The Disappeared

Jenny said, 'When did she go missing, exactly?'

Mr Crosby said, 'We spoke to her on the phone on the night of Monday, 11 January. She was at work on the Tuesday, but didn't arrive on the Wednesday.'

'Where was she on the Tuesday night?'

'In her flat, we think. The bed looked slept in. Her boyfriend called her mid-evening. Everything seemed fine.'

'Did she take anything with her?'

Mrs Crosby said, 'It looked like she'd packed a bag. Her wallet and passport were gone. She took five hundred pounds from an ATM near her flat at seven-thirty on the Wednesday morning.'

'Has there been any activity on the account since?'

'No,' Mr Crosby said definitely. 'And no record of her leaving the country that we can find.'

Jenny said, 'Was there any indication that anything was wrong?'

'It was a complete bolt from the blue,' Mrs Crosby said. 'She seemed perfectly happy. She had a good job, a new boyfriend—' She stopped mid-sentence and glanced at her husband, who seemed to have been struck by the same thought. She let him take over.

'We think she might have been seeing an Asian chap last year,' he said, as if it was a source of great shame. 'My wife was visiting one day last October and saw him leaving her flat. She said he was just a friend, but . . . you know. One has an instinct.'

'Do you know who he was?'

'Salim something, I think. She never mentioned a surname.'

'What did he look like?'

Mr Crosby turned to his wife, who said, 'Mid-twenties, a little older than Anna Rose. Perfectly respectable,' adding apologetically, 'quite good-looking, really.'

Mr Crosby said, 'Christ, I knew we should have said something. What the hell has she got herself mixed up in?'

Mrs Crosby put a calming hand on her husband's back. 'I don't think it was still going on. She was really taken with Mike. They met at work.'

'At Maybury?'

'Yes . . . He was her first line manager, her boss, I suppose. She started a two-year training programme last September - the graduate programme.'

'This Asian friend, do you know anything more? Was he involved politically in any way?'

'I've no idea,' Mr Crosby said. 'I've never heard Anna Rose talk politics in her life.'

'What are her interests?'

'Having a good time, as far as I could make out,' he said. 'Stunned us both completely when she went straight into a job. She only took physics because she thought there would be less competition getting onto the course.'

'Did she do well?'

'Not particularly,' Mrs Crosby said. 'A z:z. She was lucky to get on the graduate scheme at all. She'd always talked about going off travelling for a year.'

'Her looks probably helped,' her husband said. 'Men would do anything for her.'

Jenny glanced at the few tasteful black and white family photographs arranged on a polished walnut bureau. Anna Rose in her late teens had shoulder-length blonde hair and a twinkling, mischievous smile that spelled trouble. She was more elemental, less refined than her adoptive parents.

Jenny said, 'How did she end up in this job? It sounds almost out of character.'

Mr Crosby shrugged, seemingly at a loss to explain it other than as just another of his daughter's many surprises. His wife said, 'She got on very well with one of her tutors - Dr Levin. I had the impression that she pushed Anna Rose in that direction. Pulled a few strings, probably, but Anna Rose would never have admitted to taking someone else's help.'

'She was very independent?'

'Oh yes,' Mr Crosby said. 'And headstrong. It didn't matter how wrong she was, she was always right.' His tone suggested he'd already made up his mind about what had happened: his feisty, naive daughter, too good-looking for her own good, had got involved with some damn-fool foreigner. If she wasn't already dead, she was certainly beyond any help they could offer.

Mrs Crosby said, 'Does this mean there will be a criminal investigation?'

'Of course there will,' her husband snapped. 'It's bloody obvious. She's up to her eyes in something.'

'You don't know that, Alan,' she protested, pained by his anger.

'You know how impressionable she is. She's been like it since she was small.' He turned to Jenny. 'I'll be honest with you, Mrs Cooper - we were amazed she survived her teens. Expelled from two good schools, God knows how many unsuitable boys. She was always getting into trouble.'

Mrs Crosby, succumbing to tears, said, 'That's not fair—'

Jenny said, 'I've no reason to talk to the police at the moment. But I would like to look around your daughter's flat, and also talk to Mike Stevens.'

Jenny left the Crosbys' home with a set of keys to Anna Rose's flat and Mike Stevens's mobile number. She called him from her car, hoping to meet him later that morning, but he answered from a hotel room in the Lake District. He was on a week-long business trip to the nuclear reprocessing plant at nearby Sellafield. There was nothing to be gained from staying at home, he said: Anna Rose's parents had followed up every one of her friends and acquaintances they knew, who were far more than he did. They had only been together for a little short of three months.

Jenny said, 'I know this is going to sound a little strange, Mr Stevens, but would Anna Rose have had any access to radioactive material, caesium 137 for example?'

She was met by what she interpreted as a stunned silence. When Mike Stevens found his voice, he said, 'Why would you ask that?'

'It's just that traces of that substance have turned up in another case I'm investigating.'

'A death?'

Jenny said, 'Don't panic. There's no connection with Anna Rose apart from the caesium. I just need to know if any could have escaped from your plant.'

'God, no. Do you know anything about the nuclear industry? Everything's dealt with by robots.'

'You're saying it's impossible for her to have got hold of such a substance?'

'You'd have as much chance. What is this? What's she meant to have done?'

'Nothing. It's probably just two unconnected events. One more question - what do you know about an Asian friend of hers called Salim?'

'Never heard of him.'

'Her mother saw him leaving her flat last October.'

'Where the hell is all this coming from? Anna Rose doesn't have a friend called Salim. She was seeing me last October.'

'Sorry to have troubled you, Mr Stevens. Mr or Mrs Crosby will fill you in. Try not to worry.'

'Hey—'

She hung up and dialled Alison's home number. It rang seven times before she answered with a cautious hello.

'I thought you might be at church,' Jenny said.

Alison ignored the comment. 'You're alive then, Mrs Cooper. Half of Bristol's trying to get hold of you. Everyone thinks you know something.'

'Not yet, but I'm working on it. Has it hit the news yet? I haven't heard anything.'

'Not a squeak. There must be some sort of blackout.'

'I don't know if that's frightening or reassuring. I need to get hold of a dosimeter.'

'A what?'

'Andy Kerr's number will do.'

Andy took her call from what sounded like a gym with bad pop music and weights clanking in the background. There was obviously no girlfriend to keep him occupied on a Sunday morning. He still had the dosimeter in his lab coat pocket, he said, but the entire mortuary building had been sealed off while it was being decontaminated. He wasn't expecting to be allowed back in before mid-week. He would have called Sonia Cane, but he'd heard she was writing a report complaining that he'd acted improperly in not informing the Health Protection Agency immediately he discovered radiation on Mrs Jamal's body.

'What's she frightened of?' Jenny said.

'Same thing as me - getting sacked. I've already been told not to discuss it with anyone, not even you, apparently.'

'I won't tell. So where can I get a dosimeter?'