Page 103 of No Safe Place
‘Let’s do this inside the house, shall we?’
Lisa took them inside, to a messy living room, and Wilson told her about the two attacks, keeping the link to Andy vague.
‘An OCD doctor? Andy has OCD,’ Lisa said, frowning. ‘I mean – he’s fine. We’re all used to it. It’s not like it stops him working, or anything.’
Field was surprised at the frankness. Clearly Andy hadn’t hidden his illness from his uni friends, now housemates.
‘What does he work as?’ Field asked.
‘He’s a software engineer.’ Lisa pointed to the pile of laptops on the dining table. She was rambling, nervous. ‘We all did computer science at UCL. I’m a UX designer at a start-up. Andy works for Microsoft. He’s the front-end lead on a major software upgrade to SharePoint. He earns silly money.’
Wilson’s pen hovered above her notebook. ‘And Andy’s OCD, it doesn’t affect his work?’
‘No,’ Lisa said firmly. ‘He finds it hard when we’re noisy, sometimes – and there’s still the odd thing we do around the house to make life a bit easier for him, but most of the time you’d never guess, not nowadays. I’m not sure his work even knows.’
‘And when you said he’s not here—’
‘He’s gone to stay at his mum’s place for a few days. She passed away, a few months ago. He’s doing it up, to sell.’
‘And when did you last see him, Lisa?’ Field asked, already getting her phone out to send an urgent email.
‘Thursday morning, when he left for work. He was in bed by the time I got back on Thursday night, and I think he left for his mum’s early on Friday. What is this about?’
‘You’ve been really helpful,’ Wilson soothed. ‘We just want to make sure Andy’s safe.’
Lisa let them go up into his room. They were pushing it, without a search warrant, but Field wanted answers, and they’d wasted enough time.
The room would be easy to search, when they did get a warrant. It was almost completely bare. There were shelves holding a few books and some well-cared-for houseplants. He had an open wardrobe rail, a small chest of drawers and a desk.
The bed had been stripped, the bare duvet folded on top of the mattress.
Wilson snapped on a pair of gloves and opened the desk drawer. Field leaned over to look inside.
Neatly laid out were his phone, his laptop, his bank cards.
‘Anything that could be used to trace him,’ Wilson said grimly, sliding the drawer shut without touching anything.
Field rubbed her temple. ‘So, he was last seen early on Thursday morning – the morning after Sam’s attack. He was one of David’s patients, but as far as we know, he’s not beenin treatment for OCD since.’ Field hesitated, tapping her phone against her hand. ‘And at some point between Thursday morning and today he’s disappeared without his phone, bank cards – anything.’
Wilson still had gloves on, moving aside the trailing houseplants to peer at the books.
Field caught sight of the laundry basket, at the end of the bed. She used her pen to lift the lid. ‘Wilson—’
Field looked down at the white T-shirt, crusted with blood. The bedsheets beneath it were filthy – the light blue pinstripes stained black.
‘The Territorial Support Group are being briefed as we speak.’ The super sounded energised, full of praise for their initiative in tracing Andrew Levey through his work.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Field said down the phone, throwing a thumbs-up at Wilson. ‘That’s great.’
He’d handled the warrant for Andrew Levey’s house personally, and he’d called DCs from MIT5 and MIT2 into work, for extra support.
‘Make sure you nail the bastard, Field,’ he said, happily. ‘Wrap this up nice and quick and, well—’
It might bring the Met some positive press for once, and earn him major brownie points with the commissioner.
For once, Field didn’t care what his motivations were. They were making progress, and all she wanted was to bring Andy into custody – safely.
Chapter 71
