Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (30)

Perhaps she’s been called in for another shift, thought Maria as she went to the fridge to see if her sister had left a note, but there was nothing. Had she gone out shopping? No, it was six o’clock in the morning. Had she met a guy? No, she would have left a message.

Maria shivered and sat on the sofa. She opened the ‘find my phone’ app on her phone, and logged in as Sophia. It showed that Sophia’s phone was switched on. She felt a deep unease as the app loaded, and the compass graphic swung from side to side. When the map popped up, Maria was expecting to see the familiar roads around Lewisham Hospital, or a street around Blackheath, but a different map view came up and for a moment she didn’t recognise the location. All she could see was a wide area of yellow, and her sister’s phone looked to be in the middle of nowhere. She pinched the screen and zoomed out and then back in on the map, her heart starting to beat in her chest with panic.

The green dot representing the location of her sister’s phone was in something called the Excel Waste Management Centre. As she zoomed out, she saw this was far out of London, past Dartford, near a place called Tilbury. She switched the map to satellite view, which gave more detail of the area, and there was a vast swathe of yellow sand and gravel and a huge industrial building.

Horrible images started to rush through her mind, and with shaking hands Maria dialled the emergency services. Why was Sophia’s phone miles outside London, showing up on a landfill site?





20





Erika slept through her alarm, and woke at 9am, stiff and frozen on the hard wooden floor of her box room. The bright white light pouring through the gap in the thin curtains seemed to slice into her eyes, and when she sat up, her breath was coming out in vapour and she could see there was a layer of ice on the inside of the glass.

She was furious with herself. She’d called a briefing at 8am and she was an hour late. She never slept in. As she rushed around the house, pulling on her clothes and trying to find her car keys in the mess, she knew she had to get herself sorted with a proper bed, and heating, and hot water.

There was a thick layer of frost covering her car, and of course, she’d also run out of de-icer. She was scrubbing at the windscreen with her Tesco Club card when her phone rang. It was Moss.

‘Is everything okay, boss?’ Erika could hear the air of caution and discomfort in Moss’s voice.

‘Yes. Yes. Sorry. I’m on my way in,’ she said. Her fingers were now numb, and she’d only cleared a small square of the iced-up windscreen.

‘How close are you?’

‘I’m still at home.’

‘Maria Ivanova, one of the two sisters who live in the flat opposite Vicky Clarke’s flat in Honeycomb Court, made an emergency call just after six this morning. She hasn’t heard from her sister, Sophia, in over twenty-four hours, and says her sister’s phone is showing up on a tracking app at a recycling centre in East London.’ Erika’s heart sank, and she forgot her freezing hands for a moment. ‘I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I’ve read the log from last night. If the body we found isn’t Vicky Clarke…’

‘Shit. Okay. I’m just around the corner from Honeycomb Court. Can I meet you there?’ said Erika. ‘And can we send a uniform team out to that recycling centre, just in case?’

‘Yes. Already on their way, and I’ll be there ASAP,’ said Moss.

When she came off the phone, Erika walked around to Morrison Road. The road was empty, and it looked strangely quiet in the grey frosty morning light.

Erika peered in through the huge glass doors of Honeycomb Court. The lobby inside was gloomy and empty. She rang the bell marked ‘IVANOVA’.

‘Yes?’ said a quavering voice with a slight accent. Erika announced who she was, and a moment later a small, thin woman emerged from the door opposite Vicky’s flat. Erika guessed that Maria Ivanova must be in her mid-twenties, but she looked very young, no more than sixteen years old. She was thin, with a muscular dancer’s build, and wore tight jeans and a loose-fitting wine-coloured T-shirt. A small silver crucifix hung around her neck. Her ash-blonde hair was pulled back into a short ponytail. When she came close to the glass door, Erika was ready with her warrant card. Up close, Maria’s skin was like putty, smooth but bloodless. She was plain-faced and bird-like, with a small pointy nose and large round eyes.

‘Why don’t you have a uniform?’ she asked sharply, looking Erika up and down. Erika realised that she must look a little dishevelled.

‘I’m a plain-clothes detective. I’ve been working on another case, which might be connected with your sister’s disappearance,’ said Erika. ‘Could I please come inside?’

Maria nodded and opened the door.

‘Please, come through. Do you know what happened at number one?’ she asked, indicating Vicky’s flat as they crossed the lobby.

Jeez, she doesn’t know, thought Erika.

‘Let’s sit down and talk,’ said Erika as they went inside Maria’s flat. She was trying to work out how to play this. She didn’t know if the body found in Vicky’s flat belonged to Sophia, but there were a few questions she could ask that could confirm this.

The flat had the same layout as Vicky’s, with a combined kitchen living area and one small bedroom, but everything was the other way around.