The Disappeared (34 page)

Mrs
Crosby said, 'Does this mean there will be a criminal investigation?'

'Of
course there will,' her husband snapped. 'It's bloody obvious. She's up to her
eyes in something.'

'You
don't know that, Alan,' she protested, pained by his anger.

'You
know how impressionable she is. She's been like it since she was small.' He
turned to Jenny. 'I'll be honest with you, Mrs Cooper - we were amazed she
survived her teens. Expelled from two good schools, God knows how many
unsuitable boys. She was always getting into trouble.'

Mrs
Crosby, succumbing to tears, said, 'That's not fair—'

Jenny
said, 'I've no reason to talk to the police at the moment. But I would like to
look around your daughter's flat, and also talk to Mike Stevens.'

Jenny
left the Crosbys' home with a set of keys to Anna Rose's flat and Mike
Stevens's mobile number. She called him from her car, hoping to meet him later
that morning, but he answered from a hotel room in the Lake District. He was on
a week-long business trip to the nuclear reprocessing plant at nearby
Sellafield. There was nothing to be gained from staying at home, he said: Anna
Rose's parents had followed up every one of her friends and acquaintances they
knew, who were far more than he did. They had only been together for a little
short of three months.

Jenny
said, 'I know this is going to sound a little strange, Mr Stevens, but would
Anna Rose have had any access to radioactive material, caesium 137 for
example?'

She
was met by what she interpreted as a stunned silence. When Mike Stevens found
his voice, he said, 'Why would you ask that?'

'It's
just that traces of that substance have turned up in another case I'm
investigating.'

'A
death?'

Jenny
said, 'Don't panic. There's no connection with Anna Rose apart from the
caesium. I just need to know if any could have escaped from your plant.'

'God,
no. Do you know anything about the nuclear industry? Everything's dealt with
by robots.'

'You're
saying it's impossible for her to have got hold of such a substance?'

'You'd
have as much chance. What is this? What's she meant to have done?'

'Nothing.
It's probably just two unconnected events. One more question - what do you know
about an Asian friend of hers called Salim?'

'Never
heard of him.'

'Her
mother saw him leaving her flat last October.'

'Where
the hell is all this coming from? Anna Rose doesn't have a friend called Salim.
She was seeing me last October.'

'Sorry
to have troubled you, Mr Stevens. Mr or Mrs Crosby will fill you in. Try not to
worry.'

'Hey—'

She
hung up and dialled Alison's home number. It rang seven times before she
answered with a cautious hello.

'I
thought you might be at church,' Jenny said.

Alison
ignored the comment. 'You're alive then, Mrs Cooper. Half of Bristol's trying
to get hold of you. Everyone thinks you know something.'

'Not
yet, but I'm working on it. Has it hit the news yet? I haven't heard anything.'

'Not
a squeak. There must be some sort of blackout.'

'I
don't know if that's frightening or reassuring. I need to get hold of a
dosimeter.'

'A
what?'

'Andy
Kerr's number will do.'

Andy
took her call from what sounded like a gym with bad pop music and weights
clanking in the background. There was obviously no girlfriend to keep him
occupied on a Sunday morning. He still had the dosimeter in his lab coat pocket,
he said, but the entire mortuary building had been sealed off while it was
being decontaminated. He wasn't expecting to be allowed back in before
mid-week. He would have called Sonia Cane, but he'd heard she was writing a
report complaining that he'd acted improperly in not informing the Health
Protection Agency immediately he discovered radiation on Mrs Jamal's body.

'What's
she frightened of?' Jenny said.

'Same
thing as me - getting sacked. I've already been told not to discuss it with
anyone, not even you, apparently.'

'I
won't tell. So where can I get a dosimeter?'

'Today?'

'It'd
be helpful.'

Andy
sighed. 'I'll make some calls.'

Jenny
picked up the badge dosimeter from the junior radiographer working the Sunday
shift at the Vale. He didn't ask any questions and Jenny didn't offer any
explanations. He had a queue of casualties waiting, and in his line of work the
badge was a standard and unremarkable piece of equipment. It was nowhere near
as sophisticated as Sonia's handheld device: a small piece of photographic film
contained in a credit-card-sized badge with a colour key. When exposed to
radiation the film would turn a steadily darker shade of green.

It
was less than a fifteen-minute drive to Anna Rose's flat in a new build not far
from Parkway station on the northwest edge of the city. An area punctuated by
business parks, industrial estates and arterial roads, it was charmless but
convenient for the motorway, and less than twelve miles to Maybury. The block
was a three-storey building wedged into a far corner of the estate. Every inch
of narrow roadway was lined with parked cars. There wasn't a space to be had,
so Jenny left her car blocking a turning circle.

There
were two keys on the ring the Crosbys had given her. The first opened the door
to the confined communal hallway, the second unlocked the door to Anna Rose's
flat. Jenny checked the dosimeter: it remained the lightest shade of green.

She
entered a small, conspicuously orderly one-bedroom apartment. The door opened
straight from the outside landing into a kitchen-cum-living room furnished
with a few items of simple modern furniture. A window looked out over a
fenced-off area of scrub that had been cleared for development which had never
happened. The dosimeter remained unchanged. She moved around the room, glancing
over a shelf unit laden with university text books, opened drawers, checked the
bathroom and thoroughly searched the tiny bedroom, poking the dosimeter into
every corner, but it stuck stubbornly at
no hazard
.

She
was both relieved and disappointed, and a little weary. She sat down on one of
the two chairs at the small pine dining table and took stock. It was what she
hadn't found that was most interesting. There was no suitcase or rucksack, no
computer, camera or mobile phone. No wallet or toothbrush. There were empty
hangers in the wardrobe, only a few pairs of socks and underwear in the chest
of drawers. There were no signs of forced entry at the front door. The pile of
mail on the kitchen counter and the few items she had picked up from the mat
were unremarkable - bills or junk. Unlike Nazim and Rafi, it seemed that Anna
Rose had packed and left deliberately.

Jenny
tried to avoid the temptation to speculate, but she had an instinct she
couldn't ignore, a sixth sense that told her this room belonged to someone who
was alive, still in the game. It didn't smell dead; the atmosphere was
disturbed but not leaden.

She
scanned the room one last time for any hint of a clue. There was nothing. No
notebooks, no scraps of paper, no rubbish in the bin. Virtually no trace of
Anna Rose except her textbooks and a number of paperbacks lined up on the shelf
beneath them. Jenny glanced at the titles: all light, slightly risqu
é
fiction aimed at young women and a couple of trashy celebrity biographies. Anna
Rose might be intelligent, but she couldn't be called cultured. It seemed odd
to Jenny that a bright young woman would have no intellectual curiosity beyond
her narrow subject, yet the syndrome felt somehow familiar. She turned her
attention to a framed poster - the only object approaching a piece of art in
the flat. She had barely noticed it before: from a distance it looked like a
crude cartoon rendering of the Mona Lisa. Up close it was a collage of hundreds
of photos of a younger, barely clad Britney Spears striking provocative poses.
It was clever, Jenny thought, and imagined it appealing both to the scientist
and the party girl in Anna Rose: sexy and serious at the same time. She was
reminded of her visit to Sarah Levin's home: the young academic who spent her
days with her head in particle theory but came home at night to MTV and glossy
magazines. They struck an attitude, these young women: took a whole lot of
things for granted Jenny's generation never had, but felt strangely shallow and
unformed for it. What did they believe in? What then did they have to fall back
on in times of crisis?

She
checked the dosimeter one last time and locked the apartment door behind her.
The radiation trail had gone cold, but she left the building certain of her
next move.

There
was no reply to the doorbell at Sarah Levin's apartment. Jenny waited outside
in her car for over an hour and tried to order the theories invading her mind
into a series of credible possibilities. Given that each one had to begin with
the theft of radioactive material, it wasn't easy.

It
had started to rain and she was feeling both tired and in need of a pill when a
powder blue Fiat 500 pulled into a space across the street. Sarah Levin jumped
out carrying several upmarket carrier bags and headed for her front door. Jenny
beat her to it, intercepting her on the pavement.

'Dr
Levin - I need to ask you some more questions.'

The
young woman was surprised and affronted.

'Now?
Are you joking? I'm only calling home for five minutes and then I'm on my way
out again.'

She
made for the front door. Jenny pursued her.

'It's
about Anna Rose Crosby. I understand you knew her well.'

Sarah
Levin stopped and turned, irritated.

'I've
got friends who are lawyers - they couldn't believe that you came to my house.
What do you think you're doing?'

'She's
missing.'

'I
heard.'

'Do
you know why that might be?'

'Why
would I know? I was her tutor, not her friend. I really have to get on.' She
fished her keys from her pocket.

Jenny
said, 'Her family were very surprised she got on the graduate scheme at
Maybury. They said you might have pulled strings for her.'

Sarah
Levin sighed theatrically and flicked back her long blonde hair. 'I write
references for all my students. I have no idea what any of this is about, and as
you don't seem inclined to tell me, we'll leave it there, shall we?'

Jenny
was about to hit her with the whole story - Mrs Jamal, the caesium 137, all of
it - but an instinct told her to hold fire. There was panic in Sarah Levin's
defiant expression, and anger. Jenny had her denial and if need be she could
use it against her later.

Calmly,
Jenny said, 'You seemed rather alarmed when I mentioned her name.'

'That
wouldn't have anything to do with me being door- stepped?'

'You
have no idea what might have caused her to disappear?'

'This
is ridiculous. None at all.'

'When
were you last in contact?'

'I
don't know. Last summer.'

'You'd
say that on oath?'

'I'm
sorry, Mrs whoever-you-are, I've had enough of this. You can ask me for a
written statement, but you can't interrogate me out in the street. I'm not
stupid.'

She
went through the door and pushed it hard shut behind her. Her scent hung
briefly in the air. If Anna Rose was pretty, Sarah Levin was beautiful. It
wasn't simply her looks, it was chemical. Not a man or a woman would pass her
without glancing back either in lust or envy. From the photographs she had seen
of him, Jenny assumed that Nazim had had something of that quality, too. He was
certainly better looking that Sarah Levin's current partner. She could imagine
Nazim falling hopelessly in love with her, no matter what religious principles
might have stood in his way. And for a girl who could have had anyone, he must
have been one of the more interesting propositions.

Jenny
hurried back to the car and pulled out her phone.

'Alison,
it's me.'

'I
know, Mrs Cooper. I can tell from the ring,'

'There
was no radiation at Anna Rose's flat.'

'Oh.
Is that surprising?'

Jenny
disregarded the sarcastic tone. 'I've just spoken to Sarah Levin again. I've
had a thought - can you get hold of her medical records?'

'What,
without her consent?'

'Yes.'

Somewhere
in the background Alison's husband called out for her over the sound of a
yapping dog. She shouted at him 10 hold on, then returned impatiently to the
conversation.

'Isn't
that a bit irregular, Mrs Cooper? Aren't you meant to ask the witness?'

'Sod
the protocol, just get them.'

Jenny
had driven across the city and was staring out through a streaky windscreen at
a foggy dual carriageway when it occurred to her that there was one other
person who linked both Anna Rose and Nazim Jamal: the gawky Professor Rhydian
Brightman. She knew little about how universities worked, but thought it safe
to assume that in a closed institution professional relationships would be intense
and not much would go unnoticed by colleagues. Brightman must have discussed
the inquest with Sarah Levin, if only out of concern for the reputation of his
department. He must have heard about Anna Rose, and if strings had been pulled
on her behalf, it was more than likely he had done some of the tugging.