Jack and Laura were huddled together over the contents of Jessica Chi’s duffel bag, which sat on a plastic sheet on a large white table in Angel’s SOCO lab. Their gloved hands carefully opened the sodden make-up bag and the toiletries bag, as these were the only two items yet to be fully examined and their contents logged. At the same time, Laura was on hold with Jessica’s college and they were both trying hard to ignore the godawful music playing in the background when Laura found a bottle of CBD oil in Jessica’s make-up bag. ‘Hemp oil. Not exactly drugs but... was she ill, do you think? Anxiety maybe? I can’t get my head round CBD. Once the THC has been removed, what’s the point? With no active cannabinoids, it can’t actually work, can it?’
‘We’ll get it tested. Just because the bottle says CBD, doesn’t mean it is. Jessica was certainly anxious when I spoke to her, but that was because she was worried about Adam. I didn’t get the impression she was a drug user.’
‘Certainly not to our knowledge!’ The high-pitched, indignant voice came from Laura’s mobile. The music had stopped, and the college receptionist was back on the line without either of them realising.
‘Apologies.’ Laura picked up their conversation from where they had left off. ‘Did you manage to find someone authorised to talk to us about Jessica?’
‘I’ve been given the authority to answer your questions within certain boundaries. You ask me what you need, and I’ll answer what I can.’
Laura thanked the receptionist, whose name she’d forgotten, and asked her to initially confirm that Jessica was indeed a student with them. ‘She was registered on our Business and Economics course. Started last year. She was on a student visa. I can let you have her home address if you need that.’ Laura confirmed that they already knew it, but double-checked that it was the same address the college had on file. Laura then said that she was interested in any family Jessica may have had.
‘I don’t have any record of next of kin. Sorry. Is she in trouble? Drugs, did you say?’ Laura ignored the receptionist’s questions, instead asking what Jessica was like, who she hung around with and whether she had a boyfriend. ‘I never met her. I work in the offices. I have her file details, which I’ve now shared with you. I can ask her tutor to contact you when she returns from maternity leave?’
Without giving anything away, Laura emphasised the urgency of the situation and requested that Jessica’s tutor should be contacted at home and given Laura’s mobile number to call at her earliest convenience.
Jack left Laura to process the CBD oil, whilst he headed back to the station to go through Avril’s little red notebook in private.
By the time Jack returned to the squad room, there was a large evidence bag sitting in the middle of his desk, containing the rest of Avril’s personal property from the cellar.
His mobile screen silently lit up:
If you’ll be back by 7 — I’ll wait. If not — beef stew in slow cooker. Let me know x.
Jack didn’t reply, which he knew Maggie would interpret as meaning that he was going to be home later than seven. He tipped out the contents of the evidence bag, picking up an oversized photograph, which seemed to be a soft-focus image of Avril and Frederick on their wedding day. She was beautiful and elegant, with her strawberry blonde hair held high on her head by numerous butterfly clasps which cleverly left just two slender ringlets free to frame her lovely face. She wore a chic satin gown that subtly showed off her athletic figure. She looked nothing at all like the quirky woman he’d met, dressed in clothes more suited to a child and with her grey hair held in a scruffy bun by a scrap of floral fabric. Frederick was older, taller and he reminded Jack of the late Duke of Windsor: with his tailored suit, slender hands and immaculate shirt cuffs with heavy gold cufflinks, he looked quite aristocratic and effeminate. Not interesting, not exciting, perhaps — but trustworthy.
The second larger photograph that caught Jack’s eye was of Avril as a much younger woman, standing with a small boy at a coastal fairground. Behind them was a long pier with some kind of building at the far end which Jack assumed to be a theatre or restaurant. Avril wore a low-cut summer blouse that tied in a knot between her breasts. Her hair was long and flowing, and it tousled in the strong coastal breeze around her bare shoulders and neck.
Next, Jack sifted through an extensive pile of smaller photos, some from a 35 mm camera, some from an instant Polaroid. Most didn’t particularly draw his attention until he got to one of the same small boy, this time standing alone, dressed in a school uniform. Jack picked up his mobile and took a photo of the badge on the boy’s blazer, then he zoomed in to try and see the name of the school. He couldn’t see any wording, but the picture on the badge was of a bird seated on an open book. The final photo that caught Jack’s eye was of Avril standing next to a tall suntanned man outside the Bowler Hat restaurant in California.
Jack put these four photographs to one side, then moved on to a small, leatherbound photo album. It was packed with hundreds of overlapping black-and-white photographs, mainly showing a rundown estate with children playing football in the road and having picnics on front doorsteps. Two girls were skipping — with one end of a washing line tied to a lamppost. A sparse playground beyond back garden fences was overrun with excited children and dogs being watched over by smoking parents. Avril, at various ages in her late teens, was in every photograph — and somewhere in the background there was always a thin blond boy, wearing a frown far too sombre for his young face.
Trying to create a visual timeline of Avril’s childhood, Jack began pinning all of the photos to one of the evidence boards.
Avril seemed to be a confident, free-spirited child, always playing outside with other children, mainly boys, and mostly older than herself. She wore a variety of clothes, some quite tomboyish, which Jack assumed to be hand-me-downs from older males in the family. Most of the photographs were not posed: they were just random snapshots of life. The ones that were posed showed Avril to be less at ease, and the most intriguing were a series of images showing her standing next to another young man in military uniform.
Jack’s mind kept drifting back to the crime scene. He wondered what was happening in his absence, what Ridley and Steve were deciding to tell the press, what Moley had found on the security system, and what Mal and Josh had unearthed in the various drugs dens found at the property. Everyone seemed to be actively involved in something far more exciting than him right now. Even Anik was at the heart of the operation, as he was shadowing Moley with the Drug Squad.
Jack took a second to refocus on the task at hand and remind himself how important it was to learn about and understand the victim. And this was his forte. He had an intuition for spotting important details amongst a mess of background noise that surpassed anyone else on Ridley’s team. That was why Jack had chosen to be back at the station sifting through the personal property of their murder victim.
Laura returned from forensics with a wad of paper in her hand. ‘Did you know...’ She then read in her head for a good fifteen seconds, leaving Jack hanging on the silence, ‘that in the past four months, Avril Jenkins received two calls to her landline from California and three calls from an unidentified mobile. Apart from that, nothing. No one calls her. I think that’s sad. And most of the outgoing calls she made from her landline were to Kingston nick and food shops. The woman had no friends.’
‘The calls from California could be Terence, Frederick’s brother.’ Jack pointed to the photo on the board of Avril and a tall man outside the Bowler Hat restaurant. ‘This could be him. And the mobile could be Jessica Chi? She used to call the house to speak to Adam Border and allegedly Avril would hurl abuse and then hang up on her.’