It hadn’t taken long for her to download everything from Teo Bontempi’s mobile using a cyber kiosk. The device had been created for this precise purpose, officers had been trained to use it, and the result was that people’s information and their habits, as revealed on their mobiles, were not as secure from the eyes of others as modern technology had led them to believe. Any individual’s life became an open book once their mobile phone left their possession and somehow ended up in the hands of the police. With a cyber kiosk, anything that registered on a mobile phone was easily downloaded, generally within twenty minutes. Ordinary people going about their daily lives didn’t have to worry much about this. Villains, on the other hand, had to worry plenty.
He’d told Havers and Nkata to go their respective ways while he waited for the documentation to arrive from Marjorie Lee. But neither of them had done so. Havers said, “Really, sir, it’s not like I have a hot anything waiting for me at home: man, dog, or jacket potato,” while Nkata put in, “I’m ringing my mum, guv. She’ll keep a meal warm long ’s I promise to eat it eventually.”
So they remained. Once the information from the dead woman’s phone was transferred to them, they divided it, and there was much to divide. In addition to Teo’s texts and a record of her phone calls, they had all of her photos, her recordings, her voice messages, the uses to which she’d put her GPS, her games, her favourite restaurants, her Uber history . . . In short, they had it all and all of it had to be gone through. The DCs on loan would be able to help them, but considering the number of queries and interviews that would be required, everyone was going to be working long hours from now on. For this reason, Lynley had told them all to go home for a rest. They had a real slog ahead of them and God only knew how long it would take.
Now, he heard Daidre say, “Have you slept at all, Tommy?”
“I have,” he told her. “But I think that’s it for the rest of the night. What time is it?”
“Ten past four,” she told him after a moment of consulting the clock on her upended bedside cardboard box.
“Hmmm,” he replied. “That’s three and a half hours. I’ve done worse.” He swung his legs off the bed and sat up, reaching for his clothes that lay discarded on the floor.
She put her hand on his bare back. “You’re very tense,” she said. “I wish I could do something to help you.”
“Go back to sleep. You’ve your own workday to consider.”
“I do. And I will. But just now, let me make you a coffee.”
She reached for her dressing gown, donned it, and padded to the kitchen. He began to dress. He heard a door open and then close, followed by the plaintive mewing of a cat with expectations.
Daidre said, “Have you actually been watching the window?” to which Wally responded with another sad mew. “Yes, well,” Daidre told the cat, “you must play second fiddle just now.” And then, “Wally, no. Not the work top and not the table or out you go . . . Oh, all right. Here it is, then.”
Lynley smiled as he heard the cat’s food being spilled into his bowl. He finished dressing, took up Daidre’s spectacles from the cardboard box, and went to the kitchen. Daidre was busy at her coffee machine while Wally munched happily in the corner.
Lynley turned Daidre to him and set the specs on her nose. He smoothed her hair behind her ears. He said, “This is above and beyond, you know.”
“In your view, perhaps. But not in Wally’s. Will you go straight back to work from here, Tommy?”
He shook his head. “Home first. Shower, shave, change my clothes, and let Charlie know I haven’t been kidnapped.”
She nodded. He could see, though, that she wanted to say something but was stopping herself. He said, “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you certain?”
“I am.”
“We hardly spoke last night.”
She smiled. “There wasn’t a great deal of time for speaking, was there.”
Still and all, he thought. He said, “Daidre, is there something . . . ?”
“Something?”
“Something that’s happened, something wrong, something that’s going on that I should know about?”
“Not at all, Tommy.”
“You would tell me if there was, wouldn’t you?”
She cocked her head and looked at him fondly. “Probably not. At least not just now and certainly not if I knew I could resolve it myself.”