Leigh Fletcher has long dark hair. In the pic the glossy hair has clearly just benefitted from a fresh blow-dry. She’s wearing lipstick, a pale pink shade, but not much else in the way of makeup. She doesn’t need it. Her lashes are thick and fabulous, her skin clear, and the only wrinkles on her face are around her eyes. Clements imagines the missing woman identifying them as laughter lines, shunning the miserable description of crow’s feet. She’s smiling in the photo, a huge beam. But there’s something about her big brown soulful eyes that makes Clements wonder. She looks weary. Most working mums are tired—that’s a given—but this is deeper. She’s drained. Done for.
Clements shakes her head. Sometimes she wonders whether she has too much imagination for a cop. She has to keep that in check. It’s perfectly possible that she’s reading too much into the snap.
Suddenly, Clements feels the weight of a hand on the back of her chair, someone leaning in far too close—ostensibly to look at what she is typing—in fact, simply invading her body space because he can. She recognizes DC Morgan’s bulk and body odour instantly. Without looking at him, she knows he’ll have food between his teeth or caught in his beard. His shirt will be gaping, the buttons straining to stretch the material across his pale podgy belly that is coated in dark hair. Morgan is not an attractive man anymore, but Clements admits he might have had a charm once. Before his confidence loosened into boorishness, when his mass was the result of muscle not fat. Invasion of body space—and probably much more—is the sort of stunt he has been pulling for twenty-plus years, and no amount of training courses on appropriate workplace behavior are likely to change him now. In fact, Clements has been on the courses with him and heard him dismiss them as “political correctness gone mad. Nothing more than the spawn of limp-wristed liberals.” He is a treat. She would probably hate him if he wasn’t such a good copper.
“All right, Morgan?” Clements says in greeting. She rolls her chair away from him, narrowly avoiding running over his foot but forcing him to jump back from her.
He straightens up, arches his back. “Must be the day for it.” He likes starting conversations in an obtuse way, forcing others to ask questions, somehow making him seem more interesting and engaging than he truly is.
“The day for what?” Clements asks dutifully.
“Missing women. I’ve just had one put through to my desk too.” Clements feels a chill run through her body, her breathing stutters but she manages to keep her outward response to nothing more than raising an eyebrow. So, he was actually reading her screen. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying to secretly rub up against her, though; it’s just proof that, despite stereotypes, he is a man who can multitask.
“Really. Who? Where?”
“A Kai Janssen. Her husband called it in. Woman in her midforties, boss.”
Clements is not Morgan’s boss. She’s not even his senior. They hold the same rank. However, she is fifteen years younger than him and likely to continue to take exams and be promoted, whereas he is most probably done. The use of the term boss is laden with sarcasm. He does not see this “slip of a girl” as so much as an equal. It’s her breasts. Not that her breasts are particularly notable. Not especially large or small, but their existence—proving she is a woman—is enough to convince Morgan that Clements is inherently inferior. That’s why he laughs at the idea that one day she might outrank him. He jokes about it now, so that when it does happen, it won’t seem threatening or even important.
“The husband sounded posh, maybe foreign. Dutch? With a name like Janssen. Some foreigners sound so posh they sound more English than we do, though, eh? I’m just heading over there to talk to him in person. To follow up.”
“Do you mind if I take it?” Clements tries to keep the eagerness out of her voice. If he knows she really wants it, then he’s doing her a favor. If he does her a favor, she owes him.
“You think they are connected?”
“Maybe.”
Morgan scratches his belly, glances toward the window. It’s raining again. “Be my guest,” he says.
15
DC Clements
Clements doesn’t bother taking Tanner with her. She needs a break from her esteemed male colleagues: their sweat, their opinions, their careless assumptions. Not for the first time she wishes her division had more female officers.
It’s 3:00 p.m. by the time she arrives at the address Morgan has given her. The property is on the river, one of those flash, multimillion-pound apartment blocks within spitting distance of the shiny financial district. She is a bit surprised because urban legend has it that no one lives in these apartments, that they are all bought up by Russian oligarchs who don’t want to live in the UK but want to protect their cash and so pour it into something tangible overseas. A soulless arrangement. This is a very different part of London from the bit she was at earlier. A few miles in physical distance, worlds apart in reality. Leigh Fletcher’s home is slap bang in the middle of row after row of identical Victorian terraced houses, in a street that has yet to be redeveloped. At some point it will probably become another neighborhood for people with a lot of money but no roots. Clements would guess that the last time the Fletchers’ street was transformed was in the ’70s. Then, the original features—like stained glass, sash windows and black-and-white tiled paths—were ripped out and dug up. Replaced by ugly practical solutions—uPVC windows and doors, cement paths. Their street is not charming or in any way estate-agent “desirable,” but it is not without merit.
It is busy with nose-to-nose traffic, crowded. It’s the sort of street where groups of morose teens loll on the low walls at the end of the scraps that pass as gardens, tired parents dash their kids to and from school and football practice, pensioners slowly but determinedly saunter to the corner shop, prepared to pay a bit more for their milk as it guarantees a chat to the person behind the counter. It’s an area where the recycling bins overflow, the paintwork on the doors blisters and peels. You get the sense that the people who live on the street are too strapped—by time and money—to bother with DIY. However, there is something appealing about the sense of enduring community. It’s the sort of place where all the kids go to the same local school, and the residents don’t shoo away the teenagers from the walls because it’s silently and tacitly acknowledged, they could be up to a lot worse, elsewhere.
Kai Janssen’s part of town is immaculate. The pavements are litter-free, there are landscaped walkways, fountains and green spaces. Although there is not a single soul around to enjoy these features. Clements looks about her and shivers, made cold by a sense of isolation. Personally, she’d rather live with the peeling paintwork and the streets that teem with life. This rarefied atmosphere of wealth is paradoxically suffocating. Clements rings the bell and is allowed into a large glass-and-marble foyer where she is greeted by a man in his fifties sitting behind a concierge desk. This makes the place seem more like a hotel than a home.
Clements flashes her badge. “Can I help you?” the concierge asks, not managing to hide the frisson of excitement he is so clearly feeling on having a police officer visit the premises. Cops don’t expect cheers and genial greetings from many people, but they can always depend on a warm welcome from a nosy busybody. Clements asks for Mr. Janssen.