Talking to the Dead Read Free Page A

contact, no problems.”
    The next time Social Services come round to visit, Mancini is a no-show. Maybe at her mam’s. Maybe somewhere else. Social Services are concerned but not hitting alarm buttons.
    “The house where they’re found is a squat, obviously. No record of Mancini having any previous connection with it. We’ve got a statement from the neighbor on one side. Nothing helpful.” Jackson stabs at the notice boards. “It’s all there and on Groove. If you haven’t got up to speed already, then you should have.” Groove is our project management and document-sharing system. It works well, but it wouldn’t feel like an incident room unless there were notice boards fluttering with paper.
    Jackson then stands back to let Hughes rattle on through other known facts. The evidence from utility bills, police records, phone use. The things that a modern force can acquire almost instantly. He mentions Rattigan’s debit card, without making a big thing of it. Then he finishes, and Jackson takes over.
    “Initial autopsy findings later today, maybe, but we won’t have anything definitive for a while. I suggest, however, we proceed on the assumption that the girl was killed by a kitchen sink.” His first attempt at humor, if you can call it that. “The mother. OD, possibly. Asphyxiation? Heart attack? Don’t yet know.
    “Focus of the investigation at this stage is, Continue to gather all possible information about the victims. Past. Background. Known associates. Query drug dealing. Query prostitution. House-to-house inquiries. I want to know about anyone who entered that house. I want to know about anyone that Mancini met, saw, talked to, anything in those six weeks since Social Services last saw her. Key question: Why did Mancini move to that squat? She was drug-free, looking after her kid, doing well. Why did she throw all that away? What made her move?
    “Individual assignments here”—meaning the notice boards—”and Groove. Any questions, to me. If you can’t get hold of me, then to Ken. If you uncover anything important or anything that might be important, let me know straightaway, no excuses.”
    He nods, checking he hadn’t left anything out. He hadn’t. Briefings like this, early on in any serious crime investigation, are partly theater. Any group of coppers will always treat murder as the most serious thing they ever have to deal with, but team dynamics demand a ritual. The haka of the All Blacks. Celtic woad. Battle music. Jackson puts his weary-but-determined look to one side and puts on his grim-and-resolute one instead.
    “We don’t yet know if Janet Mancini’s death was murder, but we’re treating it that way for now. But the girl. She was six years old. Six. Just started at school. Friends. At their Llanrumney flat, the one she left six weeks ago, there were paintings of hers hanging up on the fridge. Clean clothes hanging up in her bedroom. Then this.” He points to the photo of her on the notice board, but none of us look at it, because it’s already inside our heads. Around the room, the men are clamping their jaws and looking tough. D.C. Rowland, Bev Rowland, a good friend of mine, is crying openly.
    “Six years old, then this. April Mancini. We’re going to find the man who dropped that sink, and we’re going to send him to jail for the rest of his life. That’s our job. What we’re here to do. Now let’s get on with it.”
    The meeting breaks up. Chatter. A charge for the coffee machine. Too much noise.
    I grab Bev. “Are you all right?”
    “Yes, I’m fine really. I knew today wasn’t going to be a mascarary kind of day.”
    I laugh. “What have they got you doing?”
    “Door-to-door, mostly. The woman’s touch. How about you?”
    There’s a funny kind of assumption in her answer and her question. The assumption is that I don’t quite count as a woman, so I don’t quite get the jobs which female D.C.s are usually assigned. I don’t resent that assumption. Bev is