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Further to my earlier email, I can now confirm that the Santa Monica PD have entered the apartment. Clearly we can’t be sure how much cash Robin may have had there, but according to Mackenzie Stirling there should be a necklace and matching earrings in Tierney’s jewellery box which are no longer there. They were left to Tierney in their grandmother’s will and are worth atleast $30,000. The apartment was otherwise undisturbed. CSI will check for prints, but judging by the photos I’ve seen, the perpetrator knew what they were doing.
TB
***
Friday night, 6.45, and only Chloe Sargent is still at her desk. She rewinds the footage on the screen in front of her and plays it again. LAPD sent over a batch of it earlier in the day – CCTV footage from four of the cheque-cashing operations where Robin Tierney’s account was systematically emptied. Different outlets and different cities, but when it comes to the woman at the counter it’s the same story every time: the same cap low over the eyes, the same holdall over one shoulder, the same scrupulous care not to look anywhere near the camera.
Five minutes later the door to the incident room opens. A blonde woman in jeans and a white T-shirt. Sargent hasn’t seen her before. She frowns slightly – civilians shouldn’t be up here –
She stands up. ‘Can I help you?’
The woman starts a little. ‘God, sorry, I didn’t see you.’ She looks a little embarrassed. ‘I was in Oxford this afternoon and just wanted to leave something for Gis and Baxter. I’m not snooping or anything –’
Gis, thinks Sargent. If she’s calling him that she must know him – maybe that’s why they let her in downstairs.
‘Hang on, you’re not Erica Somer, are you?’
The woman looks relieved. ‘Yes! And you’re –’ She hesitates a moment. ‘Chloe Sargent? Have I remembered that right?’
‘You have. But I guess it’s not a name you forget, in this job.’
They exchange a smile, and Sargent goes back to her screen.Somer goes over to Baxter’s and Gis’s desks and leaves large cream envelopes propped against their screens.
‘Don’t you just hate CCTV?’ says Sargent, rubbing her eyes.
‘What is it?’ asks Somer, coming a little closer.
‘This? This is FastCash4U in sunny Miami, where a murder suspect is taking $8,766 out of a dead woman’s bank account.’
Somer looks concerned. ‘The Daisy Mason case, right?’
‘In one. Sorry, I forgot. You did the interviews with her friends.’
‘Ev said you still don’t know where either of them went after the rental car was dropped off.’
Sargent sighs. ‘The team at South Mercia have spent hours trawling Evesham B&Bs and checking CCTV from local businesses, the poor bastards, but we can’t find a single sighting of them anywhere. It’s like they grew wings and flew away.’
Somer makes a wry face. ‘Sounds familiar.’ She gestures at the screen. ‘So you’re having another look?’
Sargent nods. ‘If we could at least be sure which one of them this is, that would be a start. But Bax keeps telling me I’m wasting my time.’
Somer smiles. ‘I can hear him saying it. But I’d do the same as you. If that’s any help.’
Sargent sits back. ‘Only look at it. Bax is right – it could literally be anyone.’
Somer gives her a sympathetic look. ‘Want a hand? Two sets of eyes better than one?’
Sargent looks disproportionately relieved. ‘You sure? You must have something better to do –’
‘My boyfriend’s daughter is thinking of applying to the university, so we’ve been traipsing around the town looking at colleges all day. I think they can manage without me for half an hour. And frankly, the idea of actually putting my backside on a chair for a while isextremelyappealing.’
She dumps her bag on the desk and pulls up a seat. Sargent presses Play. The camera is high up behind the counter and you can almost feel the heat in the tiny, over-furnished booth. Theold-fashioned fan cranking slowly on the counter, the flies crawling on the glass partition, the curling posters hanging at tired angles. The man behind the desk is reading a newspaper, a can of Dr Pepper at one elbow.
‘Jesus,’ says Somer. ‘Do people actually still drink that stuff?’
They can see passers-by through the glass door, and then a woman coming closer. She seems to be hesitating, but then again, as they now know, this is the first time she’s done this. You can see the short dark hair under the baseball cap.
She glances across at Somer and sees her frowning. ‘You’re looking at the hair, right? But she’d have had to cut it – to look enough like Robin Tierney.’