'Today?'
'It'd be helpful.'
Andy sighed. 'I'll make some calls.'
Jenny picked up the badge dosimeter from the junior radiographer working the Sunday shift at the Vale. He didn't ask any questions and Jenny didn't offer any explanations. He had a queue of casualties waiting, and in his line of work the badge was a standard and unremarkable piece of equipment. It was nowhere near as sophisticated as Sonia's handheld device: a small piece of photographic film contained in a credit-card-sized badge with a colour key. When exposed to radiation the film would turn a steadily darker shade of green.
It was less than a fifteen-minute drive to Anna Rose's flat in a new build not far from Parkway station on the northwest edge of the city. An area punctuated by business parks, industrial estates and arterial roads, it was charmless but convenient for the motorway, and less than twelve miles to Maybury. The block was a three-storey building wedged into a far corner of the estate. Every inch of narrow roadway was lined with parked cars. There wasn't a space to be had, so Jenny left her car blocking a turning circle.
There were two keys on the ring the Crosbys had given her. The first opened the door to the confined communal hallway, the second unlocked the door to Anna Rose's flat. Jenny checked the dosimeter: it remained the lightest shade of green.
She entered a small, conspicuously orderly one-bedroom apartment. The door opened straight from the outside landing into a kitchen-cum-living room furnished with a few items of simple modern furniture. A window looked out over a fenced-off area of scrub that had been cleared for development which had never happened. The dosimeter remained unchanged. She moved around the room, glancing over a shelf unit laden with university text books, opened drawers, checked the bathroom and thoroughly searched the tiny bedroom, poking the dosimeter into every corner, but it stuck stubbornly at no hazard.
She was both relieved and disappointed, and a little weary. She sat down on one of the two chairs at the small pine dining table and took stock. It was what she hadn't found that was most interesting. There was no suitcase or rucksack, no computer, camera or mobile phone. No wallet or toothbrush. There were empty hangers in the wardrobe, only a few pairs of socks and underwear in the chest of drawers. There were no signs of forced entry at the front door. The pile of mail on the kitchen counter and the few items she had picked up from the mat were unremarkable - bills or junk. Unlike Nazim and Rafi, it seemed that Anna Rose had packed and left deliberately.
Jenny tried to avoid the temptation to speculate, but she had an instinct she couldn't ignore, a sixth sense that told her this room belonged to someone who was alive, still in the game. It didn't smell dead; the atmosphere was disturbed but not leaden.
She scanned the room one last time for any hint of a clue. There was nothing. No notebooks, no scraps of paper, no rubbish in the bin. Virtually no trace of Anna Rose except her textbooks and a number of paperbacks lined up on the shelf beneath them. Jenny glanced at the titles: all light, slightly risqué fiction aimed at young women and a couple of trashy celebrity biographies. Anna Rose might be intelligent, but she couldn't be called cultured. It seemed odd to Jenny that a bright young woman would have no intellectual curiosity beyond her narrow subject, yet the syndrome felt somehow familiar. She turned her attention to a framed poster - the only object approaching a piece of art in the flat. She had barely noticed it before: from a distance it looked like a crude cartoon rendering of the Mona Lisa. Up close it was a collage of hundreds of photos of a younger, barely clad Britney Spears striking provocative poses. It was clever, Jenny thought, and imagined it appealing both to the scientist and the party girl in Anna Rose: sexy and serious at the same time. She was reminded of her visit to Sarah Levin's home: the young academic who spent her days with her head in particle theory but came home at night to MTV and glossy magazines. They struck an attitude, these young women: took a whole lot of things for granted Jenny's generation never had, but felt strangely shallow and unformed for it. What did they believe in? What then did they have to fall back on in times of crisis?
She checked the dosimeter one last time and locked the apartment door behind her. The radiation trail had gone cold, but she left the building certain of her next move.
There was no reply to the doorbell at Sarah Levin's apartment. Jenny waited outside in her car for over an hour and tried to order the theories invading her mind into a series of credible possibilities. Given that each one had to begin with the theft of radioactive material, it wasn't easy.
It had started to rain and she was feeling both tired and in need of a pill when a powder blue Fiat 500 pulled into a space across the street. Sarah Levin jumped out carrying several upmarket carrier bags and headed for her front door. Jenny beat her to it, intercepting her on the pavement.
'Dr Levin - I need to ask you some more questions.'
The young woman was surprised and affronted.
'Now? Are you joking? I'm only calling home for five minutes and then I'm on my way out again.'
She made for the front door. Jenny pursued her.
'It's about Anna Rose Crosby. I understand you knew her well.'
Sarah Levin stopped and turned, irritated.
'I've got friends who are lawyers - they couldn't believe that you came to my house. What do you think you're doing?'
'She's missing.'
'I heard.'
'Do you know why that might be?'
'Why would I know? I was her tutor, not her friend. I really have to get on.' She fished her keys from her pocket.
Jenny said, 'Her family were very surprised she got on the graduate scheme at Maybury. They said you might have pulled strings for her.'
Sarah Levin sighed theatrically and flicked back her long blonde hair. 'I write references for all my students. I have no idea what any of this is about, and as you don't seem inclined to tell me, we'll leave it there, shall we?'
Jenny was about to hit her with the whole story - Mrs Jamal, the caesium 137, all of it - but an instinct told her to hold fire. There was panic in Sarah Levin's defiant expression, and anger. Jenny had her denial and if need be she could use it against her later.
Calmly, Jenny said, 'You seemed rather alarmed when I mentioned her name.'
'That wouldn't have anything to do with me being door- stepped?'
'You have no idea what might have caused her to disappear?'
'This is ridiculous. None at all.'
'When were you last in contact?'
'I don't know. Last summer.'
'You'd say that on oath?'
'I'm sorry, Mrs whoever-you-are, I've had enough of this. You can ask me for a written statement, but you can't interrogate me out in the street. I'm not stupid.'
She went through the door and pushed it hard shut behind her. Her scent hung briefly in the air. If Anna Rose was pretty, Sarah Levin was beautiful. It wasn't simply her looks, it was chemical. Not a man or a woman would pass her without glancing back either in lust or envy. From the photographs she had seen of him, Jenny assumed that Nazim had had something of that quality, too. He was certainly better looking that Sarah Levin's current partner. She could imagine Nazim falling hopelessly in love with her, no matter what religious principles might have stood in his way. And for a girl who could have had anyone, he must have been one of the more interesting propositions.
Jenny hurried back to the car and pulled out her phone.
'Alison, it's me.'
'I know, Mrs Cooper. I can tell from the ring,'
'There was no radiation at Anna Rose's flat.'
'Oh. Is that surprising?'
Jenny disregarded the sarcastic tone. 'I've just spoken to Sarah Levin again. I've had a thought - can you get hold of her medical records?'