Missing, Presumed (20 page)

Her breathing comes in jolts, stepping down in her solar plexus, then up again, catching in her throat. A ladder of tears. ‘They’re com-ing to get me,’ she says. ‘They are com-ing to ge-et me.’

‘I think if we can just go back to the dream, we can try to unravel this,’ says Dr Young, still voice of calm.

‘The-ey are com-ing to ge-et me. The papers … It’s all ov-er the papers … Oh G-o-d, oh God …’ She places her palms over her face, wet and puffy from the torrent. She wants to hide, for the earth to open and for it to close over her head, welcome grave. Exposure is everywhere, about to happen. She is about to be named. She is filthy.

‘The dream,’ he says.

In the dream, she was running down suburban streets – Newnham or her parents’ street in Bromley, she couldn’t tell. Breathless, her clothes torn, pursued by a flock of enormous black crows, with wings flying out behind them like academic cloaks, and angry beaks. Running and running from them as they gained ground, and then she turned a corner and saw her parents’ house, the front door of her childhood, and she felt a surge of relief that she would be safe. They would open the door to her and she would get inside and the crows would be barred. She reached the front door and banged with her fists on it and the crows were at the gate. But the door didn’t open. Her parents didn’t answer, and the horror, the horror, she feels herself collapsing again, folding in on herself. She saw her parents at the window looking at her from the safety of the lounge, leaving her outside to face the crows.

‘They wouldn’t let me in,’ she gasps, her palms wet over her face, the tears seeping to the webbed crooks between her fingers. ‘Because I am disgusting.’

‘How are you disgusting?’

‘Because … because … the newspapers are saying she had a female lover, but I’m not, I’m not … Everyone will think I was her lover, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t like that, but everyone will think it was dirty, sordid, that I did something to her.’

‘Why would anyone make that connection? Is there something about your relationship with Edith, something about that night that you’re not being honest about?’

‘No, no, you see? You think it. You see “female lover” and you think of me. Her best friend, with her on the night she disappeared. It’s all over it – the innuendo.’

Silence.

‘But you know what
did
happen,’ he says. ‘The truth about that night.’

‘Yes, I know. No, no I don’t mean that. I don’t know what happened to Edith, I don’t know that. You’re trying to trip me up. You’re trying to get me to say I was involved.’

Silence, this time of a kind which seems incriminating.

‘I wonder,’ he says, ‘if you feel that I am locking you out – leaving you to the black crows – in the gap between now and our next session on Monday. All this press interest, the feeling you have of exposure … Three days is a long time to be on your own with it all.’

She is silent, except for the uneven steps of her breathing.

‘We have to leave it there,’ he says.

‘Nice road,’ he says. He presses on his key fob and the car answers with its electronic
whup-whep
. The lights flash twice and they walk along a pavement sparkling with frost, their breath smoking and their hands dug into their pockets. It’s a relief to be out of the frenetic heat of HQ – a million conflicting sightings of Edith and the deceiving infiltration of reporters who are back on the story.

A ribbon of mist curls through the tops of the trees. He looks into the front gardens: chequerboard tiling and the bare stems of magnolias or lilacs; bicycles chained to black iron railings; bay windows so clean they seem liquid and topped with little proud roof turrets in grey slate.

They have come to the posh part of Cambridge – Newnham – to re-interview Barbara Garfield, wife of Edith’s Director of Studies, after she called and told them she had new information to share. Didn’t everyone, after
Crimewatch
?

Be nice to live somewhere like this, he thinks – so comfortable with itself. Those front patches are tended by people who listen to
Gardeners’ Question Time
and know the names of shrubs. He bets the houses’ insides are worn but bookish, not smelly-depressing shabby, like the places they visit for work, pushing their jumpers up over their mouths and noses. No, this is easy-does-it shabby. I-know-who-I-am shabby. Persian-rug shabby.

‘Grantchester Street,’ he says, checking in his green book.

‘Left at the end here,’ says Manon.

They walk a little further.

‘Did you see,’ Davy says, ‘Stuart’s got a new iPad?’

‘That’s more Colin’s bag than mine,’ says Manon.

‘Nice one, latest kind, y’know – white one, thin as you like. Says he can’t get used to the touch screen. Just wonder how he afforded it, that’s all. Didn’t think CIs got paid that much—’ He is winded by a body slamming into him from the left. Someone who has hurtled out of the gate from one of the houses they have just passed. ‘Woah,’ he says, catching her about the shoulders. ‘Slow down. Are you all right?’

The girl is stooped over, crying, and when she looks up, Manon says, ‘Helena?’

She doesn’t speak. Her eyes are red raw, her lips swollen, and she is shaking.

‘Helena,’ says Manon again. ‘What are you doing here? Is everything all right?’

‘Everyone will know,’ she says, with pleading eyes. ‘Why did he say that, about a female lover? Why did he have to say that on telly? Everyone will know. It’s all over the papers. They’re going to want to know
who
.’ And she collapses into Davy’s chest.

‘Didn’t an officer come and warn you about
Crimewatch
? I thought DC Kim Delaney—’

‘I didn’t realise, I didn’t know how huge it would be,’ Helena says, her eyes wide with fear. ‘The television. It was on the television. I don’t know what I thought … I didn’t take it in.’

‘No one knows about you,’ says Manon. ‘It won’t come out, about you and Edith.’ She and Davy look at each other over Helena’s head. ‘No one is going to release your name, Helena. As far as the press knows, you are just the friend she was out with on Saturday night.’

‘Look, anyone comes after you, you call me,’ says Davy, pushing her away from his chest so he can dig in his pocket for a card with his number printed on it, and so that he can look her in the eye, too. Tell her it’s real. They will protect her. ‘Now get yourself home and lay low. D’you need a car? I can get someone out here—’

‘No, no,’ she says. She wipes the wet from her nose with the back of her hand and the movement makes her seem like a little girl. ‘I can get home.’

She is looking down at Davy’s little white card, with its silver star symbol topped with a royal crown and the words
Cambridgeshire Constabulary
following the blue circle.

‘Would you like an officer with you at your flat? We can arrange that,’ he says.

‘Why are you here?’ says Helena abruptly. ‘What are you doing on the same street as my, my, my friend … I have a friend who lives here.’

‘Just routine enquiries,’ says Manon, smiling, but this seems only to increase the terror in Helena’s eyes.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ says Davy. ‘I think I should drive you. I’ve got a car just around the corner.’

‘No, no,’ and she bridles, shaking Davy’s hand off her shoulder. ‘I’ve got somewhere to go right now. I’m not going straight home, you see. I’ll be all right.’ She sniffs. ‘It’ll all blow over, right? This storm, it’ll pass.’

Manon and Davy watch her as she turns and scurries, hunched and quick-footed, away from them down Grantchester Street.

‘Don’t like the look of her,’ says Davy. ‘We should call it in. Tell Harriet she seems vulnerable.’

‘Yup, we’ll flag it up when we get back to the office after this,’ says Manon.

‘Have you finished yet?’ asks Manon, smiling at him.

‘Not yet, no,’ Davy says, sneezing another three times.

‘Goodness me,’ says Mrs Garfield. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Do you have a cat?’ asks Davy.

‘Yes, oh goodness, sorry. Wait a minute, I’ll put her out.’

Manon takes a seat at the dining table while Davy blows his nose. They are in a sunken kitchen which gives out onto the back garden. The kitchen floor is a grid of terracotta squares and the cupboards are oak. The room smells of boiling lentils and surfaces just wiped with a faintly mildewed cloth. The dishwasher is going. The round dining table, at the garden end of the room, is covered with a wipeable oilcloth in a pale green William Morris design. On the wall is a picture of Mr and Mrs Garfield in shorts and sunglasses, leaning into one another.

‘There, she won’t bother you any more,’ says Mrs Garfield, coming back into the room and brushing at her skirt. ‘Though I can’t guarantee her fur won’t – it’s everywhere, I’m afraid. Now, what can I get you to drink? Tea? Coffee?’

‘Glass of water, if you don’t mind, Mrs Garfield,’ says Davy.

‘Sergeant?’

‘Nothing for me, thank you.’

Mrs Garfield runs the tap, her finger feeling its temperature, saying, ‘I really don’t know why I rang. And you must be absolutely inundated after
Crimewatch
. The papers are full of it.’

‘Did you remember something that might be important?’ asks Manon.

‘Silly, really, and you’ve come out all this way. I mean, sometimes you think something’s a thing, and then it isn’t a thing. D’you know what I mean?’

‘Something about the night Edith went missing, perhaps?’ says Manon. ‘When your husband came back from The Crown?’

She sets the glass of water in front of Davy, who has his green book out on the dining table. Mrs Garfield doesn’t sit down with them. Instead, she returns to the kitchen counter and busies herself, clattering about with various pans and bowls. They wait.

Davy writes something in his book, the date and time probably. Manon looks out to the garden, the wet-grey paving slabs, soil silted and blown about with fallen leaves. It all seems quite dead.

Manon breaks the silence, ever so gently. ‘Is there something you’re unsure about … about Mr Garfield?’

‘He wipes his Internet history,’ Mrs Garfield says, without looking up, making circular wiping motions on the worktop with a cloth.

‘Go on,’ says Manon.

‘I don’t. I don’t wipe my Internet history. I’m only ever on the John Lewis website looking at table lamps. Or Amazon. I don’t wipe my Internet history – it wouldn’t occur to me. So why does he?’

‘It occurred to you to look for his Internet history, Mrs Garfield. Why was that?’

‘He’s always on his computer – lost in this world that I don’t know anything about. It’s like some secret door he goes through, where he’s unreachable, like the screen has stolen him from me.’ She shakes her head, then adopts a different tone. ‘It’s probably nothing – work or football scores. Reading the
New Statesman
. But you don’t
know
, do you?’ And she laughs, but the texture in the room has darkened.

‘Was he with you on the night of the seventeenth of December, after The Crown?’

Mrs Garfield nods. ‘As far as I know.’

‘As far as you know?’

‘I did say at the time, but perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I was falling asleep when I heard his key in the door. I registered that and then I nodded off. I didn’t actually
see
him.’

‘And your relationship with Mr Garfield,’ says Manon. ‘How has that been?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Has everything been normal between the two of you? Has he been behaving normally?’

‘As far as I know,’ says Mrs Garfield.

Manon waits. If she waits, something more might come. But Mrs Garfield has become more brisk in her clattering and fussing in the kitchen area, her body language saying:
I’m really far too busy for all this.

‘Right, well, thanks very much for your time,’ says Manon, rising from her chair. Davy follows her cue to get up, too. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, the computer stuff, but thanks for letting us know. And do call us if anything else comes to mind, Mrs Garfield. We can see ourselves out.’

They pull their car doors shut with a warming
shunk
and the sounds of outside are cut off. Their coats rustle and they click their seatbelts down into the red slots.

‘We going to get Garfield’s laptop then?’ asks Davy, before he starts the engine.

She already has her phone to her ear, and after a short preamble – ‘Mr Garfield, yes, sorry to disturb you, it’s Detective Sergeant Bradshaw’ – she says, ‘We’d like to take a look at your laptop.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘Just to eliminate you from our inquiries. It’d be best if you gave it to us voluntarily.’

‘I’m sorry, I do want to help in any way I can, but all you’ll find on my laptop is a series of very dull essays on Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King
, that sort of thing.’

‘We can have it back to you in a week,’ says Manon.

‘Really, I’d love to help, but I can’t manage without it for a week and anyway, there’s nothing on it. Nothing that would be of any interest to you. Look, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got a study group in five minutes.’

‘Mr Garfield?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’d hate to come and arrest you at the college.’

‘Why would you arrest me?’

‘Because an arrest gives me automatic powers to search and seize.’

There is silence on the line.

‘I’d hate to, you know, create a scene. Uniformed constables at the porter’s lodge, asking where you are. Our panda cars with their flashing blue lights outside the college – we love putting our lights on. Officers marching across the quad towards your rooms. All those students standing around watching. You know what Cambridge is like – terrible for gossip. But I’d have to do that in order to get your laptop, you see. But if you handed it over voluntarily, we could keep it all nice and quiet.’

Davy starts the engine as Manon puts her mobile back in her bag. As he pulls out, he says, ‘To the college, then?’

‘Yep.’

‘By the way, I’ve spoken to my mate – the mentoring buddy. In Brent. Said she’s looking out for Taylor’s brother, Fly, is it? She had meetings with education welfare and with the school, and they have agreed to work together to keep him at home with his mother.’

‘Great. That’s great.’

‘Actually, she thinks he’s amazing.’

I know he’s amazing, she thinks. ‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well, the school said he’s gifted. A great little reader. They said you’d expect a child in his situation to fall off the curve, but he’s top of his class.’

‘Does that somehow make him more worthy of being saved?’ she says, in a bid to cover an involuntary flush of pride in Fly Dent. After all, why should she feel pride? It’s not as if he’s hers.

‘Makes him of interest to them,’ says Davy, eyes fixed cheerfully on the road. ‘My mate’ll keep an eye on him. Fly’s mum’s really sick, you know that, right? Hasn’t attended any of her hospital appointments. If she dies, he’ll be taken into care. Just to warn you.’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she says, her hands having already dug out her mobile phone, working on a text to Fly.

How is school?

OK, if you like that sort of thing.

What did you have at the Portuguese café?

Why d’you care?

Cos I’m paying.

Oh, OK. Toast and jam.

White or brown?

Actually, it was kind of red.

Haha. White or brown toast?

Back off, DS Auntie.