Back in the marble edifice that was the police station I set to on Aleisha Newman’s phone log. A quick check on her records had shown her general practitioner was Dr Alan Kenilworth at the medical practice in South Dunedin. She didn’t have him in her contacts list, but did have the medical centre’s phone number, which was the norm. Most of us didn’t have a hot line to our GP. If we did, the poor buggers would never get a moment’s peace. There hadn’t been any calls to or from the medical centre in recent times, so that pretty much ruled that out.
Midwives were another matter – that was a far more specific relationship. Miriam Hardcastle was in Aleisha’s contacts, as would be expected. I sure as hell had Naomi locked and loaded in mine. My previous check through the records Otto had shared had only taken in the two weeks prior to her death. This time I went back six weeks, just in case there were any patterns I hadn’t noticed.
I could see regular text messages from Miriam, which were mostly appointment reminders. They had increased in the last few weeks; also expected, as I knew my regular check-ups had moved to weekly from around thirty-six weeks. There were also a number of phone calls. Of course, the trouble with phone calls was we had no idea what their purpose was. I could see a couple where Aleisha had rung Miriam, and also some where Miriam had rung her. The only way I could check what they were about was to ring Miriam herself. This was problematic, as if I were considering her a potential suspect, which still felt all wrong, asking her why the call had been made would alert her to my suspicions. Providing, of course, she could even remember the call, or just didn’t lie about it. The most recent call had been from Miriam to Aleisha on the afternoon of the day she had died. I was definitely going to have to follow up on that, but it would require a bit more thinking on the best approach.
I noticed that some of the numbers that had previously been logged from non-contacts had now been reverse-searched and the details filled in by Otto. There was still one call from a cell phone in the week prior to her murder that hadn’t been identified, which was frustrating. In this instance we couldn’t get the skinny.
My eyes scanned further down the list of calls and one of the fill-in names pulled me up short. Naomi Orr. Why on earth would Naomi have rung Aleshia? In all of our conversations she had never mentioned she knew the victim. The call had been placed four weeks prior to her death, so it wasn’t a recent interaction. Still, it had me perplexed. The only thing I could think was it related to maternity services. I looked at the date the call was made and scrolled down the text messages that had been sent from Miriam. It was the day after one of Miriam’s appointment-reminder texts. In fact, it was made on the morning of the appointment.
Relief midwife? That would make sense.
There was only one way to find out.
And while I was at it I could quietly ask a few questions about Miriam.
I reached for the phone.