Sara hesitated, then agreed to go and talk to Mrs O’Reilly. She had never had to break bad news to the relative of a deceased person, whether it was accidental or murder. She told Leon to take Mrs O’Reilly into the small interview room and to organise a cup of tea for her. She then took out her makeup bag and opened a compact to check her hair and freshen her lipstick.
‘What on earth are you checking yourself for?’ Anik snapped. ‘Just go and do it and get back as fast as you can. We have a big backlog of statements to check through.’
The small interview room contained a table and two chairs. It smelt stale, and the only window was high up on the back wall. The strip lighting was blinking as if the bulb was loose or needed changing.
Mrs O’Reilly was sitting with her back to the door. Her dark, rather greasy hair was tied with a black rubber band, and she wore a heavy tweed coat and fur-lined ankle boots.
On her lap was a large worn leather bag. She turned expectantly when Sara entered the room.
‘Thank you for the tea,’ she said in a soft Irish accent.
Sara introduced herself and sat down opposite.
‘I got the train, straight after they’d come around to the house for some of Nadine’s things. They told me that they were officers working for the Metropolitan Police here in London and gave me the address. I knew that it must be important — my husband said to me that they asked for certain things and he said he had seen programmes on the TV, you know, real crime ones, and they always asked for things like toothbrushes and hair accessories. He said that it was for identification purposes. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Mrs O’Reilly, that is correct.’
‘Then we got another woman come round and she told us that they was doing a murder investigation, that Nadine might have been killed at a house in London. She was very nice, trying to be helpful. She said it wasn’t confirmed yet, and so now I’m here to find out if they have found her.’
‘Mrs O’Reilly, I am very sorry to tell you, but we have found items that belonged to your daughter.’
‘Does it mean that you’ve found her? Maybe I’ve wasted the train fare, I was just eager to help... at least to speak to her because I never meant to get into such a row with her... I’ve been wanting to slap myself for being so nasty to her, but she can be a right little madam sometimes, and...’
Sara was desperate to stop the flow, but just as she was about to try and explain that they had found evidence that her daughter was no longer alive, Mrs O’Reilly dug in her worn handbag and pulled out a postcard.
‘This is what I wanted to bring here, because when we got it... well, it was a while back, but it made me feel not so worried. Here, dear, you read it.’
The postcard was a photograph of Buckingham Palace and had been posted almost eight months ago. Sara turned it over and read the message on the back:
Dear Ma — Just to let you know I’ve met some friends from Snapchat, and they let me move in with them. I’m going to try and get a job in a hair salon and I’m not coming home. Love Nadine.
‘Thank you for bringing this in,’ Sara said. The date on the postcard would be helpful in constructing their timelines. As she was about to give Mrs O’Reilly the sad news, she dived into her bag again and this time brought out a mobile phone.
‘This is what caused the big row. She was never off it, and we had to pay the bills. So my husband took it away from her and it made her go crazy. She attacked me. She was that angry. Next morning she’d gone. We thought she was just messing, so we didn’t report her missing for a couple of days. Then we got that postcard saying she wasn’t coming home. The phone’s dead and it’s been in a drawer all this time.’
‘Is the handwriting on the postcard Nadine’s, Mrs O’Reilly?’
‘Yes, that’s her handwriting... she was very clever at school.’
‘When you reported Nadine missing, did they ask you whether she had a mobile phone?’
‘No, I don’t think so, but it wasn’t turned on or charged up, just in the drawer.’
Sara reached over and touched Mrs O’Reilly’s hand. She took a deep breath.
‘Mrs O’Reilly, I am very sorry to tell you that Nadine may not be coming home.’
She looked bewildered. ‘I don’t understand. Has she got herself into trouble? I knew it when the coppers came round asking for her things, showing me photographs of her things; I just knew it.’
Sara quietly explained to Mrs O’Reilly that they had DNA and other evidence indicating Nadine was probably dead.
Mrs O’Reilly repeatedly shook her head, then suddenly broke into tormented sobs. Sara felt terrible for being the bearer of such devastating news. She offered her another cup of tea, then got up and walked around the table to put her arms around the distraught mother. Sara spent another half an hour with Mrs O’Reilly, then ordered a taxi to the train station for her.
Sara returned to the incident room, feeling emotionally overwhelmed. As she slumped into her seat, Anik came over to ask how it had gone. She shrugged her shoulders.
‘It was horrible. I couldn’t give her any details, like Nadine’s body not being found; it was just so hard... totally heartbreaking.’
Anik looked at the mobile phone and the postcard she had placed on the desk in front of her.
‘What’s this?’
Sara told him that Nadine’s parents had received the postcard and that they thought she had run away because they had taken her mobile phone away. He picked up the card, read it, then studied the mobile.
‘This is a major breakthrough! This means that little two-faced bitch Amanda Dunn could have been in contact with Nadine on Snapchat. The guv is going to love this.’
Sara watched him scoot across the incident room and go into DCI Clarke’s office. All she could think of was the expression on Mrs O’Reilly’s face when she had told her that Nadine was possibly never coming home. Anik came back to his desk after a short while. ‘I’m going to go and interview Middleton’s aunt and her husband about giving him a mobile phone.’
‘Do you need a search warrant?’ Sara asked.
‘No, just going to put the frighteners on them. As you met them both, you can come along with me if you like.’
After they had left the station, new information came in from forensics. They had now identified a DNA match with the missing girl, Jamail. The positive result came from blood splattering in the coal hole and the hairs recovered from the drain inside the basement flat, indicating that Jamail had probably been dismembered in the bathroom.
The incriminating evidence was mounting by the hour. However, no relevant clothing had been found from the charity drop cabinet yet, but they were still searching the vast warehouse where the clothes were being sorted, ready for distribution. Twenty officers had been assigned to the landfill sites, but as yet, they hadn’t unearthed any evidence connected to the murders. Leon had been compiling the missing girls’ dates of birth which had been passed to them by the victims’ respective families. He knocked on DCI Clarke’s office door.
Clarke looked up at Leon with an irritated expression, as he was busy trying to collate all the new evidence.
Leon was hesitant.
‘Sir, I just wanted you to know that I’ve been double-checking all the birth dates of the missing victims and matching them with the missing persons reports.’
‘Yes, and. . .?’
‘It’s Amanda Dunn, sir. She was born on 15th March 2006 and is therefore a bit older than we thought. It means she’s now eighteen years old as her birthday was last week. She’s no longer a juvenile.’