Night Angels

Personal circumstances make it impossible for me to continue with the Law and Language Group. Please accept my resignation effective from today’s date. I apologize for not giving you full notice of my intentions.

Yours sincerely

Gemma Wishart

Roz was thrown into confusion. She remembered the discussions they’d had the week before, Gemma’s concern that she might be late with her report for DI Jordan, her assessment plans for her students, her research schedule. She couldn’t believe that Gemma had been planning, then, to leave her job, suddenly and without warning. She clearly hadn’t discussed it with Luke, or he wouldn’t have been stirring up the police and the hospitals. She remembered his words on Sunday: ‘She’s going to go back there, when her research money runs out here.’ He and Gemma had talked about the future, but he hadn’t known about this. What had happened? What kind of trouble was Gemma in? Personal circumstances…

‘Aren’t you worried?’ she said. ‘About Gemma?’ Gemma was Joanna’s protégée. Joanna had spoken to Roz often enough about the brilliant future she thought that Gemma could achieve.

Joanna frowned, staring into space. ‘Gemma’s been planning to leave for a while,’ she said. So Gemma had discussed this with Joanna as well as with Luke. It was just Roz she had kept in the dark. ‘She’s put in several applications for funding to go back to Novosibirsk,’ Joanna went on. ‘I don’t want to lose her, but I supported her. The university there is excellent, and if that’s the direction Gemma wants her research to take, then she will be better off there.’ There was a faint line between her eyes. ‘I didn’t expect her to do it like this,’ she said. There was silence for a moment, then Joanna gave herself a shake. ‘I don’t have time for this now. We have the situation here to deal with. I had that Jordan woman on the phone half an hour ago, asking about her report. I can’t find it.’

Roz remembered the report. She’d promised to put it in the post on Friday, and she’d forgotten. ‘I’ll deal with that,’ she said with evasive diplomacy.

Joanna nodded. ‘I want to go through Gemma’s desk and her filing cabinet as well,’ she said. ‘I need to know exactly what’s missing.’

Hull, Monday

Lynne went over the statements that Farnham’s team had taken after Katya’s body had been found. Katya had been taken to the casualty department by someone called Matthew Pearse, a volunteer worker at a refugee support centre down near the old docks. Lynne read through his statement. She had understood that Katya had been found on the street, but now she came to read Pearse’s statement, she realized that Katya had actually come to the support centre seeking help. Pearse had seen the condition she was in and had taken her to the Infirmary. It had been the obvious decision, and the sensible decision, but, with hindsight, the wrong one.

Lynne needed to talk to Pearse. The statement gave an address in the Orchard Park area of Hull, but no phone number. She didn’t want to trail all the way across the city and find him out. Maybe she could track him down at this support centre. She needed to know when he was likely to be there. OK, the Volunteer Coordinator, Michael Balit, should be able to help her there.

Balit was his usual, unhelpful self. ‘Matthew Pearse?’ he said. ‘What do you want with him?’ It would have been easy to pull rank on him, tell him to co-operate as she was in the process of an investigation, but she knew that Farnham wanted to keep things low-key for the moment. The Michael Balits of this world existed to give her practice in the skills of patience. She reminded him of the Katya incident, and indicated that her inquiry was part of an ‘i’-dotting and ‘t’-crossing piece of bureaucracy. ‘We just need to close our file on the case,’ she said with vague mendacity.

He accepted this at face value. The place where Pearse worked was called the Welfare Advice Centre, he told her. ‘We don’t use the word “refugee”,’ he said. ‘For obvious reasons.’ There had been a series of racially motivated attacks on people since the dispersal system had sent groups to Hull, stretching the social services to the limit. ‘So the voluntary sector had to step in,’ Balit said. The advice centre was based in the old docks area, part that was still awaiting gentrification. ‘We’ve taken over one of the derelict buildings down there,’ Balit said. ‘It used to be a shop. We were using it to store donated furniture. We still do, but we cleared out some office space, put a translator in place and set up.’ So he clearly could get things moving when he had to. Perhaps he just didn’t see that Lynne’s work was his problem.