The Doll's House

68

The two women were virtually eyeball to eyeball, neither backing down. Sanderson didn’t normally do all-out assault, but she was too enraged to back down. DC Lucas clearly felt the same, snarling at Sanderson to ‘get back in her box’.

Sanderson could happily have swung for her colleague. It had been her idea to put the mobile phone companies on alert for any sign of the missing girls’ phone signals and now that this plan had paid off, she was buggered if she was going to stand aside and let DC Lucas run with it. The mobile signals had briefly sprung into life, somewhere on or near Southampton Common and the smart thing to do was to get down there as fast as possible, to canvass witnesses, source CCTV footage, search for any signs of their killer.

‘DS Fortune specifically left me in charge,’ Lucas was saying. ‘If anything significant came up while he was at the beach, I was to handle it.’

Sanderson was about to come back at her, but DC Lucas was not finished yet.

‘And every minute you spend arguing with me reduces the chances of us bagging this guy and bringing Ruby home safe and well. Do you understand, DC Sanderson?’

Lucas had enunciated the syllables of Sanderson’s name deliberately slowly – to underline her point. The eyes of the rest of the team were on her now and there was no way she could continue the fight, without looking irresponsible. With bad grace, she backed down and returned to her desk.

Ever since the investigation had widened to include Roisin Murphy and Isobel Lansley, Sanderson had been busy compiling dossiers on both women, climbing inside their lives to test Helen’s theory about their abduction. She had made good progress but she flicked through the pages listlessly now, still fizzing with anger over her confrontation with Lucas. She had never liked the humourless fast-tracker whose ambition was so ill-concealed, but now she was growing to loathe her. This sort of conflict was unnecessary and counter-productive. It risked turning the team against each other, which could only hamper the investigation. It was outrageous of Lucas to accuse her of risking lives, when she was the one whose ego could prove costly.

Sanderson returned to the task in hand, wrenching her mind away from crucifying Lucas to the important police work in front of her. She mustn’t compromise her own work through anger or bitterness – that wouldn’t be fair to Ruby or Pippa. So she continued to leaf through the files, diligently comparing the life of Roisin – a single mother of Anglo-Irish extraction who lived off benefits in a small flat in Brokenford – with that of Isobel Lansley, a student at Southampton University about whom they knew almost nothing. She had few friends, little money, no jobs or hobbies. All they did know about her was that she lived in a one-bed flat in -

Sanderson stopped in her tracks, her heart suddenly racing. Checking the details again, she skimmed back fast through Roisin’s growing file, searching for the relevant entry. And there it was. The discovery took Sanderson’s breath away.

Finally, they had the break they needed.