‘Innocent victim,’ Patel said succinctly.
‘It goes beyond that.’ He ran his fingers through his silver curls. ‘Usually, there’s a gap between somebody like this going missing and us finding the body. We’ve got time to get background from the family, information about the missing person’s movements. People are desperate to help because they want to believe there’s a chance of finding the kid.’ He shook his head. ‘Not this time.’
‘I’m with you,’ Patel said. ‘They’ve not even got used to the idea of her being missing and we’re walking in to tell them she’s dead. They’re going to be devastated.’
Patterson nodded. ‘And please don’t think I’m not sympathetic to that. But for me, the difficulty is that they’re not going to be in a fit state to interview.’ He sighed. ‘The first twenty-four hours of a murder inquiry, that’s when we need to make progress.’
‘Have we got a note of what Mrs Maidment said when she reported Jennifer missing?’
It was a good question. Patterson extracted his BlackBerry from his inside pocket, found his reading glasses and pulled up the email Ambrose had forwarded from the duty officer who had taken Tania Maidment’s phone call. ‘She phoned it in rather than come down to the station,’ he said, reading from the small screen. ‘She didn’t want to leave the house empty in case Jennifer came back and found herself locked out. Jennifer had a key but her mother didn’t know whether she’d have it with her. Mother hadn’t seen her since she left for school in the morning . . .’ He scrolled down. ‘She was supposed to be going to a friend’s house for tea and homework, should have been back by eight, no problem because her and her pal often did that at one house or the other. Mum cut her a bit of slack, rang the friend’s house at quarter past. The friend hadn’t seen her since the end of school, no arrangement for tea or homework. Jennifer hadn’t said anything about any plans other than going to the Co-op then heading home. And that’s when Mrs Maidment calls us.’
‘I so hope we took her seriously,’ Patel said.
‘Thankfully, we did. DC Billings took a description and circulated it to all units. That’s how we identified the body so quickly. Let’s see . . . Age fourteen, 165 centimetres, slim build, shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes, pierced ears with plain gold sleepers. Wearing Worcester Girls’ High uniform - white blouse, bottle green cardigan, skirt and blazer. Black tights and boots. She had a black mac over her uniform.’ To himself, he added, ‘That’s not at the crime scene.’
‘Is she an only child?’ Patel asked.
‘No idea. No idea where Mr Maidment is either. Like I said, it’s a bitch, this one.’ He sent a quick text to Ambrose, instructing him to interview the friend Jennifer had claimed to be with, then closed down the BlackBerry and rolled his shoulders inside his coat. ‘We ready?’
They braved the rain and walked up the path of the Maidments’ family home, a three-storey Edwardian brick semi fronted by a well-tended garden. The lights were on inside, the curtains pulled wide open. The two cops could see the sort of living room and dining room that neither of them could afford, all gleaming surfaces, rich fabrics and the kind of pictures you didn’t find in IKEA. Patterson’s finger had barely hit the bell push when the door swung open.
The state of the woman on the doorstep would have provoked a reaction in any other circumstances. But Patterson had seen enough frantic mothers to be unsurprised by the wild hair, the smudged eye make-up, the bitten lips and the tight clench of the jaw. As she took in the pair of them with their hangdog faces, her puffy eyes widened. One hand went to her mouth, the other to her breast. ‘Oh God,’ she said, her voice tremulous with the tears that were about to come again.
‘Mrs Maidment? I’m Detective Chief Inspector—’
The rank told Tania Maidment what she didn’t want to know. Her wail cut Patterson off in mid-introduction. She staggered and would have fallen had he not moved rapidly towards her, an arm round her slumped shoulders, letting her collapse into him. He half-carried her into the house, DC Patel at their heels.
By the time he lowered her into the plump living-room sofa, Tania Maidment was shaking like a woman on the edge of hypothermia. ‘No, no, no,’ she kept saying through chattering teeth.
‘I’m so sorry. We’ve found a body we believe to be your daughter, Jennifer,’ Patterson said, casting a desperate glance at Patel.
She picked up his cue and sat down by the distraught woman, taking her freezing hands in her own warm ones. ‘Is there someone we can call?’ she said. ‘Someone who can be with you?’
Mrs Maidment shook her head, jerky but clear. ‘No, no, no.’ Then she gulped air as if she was drowning. ‘Her dad . . . He’s due back tomorrow. From India. He’s already flying. He doesn’t even know she’s missing.’ Then the tears came with a terrible storm of guttural sobs. Patterson had never felt more pointless.
He waited for the first barrage of grief to lessen. It seemed to last a hellish length of time. Eventually, Jennifer’s mother ran out of energy. Patel, keeping her arm round the woman’s shoulders, nodded almost imperceptibly at him. ‘Mrs Maidment, we’re going to need to take a look at Jennifer’s room,’ Patterson said. Heartless, he knew. There would be a forensic team there soon to strip the place properly, but he wanted first dibs on the dead girl’s private space. Besides, the mother might be in bits now, but it wasn’t unusual for parents to leap to the realisation that there might be elements of their children’s lives they didn’t want the world to know about. It wasn’t that they wanted to impede the investigation, more that they didn’t always understand the importance of things they considered irrelevant. Patterson didn’t want that to happen here.
Without waiting for a response, he slipped out of the room and headed upstairs. Patterson thought you could gauge a lot about the condition of family life from its environment. As he climbed, he made his own judgements about Jennifer Maidment’s home. There was a gloss to the place that spoke of money, but it lacked the sterility of obsession. A splay of opened mail was scattered on the hall table, a pair of discarded gloves lay on the shelf above the radiator, the vase of flowers on the windowsill of the half-landing needed winnowing.
Five closed doors faced him as he reached the first floor. A home where privacy was respected, then. First came the master suite, then a family bathroom, then a study. All in darkness, not giving many of their secrets away. The fourth door revealed what he was looking for. He breathed in the scent of Jennifer Maidment’s life for a moment before turning on the light - peach sweetness with a note of citrus scored through it.
It felt disarmingly similar to his daughter’s room. If he’d had the money to let Lily have her head, he suspected she’d have ended up choosing the same sort of pink and white and pastel décor and furniture. Posters of boy bands and girl bands, dressing table a jumble of attempts at getting the make-up right, a small bookcase with novels he’d seen lying around his own living room. He assumed the pair of doors in the far wall led to a walk-in wardrobe which would be crammed with a mix of practical and fashionable items. Time enough for the SOCOs to go through all that. What he was interested in was the dressing table and the small desk tucked into one corner.
Patterson snapped a pair of latex gloves over his hands and started to work his way through the drawers. Bras and pants, fussy and frilly but pitiful in their essential innocence. Tights, a few pairs of socks rolled into tight balls, concealing nothing. Camisoles and spaghetti-strapped tops, T-shirts rendered improbably skinny by lycra. Cheap earrings, bracelets, pendants and necklaces arranged neatly in a tray. A bundle of old Christmas and birthday cards that Patterson scooped up and put to one side. Someone would need to go through those with Mrs Maidment when she was able to focus on something beyond her grief.