Fry had been in that situation herself. She had worked in one of those CID offices. She guessed the officer had tried his best. But in the end, his sense of relief almost rose off the page as he concluded that the facts pointed towards Emma Renshaw having left the West Midlands, just as she had been supposed to do. He had passed the problem back to Derbyshire.
Fry shook her head, not sure whether she was puzzled, or whether she was trying to shake off the feeling that had been creeping up on her ever since she had taken the evidence bag in her hands.
‘You know, it’s all too vague, sir,’ she said. ‘It seems to me that none of Emma Renshaw’s housemates was bothered enough about her to make quite sure that Emma could get to the station all right on her own. They think she was getting a taxi, but they don’t know when, or where or how, or what taxi firm was coming to pick her up. And no one actually saw her leave the house.’
Hitchens shrugged. ‘Well, that’s the way it is, Diane. You know it happens all the time. People just disappear through the cracks.’
She nodded. Hitchens was right, of course. Throughout the country, teenagers went missing all the time, and were never seen again. But Emma Renshaw had last been seen in Bearwood, in the Black Country, no more than a mile or two from her own childhood home. That made a difference.
‘And we have to consider the other possibility …’ said Hitchens.
‘Sir?’
‘The possibility that Emma Renshaw may have lied to everyone – her parents, her friends and her housemates. She may never have intended coming home at all.’
‘Of course.’
Fry looked at the railway timetable attached to the reports. Emma had been due to catch a train from Birmingham New Street station a few minutes before eleven o’clock on the morning of Thursday, 12 April. Virgin Trains should have taken her to Manchester Piccadilly, where she would have had a quarter of an hour to change platforms and transfer to a local train. She had been expected to arrive at Glossop station at twenty past one, and her parents, Howard and Sarah Renshaw, had been waiting to collect her. But Emma hadn’t got off the train. The Renshaws had tried to call her mobile phone, but had got only the message service. So they had waited for the next train from Manchester. And the next.
The schedule filled Fry with a sense of despair. No wonder the West Midlands officer had been glad to get the case off his desk. If Emma Renshaw had left the house in Darlaston Road as planned, there were two possibilities. Either she had disappeared in Birmingham, and had never made it to the train at all. Or she had vanished when she changed trains in Manchester.
Fry was looking at the names of two of the largest metropolitan areas in Britain, cities where a girl of nineteen could melt away so easily. A change of identity, and her family would never see her again, if she didn’t want them to. Fry knew that all too well.
On the other hand, the evidence bag that she was holding contained a Motorola Talkabout with a bright blue inlay over the keys – a phone which Vodafone said had belonged to Emma Renshaw. Without a group of ramblers deciding it was time for a spring clean, the phone might have lain undiscovered for ever. If one of those ramblers hadn’t been the mum of a teenager whose mobile phone had been stolen by muggers, it would have been sent to the council tip with the rest of the rubbish. And if it hadn’t been for the police officer at Chapel-en-le-Frith who had taken the time and trouble to trace the owner of the phone, no one would ever have thought of submitting it for forensic examination.
But that’s what they had done, and the result was in Fry’s hands. Down the right side of the phone, the blue inlay was streaked with the dried residue of a dark brown liquid that had glued up the keys and trickled into the little hole where the lead for the re-charger should fit. According to the label on the bag, the stains had been confirmed as human blood.
Fry knew that she might be looking at the last remaining biological traces of Emma Renshaw. Her fingers might almost be touching the pathetic remnant of Emma’s life, a desiccated dribble of her DNA.
And that was what opened up the tunnel of fear that she had already begun to slide down.
DC Gavin Murfin had sandy hair and a pink face, and he always seemed to have dabs of tomato sauce on his lower lip. He was well past forty, yet he took no notice of any nagging about the condition of his heart. He had experience, though, and that was worth gold these days. Even Diane Fry had to admit it.
Fry found DC Murfin at his desk in the CID room, answering the phone with one hand and eating from a paper bag in the other. She waited impatiently until he put the phone down.
‘And I’ll complain to the Chief Constable about you too, madam,’ he said to the empty air. Then he looked up and grinned at Fry. ‘We’re not providing the high quality of customer service the lady expects for her Council Tax.’
‘I hope you were polite, Gavin,’ said Fry.
‘Polite? I charmed her so much that she’s coming round straight away to have sex with me.’
But Fry wasn’t in the mood for Murfin’s brand of humour.
‘Gavin, what are you doing at the moment?’
‘Eh?’
‘Nothing much, by the look of it.’
‘I’m just having a minute, like.’
‘Well, your minute’s up. There are crimes to be detected.’
‘I’ve already detected one this year, Diane.’
‘Well, it’s time to get your average up. Let’s see if we can make it one point five.’
Murfin sighed. ‘I’ll just finish this sarnie.’
Fry looked at his sandwich more closely. ‘Gavin, is that what I think it is?’
‘Bacon and sausage.’ Murfin licked a bit of the grease off his fingers, then wiped the rest of it on a forensics report.
‘There’s half an inch of fat on that bacon, Gavin. Have you never heard of cholesterol?’
‘Yes, of course I have. Me and the wife went there for two weeks’ holiday last summer.’
Fry breathed in slowly, suppressing an urge to begin screaming. She knew it came from the fear, not from anger at Murfin. It was something she would have to deal with later.
‘Get the jokes out of your system now, Gavin,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a couple called Renshaw coming in.’
Murfin gave a muffled groan from behind a mouthful of sausage. ‘You’re kidding! Not Emma Renshaw’s parents?’
‘Do you remember the case?’
‘Everyone remembers it. What have they been doing now?’
‘Who?’
‘The Renshaws, of course.’
‘Why should they have been doing anything?’
‘Well, they’re regulars. Ask Traffic.’
‘Gavin, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Then you ought to pull some of the files on the Renshaws before you talk to them. It might reduce the shock, like.’
Murfin answered the phone and pulled a face at Fry.
‘Too late. They’re here already.’
‘Bring them up then, Gavin. No, hold on a minute. Come here.’
Murfin stopped at Fry’s desk on his way out of the CID room. She opened a drawer and pulled a Kleenex tissue out of a box. She carefully