Keep Her Close. M.J. Ford
not with your best friend?’ asked Pryce.
Anna blushed. ‘Her mum wanted her in the college, actually. Funnily enough, she thought it was safer.’
Jo felt sorry for the girl. She seemed completely out of her depth. But there was still a difficult subject to broach. ‘Anna, do you know if Malin had a drug problem?’
Anna looked down at her hands. ‘I never saw her take anything.’
‘But you know she did, right? It’s okay. You’re not in trouble.’
‘I know she used to. She went to hospital once, in our second year.’
‘Something she took?’
‘I think so.’
‘And what did the college do about it?’
Anna actually smiled. ‘Nothing. I think Malin’s step-dad might have handled it.’
Maybe I dismissed the nepotism a bit too quickly.
Jo relaxed in her chair, then fished out her card and slid it across the table. ‘My number’s on there if you think of anything else. Are you staying around in Oxford?’
‘For another day,’ said Anna. ‘Then I’m going home for Christmas to my family.’ She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. ‘What do you think happened to her?’
‘Too early to say,’ said Jo, standing up. Pryce did the same. ‘But we’ll get working on it. You’ve been very helpful, Anna.’
Malin’s friend remained seated. ‘She’s a good person, you know.’
Jo wondered what that was supposed to mean.
‘We have no doubt about it,’ said Pryce. ‘And we’ll find her. I promise.’
Jo wished he hadn’t said it. Though he hadn’t specified ‘dead’ or ‘alive’, Jo was pretty sure Anna’s take-away would be the latter. Maybe Pryce was regretting going a bit hard on her. Most missing person cases did get solved, because most of the time the missing didn’t want to stay that way. But this already felt a little different. The bloody handprint in the almost empty college. The almost archetypical angelic face concealing what was looking like a complicated life beneath. They likely would find Malin Sigurdsson, but Jo already had a creeping feeling this wouldn’t be a happy ending.
They decided to pay Ross Catskill a surprise visit. Calibre Events was over in the new Castle Street development, just across the city centre.
Jo called Carrick on the way. He didn’t answer, so she left a message telling him where they were going. As she was doing so, Pryce’s phone rang, and from what she could gather it was Stratton on the other end. She waited until he came off.
‘Cranleigh’s been onto the gaffer already,’ said Pryce. ‘Wanted an update.’
‘I only spoke to him an hour ago, and he was too busy to have a conversation.’ Even without meeting the MP for Witney, Jo was already forming a positive dislike for the man.
A young woman in business attire walked past and smiled warmly at Pryce.
‘Friend of yours?’ asked Jo after a few seconds.
‘Who?’ he said.
Jo nodded at the woman, who was walking away.
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
Jo grinned. For someone who specialised in digital forensics, going over evidence with a fine-tooth comb, Jo had noticed he often missed some of the more basic social cues. She wondered if he was somewhere on the spectrum. His desk at work was scrupulously neat and spotlessly clean, unlike her own, which was strewn with mugs and Post-it notes. Heidi called him ‘the professor’.
‘So what are your first impressions of Anna?’ Jo asked him. ‘She telling the truth?’
Pryce shrugged. ‘Not all of it,’ he said. ‘She seemed nervous, but that’s only natural. Plus, her friend’s missing.’
‘You think they’re as close as she says? Hardly known each other long.’
Pryce shrugged. ‘Three years? In a college like this, it’s a long time I think.’
The Castle Street Hub, as it was called, was just a collection of the standard chain restaurants around a courtyard, with some business premises above, approached by metal steps. Calibre Events had a glass door and intercom to reception.
‘Calibre Events. How can I help you?’ said a female voice.
‘We’re looking for Ross Catskill,’ said Jo. ‘It’s the police.’
‘Mr Catskill is away on a premises visit at the moment,’ came the reply.
‘Whereabouts?’ asked Jo.
‘I’m afraid I can’t give out that information.’
‘What’s your name please?’ asked Jo.
‘Selina,’ said the receptionist.
Jo took out her warrant card, and held it to the camera. ‘We’re investigating a possible crime, Selina,’ she said. ‘Maybe you could let us in.’
A couple of seconds passed, then the buzzer went and Jo opened the door. They went up a set of backless stairs and into a small atrium where the receptionist sat behind a desk. Jo saw a small boardroom and another door with a WC sign, but that was it. The receptionist smiled, tapping at her keyboard. ‘Mr Catskill will be busy until six-thirty,’ she said. ‘You could wait if you like. He might not come back at all though.’
Jo checked her watch. An hour.
‘Is that his diary on screen?’ asked Jo, leaning over the desk. ‘You could help us actually. Where was Mr Catskill over the last, say, twenty-four hours?’
Selina shifted the monitor’s angle. ‘Is he in trouble?’
Jo wondered about her next move. Really, Selina was under no obligation to share anything.
‘Quite possibly,’ she said. ‘More so if he doesn’t help us in a timely manner.’
‘Okay.’ said the receptionist. ‘Let me call Ross.’
She reached for the phone, but Jo leant across and got there first. ‘Just tell us where he is,’ she said. ‘Pretty please.’
* * *
Jukebox was a nightclub above a supermarket on the edge of the shopping centre. Most people knew it by its nickname, Dirtbox, and Jo remembered it from her own time growing up. Sticky, worn carpets, plastic cups, themed nights that ranged from the cheesiest seventies pop to drum and bass. The sort of place that was dead at ten pm, by midnight was a meat-market of desperate youngsters, and by two boasted toilets like a warzone, awash with various forms of effluence. Though it ran student nights during term, it was more of a ‘town’ than ‘gown’ place – and provided a reliable stream of weekend calls to the emergency services related to post kicking-out time drunken altercations.
At six pm on a Wednesday, the scuffed double security door was closed. There was a letterbox, no signage, and no doorbell or other means of communication, so Jo closed her fist and pounded three times. A couple of shoppers heading back to their cars with full trolleys looked over curiously.
They’d told Selina not to call Catskill, but Jo hardly expected her to listen. If he’d gone already just to avoid them, that might make everything look a little clearer. Jo lifted her hand to bang again, when she heard footsteps from the other side of the door, then a bar mechanism being drawn.
It opened to reveal a man in a pale grey