“Claire Potter?”
“Yes. It was on the news for weeks. They still haven’t found the man. You don’t think…?”
“We don’t know yet. Jennifer wasn’t sexually assaulted, though.”
“Thank God for that, at least.”
“Her things are missing,” Annie said. “Handbag, purse. So it could be robbery. Do you know if she carried much money with her?”
“No, never. She always said she could buy everything she wanted with her credit card or debit card.”
That was true enough these days, Annie knew. The only time people seemed to have a lot of cash on hand was when they had just withdrawn some from a cashpoint. “Look,” Annie went on, “you shared the flat with Jennifer. You must have been close. I know you’re upset, but I’m relying on you to help me. What was going on in Jennifer’s life? Men. Work. Family. Friends. Anything. Think. Tell me about it. There has to be an explanation if this wasn’t just some senseless random attack.”
“Maybe it was,” said Kate. “I mean, those things do happen, don’t they? People killing people for no real reason.”
“Yes, but not as often as you think. Most victims know their killers. That’s why I want you to think deep and tell me anything you know.”
Kate sipped some water. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, we weren’t that close.”
“Did she have any close friends?”
“There was this girl she used to go to school with, up in Shrewsbury, where she grew up. She came around once or twice.”
“Can you remember her name?”
“Melanie. Melanie Scott.”
Annie definitely got the feeling that Melanie Scott wasn’t on Kate’s list of favorite people. “How close were they?”
“They went on holiday together last year. It was before Jenn moved in, but she told me all about it. Sicily. She said it was awesome.”
“Do you have an address for Melanie?”
“I think so. She lives in Hounslow, I remember. Out Heathrow way. I’ll be able to dig it out before you go.”
“Fine. What was Jennifer like?”
“Quiet, hardworking. And she really cared about people, you know. Maybe she should have been a social worker.”
In Annie’s experience, the world of social work was hardly staffed by caring people. Well-meaning, perhaps, but that was a different thing in her mind. “What about all those mysterious comings and goings?”
“That’s just me being silly, really. I like to know where people are and when they’ll be back. Jenn didn’t always bother to let me know. But she wasn’t a party girl, if that’s what you mean, or a clubber. I think she was actually rather shy. But she was bright and ambitious. Like I said, she cared about people. And she was funny. I liked her sense of humor. We used to watch The Office on DVD together and we’d both crack up laughing. I mean, we’d both worked somewhere like that. We knew what it was like. I’ll miss all that,” Kate added. “I’ll miss Jenn.” She started to cry again and reached for the tissues. “I’m sorry. I just can’t…”
“It’s all right,” said Annie. “Is that what you always called her? Jenn, not Jenny?”
Kate sniffled and blew her nose. “Yes. It’s what she liked to be called. She hated Jenny. She just wasn’t a Jenny. Like I’m not a Katy or a Kathy, I suppose.”
And like I’m not Anne, thought Annie. Funny the way names, contractions, especially, tended to stick. She had been Annie all the time growing up on the artists’ colony, and only at school had people called her Anne. “The two of you must have talked,” Annie said. “What sort of things did she talk about?”
“The usual things.”
Christ, thought Annie, this was like trying to get water out of a stone. “Did you notice any change in her mood or behavior recently?” she asked.
“Yes. She seemed very nervous and jumpy lately. It wasn’t like her.”
“Nervous? Since when?”
“Just these past few days.”
“Did she tell you what it was about?”
“No. She was even more quiet than usual.”
“Do you think there’s any connection between that and her reaction to last night’s phone call, the late drive?”
“I don’t know,” said Kate. “There might have been.”
The problem was, Annie realized, that Jennifer’s mobile had been taken along with everything else. Still, the phone company records might help.
“Do you know which network she used?”
“Orange.”
Annie made a note to follow up, then asked, “Do you have anything with her handwriting on it?”
“What?”
“A note or something? Letter? Postcard?”
Kate turned to a corkboard on the wall by the door. A number of Far Side cartoons were pinned there, along with a few postcards. Kate went over and unpinned one of them, a view of the Eiffel Tower, and carried it over to Annie. “Jenn went to Paris for a weekend break in March,” Katie said. “She sent me this. We had a good laugh because she got back here before it did.”
“Did she go by herself?” Annie asked, taking a photocopy of the note found in Jennifer Clewes’s back pocket from her briefcase to compare the handwriting.
“Yes. She said she’d always wanted to go on the Eurostar and they had a special deal. She went around all the art galleries. She loved going to galleries and museums.”
To Annie’s untrained eye, the handwriting looked the same, but she would have to get an expert to examine it. “Can I keep this?” she asked.
“I suppose so.”
Annie put the photocopy and the postcard in her briefcase. “You said she went alone,” Annie went on, “but isn’t Paris supposed to be the city of romance?”
“Jenn wasn’t going out with anyone back then.”
“But she has been more recently?”
“I think so.”
“Just think so?”
“Well, Jenn could be very private. I mean, she didn’t kiss and tell, that sort of thing. But she’d been getting a lot of calls on her mobile lately, and making a lot. And she’d stayed out all night on a couple of occasions. She didn’t usually do that.”
“Since when?”
“A few weeks.”
“But this started before the odd behavior?”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you his name? I assume it was a he?”
“Good Lord, yes, of course. But she didn’t mention any names. She didn’t even tell me that she was seeing someone. It was just a feeling I got from her behavior. Intuition. I put two and two together.”
“But you said she seemed nervous and jumpy. That’s hardly the way a new relationship is supposed to make you feel, is it? And why was she so secretive? Didn’t you ever talk about personal matters, say, if one of you split up with a boyfriend or something?”
“We’ve only been flatmates for six months,” said Kate. “And nothing like that’s happened to either of us in that time. There’s that one bloke keeps pestering her, but that’s all.”
“Who?”
“Her ex-boyfriend. His name’s Victor, but that’s all I know about him. He keeps ringing and hanging around. You don’t think…?”
“I don’t think anything yet,” said Annie. “Are you sure you don’t know his last name, where he lives?”
“Sorry,” said Kate. “It was over before we started sharing. Or Jenn thought it was.”
“What did she think about it? Was she frightened of him?”
“No. Just annoyed, that’s all.”
“How did you two become flatmates?”
Kate looked away. “I’d rather not say. It’s private.”
Annie leaned forward. “Look, Kate,” she said, “this is a murder investigation. Nothing’s private. What was it? An advertisement in the papers? The Internet? What?”
Kate remained silent and Annie became aware of the tap dripping in the sink. She heard water spraying from a hose in a garden beyond the open window, and a child squealed with delight.
“Kate?”
“Oh, all right, all right. I thought I was pregnant. I did one of those home tests, you know, but I didn’t trust it.”