Born in Death (In Death #23)(69)

The woman snorted. “The drinks, more’s the pity. Why are you waking me up on a Sunday morning about Tandy?”

“Are you aware she’s been living in New York for the past several months?”

“New York? Well, f**k me. You serious? Handy Tandy in New sodding York.”

“I take it you haven’t spoken to her recently.”

“Not since…” She scratched her fingers in her hair, and crawled across the bed to a little table where she shoved around at debris and came up with some sort of cigarette. “I’m trying to think. June maybe. Why? You’re not going to tell me she’s done something illegal. Not our girl.”

“She’s missing.”

“Missing what?” She fumbled with a lighter, then lowered it before it sparked. “Missing?What do you mean, missing?”

“She hasn’t been seen since Thursday.”

“Maybe she had herself a massive piss-up.”

“Which would be?”

“You know, a bender? A drinking binge. Though that isn’t much like Tandy.”

“I doubt it, particularly given her condition.”

“Condition of what?”

“Are you aware Tandy’s pregnant? Due to give birth in a matter of days?”

“What? What the f**k? Up the duff? Tandy? Oh, bollocks to that.” But the sleepiness cleared out of her eyes. “Just a bloody minute.” She rolled out of bed, and to Eve’s mild relief was at least wearing underwear. She grabbed some sort of baggy red shirt out of a pile of clothes and dragged it over her head. “You’re telling me Tandy’s knocked up, and nobody knows where she is?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. You said you hadn’t spoken to her since June. Is that usual? That long a gap?”

Briar Rose walked back to sit on the side of the bed. This time she lit the cigarette. “Listen, we were steps less than a couple of years, really. Her widower father married my stone bitch of a mother when I was about fourteen. He was all right, too, nice sort. Then he ups and gets killed in a pile-up on the M4.”

She paused a moment, let out a long breath and a cloud of smoke. “Tandy was finishing up at University, and already had a job. My mother dragged me off to Sussex for Christ’s sake. Tandy made some tries at keeping up a kind of relationship, but the stone bitch wasn’t interested. I moved back to London first chance, but I was in a phase, you know? Mostly interested in piss-ups and getting laid. I didn’t want the big sister deal, especially with one who was bog standard while I was busy shagging wankers and gits. Cocking up right and left. I’d see her now and again, if she cornered me.”

She drew deep on the cigarette. “Even when I got myself a decent job and eased back some, we just didn’t have much in common. I saw her last spring, it was. She rang me up, said she needed to talk to me.”

“And you talked about?”

“We didn’t, not really. I knew she was wound up about something, and thought she’d probably got herself engaged, or got a bloody promotion, again. I acted a pillock because the bloke I’d been seeing turned into a berk and dumped me for some bit of fluff. And bollocks to him. I just met her for coffee and had a right go at her and buggered off. Bloody hell.”

It was a challenge, but Eve thought she’d picked her way through the foreign slang and idioms to the meat of it. “No contact after?”

“Well, I felt a right arse, didn’t I? A couple weeks later, I did penance and went by her flat, but she’d moved. All they said was she’d moved, maybe to Paris. It pissed me off that she didn’t let me know where she’d gone but there was bugger all I could do about it. She’s having a baby?”

“That’s right. Do you know Aaron?”

“Met him a couple of times. They were all but shacked up. Is he there in New York with her?”

“Not to my knowledge. Do you have his full name, a contact number or address?”

“Aaron Applebee, in Chelsea, I think. He’s a writer forThe Times. You telling me that git got her up the duff, then turned her out?”

“I’ll have to speak to him about that. Was she seeing anyone else?”

“Tandy? Not our girl. One at a time for her, and they’d been tight for months and months. Bastard. Maybe she’s come back home, come back to confront him. I’ll ring up a few people. A girl wants to be home, doesn’t she, when she’s about to be a mum.”

“I appreciate the information. If you think of anything else, or find out anything about her whereabouts, contact me.”

Eve did a search for Aaron Applebee and got his number and address.

When she hit his voice mail, she did a standard run on him instead.

Applebee, Aaron, the computer recited, DOB June 5, 2030, Devonshire, England.

It listed his parents, and a complicated series of half-sibs through each side. He was employed, as Briar Rose had said, as a staff writer for the LondonTimes, and had been employed there for eight years. No marriage on record, no criminal. Several pings for traffic violations. He’d resided at the same address, in Chelsea, for five years.

His ID photo showed an attractive blond man with a long jaw. A height of five feet ten inches, a weight of one-sixty.

On the surface, he looked steady, ordinary. A regularbloke, she mused.