`I'll give Faith a call and ask her if they've ever met,' she says at last. `Being so nearby, I suppose it's possible.'
`And get me a list of all male employees under thirty at those building firms we've been looking at. It's possible one of them is this older boyfriend Sasha's mother is apparently unaware of.'
Somer didn't know about him either, not till this moment. But this is the Fawley she knows `“ the Fawley they all know. The one who finds unseen connections, the one who gets there first.
She glances at him. `You think there really could be a connection with what happened to Faith?'
`Yes,' he says heavily. `I'm afraid I do.'
But she can't read his expression. Resignation? Apprehension?
`Update DS Gislingham, please,' he says. `And then go through this room with a fine-tooth comb. Look for anything from her father, and any sort of diary. Basically anything that might give us some names `“ male names. And take that laptop in for Baxter to look at, but make sure you get Mrs Blake's written permission first.'
`Where are you going, sir?'
`To Headington, to see Isabel Parker. The school have sent her home. Let's just hope she remembers something Patsie doesn't.'
He stops at the door. `And tell Gislingham I want everyone back at base at 6.00. If there've been no other developments.'
He doesn't need to spell it out.
* * *
* * *
Back at the incident room, the atmosphere is dense with anxiety. They know the stats `“ how quickly the clock runs down on abduction victims, how low the chances are of finding them alive once twenty-four hours are passed.
Gislingham is at the front, collating the Sasha material on a whiteboard. A new one, set up next to Faith's. Close enough that they can start drawing lines between them if they need to, but not touching, not yet, because Gislingham is superstitious, and he's not alone. No one wants these two cases to be connected. No one.
`There's no sign of Sasha on the speed camera on Cherwell Drive last night,' says Quinn, looking up and catching his eye. `I'm going to call the bus company `“ see if they have CCTV in that vehicle.'
Baxter glances up. `Good luck with that,' he says heavily.
Gis turns and looks for Everett. `Anything on her mobile yet?'
`I've asked for the call log,' she says. `But the phone is definitely off.'
`When was the last signal?'
`Last night, at 9.35 in Summertown. Must have been just before they got on the bus.'
`Isn't that rather an odd time for her to turn it off?' says Gis.
Ev shrugs. `Perhaps her battery was low.'
`I've trawled her social media,' says Baxter, `and Patsie's right `“ looks like Sasha's father did find her through Facebook. There's a Jonathan Blake living in Leeds listed among her Friends, but he must have contacted her privately after that because he hasn't posted anything on her page.'
`What about boyfriends `“ blokes her own age `“ anything standing out?'
Baxter shakes his head. `Most of Sasha's feed is about the four of them `“ the girls, I mean. They call themselves the `њLIPS`ќ. Lots of kiss emojis and stuff. As far as I can see those four are all but joined at the hip. Can't see blokes getting much of a look-in.'
Ev looks across at him. `Just because it's not there doesn't mean it wasn't happening. Kids know their parents stalk them online. They'd put stuff like that on WhatsApp or Snapchat `“ somewhere like that. Somewhere private.'
Gis sighs. `I've got that coming too, have I?'
`Oh, I don't know,' says Ev with a smile. `Your Billy's only two `“ I reckon you've got a good ten years yet.'
Gis walks round and stands behind Baxter's chair, looking at his screen. Then he bends down, as if to take a closer look. `What about the Parrie stuff?' he asks in an undertone.
Baxter glances up. `There's Wikipedia for starters, but that doesn't have much on the MO. But you can find that too if you're prepared to dig a bit `“ the usual true crime sites and bloggers who think they know better than we do. And a whole bunch of conspiracy theorist tossers, of course `“ Parrie's very popular with them.'
Gislingham makes a face. `Now there's a surprise. What about the trial transcripts?'
`Just come through. Though I've not found much yet. I've had to drop it pro tem, with all this about Sasha Blake.'
`Fair enough, but keep on it, yeah? I've got a bad feeling about this, and the last thing we need right now is Gavin Parrie coming back to bite us on the arse.'
* * *
At Windermere Avenue, Somer is still working her way through Sasha's bedroom. She's trying to leave everything as she found it, so that if Sasha comes home she won't feel her space has been violated. And all the more `“ and it's a thought that ices her spine `“ if she's already been violated in a far worse way. But however carefully she searches, she's still prying, still an intruder, still betraying this girl she's started to like. The clothes in the wardrobe are the same things she wore once `“ things she could easily see Faith Appleford wearing or talking about on one of her vlogs: the clean lines, the preference for plains over patterns, the one or two retro pieces that must have been shrewd selections from charity shops, the more expensive things carefully chosen to have as many different uses as possible. Every object in the room says something about this girl `“ a postcard from her grandparents in the Algarve, a picture of a little boy with a bucket and spade tucked into one of the paperbacks, a handwritten note on the back, faded to sepia, Weston-Super-Mare 1976. There are annotations in the books, too `“ Keats' `To Autumn' is `unbelievable', `glorious', but Endymion only gets `flabby', underlined twice. And there are six gleeful exclamation marks alongside a passage describing how a phrenologist who examined Thomas Hardy's head declared he would come `to no good'. All this brings a smile, but it's not what Somer is looking for. There's no notebook, no diary, no secret stash of sexy underwear, no pictures on the board of anyone who might be her boyfriend, and after an hour of searching, Somer is tempted to wonder if such a boyfriend even exists. But as she knows full well, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. They haven't got Sasha's phone, and they haven't even started on her laptop. And those are fine and private places to hide a love that dare not tweet its name.
She takes one more look under the bed, then goes to stand up but her bracelet snags on the carpet and she has to kneel down again to untangle it. And it's only then that she realizes there's something under the bed after all `“ what looks like a lipstick, rolled over to the far corner. There's no reason to retrieve it `“ it can't possibly be relevant to anything at all `“ but something makes her lie down on her back and reach out an arm.
And that's when she sees it.
* * *
Adam Fawley
4 April 2018
14.55
Isabel Parker's house is unexpected. One of those impossibly gorgeous stone houses in Old Headington, a colour-supplement enclave you can barely believe has survived so perfectly, surrounded by the noise and sprawl Headington's now become. But if the house is unexpected, it seems I am not. Or if not me, precisely, then someone like me. The woman who opens the door is probably the same age as Sasha's mother, but Botox and an expensive hairdresser are doing a pretty successful job of masking it. She has a grey marl T-shirt, black leggings, silver flip-flops and bright-red toenails. She introduces herself (`It's Victoria but everyone calls me Tory'; believe me, there really is no answer to that) then leads me through the big slate-flagged entrance hall to a kitchen almost as large as the Blakes' entire ground floor.