Page 17 of Her Hidden Shadow

‘Let’s theorise that Lauren and her friends left in a taxi. Sienna turned up. They had sex and then something happened. Did possessive Gerard turn up and hurt Robbie? Or did Sienna offer Robbie an ultimatum to make a choice between her and Lauren? Or maybe she planned to tell Lauren about their affair. Had things got that tense, he locked her in the cupboard while thinking of what to do? Then he killed her and left without his car. Where the hell is he?’

She shivered as she thought of Sienna curled up next to the vacuum and mop, trapped in the cupboard. She imagined being in there herself, suffocated by the darkness and the not knowing what was going to happen next. A brief flashback to her dead ex-husband Terry locking her in the understairs cupboard for a whole day made her shudder. She thought he was going to leave her to die, and Sienna must have thought the same, which is why she had fought with her life to escape. ‘She must have been absolutely terrified in there, knowing he was about to kill her.’ Gina stepped back from the cupboard, wanting to unsee that small space.

Jacob led the way into the smaller bedroom at the back. He stepped in and Gina noted the empty desk in the corner and the dust marks outlining where a laptop had been. She knew that Bernard would have made sure that the computer reached the tech department and Garth, the tech assistant, was probably going through the files. Gina crouched down and flashed her phone torch underneath the grey sofa bed but there was nothing hidden there. With her gloved hands, she felt around all the crevices, searching for anything that could be hidden, while Jacob riffled through the desk drawers. His gloved fingers got tangled in string and paperclips. A few minutes later, they’d finished in that room. The bathroom also yielded nothing.

Gina stood outside the master bedroom, not wanting to push the door open. Only a few hours ago she’d seen Sienna Moorcroft’s lifeless body in that bed.

‘I don’t want to go in either, guv.’ Jacob looked away.

‘It never gets any easier. Ever.’ She pushed the door open and was instantly hit by the stench of stale body odour, urine and a nasty sweetness that she struggled to describe if anyone asked. The smell would remain for a long time even though the body had been removed. She knew that forensics had searched thoroughly for physical evidence but now it was time to delve a different way. ‘I’ll take the wardrobe; you take the drawers.’

‘Okay.’ Jacob passed the bed and headed to the chest of drawers under the window.

Gina welcomed the woody smell of the wardrobe. It wasn’t enough to mask the scent of death, but it helped. She opened the first of three doors and all Lauren’s clothes were neatly hung. Without wasting time, she had her hands in each of the pockets of the woman’s high-end dresses and trousers. At the back of her mind, she wondered if there might also be some clue as to who Lauren was arguing with just over a week ago.

‘You know Lauren claimed that the man she was arguing in the street with was just some drunken man who had bumped into her?’

‘Yes,’ he replied as he continued searching through Lauren’s T-shirts.

‘I’d like that confirmed. As far as Lauren’s phone showed, there were no messages or calls to any unidentifiable numbers on that Thursday or Friday and no suggestion that she was seeing anyone else. So, her explanation of it being a random encounter stacks up. But Lauren does have Snapchat on her phone. Any messages would have been long gone. That encounter is now niggling away in my brain.’ Gina shook her head and wondered if she was wasting her time with that lead, especially as Robbie was out there somewhere and they had Sienna’s ex, Gerard, and the taxi driver to consider.

She stepped across and opened the next door. All Robbie’s shirts had been neatly hung up on the one side and all his trousers and jackets on the other. Once again, she fished through pockets and again, she found nothing of interest. That left one more part of the wardrobe to search. She opened the last door. It had been sectioned off into shelving. Several pairs of shoes were stacked up but right at the bottom were two metal file boxes, labelled up with Lauren and Robbie’s names. Gina pulled Lauren’s box out and placed it on the floor. After going through all her paperwork, she couldn’t find anything relevant to the case. Kneeling, she dragged Robbie’s box out next and removed all the folders. She pulled out a folder marked HMRC and flicked through it. He had an average job for a company and earned a good salary. It looked like he’d had the same job as an office manager for years. She flicked through the next file, and it was full of old bills and documents, including his birth certificate and passport. She randomly flicked through some of his bank statements and could see that he paid a large sum every month to his and Lauren’s joint bank account. It was otherwise sparse. Gina guessed that the rest of their bills got taken from their joint account. There was only one regular payment going out and it was referenced as CM. This payment had got bigger and bigger over recent months.

As she reached in to pull the rest of the files out, the paper part of Robbie’s driving licence had almost slipped out of its plastic sleeve. She pulled it out. As she unfolded it, a small photo fell to the carpet. Gina recognised the face in the photo instantly. She could feel a roughness on the back. Turning it over, she saw the writing that had almost been scratched through the paper and things began to make sense. She deserves to know.

‘Jacob, you have to see this.’ He dropped a pile of socks back into the drawer he was working through. She gave him the photo. ‘Turn it over, read the words. And look at these.’ She passed him the bank statements.

Her phone rang and she answered Briggs’s call. ‘Hello.’

‘Gina, we have the address of the taxi driver. His name is Ulrich Fischer, and he lives close to where you are now. While you go and visit Mr Fischer, I’ll prepare the team here. Robbie Shields’s image has gone out on our social media and it’s due to hit the local news this evening, so the lines will go ballistic later. He’s without a doubt our prime suspect but we can’t rest at that. In his absence we have to cover every angle. Hopefully someone will come forward and tell us where he is. He can’t stay hidden forever, that’s a fact. Another thing.’

‘What is it?’ Gina bit her dry bottom lip as he spoke.

‘We’ve managed to look into Lauren Cross and Robbie Shields’s recent bank transactions. There has been no money taken from his personal account, her personal account, or their joint account since last night. He’s vanished and hasn’t spent any money at all. We now have his car and we now know that he didn’t take Sienna’s car.’

‘Maybe he’s prepared for this scenario, sir.’

‘Maybe. Let me know how it goes with the taxi driver. It could be that he saw Robbie Shields at the bungalow when he dropped Lauren off. I know Lauren claimed that she didn’t see Robbie, but we need to check that out.’

‘Jacob and I are on our way. If you could message me the address, that would be great. I’d also like to know why he parked down the road, then went up to the bungalow after dropping Lauren Cross off? Don’t drivers normally just drop people off and go? I’ll report back.’ She bagged up the bank statements and the photo. ‘And, sir, Robbie has the biggest motive ever to kill Sienna. It looks like he is Dora’s father.’

Eleven

Gina buzzed Ulrich Fischer’s bell and waited outside the tall block of flats. Jacob began biting the skin around his thumbnail as he gazed at his feet. ‘Robbie Shields is Sienna’s daughter’s father. I know it’s unconfirmed at the moment, but that would throw a different angle onto the whole case.’

Gina nodded. ‘Yes, it’s a completely different story to what Sienna’s landlady told us about Dora’s father being a soldier. If Sienna was telling everyone that story, it stands to reason that she’d have said the same to Lauren. Those payments going out of his account, referenced CM seems to suggest child maintenance. Again, it’s also strengthening a motive for Lauren. If she knew that her best friend had her boyfriend’s baby, who knows how she would have reacted. Maybe she found out somehow. I mean, how easy was it? All I did was go through his unlocked files and I found that photo. Lauren could have known for ages.’ She pressed the buzzer again in the hope that the taxi driver was in. ‘But we still need to find Robbie. As it stands, we know where Lauren is, and Robbie has absconded. I know who looks more suspicious right now.’

‘What?’ A man’s voice boomed out from the speaker and his slight German accent told Gina it was probably Ulrich.

‘DI Harte and DS Driscoll. We need to speak to you with regards to a serious incident.’

‘I’m trying to sleep. Can you come back later?’

‘Sorry, no. As I said it’s serious and we need to talk to you now.’

The buzzer went and the door clicked. Gina pushed it open and started walking up the stairs until they reached the fourth floor, her calves burning as she stepped onto the landing. Her pulse banged away as she knocked on his door. The steps had done her in, but Jacob looked unaffected.

Ulrich opened the door and began to battle with a curtain before letting them into the dark hallway. Gina caught a hint of bacon in the air, probably the remnants of what he’d eaten after his shift. ‘Come through. Excuse my mess, I wasn’t expecting visitors.’ He scratched his backside over the top of his pyjama shorts.

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