She wandered back into the bedroom and slid beneath the covers. The cat followed, curling up on the foot of the bed and flaring its claws with pleasure.
Katie Pyle, Riley remembered, hugging the sheet to her neck, had been her baptism of fire. Pitched in at the deep end by an editor who was short of staff and impatient with mundane things like equal rights in the workplace, she had been assigned to cover a story way beyond the traditional newbie jobs of weddings, births, deaths, flower shows and local good works. As far as her boss was concerned, when news beckoned, a reporter reported and neither gender nor lack of experience was a barrier.
Armed with only the vaguest instructions and the police report to go on, Riley had dashed off with crusading zeal, anxious to put the world to rights and dig below the scummy surface to reveal The Truth. Her main problem — something her editor seemed to have had neither the time nor inclination to tell her — was trying to trace someone who either didn’t want to be found or was simply beyond reach.
She had begun by talking to the police, the most immediate experts. They had been by turn cautious, factual and professional. They had pointed out that, according to the available evidence, Katie, barely fifteen years old and a single child, had left home voluntarily, taking some money, a shoulder bag and a change of clothes, but little else of value. As a subsequent visit to her shell-shocked parents had shown, even her favourite teddy had been left behind, propped up on the bed-head and staring blankly at the opposite wall as if hiding all the girl’s secrets behind its frozen, glassy expression.
A helpful desk sergeant, perhaps sensing Riley’s inexperience, had acquainted her with the statistics of missing persons each year. It now stood, she knew, at a staggering 200,000-plus.
‘Most of them are back within days, weeks or months,’ the sergeant had informed her. ‘Usually none the worse for it other than needing a good wash, some grub and a kip.’
A more senior officer had been more analytical, suggesting that many wore the signs of their experience like a new coat, recognisable only by those closest to them. Some were deeply secretive about what they had done and where they had been. Sometimes they lost these new affectations and reverted to type, sometimes not. The unlucky ones, he’d added gravely, turned up dead, mostly at the hands of somebody known to them.
‘Shit happens,’ one DCI had commented before hurrying away on a call. As she had subsequently learned over the years, those two short words had proved a brutally accurate summary of life’s more unpleasant events.
Riley was about to close her eyes and give in to sleep when the door buzzer sounded from downstairs. She tried to ignore it but it kept on ringing until she scrambled out of bed again and angrily punched the button in the hall. ‘Who is it?’
‘Ouch.’ A familiar male voice. ‘So, no chance of a coffee, then?’
Riley sighed and buzzed the door open. Ever since she had moved in three months ago, her sometime colleague, private investigator Frank Palmer, had been promising to drop by for a visit. He hadn’t said it might be at this ungodly hour of the morning, though. They had forged a friendship of mutual understanding after working on a couple of assignments, but pleading insane waking hours evidently wasn’t going to put him off.
‘Nice gaff,’ said Palmer, putting his head round the kitchen door. If he was startled by her rumpled blonde hair and the sight of her in grey sleep joggies and top, he hid it well. Riley ignored him and spooned fresh coffee into the filter pot. Palmer had seen her looking a lot worse and frankly, she didn’t care if he approved or not; it was far too early in the day for standing on ceremony. If she carried on drinking coffee at this rate she’d be as high as a kite by lunchtime and unable to sleep tonight.
‘Glad you like it,’ she muttered, slightly mollified. ‘I don’t want to sound unwelcoming, Palmer, but what are you doing here at this time of the morning?’
‘Work, as usual. Why else?’
‘What kind of work?’
‘I’m babysitting a Saudi business type for a couple of days. He’s down the road at the Kensington Hilton. You sound cranky.’
‘Really? Well spotted. Donald wakes me at God knows when, and just as I’m dropping off to sleep again, you turn up on the doorstep expecting instant service. How does being cranky not come into it?’ She gave him a suspicious look. ‘Hang on a minute… did Donald get you to come round here?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Palmer gave her his best vacant look, the one he used when he didn’t want to give anything away. Bloody Donald; he was making her paranoid. He had a bit of a thing on the quiet about her safety, which was how she’d first met Frank Palmer. Co-opted as back up on an assignment involving some unpleasant gangster-types the previous year, and with a background in the Military Police, she knew there was nobody better than Palmer to have on her side. But she doubted he would come out and admit he’d been told to stop by. She let it go and watched as he wandered off to prowl around the small series of boxes which comprised her latest home. The cat followed his progress with a watchful tilt of the head, but didn’t seem the least bothered by the man’s presence. Riley wasn’t surprised; Palmer had a way about him which was both unthreatening and reassuring, guaranteed to set old ladies and animals at ease in the middle of a firestorm.
‘Not bad,’ he congratulated her again, returning from his scouting mission. ‘So what was wrong with Fulham that made you move to Holland Park? Or is it Notting Hill?’
‘Depends who you talk to. Mr Grobowski downstairs reckons Notting Hill, but the old dowager upstairs says Holland Park. I’m just Confused of West London and don’t really give a damn. I felt like a change of scenery.’ It had also been a practical and timely way of despatching ghosts after her previous flat had been burgled by a psychotic thug named McManus. Somehow, a thorough cleansing hadn’t been sufficient to rid herself of the feeling of vulnerability afterwards, although McManus was long gone to whatever hell awaited him, and in the end, the desire to move had become irresistible.
Palmer nodded but said nothing. He, too, had known McManus and understood Riley’s need to shake off the past. He drifted over and poured coffee into two mugs, then leaned across to the fridge and rooted around for the milk. Riley allowed him the familiarity, pleased he felt at ease. He was wearing, she noted, his usual comfort-before-style tweedy jacket and jeans, of a sombre colour guaranteed to blend in wherever he went. After a career in the Military Police, Palmer, now somewhere close to forty, had developed a healthy dislike of formal wear of any kind. He also wore his fair hair slightly longer than Queen’s Regulations would have permitted, but it seemed to suit his tall frame and angular face.
‘So… nothing to do with broken hearts, then.’ He handed Riley a mug and spooned three portions of sugar into his coffee.
She scowled at him. ‘It’s not socially unacceptable for a girl to be single, you know.’ He was referring to her arms-length relationship with John Mitcheson, by coincidence also a former soldier. They had met on an assignment in Spain barely a year ago, and so far had struggled to maintain momentum while he was building up his security business in San Francisco. Due to a misunderstanding with the law, Mitcheson was not currently welcome in the UK, so much of their involvement took place over snatched weekends in out-of-the-way places. Exciting and head-spinning at first, the relationship had suffered from a lack of regular care over the months, a fact both of them acknowledged. And all the while, Frank Palmer had observed them with detached interest, watchful of Riley’s welfare, a close friend but nothing more. His opinion of John Mitcheson had originally been uncomplimentary, but had changed with time. Now, she guessed, he remained merely cautious on her behalf.