No Smoke Without Fire. Paul Gitsham

when he reported her missing. Now, however, it was important to make certain that no details were missing or different — no matter how small they might seem.

      “Do you know who was working that night?”

      Blackheath recited a list of office staff that matched the list already supplied to the missing persons team. The office was small and on a typical weekday four of the six permanent members of staff would be in. Warren made a note to have them all questioned again to make sure their stories corroborated Blackheath’s.

      “What did you do next?”

      “I went back to the car, to see if she’d reappeared, and tried her mobile again. Then I phoned her boss Kelli. She said that Sal had left at the usual time and that she’d locked the door behind her.

      “I was getting worried, so I phoned her mum and her best friend, Cheryl. Neither had seen her. Cheryl had sent a text message just after six saying that she was coming around for a girlie night, but Sal didn’t reply.” His voice broke slightly.

      “What did you do then?”

      “I drove home and started phoning all of her friends. Cheryl and Sal’s mum came around about half-seven. By midnight we couldn’t think of anyone else to call and figured that if she had gone to the pub with some other mate, she’d be back by now. That’s when we called the police and reported her missing.”

      By now, Warren’s gut was telling him that Blackheath was not their man. However, if his timing was to be believed, there was a ninety-minute window between Sally Evans leaving work and her mother and best friend arriving at the flat; potentially long enough for him to have taken Sally Evans to Beaconsfield Woods, raped her, dumped her body, then returned home. Warren made a note to check with neighbours what time Blackheath’s car had arrived back at the flat.

      In order to eliminate him fully, Warren arranged for Blackheath to be escorted to the police station for fingerprinting, DNA typing and a formal statement. He also arranged for Forensics to go over his car and the flat.

      With Blackheath dispatched to the station and a forensic unit on its way to look for evidence, Jones and Hardwick drove the short distance to the home of Cheryl Davenport, Sally Evans’ best friend.

      The young woman that answered the door was a short, slightly plump girl with bottle-blonde, permed hair. Her make-up, though expertly applied, couldn’t conceal the dark rings under her eyes and their swollen redness. The tears came back within moments of the two police officers entering her small kitchen. She offered her visitors a coffee, which they both accepted, less to quench their thirst than to give the grieving woman a few moments to compose herself.

      As she fiddled with the kettle Warren took stock of the tiny room. It was pretty much what he expected of a twenty-something, single woman. Tidy and compact, the sink was already full of mugs but no other cutlery; the overloaded ashtray spoke of a person whose world had been turned upside down and who had spent the past three days living on caffeine, nicotine and worry. The kitchen units were clearly the cheap MDF beloved of low-rent landlords. A washing machine took up the only space under the counter, forcing the tall, fridge-freezer to stand awkwardly in the corner, half hidden by the open door. Stuck to its white front were the usual Post-it notes and postcards. In pride of place were a half-dozen photographs of Cheryl and her best friend Sally, mostly arm in arm, taken on beaches or foreign-looking nightclubs.

      Noticing his gaze, Cheryl started to cry again. “We’ve been going on holiday ever since we left school. The last couple of years we’ve been to Greece, Turkey, Egypt, you name it — Sally kept an eye out for cheap deals when she was at work and she usually managed to wangle us some sort of discount or upgrade.” She sniffed loudly. “Even when she started seeing Darren, we still went off on our girlie trips. That doesn’t always happen you know. Some girls get hooked up and that’s it, they only go away with their blokes. But Darren was all right about it — he was pretty cool. He said she could have her week in the sun with me, as long as he could go on his footie tour.”

      It was another point in Blackheath’s favour, Warren decided. Men who killed their partners often turned out to be domineering and controlling types; hardly the sort of man who’d let his girlfriend disappear for a week of fun in the sun without him. Nevertheless, they needed to pursue every lead to its conclusion. He glanced at Karen Hardwick, who picked up on his subtle cue.

      “We’re sorry to put you through this, Cheryl — it must be an awful time for you — but we need to ask some questions. Will you help us?”

      Cheryl nodded; underneath the tears, Warren could see a strong resolve to help in any way that she could to find her best friend’s killer.

      The story she told was much the same as that of Blackheath. She’d texted Evans at about six p.m., inviting herself over with a DVD and a bottle of wine. She hadn’t received a reply, but about six-thirty Darren had called asking if she’d seen her. After he’d hung up, she’d put it out of her mind as she made herself something to eat and got ready to go out. Apparently Sally could be a bit forgetful when it came to charging her mobile phone and so she hadn’t been worried. By seven-thirty, Sally hadn’t phoned or responded to her text message and she had been just about to try her landline when Darren had called, sounding worried.

      Picking up her address book, she’d set off for their flat, arriving about the same time as Sally’s mother, who Darren had also called. At first they’d been a bit jokey, trying to convince Darren that it was nothing, but as they finished calling all of her usual friends the worry had set in. Finally, at about midnight, they’d called the police to report her missing.

      “If only we’d called sooner, maybe they’d have found her before…before…” Finally she dissolved in a flood of tears, her carefully constructed façade collapsing completely.

      Hardwick leant over and took her hands and Warren was again glad that he’d decided to bring the young detective constable along with him. The two women were roughly the same age and some jobs needed a special touch that Warren, try as he might, would never possess.

      “You don’t know that. It’s unlikely that we’d have found her any sooner — we wouldn’t have known where to start looking.” Karen didn’t mention, of course, that with no evidence of foul play a young woman missing for less than six hours — before the clubs even closed — wouldn’t merit much more than a few details in the duty log and a sympathetic, but firm, ‘wait and see if she turns up in the morning, then call again’.

      After a few moments, the young woman regained her composure. Warren took over now. “Tell me about Darren. I believe they’d been together a while?”

      Cheryl nodded. “Nearly three years. They’d been in the flat for almost a year. He’s been good to her. He has a heart of gold.” For the first time since they arrived, she smiled. “I teased her when they first started dating. He’s a right skinny one is Darren and he isn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but he really loves her and he’d do anything for you. He’s never really been one for nightclubbing or that, he prefers a quiet night in, but he always insists on picking us up if we’ve been out on the town. ‘No smoking and no puking’, he always says whenever he turns up in that car of his. Sally used to joke that she never worried about him having an affair, because, between looking after her and polishing his car, he hasn’t got enough energy.” The smile faded as the reality of the past few days came flooding back.

      “So you would say that they had a strong relationship?”

      Cheryl nodded vigorously, before her expression turned conspiratorial. “He was going to ask her to marry him.”

      Warren blinked. It seemed a little odd that he would share his intentions with his girlfriend’s best friend. He said as much.

      Cheryl laughed slightly. “Oh, he never said a word. Sal told me. The silly sod hid the ring in his underwear drawer — she found it one day when she was hunting for a missing sock. She knew exactly what he was planning but didn’t have the heart to let him know the cat was out of the bag. She was going to act all surprised when he asked her. She swore me to secrecy.” The brief moment of