Cold as Ice

Chapter 8

‘It is the still and silent sea that drowns a man. That’s the literal translation of the tattoo. Doctor Harding was right about the language.’ Carter and Willis were in the crime analyst’s office.

‘The tattoo on the mermaid’s ankle is a Norse saying.’ Robbo placed a file in front of them. ‘This is her.’

Crime Analyst Robbo worked in an office which he shared with one full-time civilian worker, Pam, and two researchers, available when the investigation warranted more help. Robbo had been a long-serving detective in the murder squad and had retrained as an analyst when he retired.

Operation Sparrowhawk was written up on the board behind his desk.

On the front of the file was a picture of a smiling woman in her early twenties with a bottle of beer in her hand. She was dressed in frayed denim shorts, a bikini top, big floppy hat and pink Wellington boots. She had long auburn hair flowing over her shoulders.

‘This is twenty-three-year-old Emily Styles – went missing on June the fifth. This picture was taken at a festival a couple of weeks before she disappeared. She lived in Camden with her parents and her two-year-old daughter Sky.’

‘Christ almighty.’ Carter picked up the photo and studied it. ‘Not what I was expecting.’

‘I remember her disappearance,’ said Willis. ‘MIT 15 were dealing with it. Jeanie was loaned to them for the case; she was their Family Liaison Officer.’

‘Ask Jeanie to come,’ said Carter. ‘And tell her to bring anything she has on it.’

Ebony was already on her feet and half-way out of the door. She found Jeanie back at her desk in the Enquiry Team Office.

‘Yeah, I went round there when she first went missing,’ said Jeanie when she got to Robbo’s office.

‘What were her circumstances?’ asked Carter. ‘Did the initial investigation throw up any suspects, Jeanie?’

‘Very few. It was handled by MIT 15. I was loaned to them when they were overstretched back in the summer. Emily went missing one afternoon and no one seemed to think it was that out of the ordinary. Her parents didn’t even think to report her missing for five days.’ Jeanie perched on the edge of the vacant researcher’s desk.

‘But she left her belongings?’

‘Yeah, everything except what was in her handbag – phone, purse, what-have-you.’

‘She never turned up to collect her child from nursery. That must have been the biggest cause for alarm bells to start ringing?’

‘You’d think so – but, according to her mum, they pretty much look after the little girl anyway. They said Emily was a bit wild. I got the impression she was a good mum but she was taking time to tame; still took the odd pill and used to stay away for a night without letting anyone know a few times. She’d been travelling and found it hard to settle. It seemed to me that her parents thought she’d just gone off more than disappeared. They seemed to be apologetic about Emily and resigned to bringing up the little girl themselves. It was as if they blamed themselves for the fact that Emily wasn’t that keen on settling into motherhood. They thought they’d tried to make her into something she couldn’t be.’

‘She still lived with them?’

‘She was planning to move out and had been offered a flat. Even though she’d officially taken on the tenancy. She wasn’t in any hurry to leave; she had a good set-up there.’

‘What about the father of the child?

‘She’d split from the father. He’s part of the Romany community.’

‘Could it be some sort of retaliation for ending the relationship?’ asked Robbo.

Jeanie shook her head. ‘The father was interviewed when Emily first went missing. He was counted out of the equation; he was in prison. His family was cleared as well.’

‘And there was no one new in her life?’ asked Carter.

Jeanie shook her head. ‘Her parents didn’t know if she was seeing anyone special but she hadn’t gone so far as to bring anyone home.’

‘And what about her friends?’

‘The morning of the day she disappeared,’ answered Jeanie, ‘she phoned a friend at ten in the morning, and they met for coffee in Camden where she did a bit of shopping, hung around Camden Market for a couple of hours. Her friend left her there and she was picked up by cameras walking back towards Camden Town Tube.’

‘Was the person she went with a friend?’ said Robbo.

‘Maybe he was a potential boyfriend, under the radar,’ said Carter. ‘We need to open the investigation wider and we’ll take it over from MIT 15. Were her phone records requested at the time?’

Robbo shook his head. ‘This was a Mispers, not a murder investigation.’

‘We’ll do it now then. Get all her phone records from the last five years,’ said Carter.

‘What about any other social media?’ said Ebony.

‘I’ll put in a request.’ Robbo made notes as Carter talked.

‘Did she take a passport?’

‘No,’ answered Jeanie. ‘But she had a driving licence and she’d run away with the Romany community before. That’s how she ended up pregnant in the first place. She had a wandering heart. I guess that’s why her parents just accepted it.’

‘What are they like?’

‘Ordinary middle-class people. They brought her up in a good home but she rebelled from an early age. She was an arty child, a bohemian type. Her parents rode it all out in the hope that she would come home. When they finally persuaded her to come back, go to college, get a life, they offered her full support for her and Sky. It worked, but they thought she’d had enough of the struggle. They thought Emily had just decided to leave it all behind.’

‘What was her normal routine, Jeanie?’

‘She was in between jobs. Her parents supported her. In many ways she was quite privileged, spoilt even,’ answered Jeanie. ‘She took Sky to nursery most days, paid for by her parents. Otherwise she went to college. She met friends, went shopping. She hung out at home – normal stuff really.’

‘We’ll go and see the parents, prepare them for the worst, said Carter.

‘I’ll come too,’ said Jeanie. ‘It’s going to be a shock for them. I still think they were expecting her to walk back through their front door when she felt like it.’

Carter looked at the photo of Emily Styles.

‘What do we know about her lifestyle?’ Carter asked. ‘Could she have been moonlighting as an escort? Prostitute perhaps?’

Jeanie shook her head; ‘Unlikely but not impossible.’

Carter continued: ‘Murdered by a pimp and she was put in the Regents Canal as a warning to others? A place so that she would be seen? Otherwise, why not dump her in the countryside?’

Ebony had a map of the canal and the surrounding area on the screen.

‘He chose a place where there aren’t many cameras but you can see it from several vantage points, the bridges, the park.’

‘Hawk is a watcher,’ said Robbo.