the white space, and fired two straight lines from it. One for leaving the house, the other for someone going to hers. ‘Once we’ve ascertained which one of these it is, we can build the larger picture from there.’ He pushed the lid on the pen with a satisfying and tangible snap, then returned to his seat. ‘In the meantime, tell me everything you have on Angelica Whitaker. What do we know about her that can help us?’
Both detectives looked down at their notes, avoiding the question. Until Chey eventually summoned the courage to speak first.
‘I’ve started to look through her Instagram, as it’s the one she updates most regularly. She has two profiles. One’s a personal account, which she uses much less, while the second is a travel blog/influencer type thing. She’s got several thousand followers, but also has several thousand posts on each of them. It’s going to take a fair amount of time to sift through it all. But from the brief research I’ve done and the first couple of posts I’ve looked at, she seems to post stuff about herself and about her life as well. What she’s doing, where she is. But she doesn’t say too much on the captions – sometimes it’s just an emoji or two.’
‘Could they mean anything to someone?’
‘Possibly. I’d need to analyse who’s liking and commenting.’
Tomek nodded. ‘Rach?’
Detective Constable Rachel Hamilton cleared her throat before speaking. ‘Xanthia Demetriou, one of Angelica’s closest friends, was singing her praises. She didn’t have a bad word to say about her. Life of the party, always bubbly, always outgoing and up for going out, she was happy to be around everyone and everyone was happy to be around her. Kind, caring, full of zest, always there for her. It was like she was in love with her.’
‘They know each other from work, right?’
‘Sort of,’ Rachel explained. ‘They met at work. But Xanthia now works at a chemist’s. Not the career change she wanted, but the air steward market is tight at the moment. It was all she could find. Hopefully next year she’ll be able to get something.’
‘What did she have to say about last night?’
‘Just that she had a good time. And she remembers clearly watching Angelica open the front door and close it behind her. So, according to her, she definitely got in the house.’
‘And Zoë?’
‘Backed up everything Xanthia said. She saw Angelica enter her home without issue.’
The question that still remained was how she’d got out of it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The tinny sound from Kasia’s cheap Dell laptop reached them on the sofa. She had locked herself in her bedroom after dinner, and was no doubt watching one of her benign, mind-numbing reality TV programmes or one of the chick flick series that seemed to be all over the various streaming sites. Whenever he logged into his Netflix or Amazon Prime, he was bombarded with teenage dramas and programmes that their algorithm fed Kasia to keep her engaged. It was enough to turn him off from watching anything. And potentially stop paying the bill altogether. But he knew that would be like cutting off her arm, or at least tying it behind her back while he forced her to catch the remote. So instead he would do the honourable thing and continue to clench his fist every time he saw the direct debits come out each month.
Tonight, however, he was very much in favour of the streaming services. Abigail was over, and he had allowed her to select a channel to choose from. He had no idea what she’d put on, but it enabled him to switch off and let his thoughts drift wherever they needed to go. While she was engrossed in her programme, his mind was getting lost in deep thoughts like, why are buildings called buildings when they’d already been built, and why do we say we’re coming up for air when we’re not even underwater? He’d been battling those particular conundrums for a good five minutes when Abigail placed her legs on his lap, demanding that he massage her feet.
‘Haven’t you been sitting at your desk all day?’ he asked her.
‘Yes. But in heels. You don’t know what it’s like.’ She wiggled her toes in his face. ‘Please. They’ve been hurting so much today.’
Rolling his eyes, he said, ‘You’re more of a diva than I am. And I don’t like it when I put gel in my hair and it’s raining outside!’
‘Please,’ she begged, having listened to none of what he’d just said.
‘Okay, if I get my feet massaged afterwards? I’ve got a lovely bunion that needs kneading out.’
Tomek had never seen her look so disgusted.
‘That’s fucking gross. I’m going nowhere near your feet.’
‘But I’ve been standing on mine all day…’
His attempt at pulling the wool over her eyes with an adorable, innocent flutter of the eyelashes didn’t work.
‘Busy day?’ she asked, relaxing her toes, as Tomek began to knead them with his thumb and knuckles like they were dough.
‘Very.’
‘What happened?’
‘Woman in her late twenties was reported missing by her family. She went out last night with some friends, got dropped off at her flat, then disappeared. Her manager, who happens to be her sister-in-law, said she didn’t turn up this morning for work.’
