Twenty minutes later, Daniels entered the Durham City charge zone. The county council had levied a congestion charge between the hours of ten a.m. to four p.m. – a traffic and pollution reduction measure aimed at improving air quality in the heavily pedestrianized streets.
‘Or so the blurb would have people believe,’ Daniels said.
‘It’s just another stealth tax . . .’ Carmichael moaned. She unclipped her seat belt as Daniels parked the car. ‘It’s bloody ridiculous. Can’t we have one of them exemption permits?’
‘What’s up with you? It’s two quid. We can claim it back!’
‘I’ve got news for you, boss. We didn’t even need to be here. You should’ve turned left back there.’
‘I need an ice cream and some fresh air.’
‘I bet you know where to get one too.’
Daniels grinned.
Parking on a double-yellow, she chucked a POLICE sign in the window and got out. She waited for Carmichael to follow suit, then locked the car and slipped on her sunglasses against the midday sun. It felt good to have contact with the outside world, to feel the warmth of the sun on her face and the breeze through her hair, to be mingling with civilians for once. She’d spent far too long in her car in the past few days, and she hated the way it made her feel.
She led Carmichael down some steps to the riverside, then they nipped into a shop and bought an ice cream, which they ate as they wandered back up the steps, turning left across Elvet Bridge with its cobbled stones.
‘Ever been in there?’ Carmichael asked, pointing at the Swan and Three Cygnets public house, a great place to sit out and watch the world go by.
‘Couple of times.’ Daniels took another lick of her ice cream. ‘When you work with Hank, you get to see the inside of most pubs eventually.’
At the traffic lights, they crossed the road into Old Elvet. On the left-hand side there was an ancient pub with a tiny front door, so small Gormley would have to duck his head to enter. Jessica’s flat was a really old property right next door. They let themselves in, unsure what to expect.
‘Bloody hell!’ Carmichael said as she walked through the door. ‘Is she for real?’
Daniels looked sideways. ‘How d’you mean?’
‘Well, this!’ Carmichael swept her arm around the immaculate room. ‘Have you ever seen student accommodation look quite this orderly? Mind you, I’d have thought her old man would’ve bankrolled a better pad than this one. That Mansion House was something else, wasn’t it? I guess this could be construed as slumming it for her.’
‘Maybe she wasn’t interested in a better pad.’Daniels opened the door to the only cupboard in a room no bigger than a prison cell. Jessica’s clothes hung from a rail, all ironed to perfection, dark shades to the left through to white on the right and all colours in between. ‘Maybe she just wanted to fit in. Be normal like other students on her course.’
‘Yeah, right, like they’d be any different!’
‘Rob Lester isn’t posh. And he’s a nice quiet lad, from what I could tell.’
‘That him?’ Carmichael pointed at a photograph on the wall.
Daniels nodded.
‘Well, he might be the exception—’
‘Bring that with you. We might need it.’
Carmichael bagged the photograph, set it to one side, then got down on her knees to look under the bed. There was a suitcase underneath and she began rifling through it: keepsakes mainly, photos, trinkets, letters posted from all over the globe, a pressed daisy chain.
‘You don’t get many med students from socially deprived areas, not any I’ve ever come across,’ Carmichael said. ‘Even though they’ll tell you otherwise, there’s still a class divide in academic institutions.’
Daniels ignored the comment, too busy with her own search. A mini chest, each drawer packed with clean socks and multi-coloured underwear, pyjamas right at the very bottom. On top of the chest was a course timetable, a medical textbook and a three-ring binder. Daniels opened it. Jessica had typed up all her lecture and tutorial notes and put them neatly in chronological order, the last sheet dated Monday the third of May. Carmichael had gone back to the wardrobe, was moving clothing along the rail and rummaging through pockets.
‘Remember that kid a couple of years ago?’ she said. ‘The brilliant one who had the best grades and applied to Oxford? She was turned down. Ended up going to America to study! Now what’s fair about that? If I’d been her mother I’d have had something to say about it.’
Daniels moved to the desk.
At last, a junk drawer.
‘You listening to me, boss? Or should I shut my trap and get on with it?’
‘No, stay on your soapbox, Lisa. I’d hate to cramp your style.’ It was a nice way of saying shut the fuck up.
Daniels smiled to herself, more interested in the contents of the drawer in front of her. She removed it from the desk completely and set it down on the bed. There were various documents inside: an appointment with a dental surgeon for a date in the future, a donor card with Jessica’s name on it, detailed information from international, medical and humanitarian aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières and some personal mail from Rob Lester – raunchy stuff that made her blush.
She sifted through some Barclays Bank statements, noting that Jessica received a monthly allowance of one thousand pounds from her father’s account, which was more than generous if her balance was anything to go by. On the most recent statement, there were several entries she couldn’t immediately identify, quite a large one – five hundred pounds – to an extreme sports organization, a regular transfer to another account in Jessica’s name within the same bank, and generous donations to MSF (UK).
As far as she could tell, Jessica Finch spent very little on herself.
Further back in the drawer, Daniels found a neat pile of ATM withdrawal slips securely fastened in a giant paper-clip, timed and dated from a machine she assumed might be close to the university. Pocket money really – no more than a few pounds – enough to keep her going for a day or two at a time. The most recent one, a withdrawal of twenty pounds dispensed at just after nine o’clock on the morning of Sunday, 2 May. Jessica Finch obviously wasn’t keen to carry large amounts of cash around. Neither was she as gung-ho in life as her father would have Daniels believe. No. Her financial accounts drew a very different picture, of a young woman who was not only organized and methodical but cautious and caring too.