‘I can say nothing more about the past, Inspector. I’m afraid those records are sealed.’
THIRTY-THREE
‘Penn, have I told you how sorry I am about last night?’ Stacey asked.
‘Only about forty-seven times now.’ He checked his watch. ‘And it’s not even lunchtime.’
‘Can we talk about it?’ she asked, wishing he’d show some kind of irritation with her. Yes, he was the usual affable, good-natured, a little bit off-the-wall Penn, but he had to be feeling some kind of way about what she’d ruined last night.
She’d felt awful when Devon had picked her up at midnight after not being needed on the call-out. She and Penn had watched a bit of television for an hour in an uncomfortable silence during which Penn had checked his phone a dozen times. It hadn’t tinged once.
‘I messed it up for you, didn’t I?’ she asked miserably.
She knew how long he’d been waiting for this first real date between him and Lynne, and he’d gone to a tremendous effort to make it a good one.
‘What else were you supposed to do?’ he asked, not answering the question she’d asked.
‘Stay at home and pull on my big-girl panties,’ she said, wishing that was exactly what she’d done.
‘You did what you were told and I’m glad you chose to come to me.’
‘Really?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Nope, but I also don’t want you feeling shit about it. It’s not your fault.’
‘I don’t think there’s been any time in my life that I’ve been a cock block.’
Penn burst out laughing. ‘Stace, stop apologising. If we’re meant to get over it, we will; if not, you’re helping me with my Tinder profile.’
‘Deal,’ she said, happy she’d made him laugh.
‘Now talk to me about the damn case.’
‘Well, it doesn’t appear that Rozzie’s doctor knew anything about her pregnancy,’ Stacey said, closing the teenager’s medical record. No appointment, no blood test. ‘She may not have known herself.’
‘Okay,’ Penn said, frowning. ‘I’m a guy, humour me. I know it can happen but how is that even possible? Surely there are physical changes.’
‘Some women can go months without a period because of contraception, stress, anxiety, illness.’
‘Okay, enough about that but—’
‘How can you gleefully attend post-mortems, digest and ruminate over every part of that process but not have a conversation about periods?’ Stacey asked. Her colleague sure did pick his times to get sensitive.
‘Yeah, we’ll skate over that one. What I’m saying is how is it possible to have a human being growing inside you and for you to not know the little critter is there?’
Stacey shrugged. It wasn’t something she’d had experience of.
‘Anything interesting on social media?’ Penn asked.
‘I’ll let you know,’ Stacey answered. ‘Of the four of them, Rozzie was the only one with a substantial online presence. I don’t think Lewis had really discovered social media yet, and Helen and William weren’t present at all.’
Penn grunted before returning to his own work.
A Google search for Rozzie Daynes had brought over a thousand results. She was present on all social-media forums. She appeared to be what Stacey called a bleeder on social media, where she appeared to use different platforms for different purposes, but there was a bleed of certain posts across all forums. She had her own YouTube channel, where she appeared to be a budding influencer. She wasn’t a particularly remarkable girl, but there was something appealing about her round, pleasant face and self-deprecating manner. Her first video had been a humorous observation of living with naturally curly hair. There were snippets of her showing the tight curls after showering, the problems with different headbands, tie backs and clips. Each post had received more likes until her last post, advertising a certain type of conditioner, had amassed her a subscription total of half a million followers. A couple of her suggestions about hair products had been shared on her Facebook page, but that had mainly covered her social life, with only a couple hundred friends and high privacy settings.
She rarely used Twitter, and her Instagram was a mishmash of everything: videos, photos, live streams. TikTok held just a few videos of her messing about with friends.
One thing Stacey noticed on all forums was a reduction in posts. Rozzie had still been active, right up until the day she died, but the posts had definitely lessened in number.