Chapter Twenty-Seven
The apartment block was as she’d remembered it.
Nineties architecture. Three storeys, squat and charmless, but with large balconies that suggested apartments that were a decent size, unlike the shoeboxes being built today.
Judith stood on the other side of the road and examined the building.
She counted the windows. There were four apartments on each floor, best she could tell, so twelve in total.
There was a For Rent sign shoved into the small scrubby grass verge in front of the building.
The sign looked weather battered. It had probably been there for months. Maybe it was a permanent feature.
Judith called the number displayed. She asked to speak to the agent who managed the building. There was a buzz, and a click, and her call was diverted. It rang three times and was answered.
‘Wendy Sweeney. How can I help you?’
Judith introduced herself. ‘I’m searching for a woman named Ruth Hall. I’m wondering if she might have rented an apartment or a room from you in the building on Haines Street, sometime in the past six months?’
‘Oh. Wow. Okay. You’re a real police detective? I’ve never talked to a detective before. What’s this about? Is it serious?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t get into it.’ Clouds were beginning to gather overhead. The sky was darkening. Rain was on the way. Judith raised her face to the sky. She’d welcome a storm right then and there.
‘No, of course. I completely understand. Just hold on a minute.’ There was a pause, then Wendy came back on the line.
‘I had to pull in. I was talking to you on the hands-free, but I need my phone if I’m going to look this up.
’ She fell silent again for a moment, then came back on, sounding disappointed.
‘No. Sorry. I haven’t rented anything in that building to anyone named Ruth. ’
‘Okay. Thanks for trying.’ Judith was already switching off from the conversation.
Her brain was moving on to the next steps.
She should go into the station, find Rocky, convince him to call in some favours.
Together they should go to Superintendent Sawhill, persuade her to bring pressure to bear on the Director of Child Protective Services so that they could immediately get their hands on Ruth and Miriam’s child protection files.
Find out where else Ruth had been placed and go out and interview everyone they could find who’d known her.
There had to be someone who knew where she lived, where she worked. She couldn’t live on air.
‘I’ve only rented two apartments in that building in the last six months.
Between you and me, it has problems. No insulation, just for starters, and the plumbing is an issue, not to mention a chronic cockroach infestation.
I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve had the fumigators out, but sometimes those little buggers just don’t want to shift. ’
‘Okay. Thanks for your time.’
‘So the first one was on the ground floor, and that went to a guy called George Townsend. Well, George and his girlfriend really—she was very sweet—but George was the one who signed the lease. And the third floor went to a young woman named Alexis Turner. Lovely girl. Charming. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.
Do you know, I wanted to be a policewoman myself when I was a girl?
My father said I wasn’t cut out for it, which was terribly misogynistic of him, wasn’t it?
But at the time I just thought he must be right.
You know, it took me a while to figure out how to think for myself. ’
Judith felt goose bumps rise on her arms.
‘Wendy, do you have keys to the apartments you’ve rented?’
There was a momentary pause. ‘Yes. I mean, of course. We have keys to all of the properties we manage.’
‘And do you have to carry out inspections on any of those properties from time to time? Impromptu inspections? Maybe to check on those cockroaches you mentioned?’
Wendy Sweeney might be a talker, but she was far from stupid. There was only the smallest hesitation before she said, ‘Oh. Oh yes. Definitely. That’s definitely something I would do.’
‘Is it something you might do today?’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
In the end it took her closer to twenty.
Judith stood in the shade of the street tree opposite the building, and kept her eyes on the door.
She was conspicuous where she was standing, she knew that, but there were no good alternatives.
She could stand inside a neighbouring property, but she risked drawing the attention of a homeowner, who might legitimately wonder why a strange woman was loitering in their yard.
And moving might mean that she’d end up with a restricted view.
So she stayed where she was. By the time Wendy Sweeney arrived, Judith was almost ready to jump out of her skin with repressed tension.
Wendy drove a Mini. The car had a sage green body and a cream roof and it must have been fully electric because Judith didn’t hear it coming.
Wendy parked on the other side of the street.
She got out of the car—a friendly bundle of a woman, dressed in a floral maxi dress and a jacket, with grey hair to her shoulders—and waved energetically.
‘Judith? Are you Judith?’
Judith crossed the road quickly. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, keeping her voice low. Wendy immediately matched her tone, speaking almost in a hushed voice.
‘Of course! I have a lunch, but it’s not until one. I’m delighted to help. Well. Not delighted. Not if it’s something terribly serious.’ She paused. ‘Is it? Something terribly serious?’
‘If you could lead the way,’ Judith said. ‘That would be very helpful.’
She followed Wendy into the building. There was an electronic lock on the entrance door for which Wendy used a swipe key. There was no elevator, and they climbed the stairs to the third floor. Wendy moved slowly, and she was gassed by the time they reached the top.
‘Sorry,’ she said, breathing a little heavily.
‘I have a trainer—lovely girl—but I keep cancelling on her. I hate exercise. Nothing more boring.’ The corridor was narrow.
The floors were tile, discoloured and chipped in a couple of places.
The walls would have benefited from a fresh coat of paint.
It was chilly inside the building. Wendy stopped outside apartment 3C.
The door was painted spearmint green. ‘This is it,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘What do I do? Should I just . . .’
‘If you could just step back a moment.’ Judith was struck with sudden uncertainty.
She was taking a risk—too big a risk. If Ruth Hall was inside she could be armed.
Two guns had been stolen from Steve Gifford, and only one of them had been recovered.
She shouldn’t have allowed Wendy to be there.
But that overwhelming sense of urgency, of time running out, wouldn’t go away.
She gestured for the other woman to step further back down the corridor, then she knocked briskly on the door, and waited.
She listened carefully, but heard nothing.
The whole building was eerily silent. There was no music playing, no voices coming from neighbouring apartments.
No cars passing on the road outside. Judith knocked again.
Again there was silence. She waited, then asked Wendy to unlock the door.
Wendy fumbled with a large ring of keys until she found the right one.
She inserted the key into the lock, unlocked the door, then stepped back again.
Judith opened the door, and took a couple of steps inside.
‘Hello?’ she said. There was no answer, and she could see at a glance that the place was empty.
It was a large studio apartment. There was a small kitchenette to her left, a double bed in the centre of the room, and at the other end, near the window and balcony, a couch against the wall, a coffee table, and a large desk overlooking the car park below.
The place was tidy. The furniture was cheap, the coffee table and desk made of the same orange-toned, timber-adjacent formica, the bed a steel-framed monstrosity that looked like it would be more at home in a prison.
The door to the small bathroom was open, and Judith could see immediately that there was no one inside, but still she stepped forward and double-checked the shower. The room smelled of damp.
‘The place came furnished,’ Wendy said. She’d followed Judith inside, and she was now looking around the room with an expression of displeasure.
‘Please don’t touch anything,’ Judith said. She had one pair of gloves in her pocket. She pulled them on.
‘No, of course not.’ Wendy folded her arms, and her face assumed a look of concentration.
There wasn’t much to touch. Nothing on the benchtops in the small kitchenette.
The bed had been stripped. The wardrobe was open and the hangers were bare.
There was a computer on the desk—an open laptop connected to a large screen.
Judith went to the wardrobe first. There was a tangle of clothing discarded at the bottom.
She leaned forward, touching nothing. It was difficult to be sure without picking it up, but she was almost certain that the tangle included the jeans and hoodie Alexis Turner had worn to her interview at the police station.
‘You said the girl you met was charming,’ Judith said.
‘Yes,’ Wendy said. ‘Very young, you know. But sweet. Chatty. Bubbly.’
‘Could you describe her?’
‘Oh yes, I can do that. I’ve always been very good with faces.
My sister says she’s got face blindness.
Can’t remember anyone at all unless they’re family or a very close friend.
I’m not like that. I wouldn’t say I have a photographic memory because I’m no good at anything academic.
But I’m great at faces.’ She paused, then hurried on.
‘Alexis was average height, I’d say around five foot seven.
Very fit. Obviously a gym bunny because she had those toned arms and legs, you know? Blonde hair. Pretty. Very smiley.’
Only the height matched the Alexis Turner Judith had met.
‘Any tattoos? Piercings?’
Wendy looked doubtful. ‘No tattoos that I saw. She had little gold drop earrings. They were very pretty. I remember I told her that they suited her. And she had a little cuff on her left ear. But nothing unusual. No septum or eyebrow piercing or any of that. Not that those are unusual. Every second girl you see has her septum pierced these days. Which makes me think that the next trend will be no piercings at all. Everything seems to come in waves, doesn’t it? ’
Judith turned to the desk, her mind turning things over. Piercings were easily removed. Hair could be dyed, or Alexis/Ruth could just have worn a wig.
Judith opened the door to the small balcony.
She went outside. The temperature had dropped again.
Gusts of wind whipped the branches of trees across the street and black clouds were just visible on the horizon.
Judith turned and saw that the balcony had an almost direct view of Robert Walker’s consulting room.
She could see his desk, his chair, the corner of an aggressively red artwork on the wall behind his desk.
Judith felt a mounting sense of mingled excitement and tension.
She went back inside. Wendy Sweeney was still standing in the middle of the room, her arms carefully folded.
‘It looks like she’s left, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Even though she signed a six month lease. She’s taken all her things.’
‘Everything except this,’ Judith said. She went to the desk.
The laptop was open, and plugged into an expensive-looking monitor.
There was a phone—an older model iPhone in a bright pink case—also connected to the laptop.
All three screens were dark. Judith hit a couple of keys on the keyboard and all three screens lit up.
The laptop and phone were both password-protected, inevitably, but the phone screen displayed a background photograph.
A very pretty young brunette, crouching down, her arms around two little girls, all three of them smiling at the camera.
Judith frowned. The young woman in the photograph did not look at all familiar.
‘Wendy?’ Judith turned to the other woman and gestured for her to come forward. ‘Do you recognise her? Is that the girl you rented the room to?’
Wendy was frowning. ‘No. That’s definitely not her. The girl I met was a little older, I think. Also, she was blonde.’
Judith couldn’t take her eyes off the photo.
She didn’t recognise the woman, but the little girls .
. . for sure there was . . . recognition kicked in.
It had taken her a minute because the last time she had seen them had been in far from normal circumstances.
But those girls . . . they were Elsa Anderson’s girls: Lola and Doris.
Judith stared at the photograph, her brain slowly, far too slowly, putting it all together.
She pulled out her phone. She asked Wendy Sweeney to step outside as she made the call. Rocky answered on the second ring.
‘Jude?’
‘I’ve found her flat. Ruth Hall’s. She was staying beside Robert Walker’s rooms. But look, there’s a mobile phone here.
I think it belonged to Elsa Anderson’s au pair.
Her previous au pair, I mean. There’s a photo of a young woman with her arms around Elsa’s little girls.
Can you call Nathan Anderson? I don’t have his number or I’d call him myself.
Make sure he’s with the kids. Make sure he doesn’t leave the kids alone with the au pair. Send a team to the house.’
Judith was already walking, moving fast.
‘What? I’m not following you. Which au pair?’
Wendy had followed Judith outside. Judith took her phone from her ear and spoke to the other woman.
‘Can you lock the door? Don’t go back inside. The police will be here soon. Wait in your car.’
And then Judith was running. Taking the stairs two at a time. She spoke to Rocky. ‘Just call Nathan Anderson. Tell him to stay with the kids. Don’t let them out of his sight, okay? And tell him to say nothing to the au pair. I’m on the way.’