‘Okay. An officer will come to take a full statement from you with regards to Vincent Jordan and the drug deal that nearly went ahead. Next time when the police are chasing you, stop. It’ll be less trouble in the long run and we don’t take too kindly to people leaving the scene of a crime.’
‘I will, ma’am. I promise.’
She kept her gaze on his. The way he said ma’am made her feel like the oldest person in the world. Even though he was in his early twenties, he could have still been mistaken for a boy in his mid-teens. Gina grabbed her notes. She nodded to Wyre who began to speak to the tape. She hurried along the corridor towards the kitchen where O’Connor was pouring a cup of coffee. ‘I love a boiled kettle.’ She grabbed a cup.
He scratched some sleep from under his eyes. ‘We’ve just finished up with the drug dealer, Vincent Jordan. He’s been charged. I’ve been in touch with the officers at his bungalow.’
‘And.’ She put a spoon of coffee into a chipped mug and poured.
‘There is no evidence of Kapoor ever being in his home and no evidence that Amber has ever been there either.’
‘You were looking into his family, his background, the lot, just in case he could be holding her somewhere else. I know it’s a long shot but what do we have?’ Gina took a sip of the hot liquid and her face contorted briefly as she burned her lip.
‘His father owns the property business. We spoke to him and he claims that his son is a lazy layabout and that he set him up with this job to inspire him to take over the business one day but he despairs at his son’s lack of ambition. He wasn’t surprised about the drugs. Vincent doesn’t have access to any other properties as his father doesn’t trust him with anything better – those were his words. He was meant to start small and prove himself with managing this block but his father said he’s blown his last chance.’
‘Do we know his father? Has he come up in the investigation?’
‘No, not at all. On the better news front, the Collinses are on their way. I’ve just got the call from a PC Eagleton so you might want to get that coffee down you. There’s some pasties in the incident room if you need to refuel.’
Gina blew on the coffee and tried again. This time her lips didn’t feel as though they were being singed to her gums. ‘Have you started looking for those holes yet?’
‘I have and there are a couple. Corrine Blake gave us her registered address; that of her parents’ house, but they no longer live there. It’s a Birmingham address. I don’t know why she’d lie. We obviously need to wait for office hours to resume to chase up the colleges and universities.’
‘First thing in the morning, make sure you’re on that phone.’
‘Will do. Two of the lecturers I needed to speak to weren’t available last time I called and one was off sick and the administrator in charge was a temp.’ He paused and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. ‘Do you think she’s alive?’
‘She has to be.’ He swallowed and looked away. She patted him on the shoulder.
He turned away and held his hand up as he left. ‘Don’t forget those pasties.’ Her big-hearted colleague, the one who quite often with his teammate Mrs O made sure they always had food during a big case, was feeling the strain, just like all of them were.
59
Gina checked the time again and it would soon be morning. She’d not even managed to have a nap in her office and exhaustion was taking its toll. She yawned as she stared at Mrs Collins. She and Jacob remained seated while the woman sobbed into her hands as Jacob had introduced her for the tape. She wondered how Wyre and O’Connor were getting on in the room down the corridor with Mr Collins.
‘Mrs Collins. An unregistered phone was taken from you by police in Shropshire, one that contained messages sent to Amber Slater and, I must say, they appeared to be harassing in nature. I’ll read some of them to you.’
‘Please don’t. I can’t hear them again.’ The woman shook her head and wiped her nose and eyes with the back of her hand. Her crumpled coat clung to her frame and was almost bursting at the buttons around her bosoms. Her sunken eyes reminded Gina of her own. She guessed that Mrs Collins hadn’t been getting any sleep either.
‘So tell me why you sent these messages to Amber Slater?’
She shook her head and ran her fingers through her damp hair. A sweaty smell began to permeate through the room. Mrs Collins was feeling the pressure but her lack of talking was getting more frustrating by the second.
‘“NoName: Don’t do that. You can’t ignore me. NoName: Why won’t you pick up? NoName: Just answer your phone. NoName: Stuck-up bitch.”’ Gina said the words as loud as she could and as pronounced as she could make them. ‘What did you want to speak to her about on the phone? Was there a rage building up inside you because you’d discovered that your husband was sleeping with this young woman? She wouldn’t answer, would she? Did that make you angrier? Angry enough to—’
‘Stop!’ Mrs Collins broke down. ‘It’s not my phone.’
‘Now we’re getting to the truth.’
‘My husband told me to crush up the SIM card and bury it while we were in Bridgnorth but I couldn’t, not after I’d read the messages. I told him I’d done it but I couldn’t let the phone go. He’s an expert in changing a story over time and making out that I’m crazy or make something into more than it was – I suppose you could call what he does gaslighting.’ She bit her bottom lip and blinked away a tear. ‘This phone gave me the proof I needed to believe in myself when the time came. I kept reading those messages over and over again and it hit me. He’d been cheating on me and the girl was now dead and he’d dragged me out of my home to go on the run. I know about Scarlett too. I had it out with him but he kept saying that she was a mad woman. That she tried to lead him on then shopped him to the police because she was an attention seeker. He said that what happened with him and Amber was different – but then I found this phone, in his study. He’d hidden it behind a loose skirting board. When I confronted him, he went mad, said we had to get away, which is why we left. He said you’d read it all wrong, that it wasn’t him that was the problem, it was her. I didn’t want to go and the children… he upset them. They were crying.’ She paused. ‘I’d never seen him like that before. I thought it was best to get us away from the children so that we could sort things out, which is why I agreed to go with him. He was…’ She stared into space.
‘He was what?’
‘Frenzied. His eyes were stark, his grip on me, forceful. The kids, he didn’t seem to care that they were cowering in a corner as we argued. Then, we turn up at his parents’ house begging them to have the kids and to use their car so that we can take the caravan away. They were as confused as the kids but they could see that something was stressing us so they agreed. Our car had been playing up and given the weather, they were okay with us borrowing theirs. We often did that anyway.’
Jacob scribbled a few notes and looked up.
‘What happened after that?’
