‘You talked to her housemates.’
‘Harriet and Alissa. They all work together at St Jude’s. They’re worried sick. They were with Daniela on Friday night, but they left the bar early to queue outside the nightclub. Daniela said she’d be right behind them.’
‘And you told the police this?’
‘Of course.’
I’ve been making notes on my phone. Evie is hovering, waiting for some sign from me that she hasn’t panicked for no reason. Everything Mrs Linares has said must be the truth, or Evie would know otherwise.
‘I’ll need a photograph of Daniela,’ I say. ‘More than one, if you have them.’
She opens a cabinet and pulls a photo album from one of the drawers. As she turns the pages, old memories surface and she grows more distressed.
‘This was taken at a friend’s birthday last year.’
The photograph shows Daniela raising a glass of champagne towards the camera, smiling cheekily.
‘How do I get in touch with Harriet and Alissa?’
Mrs Linares provides me with their numbers. The photo album is still open on the coffee table. One of the images shows Daniela in a nurse’s uniform, alongside two colleagues.
‘That was taken on her first shift at St Jude’s,’ she explains. ‘I keep thinking of poor Maya. It was dreadful what happened to her and her father. But they caught him, didn’t they – the man responsible?’
I blink at her in surprise. ‘Did you know Maya?’
‘Daniela did.’ She points to the photograph. ‘That’s Maya there. They studied nursing together.’
I look more closely at the picture. Maya is in her early twenties, with blonde highlights in her hair and laughter in her eyes. She’s standing, hands on hips, pointing her toe at the camera and pouting.
Mrs Linares has found another photograph – a birthday celebration with Daniela kneeling on a chair, leaning forward to blow out candles on a cake. Maya is next to her, filming on her phone.
The room seems to suddenly tilt.
‘Daniela was so upset when she heard the news,’ says Mrs Linares. ‘We all were.’
‘When did she last see Maya?’ I ask, stunned by the connection.
‘Not for ages.’
‘Months?’
‘Years.’
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined the term ‘synchronicity’ to describe events that seem more than coincidental. We’ve all experienced them. Thinking about someone we haven’t thought about in years and suddenly the phone rings, or we bump into them in a supermarket, or we hear the news that they’ve died, or been hurt. We often see these events as having special meaning, somehow believing they are beyond cause and effect. It’s the reason that some people believe in God or star signs, or that our fates are predetermined.
I am not one of them. We do not live in a supremely ordered world where every occurrence or action serves some purpose. The pattern of a bird through the sky, or a beam of light breaking through clouds at a critical moment, or the overhearing of a chance remark – these are only significant because we give them meaning or imagine they’re part of some greater grand design. Sometimes, an unlikely event is just a coincidence, or God’s way of remaining anonymous.
Not this time.
42
Evie
I’m jogging to keep up with Cyrus as he crosses the lawn, leaving footprints in the dew.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The police.’
‘Now?’
‘I wish it were sooner.’
Cyrus calls Lenny Parvel on the journey. The shadows of streetlights slide across the bonnet and over my face.
‘Another woman has gone missing,’ he says. ‘Daniela Linares. Nobody has seen her since Friday night when she left a bar in the Lace Market. I have a witness who says Daniela’s drink may have been spiked.’ Cyrus glances at me.
‘People go missing all the time,’ says Lenny, who sounds half asleep.
‘This one knew Maya Kirk.’
Now he has her full attention. Lenny is thinking out loud. ‘Foley wasn’t arrested until Monday afternoon. Where are you now?’
‘On my way to Radford Road.’
‘I’ll meet you there.’
‘What about Hoyle?’
‘I’ll wake him.’
The call ends and Cyrus keeps asking me questions, wanting the whole story – right down to what Daniela was wearing, and who she might have met or spoken to.
‘She was sitting at a table near the front windows. There was a group of them.’
‘Women or men?’
‘I can’t remember. The place was crowded.’
‘What time did her friends leave?’
Again, I can’t tell him. Daniela had vomited in the loo. I was sent to clean it up. She said it was something she ate.
‘Who ordered her a car?’
‘She had an account. I helped her.’
‘She could walk steadily?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she could talk?’
‘Of course. Otherwise, I would have called an ambulance. I helped her outside. When the driver arrived, he used her name. I asked him if he knew where to go. He said Stapleford. That was the address on her driver’s licence, but not where she lived.’
‘You think someone took her phone and read her licence?’
‘Yes, but how would he know Daniela was going to order a car?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t. Maybe he planned to follow her home.’
At the police station, Cyrus buys me a machine hot chocolate that tastes of sugar rather than cocoa. The sergeant in the charge room recognises me and raises an eyebrow, as if to say, ‘Back again so soon?’
Lenny is equally surprised, until Cyrus explains that I’m the witness. Before he can explain, a male voice booms down the corridor, shouting at a cleaner for leaving a mop and bucket in the middle of the floor.
Hoyle appears. Pillow marks crease his face and he’s dressed in a khaki shirt, baggy jeans and boat shoes that reveal bare ankles below the cuffs.
‘This had better be good,’ he announces.
We meet in Lenny’s office. I sit nearest the door, hoping to hide, and only look up when my name is mentioned. Hoyle turns out to be one of those loud, opinionated men, who uses swear words as adjectives and punctuation marks. Mr Joubert would be proud of that analogy. He’d be proud that I know what analogy means.
‘You don’t even know if this woman is missing,’ says Hoyle. ‘She could be shacked up with some new bloke.’
‘Daniela has never missed a shift at St Jude’s,’ says Cyrus. ‘Monday was the first time. She hasn’t answered her phone in four days. No calls. No texts.’
‘Give it to the uniforms to investigate.’
‘Daniela and Maya knew each other. They studied nursing together.’
‘Maya wasn’t a nurse.’
‘She used to be.’
Hoyle dismisses it as a coincidence.
‘Maya Kirk didn’t disappear from a bar. She was taken from home. And you have no evidence Daniela Linares was drugged.’
‘She told Evie that she’d barely had anything to drink.’
Hoyle swings his gaze to me. He takes a moment to size me up and I can feel his eyes on my skin. ‘A little birdie tells me that you approached and harassed a sexual assault victim.’