Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

howl of outrage.
    Because it’s not a priority. Because they’d rather be at the football. Because nobody else is worried about her the way you are. ‘Because these things are all easier to do during normal working hours,’ Paula said. Elinor’s raised eyebrows told her what her partner thought of that pale excuse. Guilt-tripped, Paula said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you like. I’ll go round to your house tonight and put together all the stuff they’ll need so they can get started right away in the morning. How does that sound?’
    He chewed the skin on the side of his thumb. ‘OK, I suppose.’
    ‘Where does she keep stuff like bank statements and her passport? Do you know?’
    ‘There’s, like, a boxroom between her bedroom and the bathroom. It’s a cupboard really, but my dad fitted it out like an office. Built a desk in and everything. All our official stuff’s in the bottom drawer.’
    ‘Thanks. I’ll need to pick up some clothes for you too, if you’re going to stay with us. Is it OK for me to go into your room?’
    He looked mutinous but he nodded. ‘OK, I suppose.’
    ‘Do you want to stay here with us, Torin? It’s up to you. If you’ve got a mate you’d rather stay with, or another friend of your mum’s? You can say what you want, you know.’
    ‘Do you not want me here, then?’
    Paula could have wept for him. ‘You can stay as long as you need to. As long as it’s what you want.’
    ‘It’s OK here.’ He jerked his head towards Elinor. ‘She doesn’t make a fuss. And if I’m under your feet, you’ll crack on, get some answers so you get your space back, right?’
    ‘Fair enough.’ She tried to hide her surprise at his insight. ‘Can I have your keys?’
    ‘Not so fast,’ Elinor said. ‘You haven’t eaten, have you? We saved some pizza for you. So before you go over to Bev and Torin’s, you’re going to sit down and have some dinner.’
    Paula didn’t even bother trying to protest. And if she was honest, as she headed back out into the night, she was glad she’d taken the time to eat. Not just because it recharged her physical batteries but because it gave a face to the task ahead. That was something she’d learned from Carol Jordan. Until then, she’d listened to the colleagues who said you couldn’t afford emotional involvement with cases because it would burn you out. Working with Carol, she’d come to understand that you deliver a better quality of justice when you care. Yes, the price was high. But why do the job if you didn’t care about the outcome?
    It felt strange, letting herself into a house where she’d been a guest. Usually when she was searching premises or interrogating in someone’s space, as she had been with Tony earlier, she was coming to it fresh. Here, she’d have to put aside the embarrassment of raking through the life of someone she knew and liked. For Bev’s sake, she couldn’t put personal squeamishness ahead of scouring the house for anything useful.
    Of course, the house should have been searched already by whoever had been given her original notes. Paula suspected that Bev had been identified as low risk, the lowest rung on the ladder of missing persons. A by-the-book classification – ‘no apparent threat of danger to either the subject or the public’ – that would allow the officer concerned to put Bev on the bottom of the pile for someone else to pick up on the morning shift. They might not search the house at all at this stage. If Paula had been in charge, she’d have opted for an assessment of medium risk and not simply because Bev was a mate. The manual said, ‘The risk posed is likely to place the subject in danger,’ and she thought Bev slotted right into that category. Women like Bev did not go missing voluntarily. She tried not to dwell on the single sentence capitalised and highlighted in its own box near the start of the missing person protocol – ‘If in doubt, think murder.’
    There was a corner of her professional mind that had already been thinking precisely that.
    She made a note of the time in her pocket book and stepped inside. The first phase was the Open Door search. Her former colleague Kevin Matthews used to call it the ‘Don’t-discount-the-bleeding-obvious search’. They all remembered unnerving cases where missing kids had turned up hidden in obscure corners of houses and flats, sometimes off their own bat. But more often at the hands of others. So Paula made her way through