Broken Homes

blue plaster rustication around its main gate. It was the sort of place you’d expect to find a software start-up or TV production company that had fallen out of favour – not a full service property management company. Especially one that had a fleet of liveried vehicles. There was definitely no parking around Scrutton Street, as we found when we looked for somewhere to put our brand new wheels – well, not brand new, but at least not a silver Astra. Another Ford Asbo with 2010 plates and a painfully high number on the clock, but obviously loved by someone because it was still sweet to drive. Sadly, it wasn’t orange but a rather serviceable dark blue which at least meant it wouldn’t stand out so much on an obbo.
    In the end we wedged totally illegally onto the pavement and hoped we wouldn’t be there long enough to get a ticket.
    We showed our warrant cards at the building reception desk and asked for directions. After one flight of steps and a slight mistake where we went left instead of right, we found ourselves outside a plain grey reinforced metal door with the County Gard logo printed on a piece of A4 paper which was attached to the door with Sellotape. I tried the handle – it was locked. I knocked on the door, we waited, but there was no answer.
    I checked my watch. It was three o’clock in the afternoon – no office closes that early. I put my ear to the door and listened.
    ‘There’s nobody in there,’ I said, but even as I said it I heard a hoover starting up. I banged the door hard with the flat of my hand and yelled ‘Police – open up.’ I listened again and heard the hoover turn off. It seemed to take a long time for the door to open.
    When it did, we found ourselves face to face with the tallest Somali woman I’ve ever met. Mid thirties, I thought, and a good ten centimetres taller than I was, with a grave calm face and sad brown eyes. She wore a blue polyester cleaner’s coat which fit her like a waistcoat and her hijab was an expensive purple silk one.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’ Her accent was Somali but her English was smooth enough that I figured she’d learnt it as part of an expensive education back in Africa.
    I showed my warrant card and explained that we were investigating County Gard.
    ‘That has nothing to do with me,’ she said. ‘I’m employed by Fontaine Office Services.’
    Lesley slipped past us to check the office.
    ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.
    ‘About eleven years,’ she said. ‘I have a passport.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘How long have you been in this particular office today?’
    ‘Oh,’ she brightened. ‘I just got in.’
    ‘Do you know where all the people are?’
    ‘I thought it might be a company holiday.’
    ‘Peter,’ called Lesley urgently. ‘Come and have a look at this.’
    It was your standard open-plan office laid out with cubicles for the ants and glass box meeting-rooms for the grasshoppers. It looked like every working office I’ve ever seen, including the outside inquiry office of a Major Investigation Team – papers, coffee mugs, post-it notes, telephones, lamps, occasional human touches – photographs and the like.
    ‘What am I looking at?’ I asked.
    ‘What’s missing?’ asked Lesley.
    Then I saw it. Every cubicle desk had its bog standard flat screen monitor and cheap keyboard, but the main columns were missing. Paperwork was still piled up in in-trays, desk calendars were still pinned to the beige fabric-covered partition walls and one worker seemed to be deliberately trying to create the Olympic symbol using coffee rings, but there wasn’t a single operating hard-drive in the office.
    I walked back to the cleaning lady and asked whether she’d been in the day before and whether the office had been staffed.
    ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘It was very busy yesterday. It was hard to get my work done.’
    I reassured her a bit, took her name, Awa Shambir, and her details and told her that she might as well move onto her next job since I didn’t think this particular office was going to re-open.
    ‘Friend of your mum’s?’ asked Lesley as we watched the lady neatly stow her cleaning gear and collect her personal things.
    ‘Don’t think so,’ I said. My mum doesn’t know every cleaner in London, just the Sierra Leoneans, most of the Nigerians and that Bulgarian contingent she’s been working with in King’s Cross. ‘Remind me to run her name when we get a moment.’
    ‘If you’re