Page 39 of The Trap by Catherine
Lucy finally let the scream out and he turned and ran.
LINES OF ENQUIRY
Angela watched the clock mounted on the wall high above the door to the Missing Persons Unit as it ticked toward three o’clock. She looked at the door to the MPU, willing Detective Denise Pope to come walking through it. Then looked back at the clock.
This was the longest day she had ever had at work, maybe even in her entire life.
The problem was, Denise hadn’t actually said anything yesterday about whether or not Angela would get to continue to work the Kerry Long case today. Denise hadn’t said anything at all. She’d stopped the car at a red light near the Luas stop in Carrickmines and said to Angela, “You’ll be all right getting back from here, won’t you?” and then driven off before Angela could ask any questions of her own.
She’d managed to kill a good chunk of the morning by creating a spreadsheet with the address of every charity shop, clothing bank, and vintage store she could find in Dublin and its surrounding counties. She’d typed up a letter explaining that the Missing Persons Unit was appealing for reports on any personal items found in bags or other women’s accessories that may have been donated, and to be on the lookout for them going forward. She wouldn’t do anything until she got permission, and she didn’t want to ask Don for it until she was sure she wouldn’t get an opportunity to ask Denise, but having everything ready to go at least felt like doingsomething.
Now, Angela drummed her fingers on the desk.
“Don’t you’ve anything you could be doing over there?” Don called from the back of the room. “Because if you’re looking for something, I’ve got a cup of tea you could make.”
Good question, Angela thought.
Wasthere something she could be doing? Somethingelse?
She took out her phone and swiped through the photos she’d taken of Kerry Long’s things, stopping when she got to the Q-Park ticket. She didn’t think it was Kerry’s, but she did think it could belong to the person who’d owned the bag, which she didn’t think was Kerry’s either. It was stamped with the address of the Stephen’s Green car park and the time and date—11:02 a.m. on 3 March 2018—in small black type, alongside what must be some reference numbers and a barcode.
The car park itself was only a few minutes’ walk from Harcourt Square, but Angela figured it was wiser to ring the company rather than visit the facility itself. She had a much better chance of someone believing she had any authority if she was only speaking to them on the phone. She found a number for Q-Park Ireland’s head office online and called it to try her luck.
“Ah, hi,” she said when someone answered. “My name is Angela Fitzgerald and I’m calling from the Gardaí’s Missing Persons Unit in Harcourt Square.” Which was all true. If someone mistook her for a guard, that wasn’t her fault. “I’m wondering if you can help me with something. We have a ticket here for your Stephen’s Green car park that may be relevant to one of our cases. Is there any way to get a registration number or a name or debit card info from that ticket?”
The woman on the other end said, “Well, that depends. What’s the date on it?”
“March 2018.”
“Oh no,” she said with a little laugh. “Not a chance. Since GDPR came in, we have to delete everything after eleven days.”
“So there’s no way?”
“No way at all, no.”
“No way to do what?” a new voice said.
Angela turned to see Denise sitting down in the chair of the unoccupied desk directly behind hers. She thanked the woman on the phone and ended the call, and tried not to look too pleased that Denise was here.
“That was Q-Park,” Angela explained. “I called them to see if the parking ticket we found in the bag could give us any information about the car’s owner.”
“With data protection laws, not a hope,” Denise said. “Not for something that far back. But good thinking.” She pointed at the open Word document on screen. “And that?”
“Oh. Well, I had an idea—” Angela started.
“To ask charity shops to tell us if they find any wallets or keys or anything like that, in case there’s more out there belonging to the other women, waiting to be found?”
“Um... Yes.”
Angela’s sense of pride at having thought of it was already draining away.
“They already do,” Denise said. “Effectively. Most people who find lost wallets either try to get in contact with the owner, or hand them in to their local station. As your friend from the charity shop did yesterday.”
“Oh,” Angela said, minimizing the letter on screen. “Right.”
“And I’m sure if any of our three families had been contacted about something like that, they’d have told us. Likewise if something arrived at a station.”
“What about the public? Is there any point trying to get a message to them, like through the media or something?”
