Night Angels. Danuta Reah

down for a moment. ‘We might have another one,’ he said. He told her about the woman found in the hotel the previous day. Another faceless woman. ‘But we’ve got a cause of death. This one was strangled. We got the call around midday Friday.’

      ‘Do you know when she was killed?’ You, not we. Lynne was always careful with her language. She wasn’t on the murder team, she didn’t want anyone to think she was poaching on their turf.

      ‘Thursday night some time.’

      ‘And they didn’t find her until lunch-time? How come?’

      Farnham shook his head. ‘It’s a mess,’ he conceded. ‘The manager, a woman called Celia Fry, went on a hunt for a missing cleaner. According to Fry, they were short-staffed Friday morning. The cleaner started doing the rooms. Later on, Fry comes down to find her because the upstairs rooms aren’t done, and she finds the vacuum in the middle of the passage and the linen basket out, and no sign of the cleaner. She’s a bit pissed off about this and she starts looking round, and that’s when she finds the Sleeping Beauty in the bathtub.’

      ‘And the cleaner?’

      ‘No sign of her. That’s where I thought you might be able to help us.’ He looked across at her. ‘There’s nothing on the books for her and the manager is trying to pretend she doesn’t exist. Casual worker, student, stuff like that. I think she’s wishing she’d kept her mouth shut in the first place.’

      ‘You think she might be someone who’s working illegally?’ Cleaning was a largely unregulated area. ‘I’ll need more information.’

      ‘I told her to expect full checks on all the systems and all the accounting within the next week. Did wonders for her memory.’ He grinned, and checked through the folder. ‘Name of Anna Krleza. Age about twenty. Five foot two, three. Shoulder-length dark hair. According to Fry, she’s only been working in the hotel for a week or two. She was supposed to be bringing in her national insurance and P45 any day. Fry says she was getting suspicious about the delay.’ He raised a sceptical eyebrow at Lynne. ‘I’m looking for her. But you’re the one with the contacts.’ He pulled another file across his desk. ‘Do you know anything about a firm called Angel Escorts?’

      ‘You think she was killed by a client?’ He didn’t respond, but waited for her to answer his question. ‘I don’t know any escort firm called Angel, not operating around this area. But a lot of the agencies operate online these days. Basically, they claim to act as contacts agents – the girls give their details and the agency passes them on to clients.’ She shrugged. The sex-for-sale sites on the internet were blatantly brokering prostitution, but they were hard to track down, the ones who operated from cyber-space, and the ones that had a more terrestrial reality kept themselves within the law by careful wording, or sufficiently within it not to attract scarce police resources.

      ‘Mm.’ He was noncommittal.

      Lynne pushed. ‘Why do you think she was on the game?’ she said.

      ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘But I think she might have been. The Blenheim’s a bit of a giveaway. And she was wearing some specialist gear – one of those corset things, laced. Bondage stuff. And the room wasn’t booked out to a woman. It was a man, single booking, made that evening by phone. A sales rep, apparently.’ He checked his notes again. ‘Name of Rafael. That’s with an “f”, not a “ph”.’ He read the question in Lynne’s face. ‘No luck yet. He scribbled something in the hotel register. We’ve got someone looking at it, but I don’t think it says anything. The phone number doesn’t exist, and he didn’t give a car registration. He booked in as normal, paid his bill – they do that if they want to get off first thing – and that’s all anyone saw of him.’ He rubbed between his eyebrows with his thumb and index finger. ‘Anyway, the name – Angel Escorts, Rafael…’ He looked at Lynne. ‘There’s an archangel called Rafael.’ Lynne knew. She was surprised that he did. ‘Client’s joke or killer’s joke? Or are they the same person?’ He frowned. ‘We found this card.’ He pushed it across to Lynne. She looked at it. International women. That was why Farnham thought she might know it. She kept her eyes on the card, letting her mind wander over the possibilities as she listened to him. No address. No URL. Just a phone number.

      ‘The phone’s a pay-as-you-go,’ Farnham said, anticipating her question. ‘We’re waiting to get some location information on it – at least find out where it’s been used. Nothing so far. We need an ID.’

      She was about to ask how far they’d got with that, when he pushed a photograph across the table to her. She looked at it, looked away then looked more closely. ‘Christ.’

      Farnham nodded. ‘He beat the shit out of her.’ Lynne looked at the photographs, at the woman’s destroyed face. The body was small and slender; the hair, which had been brushed back from the ruined face, hung in loose curls. Lynne tried to imagine the features that had been obliterated, and the faces of dead women from her past flickered in her mind. And more recently. Anonymous, dead women. The woman at Ravenscar, Katya, and now…she heard Farnham’s voice in her mind. The Sleeping Beauty.

       Sheffield

      Saturday evening found Roz at the entrance to the block containing Joanna’s flat. The building was low – three stories – and set back from the road. The front overlooked the park and the back looked on to a wooded hillside. It formed an enclave of rural seclusion in the centre of the city. Roz sometimes wondered how Joanna afforded to live here on an academic salary. She rang Joanna’s bell, and gave her name as the intercom crackled incomprehensibly at her. She straightened her shoulders and pushed the door open. She found Joanna’s parties a bit of an ordeal, and she wasn’t sure why she had been invited to this one. She’d queried this with Luke as she left work on Friday. ‘You’ll be the cabaret,’ he’d said, without looking up from his screen. ‘Take your fancy knickers.’

      Thanks a bunch, Luke! She was at Joanna’s door now, and Joanna welcomed her with the social kiss she never used with Roz at other times. She took the wine that Roz had brought with a quick glance at the label. Bringing wine was probably a faux pas, Roz reflected as she and Joanna exchanged meaningless social pleasantries. Joanna was wearing a black dress of impeccable elegance and looked beautiful. Roz told her so, and for a moment a look of genuine pleasure appeared on her face. ‘We’re in here,’ she said, ushering Roz into the lounge. Roz envied Joanna this room with its huge windows that filled the whole of the far wall. She had spent an afternoon here before Christmas when the Arts Tower was closed, going through some spreadsheets in preparation for the finance meeting, watching the winter sunset turn the clouds grey and brilliant red, the sun an orange fire through the trees.

      She felt the cloudy softness of the carpet under her feet as she crossed the room, nodding to one or two familiar faces as she followed Joanna to where a small group was admiring one of the paintings. Joanna performed the introductions quickly. There was Mark Bell who Roz knew by sight; an influential member of the grants committee, one of the new breed of industry-based academics. ‘And this is Petra, Mark’s wife,’ Joanna went on. ‘I don’t think you’ve met Jim, Jim Broadbent. Jim’s with Ashworth Lawrence.’ One of the biggest legal firms in South Yorkshire. Roz had recognized the name – another man with influence in both the legal and academic worlds. She found herself wondering if Joanna had any friends who were just that – friends. Presumably, Roz’s role tonight was to sell the Law and Language Group to these people whose influence stretched beyond the confines of the university.

      ‘And you may have met Sean Lewis,’ Joanna was saying. ‘He completed his doctorate at MIT. He’s with Martin Lomax’s team.’ The computer department. ‘Sean, this is Rosalind Bishop.’

      Roz found herself looking into the appreciative eyes of a very young man. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she said.

      He smiled. ‘I’m sure we haven’t.’

      Joanna pressed a glass of wine into her hand and Roz, tasting its almost astringent