Page 65 of No Safe Place
Saturday | Morning
Field
Field got to the station at quarter past seven. She’d showered, straightened her hair – even put on make-up. Everyone else looked rested, but after finishing Callum’s book at gone four, she’d had a few hours’ fitful doze before her alarm went off.
Day four – and another night with no reported incidents. They had two days before the super reassigned the investigation, and still had no name for Patient C.
Field needed to concentrate on the case, but she kept thinking about Toby.
She wanted to tell him that she’d read Callum’s book. All these years, she’d never been able to fathom what might have been going on in Toby’s head, when he was a teenager. All she knew was the terror and the confusion of being trapped on the outside.
But then she read Darlings, Obsessed.
Riley and Wilson were in before eight, both looking for fresh links between David and Sam, convinced that if they were the only intended victims, there had to be something going on between them. Their chatter and speculation finally snapped Field out of it.
She was waiting for the results of the DNA comparison between the semen sample found on Sam and David’s DNA, but then Riley dropped a print-out on Field’s desk. It was Sam’s phone download, back late last night from Digital Forensics.
Field skimmed a string of messages between Sam and a man saved in her phone as “James Hinge”.
They’d been messaging for over a fortnight, and met for a first date on Tuesday.
There were messages from Wednesday morning, thanking Sam for breakfast, suggesting he’d been with her overnight, when David was attacked.
A DC was already on the way to follow it up.
The team had completely taken over the whiteboards in the conference room. Furthest left were David and Sam’s photographs, surrounded by their known movements and personal information.
In the centre of the board was their list:
PATIENT A: LILY STEWART
PATIENT B: SAMANTHA HUGHES
PATIENT C:?
PATIENT D: CALLUM MULLIGAN
PATIENT E: PAIGE JACOBS
They had pictures of Lily and Callum – a smiling Lily at a wedding, in a formal dress, next to Callum’s book headshot, moody in black and white.
On the same board, Wilson had started a neat list of periphery players, with accompanying photographs printed much smaller: Penny Moore; Sam’s family members; David’s receptionist; an ex-boyfriend of Sam’s that Riley uncovered from Instagram; Lily Stewart’s boyfriend, Scott, a junior doctor.
James from Hinge was another recent addition.
Field frowned and made a mental note to ask Young and Prof if they’d ever heard of Lily’s boyfriend, since they all worked at the same hospital. It was unlikely that Scott, in Cardiology, had crossed paths with David Moore, but it was yet another coincidence.
Overall, it was a relatively small pool of suspects and players, which made Field more uneasy. She was missing something, some vital piece of information.
Riley knocked on her door, stuck his head round it. ‘Boss?’
She nodded at the chair opposite her desk, and he took a seat, laptop on his knees. His lip looked better today.
‘I’ve just sent you an email,’ he said. ‘I’ve found Paige Jacobs. Well, her family.’
He carried on talking as she navigated to her inbox. Riley was struggling to look at her with the sun in his eyes, from the window behind her.
‘There was no address on the RTC report, but I cross-referenced the time and date with local news stories and got in touch with a few of the people who left comments on the News Shopper ’s Facebook post. Two of them got back to me this morning.’
‘Good,’ Field said, scanning the clippings he’d sent over.
‘Mr and Mrs Jacobs, her parents, are selling up. They’ve already moved to Hastings, into a little bungalow. It’s just Paige’s sister in the house now. I spoke to her, too. She’s in all day today, and she’s happy to speak to you.’
Field scanned the email again. ‘Ruby Jacobs?’
‘Twenty-nine-year-old pharmacy technician. Still lives at home, no priors or anything.’
He broke off as Field got out of her chair to wrestle with the blinds. His pained squinting was getting on her nerves.
‘What did you make of the report?’ The cord finally gave way and the blind shot down. ‘Anything they might have missed?’
He looked down at his laptop and shrugged. ‘I can’t see anything obvious. She went off the road in Thamesmead – you know the dual carriageway? There are some big dips in the road near the industrial estate that flood all the time.’
‘Oh, that’s where it happened?’ Field was surprised it was so close to home. For some reason, she’d imagined Paige far away somewhere unfamiliar, on a winding country road.
She glanced at the Jacobs’ address again. At a guess, Paige was maybe ten minutes from home.
‘The car aquaplaned. The RTC report mentioned a mechanical fault, which Wilson and I couldn’t make head nor tail of.
I spoke to a mechanic on the phone last night.
’ Riley sucked in a breath. ‘It was a faulty drive shaft. That was all. No suggestion the brakes had been meddled with or there was any foul play. Apparently, she must have been going too fast, skidded on the water – then the fault meant she couldn’t regain control in time. ’
‘Cause of death?’ Field asked.
‘Cranio-cerebral injury,’ he replied, automatically. ‘Died six hours after she was admitted.’
Her poor parents.
Field sat up in her chair. ‘How old was she? Nineteen?’
Riley nodded.
‘Did she have drugs or alcohol in her system?’ Field asked.
‘Nope.’
‘And no one else was in the car with her, right?’
Riley closed his laptop. ‘No. She wasn’t found for over an hour. It was dark and the car had flipped over, down a verge.’ He hesitated. ‘There was a suggestion that it could have been suicide, because of her past mental health issues. But the parents were adamant that was all behind her.’
Field swallowed. ‘Right. I need to get ready for the case call. I’m just going to make a quick coffee.’
‘Do you want me on that call, boss?’ His voice was slightly higher than usual.
‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Fine.’
Field escaped to the solitude of the kitchenette, mercifully empty this early on a Saturday. The limescale-ridden kettle rattled as it boiled, but Field didn’t hear it. This case was like two fistfuls of sand, and Field was desperately trying not to let it slip through her fingers.