The journey home thankfully passed without incident, but it was slow and unpleasant nonetheless.
Chloe seemed so nervous that she didn’t speak, which allowed Anna to listen to the news bulletin uninterrupted. And what she heard shocked her. Eleven people dead. Five hundred arrests. A hundred buildings destroyed. Plus, the brutal murder of firearms officer Barry Noble.
Mark Rossi’s heartfelt words added to the sense of despair that was growing inside her. Vivid images of the man’s son chained to the wall in the cellar crashed back into her mind. She could picture Roy Slater standing over him, grinning maliciously as he took the photo that he sent to the family home.
Anna’s shoulders were high with tension as she stepped through her front door behind Chloe. It was good to be home, but the house felt cold and weirdly claustrophobic.
‘You go upstairs and put on your PJs,’ she said to her daughter. ‘I’ll make us both a mug of hot chocolate, which should help us relax before we call it a night.’
Anna turned up the heating and put on the kettle. She was tempted to switch on the television to check on the latest situation with the riots, but decided to wait until Chloe was in bed. She knew that she was going to find it hard to get to sleep herself. She felt too uptight, and a dark unease had pushed its way into her mind.
The hot chocolates were poured and on the table by the time Chloe came down in her pyjamas and dressing gown.
‘Do you want anything to eat?’ Anna asked her.
Chloe shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry. I ate lots of stuff at the hospital.’
‘Then drink this and try to get a good night’s sleep.’
Her daughter’s face was gaunt and colourless, her eyes sagging with exhaustion. But was it any wonder? In just a single month the poor girl had experienced more pain and trauma than many people experience in an entire lifetime.
‘Thank you again for staying at the hospital today,’ Anna said. ‘It was very grown up of you and it clearly meant a lot to Tom.’
Chloe shrugged. ‘I didn’t mind. Really. Will he be all right on his own tomorrow?’
‘Of course. The doctors and nurses will look after him and I’ll pop in to see him. Are you sure you want to be here by yourself?’
Chloe nodded. ‘I’ll stay in my bedroom for most of the time. I won’t get bored and I promise not to leave the house.’
‘Well before I go, I’ll ask Peggy and Ron next door to keep an eye on you. There’s no sign of trouble in this area now and hopefully the louts won’t be coming back.’
Anna curled her hands around the warm mug and sipped at the chocolate.
After a beat, she said, ‘Do you want to talk some more about when you got upset today?’
Chloe licked her lips and heaved a sigh. ‘Not really. I just felt so sad when I saw that picture of Ryan. I can’t stop thinking that he died because he helped me. If I talk about it now I’ll cry.’
Anna put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry then. I understand perfectly.’
Chloe drank all of her chocolate and said she was ready for bed. Anna stood nearby while she cleaned her teeth. Minutes later she tucked her beneath the duvet and kissed her goodnight.
‘I’ll have to leave early in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a lot to do.’
‘Are you going to tell that boy’s mum and dad that you’ve found out who put him in the cellar?’ Chloe asked.
‘I am indeed, sweetheart. And I’m really not looking forward to it.’
*
Back downstairs, Anna went straight into the living room. She switched on the television, opened a window, and lit a cigarette.
She only smoked indoors at times when she felt really stressed out. And this was one of those times. Her mind resolutely refused to switch off and kept grinding away at all the things that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. She had never known a time during her seventeen years on the job when so many wheels were frantically turning in her head at once. And it was striking how everything was linked in some way to the riots.
Jacob Rossi was killed because someone threw a petrol bomb into the pub where he was imprisoned.
Tom was in hospital because rampaging thugs had attacked him.
Chloe had spent hours on the riot-torn streets trying to stay alive.
Roy Slater was stabbed to death by one of the many gangs who were brazenly committing criminal acts.
And still the violence and disorder continued to rip London apart.
A pulse thundered in Anna’s temple as she once again watched the coverage on the news. The Embankment had been turned into a battleground as police and rioters clashed close to Scotland Yard. Riot shields were being hammered by missiles, and in several shots officers could be seen lying injured on the ground.
There was trouble elsewhere too. Two buses were on fire at London Bridge while a mob was causing mayhem down in the tube station there. Meanwhile there was now widespread looting of the posh shops along Bond Street in the West End and Brompton Road in Knightsbridge.
Anna sat glued to the coverage for over twenty minutes. In order to steer her thoughts away from the riots she had to switch the TV off. She wanted to focus on her own investigation, which to all intents and purposes had been solved.
Or had it?
She couldn’t put her finger on why she was nervous about closing the case down just yet. It wasn’t solely because she didn’t like to be rushed into it. It was more than that. She was troubled by a niggling doubt that it might not be as clear-cut as it appeared to be.
Roy Slater may well have gone to Bromley last Monday to abduct Jacob Rossi. But not having the answers to all the obvious questions that followed on from that made Anna nervous.
Did Slater have an accomplice?
Why did he bother to keep hold of Jacob’s phone and wallet, but not his rucksack?
Why did he choose that particular pub in Camberwell to hide the boy?
And if he was planning to ask the father for money, why didn’t he mention that in the note he sent?
This last question was the one she was really puzzling over. She didn’t understand why Slater, having taken the boy, did not demand a ransom. After all, money must surely have been as important to him as revenge.
It felt to Anna as though her job was only half done. But because of the riots the pressure was on her to call it a day and move on to something else. And she was reluctant to do so.
She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine, then sat at the table and fired up her laptop. She decided that if she wasn’t going to be able to sleep she might as well make use of the time by searching for at least some of the answers.
She began by going through the case notes, including those provided by DI Benning on the missing persons investigation following Jacob’s disappearance. She reread all the statements, the forensic reports, newspaper cuttings.
She checked back through what Mark Rossi had told her and then the interview with Gavin Pope and his wife. Was it possible, she wondered, that Pope and Slater had colluded in the boy’s abduction? After all, they both bore a grudge against Rossi because he slept with their wives. Pope claimed that he hadn’t told Slater about his own wife’s affair, but perhaps he was lying.
And then there was the fact that Pope’s wife had been based for a couple of weeks in a recruitment agency office so close to The Falconer’s Arms. Was it possible that she had earmarked the pub as a place to hide Jacob?
Anna then went online in the hope that she might come up with something of interest through Google.
She spent the next hour typing names into the search engine. Mark Rossi. His late father, Isaac Rossi. Roy Slater. Gavin Pope. The Glory Entertainment production company.
But she didn’t stumble upon anything new or in any way interesting until she looked up The Falconer’s Arms pub in Camberwell. It appeared on a list of London boozers that had closed down in recent years. And it was also the subject of an old newspaper feature that had appeared in a local rag to mark the pub’s thirtieth anniversary.
There were lots of photographs, some of which showed how the building had changed both inside and out over the years. But one photo caught Anna’s attention. It was of a group of bar and restaurant staff, and it had been taken on Christmas Day twenty-five years ago.
Among those smiling for the camera was a blonde woman in a black trouser suit who was identified in the caption as Hilary Metcalfe.
Anna immediately seized on the possibility that she might be the same Hilary Metcalfe who had been Isaac Rossi’s partner before he left her and married Mark’s mother, Emily.
It was Emily who had told Anna that Hilary had been living in Camberwell at the time of the woman’s death from cancer five years ago. But Emily had also said that she’d never heard of The Falconer’s Arms pub.
So had Emily told the truth? Or was it just a coincidence that her grandson had died beneath that particular pub all these years after that photo was taken?
It was too late for Anna to check it out now, so she printed off the picture and added it to her to-do list for tomorrow.
She knew that it probably wouldn’t turn out to be any kind of smoking gun. But it was certainly something that needed to be followed up at the earliest opportunity.