Part 11 (2/2)

He couldn't see her. Where had she gone?

'Come on, Leo. Where are you?' he muttered, scanning up and down the road. But she wasn't there. There was no black coat, no tall, slender woman with hair below her shoulders. The scarf was unusual, though. He had never seen Leo wear any colour at all.

He stood where he was for a few more minutes, knowing she had gone and he wasn't going to find her.

'b.u.g.g.e.r,' he muttered.

'Tom?' The same voice spoke from behind him and he turned round. He recognised the face of a young man with dark, curly hair and a slightly sallow complexion, but couldn't place it.

'I'm Luca Molino Daniela's boyfriend from next door to Leo.'

'Luca, of course. I'm sorry my mind was elsewhere. What can I do for you?'

'I wanted to speak to you about Leo.' He looked down at the ground and back up again. 'I'm afraid Daniela didn't tell you everything.'

Tom felt a moment of anger at Luca's girlfriend. When somebody was missing, every sc.r.a.p of information could help. He forced himself not to show his irritation. 'Come into the office out of the cold,' he said. 'We'll grab a meeting room and you can tell me.'

Tom ushered Luca inside, organised a cup of coffee and waited for him to find the words.

'When you came to visit, Daniela thought you were worried about Leo because she's your ex-girlfriend, and perhaps you wanted to get back together with her.'

Tom said nothing. He didn't want to influence Luca's story one way or another, but this did explain why he had wondered about about the brevity of Luca's translation of Daniela's long burst of Italian.

'She told me just to tell you when she had last seen her Sat.u.r.day and that was the truth. Then I saw the picture of the girl who's been killed. She looks so much like Leo that I thought I should come to see you. Daniela didn't want me to, because she thought you would be angry with her for not telling you everything. She doesn't know I'm here now.'

'I'm glad you are, Luca. I'm very concerned for Leo.'

'The thing is, Leo has a new man in her life, and Daniela wasn't sure how you would take that. She's been seeing him for about two months. He's quite a high flyer corporate finance, I believe. I think she went to Cheltenham with him, to the racing earlier this month. She had to buy a hat. I remember that because she came round to ask Dani if it suited her.'

Tom felt for a moment that it should have been him she had modelled the hat for. Maybe he should have taken her to the races. He couldn't help wondering why Ellie or Max hadn't told him about this man. As if reading Tom's mind, Luca answered the unasked question.

'She didn't tell anybody about him apart from Dani. She knew we would see him coming and going so it was better if she told Dani so she wouldn't gossip.' The look on Luca's face suggested that would be a tall order. 'She asked Dani not to say anything because she wanted to see how it went before she told her family.'

That sounded like Leo. She wouldn't want to expose herself in case it didn't work out.

'Do you know his name, who he works for, where he lives anything that might help me track him down.'

Luca nodded. 'She said he was a partner in his firm, and we knew his name was Julian. But no surname. He drives a big Merc.'

Tom couldn't think of anything else to ask. He was fairly sure that there wouldn't be too many Julians who were partners in a corporate finance firm, so it was likely they could track him down.

He stood up. 'Thanks for coming in, Luca. You've been a great help. Leo's obviously keeping this relations.h.i.+p close to her chest and is waiting to see how it goes.'

'I'm not so sure if it's still going or not. Dani thought they'd had a row, because the last time he was with her Friday, I think he left before midnight. We were coming back from a bar in town and he came out of the front door quickly. He didn't look happy. We stood back out of his way. He didn't know us, and we only knew who he was because Dani's nosy. That was the night before we saw Leo for the last time.'

'Did he usually stay the night, then?' Tom asked, realising that this might sound intrusive, although he was actually trying to decide if this man had somebody to go home to which could make a difference. At least, that's what he told himself as he ignored the stab of jealousy at the thought.

'Yes, I think so. Dani's not so nosy that she kept a watch on him, but we did see him leave at about six in the morning more than once. We heard Leo's door close, and of course Dani leapt out of bed to see who came out.' Luca's eyes didn't quite meet Tom's, and Tom realised that they had probably done exactly the same each time he had gone to Leo's. Six had been his normal time to leave too.

Luca headed towards the door.

'Well, I expect they made it up and she's gone away with him somewhere for a week or so,' Tom said, holding out his hand to Luca.

'Oh, I don't think so. He turned up a couple of days after we realised she wasn't home. That would have been Monday. He knocked on our door to ask if we'd seen her.'

Tom felt a stab of concern. He would have felt much happier if Leo had been away with her new man.

'Clearly the flowers didn't work,' Luca said, a small frown furrowing the skin between his eyes.

'Flowers?' Tom said.

'The day after the row. Late Sat.u.r.day morning. A delivery guy arrived carrying a huge bunch of flowers. It was the biggest arrangement I had ever seen, so we guessed it was an apology.'

Tom remembered the drying petal he had found. But no flowers neither in a vase, nor in the bin.

26.

Tom was still struggling with the idea that Leo had been standing outside police HQ, maybe looking for him, and he hadn't been able to get to her in time. If it really was Leo of course. Everything about the woman looked so similar from the far side of the road, but the green scarf was an unlikely choice. Since then he had called Leo, left messages, tried to contact her on every form of social media that he knew she used, but he had heard nothing. He had also asked one of his team to check out all corporate finance firms in Manchester with a partner called Julian, but Tom's main focus had to be on the murder of Hayley Walker.

He was in the incident room when Becky returned from several long hours at the hospital. She flopped into a chair, rested her elbows on her desk and cupped her hands under her chin. It was a pose he had seen many times. He always thought of it as her thinking-but-not-getting-anywhere-fast look.

'What's up, Becky?' he asked.

'Oh, nothing.' She blew out a puff of air through pursed lips. 'Except that all I seem to have for my day's labour is a lot of paper, several lists and not a clue who would have wanted to hurt Hayley Walker.' She picked up a pile of files and let them drop again on the desk.

Tom leant against the wall, one leg crossed over the other. 'Well, the doctor who came in this morning Louisa Knight has gone away to come up with a list of people Hayley might have had an interest in, or vice versa. She's called and offered to come and talk it through with us. You bring your list, and we'll see what we've got.'

'I can do that, boss,' Becky said. 'There's no need for both of us, just because I'm in a grump.'

'No, it's okay, Becky. I want to hear what she has to say. Anyway, something might ring a bell with the crimes from twelve years ago.'

He was relieved that Becky seemed to have recovered a little from her fl.u.s.ter the day before, even if it had been replaced with a cantankerous att.i.tude. He always thought Becky was at the top of her game when she was at her most stroppy, and he smiled to himself.

Louisa was waiting for them in a meeting room, and she stood up when Tom and Becky entered. She had removed her coat and was wearing an apricot silk s.h.i.+rt that complemented the colour of her hair. She smiled at Tom and held her hand out to Becky as Tom introduced them.

'I've made the list you asked for.' She briefly waved a sheet of A4 paper in the air. 'I've named anybody who might have shown an interest in Hayley and I'm happy to run through it and give you my impressions of each of them, but I do hope none of these guys will ever know what I've said.'

'They won't hear anything from us, Louisa, and please call me Tom.' Tom couldn't miss Becky's slight raising of the eyebrows but he chose to pay no attention. 'What have we got?'

'The fact is, we're a large team. Most of our patients have a dedicated nurse a.s.signed to them one per s.h.i.+ft. There are a lot of consultants, but it's the anaesthetists who tend to be around and maybe a surgical registrar or two. Given that Hayley thought somebody was interested in her, I thought I'd concentrate on the men. She's never given me any indication that she prefers women, and I'm sure it was a man she thought was watching her.'

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