back. She was more than capable of jump-starting her car. She’d had to do it on numerous occasions recently and was now seriously considering bumping the purchase of a new car battery higher up her priority shopping list than new DMs for herself. Damn car! Her hands were freezing, her toes were numb, and she was better employed sitting in her marginally warmer car organizing things than fannying about in the slush getting colder. Besides, as her car engine sputtered to life, the officer, unlike herself, was dressed for the weather. She gave him a thumbs-up as she backed down the narrow lane, and stopping when she drew level with him, she wound down her window. ‘Remember, no telling DC Malik about this, okay?’
As the grinning officer shook his head, Nikki frowned. ‘In fact, no telling anybody, yeah?’
‘Lips are sealed, Detective, lips are sealed.’
Satisfied, Nikki nodded put her window back up and, wishing that her vehicle would choose today to spontaneously burst heat from its contrary fan, set off.
By the time she reached the station, the promised snow had started again and Nikki was glad she’d missed driving in it. Entering the Trafalgar House car park, she was pleased to note the absence of the media. Last thing they needed was this leaking before they had a chance to speak to Springer’s next of kin. She ran up the steps to the officers’ entrance at the back of the station and jogged up to the incident room, bursting through the door, causing it to bang against the wall and rebound back almost hitting her in the face. Dodging it, she moved into the room and cast her eyes round. Apart from Sajid, a couple of uniformed officers momentarily looked up from their computers at her entrance. Otherwise the room was deserted. Everybody else was either at home or out following up the limited leads they had on Springer.
‘Ah, you’re back.’ Sajid, alerted by her dramatic entrance, turned around from the crime board he was creating. At the top he’d scrawled, ‘DS Felicity Springer’ and underneath ‘Abducted/Missing?’ ‘Was beginning to wonder if that chunk of metal you call a car had finally given up on you.’
Hoping that the officer who’d helped her would keep his side of the bargain, Nikki tutted. ‘Oh, ye of little faith. Course it didn’t let me down. Pure gold, that car.’
Ignoring Sajid’s disbelieving snort, she bent down, undid her DMs and peeled off her sodden socks before swiping a discarded newspaper from one of the cluttered desks. Scrunching it up, she stuffed pages of it into her boots and then placed them and her socks onto the heater.
‘Fire risk.’
Nikki raised her middle finger at her colleague and glanced round. ‘Archie?’
Sajid tilted his head towards Archie’s office. ‘In there.’
Nikki began to march towards it, but Sajid’s next words stopped her in her tracks. ‘Wouldn’t go in. He’s not alone and he’s not a happy bunny.’
‘Oh? Who’s he with?’
‘The big boss.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Something’s going on, Nik and whatever it is, it’s serious. You should’ve seen Archie. I thought he was going to explode.’
Nikki looked at the blinds that now obscured whatever was going on inside the room. That was strange in itself. Archie rarely lowered the blinds, preferring an open-door policy, or, as Nikki suspected, he really liked to keep an eye on what was going on in the office. Archie had been acting strangely all day. Agitated and off-kilter. Then, of course, there was that really strange and secretive request he’d made. Now he was ensconced in his office with the big boss, blinds closed. Detective Chief Superintendent Eva Clark was pretty much a hands-off boss. If she wanted to see Archie, she’d normally request his presence upstairs in her office, so what had prompted her to come down here? What the hell’s going on? ‘How long they been in there?’
‘She arrived just as I got back.’
Nikki exhaled and then walked over to stand beside Saj. ‘Okay, let’s deal with the Archie situation later. We need to focus on Springer. Did we get some officers sent over to interview the hotel staff? We can’t rule out that it may have been a planned and targeted attack.’
‘Yep, I asked them to grab any CCTV footage they could, just to be sure. Everything from Friday afternoon through to ten o’clock this morning, when the conference officially ended.’ Sajid frowned.
Nikki knew her partner well enough to sense his discomfort. ‘Spit it out then.’
‘It’s just, apparently someone else already requested copies of the hotel’s CCTV of the conference.’ He paused. ‘All of it.’
Nikki shrugged. ‘No big deal. As long as we’ve got it, that’s fine. Maybe Archie was on the ball and requested it.’
Saj nodded. ‘Yeah. It was Archie who requested it.’
Nikki nudged his arm. ‘There then. No big mystery.’
‘Well, that’s just it, Nik. Archie made the request at 10.47 a.m.’
As his words sunk in, Nikki exhaled. She pulled out a chair and sank into it. ‘You sure?’
‘Yep. I even phoned the hotel myself to double check.’
‘Shit! What’s going on?’
‘No idea, but it’s damn weird that Archie put in that request almost an hour before we got the call from Springer.’
Nikki agreed. This was strange and if she and Saj were to be able to do their job, Archie needed to start sharing with them. There was something off about all of this and Nikki needed to get to the bottom of it. She cast another impatient glance at Archie’s office and for a second considered barging in then and there and demanding to be told exactly what was going on. Fortunately, good sense prevailed and instead she focused on the task in hand. She’d deal with Archie later. ‘Have we got a copy?’
When Saj nodded she said, ‘Well, let’s at least have a look at Springer leaving the hotel. We can start following her journey from the hotel to when she disappeared.’
They huddled over the computer with the largest screen and Saj fiddled to get the recording to the right spot. ‘She signed out at 9.57 a.m., so here’s the footage of the front entrance and hotel car park from eight-thirty.’
They fast-forwarded the recording, keeping an eye out for any transit vans or anything else that stood out. At one minute to ten, Felicity Springer exited the hotel, pulling a trolley case behind her.
‘Pause it and zoom in.’ Nikki rarely looked at Springer, preferring to pretend the other woman didn’t exist. Now, it felt a little strange observing her without her knowledge. She frowned. Did Springer look upset? Hard to tell really with the fuzziness of the CCTV, but her body language seemed off. Her head was down, her shoulders, hunched. ‘Try to get a shot of her face, Saj.’
Saj fiddled a bit, fast-forwarding, and finally managed to get a shot of Springer’s face. ‘She looks upset.’
Nikki shrugged. ‘Maybe. Or perhaps she’s just hungover. Difficult to tell. Let’s play on. What I want to know is where she went after this. No way did it take nearly an hour and a half to get to where we found her car.’
They watched as Springer approached her Kia and after slinging her trolley into the boot, got into the driver’s seat. Nikki tried to swallow the pang
