There was a knock and one of the support staff came in with a cup of tea in his ‘Who’s The Boss?’ mug.
‘There we are, Sir,’ she said. ‘And I brought you your favourite.’ She placed a Kit Kat on the desk beside the steaming cup of tea and left.
Erika had a sudden urge to laugh, it took every bit of control to keep a straight face as he swept it off the desk and into the waste paper basket.
‘It seems it all hangs on you now, DCI Foster, let’s hope you get some kind of resolution to your case. I’ll have the car stationed outside your hotel in time for your return.’
‘Very good, Sir,’ said Erika. She got up and left and halfway down the corridor, she dived into the ladies toilets and she burst out laughing, she leaned on the sink and she couldn’t stop. A toilet flushed, and one of the uniformed officers came out of a cubicle and went to the sink. She was the one who had been collecting money for Guy Fawkes. She was ready for her shift, and wearing a Kevlar stab vest over her uniform.
‘You okay ma’am?’ she asked moving to the sink and washing her hands. Erika saw the vest, and immediately stopped.
‘Yes, sorry. It’s been a long hard day.’
‘It’s been a long hard week, ma’am,’ she said. She dried her hands and went to leave.
‘Be careful out there, won’t you…’ Erika found herself saying.
‘PC Claremont…’
‘PC Claremont, keep your wits about you.’
‘I always do. Thanks Boss,’ said the young officer and then left. Erika washed her hands and then went back up to the incident room.
* * *
Moss came over to her when she came through the door,
‘Boss, we’ve had DI Crawford’s phone records back, they confirm her was in contact with Amanda Baker over the last few weeks. We managed to find Amanda Baker’s phone. It had fallen down the side of her bed, so whoever was looking for it slipped up. The Cyber Crime guys have given it the once over and they found it was hacked in the last couple of weeks using a Trojan horse programme. Someone has been listening in and monitoring what she’s been looking at online.’
‘Good work.’
‘We just had some of our guys go back to the house, and they found a small listening device in the smoke alarm.’
‘Someone knew she was getting close to who killed Jessica Collins,’ said Erika.
60
Erika returned to the hotel in Dulwich and said an emotional goodbye to Lenka and the kids. It was dark outside and for once it wasn’t raining.
‘You know you’re welcome to stay,’ said Erika as they hugged on the street outside. Marek was waiting in the car with the kids.
‘Marek says things have calmed down, he’s sorted it with the police.’
‘If I was a police officer back in Slovakia, I wouldn’t be sorting things out with career criminals.’
‘I know.’
‘He loves you though, and the kids,’ said Erika watching as Marek helped them with their seat belts. ‘That’s got to count for something.’
Lenka shrugged, ’I just have to get on with life. I have to face up to whatever happens,’ she said.
‘You’ll keep in touch?’
‘Course,’ she smiled. ‘Let me know what happens with the hunky policeman.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘No. You deserve happiness. Mark would agree with me. You can’t spend the rest of your life in the past.’
‘Love you, safe journey,’ said Erika.
‘Love you too,’ replied Lenka.
She watched sadly as they drove away, the kids waving from the back window. She turned to see a squad car pull up at the kerb. She went over to it and knocked on the window, it wound down to show a young red haired officer.
‘Change of plan, I’m going back to my flat,’ she said.
61
Erika had been back at her flat for a couple of hours, when the buzzer went. When she looked through the spy hole, she saw Peterson’s face, magnified as he peered through. She sighed and unlocked the door.
‘Hey, how you doing?’
‘Fine.’
‘I stopped by your hotel in Dulwich, they said you’d checked out. This was warm when I got there…’ he held up a white plastic bag.
‘Is that Chinese?’
He nodded. ‘It’s all the good stuff, too. Crispy chilli beef, Chicken Chow Mein, crispy seaweed, prawn crackers.’
‘Damn you. How did you know I wouldn’t have any food in?’
She stood to one side and let him in. He saw she had been tidying the flat. The sofa bed was stacked with folded bedding, and there was a wet pink circle on the carpet with a can of carpet foam next to it. The light fitting had been unscrewed, so had the lamp on the table by the television. The housing for both smoke alarms lay in pieces on the coffee table.
‘I just phoned my letting agency. They didn’t know about anyone coming to read the gas or electricity meter.’
‘You think someone came in and bugged you?’ asked Peterson putting the Chinese food down on the counter and opening the cupboards.
‘Plates are all dirty,’ she said.
‘Oh my god, what is this?’ he said looking at a pile of greying stuff on a plate.
‘My sister made Bryndzove Halusky… It obviously doesn’t look like that when it’s fresh…’
He started to chip at it with the end of a fork. Erika lit a cigarette and stared at the room. ‘He would have had to have been quick.’
‘Who?’
‘The meter man. My sister and the kids were all here when he came. Although they were in the garden.’
‘Did you check the housing for the electricity box?’
‘Yes, there’s nothing.’
Peterson washed a couple of plates and they sat down on the sofa. Erika started to shovel the food in. She reached for the remote, and it took a few attempts to get the television to switch on. Peterson leaned over and took the remote.
‘Choose what you want,’ she said through a mouthful of prawn crackers. He turned the remote over and took of the back where the batteries were kept, and opened it.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he said. He pulled out a small circle of metal with a tiny length of wire.
‘Jesus,’ said Erika putting her fork down. ‘I thought I was being paranoid.’
* * *
An hour later, they had finished eating, and they were sat with Erika’s computer and the logs of Amanda Bakers phone calls and internet search history.
‘I received a blank text, about a week ago. It was on the same day that Lenka was calling me to say she’d be coming here,’ said Erika.
‘You need to stop using your phone then,’ said Peterson handing over her iPhone, She switched it off.
‘What is it that Amanda found out? This case seems to be retreating further and further from me.’
‘Whatever it was, it was a big enough deal for someone to kill her, and Crawford, and for an attempt on your life too.’
‘Joel Michaels was in custody when it happened. Trevor Marksman was and still is in hospital… We had to release Michaels earlier today.’
‘Let’s take her search history and go through it line by line,’ said Peterson. They spent the next few hours poring over everything.
‘One of the videos keeps coming up, of Laura and Marianne in the park. And she’s accessed it at the seventh minute, and the forty third minute.’
‘Let’s take a look then,’ said Peterson. They logged into HOLMES and fond the video file. In both videos Laura and Marianne could be seen arguing, their voices were faint. Erika dragged the video back and to the same point and turned up the volume to full. The sounds of the kids screaming and laughing in the park boomed out, so did the squeak of the swings going back and forward.
‘What’s that Laura is saying, you don’t get to boss me around… her either…’
‘Yeah, her voice is louder, Marianne’s is pretty inaudible.’
They played it back again, an
d Erika repeated what she heard,
‘You don’t get to boss me around… not yours… mine…’ she stopped the video. And she got up, her mind whirring. ‘What is it?’ asked Peterson.
‘Not yours, mine… not yours, mine. There was that chocolate orange box by Amanda’s computer.’
‘She was a big lady, wasn’t she just craving something sweet? My mum has been known to eat stuff out of the bin she’s thrown away.’
‘No. She hadn’t opened it. She’d underlined…’ Erika scrabbled around for the photo from the crime scene. ‘Here look, she’d underlined that tagline they used to use in the adverts, ‘It’s not Terry’s, it’s mine.’
‘You think there was someone called Terry involved?’ asked Peterson watching her pace up and down, the cogs turning.
‘Forget that… Shit,’ she said standing still. She turned to Peterson. ‘What was the age difference between Laura and Jessica?’
‘Jessica was seven, Laura was twenty when Jessica… Shit.’
Eirka scrabbled for the print out, ‘how much of this has been checked through?
‘I don’t know. What are you looking for?
‘A web address with the .ie domain,’
‘Here, give me some,’ said Peterson, they spent a few minutes scanning each page of the tiny print.
‘Got it,’ said Erika. She moved to the laptop and typed in the web address; http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/list/1/bdm/Certificates/
‘Here look, she tried to search for a birth certificate. She wouldn’t have had access, so she went this application page, you can do online applications as they’re public documents.’
‘Due to a significant increase in orders for certificates as a result of the recent referendum in the United Kingdom (UK), the delivery time for certificates from this service will be up to thirty (30) days from the date of order,’ read Peterson. ‘So she didn’t find out, that’s when she phoned you.’
Erika picked up her phone and then remembered,
‘Use mine, I’m not hacked,’ said Peterson. Erika grabbed his phone and then called in to control, and asked about getting hold of the birth certificate for Jessica Collins. She was told that they don’t have access to Irish birth certificates and they would have to wait until 8am the next morning until the office is open.
‘Shit. Are we out on a limb here? Wouldn’t someone have picked up on it?’
‘The first investigation was a disaster, and why would anyone think of looking at her birth certificate? When we do we look at Birth and death certificates? Only when there is something fishy going on.’
‘You think its possible? That Laura was never Jessica Collins sister, she was her mother…’
62
Erika and Peterson stayed up until very late, working their way through the case files, and re-visiting witness statements. They grabbed a few hours sleep on the sofa, and then drove to the station first thing in the morning.
They left the flat at the same time, but in separate cars to drive to Bromley, and the fact Peterson had stayed the night was registered by the surprise on the officer stationed outside the flats in the squad car.
* * *
‘Okay everyone, I want your attention,’ said Erika to her team when they had all congregated in the incident room. ‘A few minutes ago I put in a request to the Irish records office for a copy of Jessica Collins’ birth certificate. We have reason to suspect that Laura Collins wasn’t Jessica’s sister, she was, in fact her mother.’
There was silence in the incident room. Erika went on to explain their hunch from the previous evening.
‘Boss, there’s a fax coming through for you, I’m just sending it to the printers,’ said John. Erika went to the printer at the back of the incident room and it seemed to take an age for it to start whirring and printing. Then, very slowly the scan of a birth certificate emerged. It was dated from 1983, and written in clear but legible handwriting.
‘Yes! Mother is Laura Collins… and father is a Gerry O’Reilly of 4 Dorchester Court, Gallway.’
Moss was already at the white board and writing it up. ‘Okay we need everything we can get on a Gerry O’Reilly. We don’t know the circumstances of this, he could be old or young, but we have a name and an address.’
Ninety minutes later, they had managed to track down two Gerry O’Reilly’s who were registered to 4 Dorchester Court.
‘Father and son, both have the same name,’ said Moss.
‘Shit, how do we find out who it was?’
‘Gerry O’Reilly senior was born in 1941, which would make him…’ started Moss.
‘Forty two years old when Jessica was born,’ finished John.
‘You’re quick,’ she grinned. ‘Gerry junior was born the same year as Laura Collins, 1970. He would have been thirteen when Jessica was born.
‘Shit, either of them could be the father,’ said Erika.
63
After he had hung up his phone for the last time and destroyed the SIM card, Gerry O’Reilly spent a few hours making preparations for travelling. He’d showered and had a close shave. Then he’d packed a bag, left his flat for the last time and taken the train to Charing Cross, wearing an old pair of army trousers a thick red lumberjack shirt. He’d walked up to Soho, and had bought a fashionable dark skinny suit, a tight white button down shirt and a pair of expensive black shoes. His next stop had been to a high fashion barber in Neal’s Yard where he’d paid to have his hair cut and blow dried into a fashionable quiff. He’d then gone to Selfridges and bought an overnight bag, and taken it to a disabled toilet. He emerged a few minutes later in the suit, the new bag packed with his belongings. He’d shoved his old clothes and shoes to the bottom of the bin.
He worked his way down to the ground floor, moving past the make up displays until he found a young slim guy with bright red hair working on the MAC make-up counter, and shown him a picture of the American singer Adam Lambert.
‘Can you make me look like him?’ asked Gerry, looking the young lad in the eye and deliberately flirting. The lad looked down at the picture and back up at him. He had a small leather apron slung over his slight hips, with several make-up brushes poking out.
‘Course I can,’ he grinned, returning the flirt and selecting an eyeliner pencil. ‘I like your Irish accent. What brings you so far from home?’
‘This and that. You think you can cover up my bruises, I have a job interview. A film company.’
‘You want to make an impression, do you?’
‘Something like that. Do a good job and I’ll make it worth your while,’ grinned Gerry.
* * *
Gerry now sat in a Starbucks at King’s Cross St.Pancras Station. He swilled the last of his coffee down, and then finished the email he was writing. He attached a file, and then activating the camera he grinned, stuck up his middle finger and took a selfie, before attaching it to the email. He then set it to send later that day.
He dumped his take away cup in the small bin in the coffee shop and then left. He crossed the concourse and took the escalator stairs two at a time up to the Eurostar departure gate. His train was due to leave in seven minutes, and it was now or never. With adrenalin coursing through his veins, he placed his bag in the security tray. His £8,000 had been exchanged for a mix of €100 and €500 euro notes which he’d divided between his carry on and his wallet. He handed over his passport to a snotty looking cow, she took it and glanced at the photo, taken a few years previously. He looked rougher, but she didn’t bat an eyelid. She swiped his passport and there was a long horrible moment where she stared at her screen, the passport held open in her tiny hand. The screen beeped and she handed it back with a waxwork smile, wishing him a pleasant trip. The gate was just as easy,
Result, the guy on security looks like a textbook queer, he thought as he approached the end of a short line waiting to go through the metal detectors. He had been sure not to pack anything to rouse suspicion and he’d removed his belt and anything metal. He breezed through, waiting a
nother minute for his bag to exit the scanner.
‘Have a nice trip,’ grinned the guy on security. Gerry winked, and grabbing his bag he made it onto the train with three minutes to spare. He found his seat just as the train started to move out of the station. Thirty minutes later, the train left the UK and started its journey under the sea, and into mainland Europe.
64
Back in the incident room, it was now approaching lunchtime. The team had been working through public records, and had discovered that Gerry O’Reilly senior had died just before Christmas of 1982, just over a year before Jessica had been born. This put the young Gerry O’Reilly junior firmly in the frame.
They quickly found a picture and it was blown up and pinned to the whiteboards at the back of the incident room.
‘So we’re working on the assumption that Marianne and Martin Collins covered up the fact that Laura had given birth to Jessica at just thirteen years old…’ Erika was saying to the officers in the incident room. ‘This man is Jessica’s real father, and could be our prime suspect. Gerry O’Reilly is now forty-four years old. I want to know everything we can find on him. Where is he now, what has he been doing for the past twenty-six years, and what was he doing between 1983 and 1990 when Jessica went missing. Was he aware that he had fathered a child? Laura Collins gave birth in Ireland in the early eighties, in a strict Catholic environment. I’m not saying that Gerry O’ Reilly had a motive to kill his own daughter, but this is the most significant lead we’ve had so far. Also remember that someone out there didn’t want us to make this discovery. If we find out everything we can about Gerry, I think this will lead us to the murderer.’
* * *