Then he hung up.
They headed straight for Madds’s office.
‘Need to put a log on, Cain’s partner is missing. He hasn’t seen her since yesterday morning.’
Madds’s eyes went wide. ‘She’s probably realised he’s not for her and done a bunk. I mean, would you blame her?’
‘From her own house that she owns? I very much doubt that, she’d have told him to leave, Sarge. Cain is genuinely worried about her, so can you prioritise it, please.’ Morgan couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice.
Madds picked up the phone, called the control room and passed the receiver to Ben, who asked the call handler to put it on the incident log. When he’d passed the information over, he told them that he and Morgan would be attending in the first instance to take details. Nobody argued with him.
Madds shrugged. ‘When you’re ready for one of my officers, give me a shout. Just as well, they’re tied up at a fatal accident on Windermere Road anyway. I was just on my way out.’
Cain was standing at the pink front door of Angela’s house that Morgan loved so much. He looked awful. Morgan gave him a quick hug, and he squeezed her back tightly.
‘There’s a log on, Cain; Control is checking the ANPR cameras to see if they have her leaving the area. I’ve requested a cell site analysis of her phone too. Morgan gave me the number, and I asked for it to be completed urgently.’ Ben’s spoke quietly.
Cain led them inside to the kitchen where Morgan had spent lots of time chatting with Angela. She had the worst churning inside of her stomach. Angela was not the kind of woman to disappear without a trace even if she and Cain weren’t getting along.
‘Can you tell me when you last spoke to her, Cain?’ Morgan asked the questions, and Ben listened, pen poised in hand ready to take notes.
‘Yesterday morning before I left for work. She was sitting on your chair, Morgan, working on her laptop.’
‘How did she seem to you?’
‘A little distracted. I asked her what she was doing not because I was bothered but out of genuine interest.’
‘What was she doing?’
‘She told me she was helping a client of hers from years ago to try to find her son that got adopted.’
A creeping feeling of unease told her something was very wrong. Could Angela be connected to the mysterious brother who may have killed the Williams sisters? Maybe her friend was his birth mum, and if so, she was in very real danger if she’d discovered who he was. He wouldn’t want this in the middle of his perfectly executed killing spree; it would ruin everything.
‘Does she normally do stuff like that?’
Cain shrugged. ‘Not that I’m aware of but I work with you both, long shifts, and I have no idea what she does when I’m not around. I don’t think so though, as she’s normally got her nose buried in a book.’
‘Did she tell you who this ex-client was?’
‘No. I didn’t ask either because I didn’t think I needed to be concerned, otherwise I would have.’
‘You were worried about her yesterday and then she messaged to say she was with a friend. What time was that?’
He picked up his phone and opened his texts. ‘At 15.07.’
‘I’m sorry to ask you, Cain, but had you fallen out; are you having problems that maybe you didn’t realise were as serious as they are?’
His head shook vehemently. ‘No, I swear to God everything was great. I’ve been helping Amy out, but you know that and it’s just me being a friend. There’s nothing to it and Angela was happy for me to do that. We didn’t argue over it. She never said she felt as if I was spending too much time there. She encouraged me to help her because she said so many new mums struggle and it was lovely that I could support her, because a lotof them have no one and she’d seen the results of that end in tragedy far too often in her job.’
‘Does Angela have a tablet, a diary or journal she might have written notes in?’
‘Probably, but I don’t know where she keeps it.’
Morgan stood up. ‘Would you mind if I looked around to see if I can find anything? She might have written a name down or an address we can go to.’
‘Help yourself, I have nothing to hide.’
She squeezed his shoulder. ‘I know that, I’m not looking for anything other than something that might give us an idea where she is.’
