Chapter 17

Chapter 17

‘Are you okay?’ Zuri looks at Jennie over the top of her computer screen with a concerned expression on her face.

‘I’m fine, I just didn’t have a great night’s sleep,’ Jennie replies quickly, brushing off her colleague’s concern. Usually, she’d confide in Zuri about how she’s feeling, but today something makes her hold back. She sees Zuri frown, and attempts to lighten the moment with a rueful grin. ‘I do come in early sometimes.’

Zuri smiles. ‘Sure you do. Actually, it’s good you’re here. I’ve lined up an interview with Charlotte Varney for nine o’clock over at her house in Upper Heydon, and then Robert Marwood is going to come in later this morning.’

‘Brilliant,’ says Jennie, putting her cycle helmet and bag down on her desk. ‘That’s fast.’

‘Well, I’m still looking for the current addresses of Hannah’s other two school friends,’ says Zuri. ‘But I’ve got the janitor’s address.’

‘Good work.’ Jennie switches on her computer. ‘Give the janitor’s details to Martin, he can pay them a visit while we talk to Ms Varney.’

‘Okay, I’ll give the information to DS Wright,’ says Zuri. Her tone is light, but there’s a tension in her jaw that wasn’t there a moment earlier.

Jennie softens her tone. ‘How was your evening anyway? Better than my exciting night of a microwave meal for one and de-cluttering my mum’s house?’

‘A bit better,’ replies Zuri, laughing. ‘I took Loretta to the Mission Impossible double bill playing at the Empire. I needed something to help me decompress, you know? And she can’t get enough of those films. She always says if she can’t make it as a novelist, she’ll become a stunt actor.’

Jennie knows Zuri’s daughter is the school’s champion gymnast; she doesn’t doubt she would make a great stunt actor. ‘Were the films good?’

Zuri nods. ‘Yeah, or at least I think so. The first one was fine, but I fell asleep in the second. Loretta told me I snored.’

Jennie laughs. ‘I wouldn’t have made it to the end of the first.’

As Zuri continues looking into the current addresses for the witnesses, Jennie makes them both coffee and then settles down at her desk to read through what the old case file has on Lottie Varney. There isn’t much, just a fairly short witness statement. In it, Lottie says she last saw Hannah two days before she disappeared, when they’d been in the basement darkroom listening to music, just the two of them. Jennie frowns, wondering how often they used to do that. She knew that Lottie and Hannah had been friends for years but over the time that Jennie had known them they’d seemed to grow further and further apart. Hannah had confided in Jennie that she found Lottie’s constant need for validation tiring, and Jennie had noticed how clingy Lottie got whenever Hannah spoke about doing something that didn’t include her.

When she reaches the section that covers Lottie’s movements on the day Hannah went missing, Jennie is brought up short. In the statement, Lottie explains that she’d gone to the youth club disco in Farnby Square that night. Jennie knows Farnby Square, as does everyone in White Cross; it’s a music venue that back in the day saw the Rolling Stones, Blondie and The Who play, but had fallen into a shabby, dilapidated version of its former glory by the early Nineties. It was used for various discos and raves. On the night Hannah disappeared, there was a youth club disco, but Lottie Varney definitely wasn’t there. Jennie’s sure because she’d been there herself.

Lottie claims to have arrived at 6.30 and stayed until 10.15. Jennie wasn’t at the disco the whole night, but she was there from seven until almost nine o’clock; at that point she hurried home to pack her bag and go to meet Hannah. The disco wasn’t especially busy that night, and at no time did Jennie see Lottie. Whatever Lottie said to the police who took her witness statement, Jennie knows she must have been lying. The question is, why?

‘Jennie, have you got a minute?’

Looking up from the file, Jennie sees Naomi hovering on the other side of her desk. ‘Sure. What is it?’

‘Zuri asked me to start working up the financials on all Hannah’s friends.’ Naomi hands Jennie some bank statements. ‘These are Elliott Naylor’s. He has a monthly standing order paying Simon Ackhurst a thousand pounds. It’s been going out every month for nearly thirty years.’

‘Nearly thirty years?’ Jennie frowns as she scans the top page of the financials. ‘You’re sure about that?’

Naomi nods. ‘I’ve double-checked it. It’s weird, right?’

‘It’s certainly curious,’ says Jennie. Especially when Elliott said he didn’t see Simon much any more. ‘Thanks, Naomi. I’ll take a look.’

‘We should get going,’ Zuri announces, standing up from her desk and pulling her jacket off the back of the chair.

Jennie glances at her watch; it’s just gone 8.30. She puts Elliott Naylor’s bank statements into the file for later, then gets up and grabs her bag. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

As they walk towards the lift, DS Martin Wright emerges through the door from the stairwell. He’s supposed to start work at eight o’clock.

‘Nice of you to join us,’ says Zuri, sarcastically. ‘I’ve left a note on your desk; can you follow up on the janitor?’

Martin ignores Zuri and instead fixes Jennie with a charming smile. ‘Sorry I’m late; the baby’s teething and Matilda was having one of her pre-nursery tantrums. I couldn’t run out and leave Kath to deal with it all.’

‘Okay, see you later,’ says Jennie, following Zuri into the lift. As they start to descend, she turns to Zuri. ‘What’s going on with you and Martin?’

‘Nothing,’ says Zuri, quickly.

Jennie raises an eyebrow. ‘The two of you have been at loggerheads for weeks, months, now. Something must be going on?’

‘It’s …’ Zuri shakes her head. Sighs. ‘It’s nothing. He’s just … Martin, you know?’

Jennie nods, but she doesn’t know, not really. She needs to focus on Hannah’s murder investigation right now, but she adds the issue between Zuri and Martin to her list of things to get onto once this case is finished. She needs her detectives to be working well together, not barely tolerating each other’s presence. Once Hannah’s murderer is caught, she will get to the bottom of whatever’s going on.