style="font-size:15px;"> Jessica shook her head.
‘Has she been bullied at all? At school or perhaps online?’ Jane asked. ‘All this twittering and Facebook, chat rooms and so on.’
‘She’s not into that kind of thing,’ Alistair said. ‘She uses her mobile a fair amount, texting and chatting with her friends, but that’s all as far as I know. And she’s not bullied. She’s very popular, by all accounts.’
‘We’ll need her computer, tablet, whatever, just to make sure,’ Pete said. He’d still never seen Tommy’s again after all this time, he remembered suddenly. He’d have to ask Simon about that. ‘I expect she had her mobile with her?’
‘Yes,’ Jessica said softly. ‘But it’s switched off. Goes straight to voicemail. That was the first thing we tried when I came home.’
‘OK. We’ll need the number then, and the service provider. I take it it’s all right for us to check the call log?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you, sir. You were already home?’
‘Yes. I worked from home today. I’m a lawyer. Look, is anyone actually out there searching for Rosie, Sergeant?’
Pete paused, writing in his notebook, then looked up again. ‘As soon as we have somewhere to search, we’ll be going over it with a fine-tooth comb, sir. But we need all the information we can get in order to get to that stage. What other relatives are there?’
They glanced at each other and he spoke again. ‘We both still have our parents. I have a brother, Jason . . .’
Pete noticed a faint grimace cross the woman’s face.
‘. . . Jess has a sister, Penny. Penny Child. She’s divorced, but she’s kept her husband’s name.’
‘So, she’s single now?’
‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘She’s got a boyfriend. Michael Gibbons. They’ve been together – what?’ She glanced at her husband. ‘Two years or so? But what’s this got to do with anything? None of the family would have—’
‘And that’s it?’ Pete broke in.
‘Family-wise, yes.’
‘Right. We’ll need a list of contacts – family, friends and colleagues, even if they don’t know Rosie.’
Alistair frowned. ‘Why?’
‘For elimination and for cross-reference. People forget things, don’t notice them, do notice them. You’d be surprised. Tell you what, you’ve got your little book there. While you do that for us, would it be OK if you made us all a drink, Mrs Whitlock? Jane can give you a hand.’
‘OK,’ she said, looking a little surprised by the request. ‘I’m sorry. I should have offered before. It’s just . . .’
‘We understand.’ He nodded to Jane to go with her, then waited until Jessica had led the way out of the room. ‘Jane.’ He got up and went to the door, stuck his head through and said quietly, ‘Ask her about her brother-in-law. And if the girl’s all right around her father as well as anyone else you can think of. Grandfathers, friends.’
‘Right, boss.’
‘What was that about?’ Alistair asked as Pete returned to his seat.
‘Oh, just something I remembered at the last minute. How are you doing?’ He glanced down at the notebook on the coffee table in front of the other man.
‘Coming along.’
‘So, you’re a lawyer. What kind of law do you practice?’
‘Corporate, Sergeant. Company takeovers, property purchases and sales, staff disputes, that sort of thing.’
‘Big money involved at times then.’
‘Yes. But it’s the client’s, not ours.’
‘Nevertheless.’ He glanced around the room. ‘You’re obviously not on the breadline.’
‘And, Sergeant?’
‘Well, one of the things we have to consider in these circumstances is the possibility of kidnapping. For ransom.’
‘What?’ He stopped writing as he stared at Pete in shock. ‘I’m just a West Country lawyer, not some big City banker. Why on earth would that kind of thing affect me?’
Pete shrugged. ‘You never know, sir.’ In his own case, Simon had looked not just at ransom, but at the influence someone might want Pete to bring to any of the cases that were being worked at the time. ‘You haven’t received a demand of any kind?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘If you do, you will tell us?’
‘Of course.’
‘Only, very often, these things include a proviso that you mustn’t contact the police. It’s never a good idea to go along with it. It’s aimed at isolating you, making you more vulnerable, that’s all.’
‘As I said, Sergeant, we’ve heard nothing from anyone. And, if we do, we’ll be sure to inform you.’
Pete nodded.
Alistair leaned back in his seat. ‘Anyway, why are you – a sergeant – handling this? I thought an inspector would have come out.’
‘That’s the TV and the movies, sir. In the real world, especially these days, with all the cutbacks, there’s usually only one DI in a station, if that. And he or she’s in a more supervisory, management-type role than an active investigative one. They allocate cases, oversee progress and chip in if we ask them to.’
‘I see.’ He resumed writing, resting the pad on his raised knee.
‘So, you were at home all day?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t hear anything from the school, asking why Rosie hadn’t turned up, anything like that?’
‘No, they . . .’ He sat forward again. ‘It’s not like your average comprehensive, Sergeant. They assume the students have some level of responsibility. They allow them a day for sickness before chasing them up.’
Pete grimaced. He’d never heard of a school treating its students like that before. Maybe a college or university, but not a senior school. ‘OK. We spoke about her mobile and so on. Do we have your permission to check on your landline and Internet provider, too?’
‘Of course. Anything that’ll help find Rosie, though how they might is beyond me.’
‘The more information we have, the better.’ Hopefully, the records would allow him to verify Alistair’s whereabouts for at least part of the day without needing to ask him directly at this stage. That could come later, if it proved necessary –
