After Ken had left for work, Anna took a long bath, constantly holding up her hand to look at the ring. She found some Bandaids in the bathroom cabinet and wrapped one around her finger so the gold shaft would fit tightly. She then did something that she had never done before; she put a call in to the incident room, but it was still early, and Mike wasn’t available. Barolli, Joan, and Barbara were also not at work, so she left a message with the duty sergeant that she would be unable to be present today. She was going to say she had food poisoning or the flu, but instead said it was a personal matter and she would make contact later in the morning.
She was dressed and sipping a mug of coffee when her mobile rang. It was Barbara.
“Hi. Good morning to you,” Anna said.
“You sound perky. We thought you were sick or something,” Barbara said.
“Just feeling a bit under the weather. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Well, it’s all right for some. We’re in the incident room. Mike asked me to contact you, as we’re a bit nonplused about your late-night text message.”
Anna straightened out fast and agreed to speak to him. She explained what her message was about, that it was a possibility their killer could have been a security guard, a dog handler, maybe. This would explain the dog hairs found on the blue blanket.
“I’m not quite following why or how you’ve come to this conclusion,” Mike said.
“Cameron Welsh has maintained that he had information, and he’s led us along by the nose, but at one stage he suggested that our killer could be a police officer. I think he said someone of authority who would look completely trustworthy. We went down the police officers’ route but got nothing. What if the killer is a security guard? They have spare uniforms, they even pay for them, so even if our man was no longer working for a security company, he could have retained a uniform. Also, dog handlers have a van...”
“You think he works in Barfield Prison?”
“No, he’d be in London, maybe transporting prisoners to and from court. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s something we should look into. Go back five years to Cameron Welsh’s arrest and trial and see if we can get a result.”
Mike said he would look into it, but he didn’t sound that interested, possibly because it would be yet another long round of tedious clerical work. Anna asked if they had had any new developments, and he rather curtly said it had been only twenty-four hours.
“What about Smiley’s bank accounts?”
“Being checked out. If it’s not a rude question, where the hell are you?”
“Just with relatives. Something’s cropped up, but I’ll be back as soon as possible. Did you get my messages to trace Margaret Potts’s foster parents?”
“In the pipeline.”
“If we do get a contact, I’d very much like to take the interview.”
“Right, I’ll make a note of it. Is everything all right with you?”
“Fine. Like I said, it’s a personal matter, but I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
Mike hung up before saying anything else. Anna felt a bit guilty but then shrugged it off. She’d never taken a day off before, and she knew she must have a number of days, if not weeks, due to her.
After the call, she decided to go out and do a grocery shop to cook a meal for when Ken returned home, since he’d given her his front-door key. As she left, she saw his neighbor and smiled, apologizing again for making such a disturbance. She couldn’t take the smile off her face, and as she walked to her Mini, she had a real desire to do a cartwheel like the one in the photograph. She also had a real urge to call someone to announce that she was engaged, and it saddened her that there wasn’t anyone close who would want to know. But she couldn’t feel down for long, constantly looking at the ring on her finger as she drove to the shops. She was not alone anymore, and just thinking about what the future held made her beam with joy.
She was happier than she had ever known it was possible to be.
“Security guard?” queried Barolli as Mike Lewis wrote Anna’s message on the incident board. “Where is she going with this? Do we move off John Smiley?”
“I dunno, but there’s not a lot we can do until tomorrow.”
“They have a van to move the dogs around in, don’t they?”
“Yep.”
“So the blue blanket could have been in the back of the van for the guard dog?”
“Yep.”
“I suppose their uniforms are sort of similar to coppers’... it’d be a way of getting the victims to trust him.”
“We’ll get moving on it first thing tomorrow, but we should maybe arrange another visit to Cameron Welsh. I’ll run it by the gov — see what he thinks.”
“Just thinking — Travis never stops, does she?” Barolli said.
Mike tossed the felt-tip marker aside.
“How come she didn’t work this weekend, and now she’s taken today off?” Barolli nagged. “That’s not like her.”
Mike sighed. “I don’t know. She said it was a personal matter. There’s not a lot for her to do here anyway. Okay get started on the Smiley bank accounts.”
Barbara was given the job of tracing Margaret Potts’s children’s foster parents, and it took almost all morning, as she was transferred to one department after another at Camden Council. She was told that details could not be disclosed unless someone from the station contacted them directly and explained in detail the reason for wanting to talk to them.
Barbara was almost pulling out her hair. Mike said that she should pay them a visit in person and tell them it was a murder inquiry.
Barolli, having been assigned to get the details of John Smiley’s bank accounts, had to contact Arnold Rodgers yet again. The police needed to find out how Smiley’s wages were paid and then get a court order for the bank to release the information they wanted.
As Barbara prepared to leave, she moaned, “It’s all the way over to bloody Camden! What’s up with Travis today? Why isn’t she in?”
“I dunno. Mike said it was something personal, but she’s been texting us all like a ferret.”
Anna’s prior commitment was a candlelit dinner. She’d cooked fresh pasta with homemade Bolognese sauce, and there were fresh strawberries with cream for dessert. Ken had looked tired out when he got in from work, but after his usual shower and change of clothes, he started to relax.
“Okay, rule one,” he said. “Neither one of us is allowed to discuss work.”
He sat down at the table as Anna served. It was not exactly the most romantic setting, but they could have been on a moonlit beach in the Caribbean, as they were so in tune with each other. They didn’t discuss how soon they would get married, but when Anna told him about Lizzie asking if she would like to have children, he growled.
“I don’t believe she asked you that!”
“Well, she did.”
“Cheeky cow. And God help me when I tell my mother — she’s been waiting for me to get married. Don’t say she asked you about children as well.”
“No, she didn’t, just your sister, and I will have to phone your mother and tell her we’ve made up, because she was concerned when we had that row. I hope it hasn’t put her off me.”
“So what did you reply?”
“To what?”
“Kids or not?”
Anna was teasing him as she told him how Lizzie had said that he would make a wonderful dad, and he covered his head with his napkin. “My family! Aargh!”
“So do you want to know what I said?”
He pulled off the napkin and looked at her.
“I do want children, Ken, and you will make a fabulous dad.”
He reached for her hand, kissing it, then blew out the candles. “Then we’d better get hitched as soon as possible. In the meantime, we should put some practice in.”