Emily knocked on the door of Patricia Patterson’s house. Her partner answered the door almost immediately, her expression visibly saddening when she saw it was Emily.
‘It’s me again. Can I come in?’
‘Sorry, thought it was her and she’d forgotten her key.’
The partner left the door open and walked away. Emily took it as a hint she should enter, closing the door behind her.
‘Still no news, Cherie?’ It was an attempt at breaking the ice with this woman. As soon as the words left Emily’s mouth, she realised how weak they were.
The partner didn’t bother to answer.
Emily followed her into the kitchen. A pot of coffee was in the machine. ‘Would you like a cup?’
Emily shook her head. ‘Too much makes my head go all woozy.’
‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m following up on the visit yesterday. You’ve still had no contact with Patricia?’
‘Pat. She preferred to be called Pat. And the answer is no.’
‘Forgive me for asking, but she couldn’t have found another partner?’
‘And go away without saying anything? Not Pat’s style. We’ve been together for eight years. If she wanted to leave, she would have made a dramatic exit, telling me exactly what was wrong. She wasn’t afraid of a bit of confrontation.’ A pause as she stared off into mid-air. ‘It’s one of the things I love about her. She takes no bullshit from anybody.’
‘Does she have any enemies? People who don’t like her?’
Cherie laughed. ‘Half the bloody council and most of her colleagues hate her guts. But not enough to kidnap her.’
‘Any strange letters or phone calls in the last month or so? Anything standing out as different?’
Cherie thought for a long time. ‘We had been receiving some phone calls recently. You know the type, silence on the end of the phone. We thought it was just some kid playing around or a neighbour who didn’t like the idea of two women living together happily.’
‘Did you report the calls to the police?’
‘No. They weren’t that sort of call. And what would your lot do?’
Emily scratched her head. ‘Probably put at number two hundred and fifty-one on the list of things to action for the local station.’
‘Yeah, thanks for the honesty.’
‘There’s enough other stuff for us to get involved in, minor levels of harassment inevitably get ignored until they escalate.’
‘You think this one has escalated?’
‘Honestly?’
Cherie nodded her head.
‘We don’t know. In fact, we’re still trying to work out why she vanished. Have you called her mobile again?’
‘It goes to voicemail. No response since the morning she left.’
‘Right.’ Emily stood tall; it was time to get to the real reason she had returned to the house. ‘It would help us in our search for Patricia if we knew more about her. Does she have any files or personal documents we could check?’
‘There’s her desk. It’s what she uses when she’s working from home.’
‘Could I have a look through it?’
Cherie shrugged her shoulders. ‘If it helps.’
‘It might do.’
Cherie led Emily Parkinson upstairs to a small bedroom converted into an office. ‘She liked working in here. Anything to avoid going into the office.’
Emily checked the drawers. Three were full of official files on cases she was working. Most seemed to deal with disability and care packages.
‘She worked a lot on care packages for old people for the council. You wouldn’t believe some of the stories she told me. Old women with severe rheumatoid arthritis being passed as fit for work by the bastards at the DWP. I often heard her shouting down the phone at them. As I say, she took no bullshit, especially not from those corpses.’
Emily tried the final drawer. It was locked.
Cherie stepped forward and lifted up the lamp. Underneath was a small key. ‘She never knew I’d twigged where she hid it.’
Emily opened the drawer. Inside was more personal stuff. Pictures of Patricia Patterson as a young woman, a copy of driving licence with her photo on it, a 2021 diary with short notes, mainly work related. Emily read the diary quickly. On the day she disappeared, there was just a single word in block capitals: MEET. 11 a.m.
Meet who? Meet where?
‘Do you know anything about this?’
Cherie shook her head. ‘She never said anything about meeting anybody. When she left on Wednesday morning, she just said she was going to the office.’
Emily had a thought. ‘Were there any phone calls on Tuesday night, quite late?’
Cherie shook her head again. ‘But there was one on Wednesday morning as I made breakfast. At first she said she wasn’t going to bother going to the office. After the phone call, she said she was going in. I thought it must have been something urgent.’
Emily made a note to check with Patricia Patterson’s workplace. Had they called her that morning?
She carried on searching through the drawer. Beneath the usual biros, paperclips, old Post-its and erasers she found a yellowing CV folded in two.
She glanced through it and immediately the hackles on her neck rose. Keeping her voice in control, she asked, ‘Is this Patricia’s CV?’
Cherie looked at it. ‘Her name’s at the top and that’s the university where she did her CQSW, so I think so. See the last job, it’s where she worked before.’
‘Right,’ said Emily, ‘would you mind if I took it?’
‘No, I’m sure there’s lots printed out somewhere.’
Emily checked out the room. ‘I don’t see any computer?’
‘Patricia took her laptop with her when she left on Wednesday morning.’
‘And you’re sure she took her phone with her?’
‘Couldn’t do without it. Pat without her phone was like a car without an engine. Pretty damn useless. Her whole life was contained inside. For God’s sake, she used to sleep with it.’