Buried (DC Jack Warr #1) - Lynda La Plante Page 0,113

window, the PC was faced with Geoffrey pinned flat against the side of the fridge-freezer, his eyes screwed tight shut. He had taken Ester’s advice about hiding his fetishes in order to bag himself a nice woman, so was dressed in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, a black V-neck jumper and black brogues. He looked good. But the smart clothes couldn’t hide the fact that he was a broken man. The PC tapped gently on the window, so as not to frighten him further.

Like a greyhound out of the starting gate, Geoffrey bolted for the front door, raced outside and barrelled straight into Sergeant Henderson. Once Geoffrey was down, he stayed there. He lay on his back, his arms wrapped around his face, sobbing, ‘I miss her! I miss her! I miss her!’

Henderson got to his feet and dialled a number in his mobile.

*

Ridley looked out of Angela’s balcony window, across the grey, rain-filled skies of West London, and tried to maintain his trademark calm demeanour ‒ but his fist was clenched tight around his mobile phone as if he was about to explode. It wasn’t something Jack had ever seen before, and it wouldn’t last long, he was sure of that. Next to Ridley was Angela’s stack of transparent plastic sewing boxes, neatly labelled by client name. The stack stood seven boxes tall and when Ridley kicked out at the third one up, he sent the top four flying across the lounge. He then returned to the balcony window. His shoulders were tense beneath his coat and they moved rhythmically up and down as he took deep, controlled breaths.

While Jack waited for Ridley to calm down, something made him glance upwards at the high shelf, out of reach of sticky fingers. The worn teddy bear and yellow teething ring had gone. Jack smiled in admiration for what the women had managed to achieve. The patience, the mutual trust, the mutual love, the organisation that lay behind this was staggering. Of course Jack was frustrated at always being several steps behind them but, my God, what special women they were!

‘Geoffrey Porter-Lewis is being escorted across to us,’ Ridley said when he finally spoke. ‘He’s all we’ve got. You’ve met him, Jack – will he give us the women?’

‘He won’t know anything, sir. Geoffrey will snap like a twig and Ester would know that.’

‘I’m going to send you some uniforms. Tear this place apart. And when Geoffrey arrives I want you to interview him.’

And Ridley left without another word.

Jack pushed his hands deep into his pockets and took his place by the balcony window. On the balcony, next to a child’s bike, a bunch of flowers stood in a bucket. Jack could see the handwritten label in its plastic pocket on the side of the wrapping: ‘To Dolly. Never forgotten. X.’

The rain started to fall just as Ridley stepped outside, forcing him to jog across the car park to his BMW. Jack felt sorry for him, even though his own arrogance – no, not arrogance; Ridley wasn’t arrogant – his own blinkered self-belief was responsible for this monumental mistake. Ridley was an excellent officer, but he played by the rules and the truth was that anyone can learn them. And once you learn the rules you can predict what someone might do. The women had predicted Ridley, move by move, and that’s why he’d failed. Jack was different. Jack, for the first time in his career, was thinking outside the box . . . He was thinking like them.

CHAPTER 33

The squad room was a hive of activity. Fourteen officers were all backtracking several weeks, retracing steps, re-investigating, re-interviewing, rereading, reversing through everything they knew, back to the moment the women were first mentioned.

They knew that they would not be travelling on their own passports, and that their mobiles had all been left behind at their respective homes. They knew that the school Angela’s children attended was under the impression that the Dunn family had gone on holiday to Greece; Riel and Aggie had been practising yassas and efcharisto for days. They guessed that Angela would have lied to her children about where they were going, but they had to explore the possibility of them being in Greece regardless. They also knew that Ester’s parole officer was a total waste of space. He hadn’t even known she’d left the Isle of Wight.

*

Jack watched three PCs systematically work their way through Angela’s flat, expecting to uncover a clue. What did they think they’d find? Flight