Missing, Presumed (22 page)

‘Quiet everyone, please,’ says Harriet, and the department falls to a hush. ‘As you know, Tony Wright was arrested last night at 5 p.m., he’s spent the night in custody, so hopefully he’ll be nice and chatty this morning. His flat is now a crime scene. SOCO is still in there looking for anything that could link Wright to either Edith or Taylor Dent. We have,’ she looks at her watch, ‘six hours remaining in which to charge him with something, otherwise he walks. His brief is going to say the CCTV footage is too grainy for a firm ID and that his alibi for the weekend Edith disappeared still holds tight.’

‘Which is true,’ says Manon.

‘Which is true,’ repeats Harriet, nodding. ‘So why was Edith calling Tony Wright the week before she disappeared? Twice – once on the Monday, again on the Friday.’

‘You don’t think she was having an affair with him, do you?’ says Davy.

‘You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to have an affair with Tony Wright,’ says Kim.

‘Maybe,’ says Colin thoughtfully, as if swilling an exquisite red around his palate, ‘she’s had enough of all the posh blokes and fancies a bit of rough.’

‘Yeah, ’cos it’s a tough one, isn’t it?’ says Kim, holding both hands in the balance. ‘On the one hand you’ve got devastatingly handsome Cambridge graduate Will Carter; and on the other you’ve got sleazebag burglar Tony Wright.
Who to choose?
’

‘There’s no accounting for taste,’ says Harriet.

‘She might find rough men exciting,’ ventures Colin.

‘There’s a lot of hope in your voice, Colin,’ says Manon.

‘Let’s stick to the point,’ says Harriet. ‘Let’s say they were having an affair, preposterous though that seems – it doesn’t explain how they knew each other. How on earth did someone like Edith Hind meet someone like Tony Wright? And anyway, he’s still here, but she’s not, so it’s not like they’ve run off into the sunset together.’

‘Maybe he was blackmailing her,’ says Manon. ‘If it’s not sex, it’s money. Maybe he knew, I dunno, some dark secret about her and she had to pay him off. Would explain why she was calling him.’

‘So we need to look into his finances,’ says Harriet. ‘Any nice new tellies at his flat. I want the data off all phones and computers from his property. I want forensics from whatever vehicle he’s currently using. Let’s go downstairs, talk to Wright,’ she says to Manon. ‘Anything comes in from SOCO, come and get us.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us you knew Edith Hind?’ Harriet says, without preamble.

‘Oh aye,’ says Wright, and Manon can see he’s rankled, he’s had enough. ‘That girl that’s been abducted? She an’ I were pals! Ye wan tae cuff me now or wait for the van tae pull up? Shall we bother wi’ a trial or head straight tae Whitemoor, where you can BANG ME UP TILL I DIE?’

Tony Wright has stood up, knocking his chair backwards. His solicitor, a silently composed man in a grey suit with matching waistcoat, casts him a look and he sits back down.

‘Tell me about your relationship with Edith Hind.’

‘No comment.’

‘How did you know her?’

‘No comment.’

And so it goes on: every question, so that eventually everyone is going through the motions in a monotone, Wright not even waiting for Harriet to finish her sentences. Until she mentions Taylor Dent. At this, Wright looks genuinely quizzical, frowns, then says, ‘No comment’ all the same. There is a knock at the door and Harriet stops the recording, and they step out of the room.

‘His flat’s clean,’ says Kim in the corridor. ‘I mean, nothing obvious, No items of clothing or anything belonging to Edith,’ she says to Harriet. ‘No blood on anything. Forensics’ll take a bit longer though.’

‘Fuck,’ says Harriet. She looks at Manon. They both know, unless a miracle happens in the course of the afternoon, they’re going to have to let Wright go. ‘His brief’s going to be all over this,’ she says, ‘asking what evidence we’ve got to sustain an arrest.’

‘We can’t charge him with speaking to her on the blower,’ says Manon.

The only way to come down after a week of fifteen-hours shifts is to lose herself in a book or film, so here she is, standing on the cinema steps, head down against the cold, one hand in a pocket and the other texting Fly Dent.

What did you have at the Portuguese café?

Somefin new. She call it Manioc. She says she introducing me to new foods. Not too sure meself.

Was it nice?

Not really. It was yellow. And dry.

Do you think she could introduce you to vegetables?

We met. We didn’t get on.

She shuffles forward in the queue for
My Life as a Dog
by Lasse Hallström, reluctant to flip the phone shut, so she is scrolling back through their conversation when a voice says, ‘You again.’

Fuck shit bollocks
. She tries to think of something before looking up. He is the very last person she wants to see, not because she doesn’t like him (she’s all at sea over whether she likes him), but because she never thanked him, never called, and she can’t bear the awkwardness. Is it too late, she wonders, as she looks up, to cough violently and pretend she’s been in bed with flu?

‘Alan,’ she says. ‘How are you?’

‘Hurt and rejected,’ he says, smiling at her.

‘Oh God, I’m really sorry. It was nice of you, the eye drops, and look—’ she blinks at him – ‘all better!’

‘So I see.’

‘I kept meaning to call and say thanks. But work – it’s just gone mental.’

‘Yes, your work,’ he says. And he’s smiling ironically, as if he sees through her. And she feels annoyed at his presumption, because actually it
has
been mental.

‘It affects me. It’s important to me,’ she says.

‘Yes, sir, officer,’ he says, smiling again, his hands in his pockets.

‘I like you,’ she blurts, without realising she’s saying it out loud until it’s too late. The thought becomes the deed. ‘I sometimes show off because I like you.’ And as she looks at him, nothing seems honest at all, not even this.

‘Swedish season,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ she laughs. ‘Swedish season.’

They stand there like that, as if they are an old couple, companionable, except her insides have clenched like an angry fist. Someone pays at the front and they shuffle forward a human width.

‘Shall we sit together this time? Would you mind?’ he says.

And she smiles. He has forgiven her and she is taken up with the sensation of his proximity – a new feeling, a new smell – and interested in where it might take them.

The boy in the film is called Ingemar. His mother is dying and he keeps saying, ‘It could have been worse,’ which reminds her of Fly. She feels her phone vibrate and opens it up to see a text from him, containing a photograph of strawberry laces and the words:
One of my five-a-day.

The cinema screen flickers black and white, colours and daylight. Words are said but she has lost track. His large hand is on the armrest between the two of them and she takes it in hers. Something receptive in her, like a flower opening, sad and vulnerable. He looks at her, then clasps her hand in return, and they both lean in and put their temples together. Her body is shaking on the inside and the vast cinema screen surrounds her with its flickering, meaningless images. She closes her eyes. His hands are big and enclosing, rough on the thumb pads. Foreign hands, new to the touch. He makes tiny stroking movements with his thumb and she can feel the aftershock between her legs. She senses the movement in the air when he blinks. He is seeking out her lips now, soft and dry, very gentle on hers, and her stomach flips over itself. She is dissolving into the dark. Alan the systems analyst, with voluminous corduroys and trainers like ocean liners. Who knew? Something unspoken, like a scent, makes her being reach towards him, and she is ardent, as if all the feelings are hers, far more than his, and she fills up all the more for it being so.

When the lights go up, their heads are still together, though her neck is hurting now and their hands have grown clammy.

‘Coffee?’ he says, and she nods.

They walk up the cinema stairs to the art deco café, as before. The same table but this time, when he walks towards her carrying their drinks – she’s having mint tea to freshen her breath – she notices his elegant hands.

He loops his maroon scarf over the back of the chair, saying, ‘I loved the stuff about the dog sent into orbit by the Russians. Think of him and nothing is that bad in comparison.’

Oh, she thinks, you
were
concentrating.

She takes a sip of tea.

He leans forward. ‘What now, Sergeant?’ he says with an ironic expression, and it’s as if he’s saying,
Wither the rest of our lives?

‘What now indeed,’ she says.

They sip their drinks, each with both hands around their cups and elbows on the table, and she wonders, did anything happen in there? Or did I imagine it all?

They lie in her bed. His arm is under her n
eck and she is holding the weight of his forearm at the wrist. Bouncing it occasionally.

‘I think you should know,’ she says, looking at the ceiling, ‘that my basic position on life is that it’s shit.’

‘Oh, I’m with you. I only stick around for the food and, frankly, that’s often crap as well.’

She laughs. Bounces his wrist in her hand. ‘It’s like, take Christmas,’ she says.

‘Brilliant dinner, awful day.’

She laughs again.

‘I think part of the appeal is that slight out-of-reach quality,’ he says.

‘You mean: “Oooh, I’m almost having a good time … Oh no, I’m not.”’

‘Yes, that’s it. Well, no, it’s more: “I’m going to enjoy it, I’m going to enjoy it, I’m going to enjoy it … Oh no, it’s rubbish again.”’

‘It’s expectation,’ she says. ‘That’s what kills off enjoyment. Holidays are stressful for the same reason.’

After a time, he says, ‘The dog. I’ve got to go back for Nana – let her out.’

Her insides tighten with the disappointment, but then he says, ‘Come with me?’

She opens one eye into the grainy morning light, forgetful for one moment, then sees his crumpled form next to her, burrowed down into the pillow. Blissful January! The cold swirling the room, but oh it is warm in the bed and we are two.
We are two.
She kisses his bare shoulder, smelling his skin, malty and male, like sourdough. Alien male! This is what she needs: a person who is other.

She rolls onto her back and closes her eyes. She feels his weight upon her, his lips soft and dry, his over-sweet breath which he is trying to disguise by keeping his mouth shut, his erection against her leg.

‘Well, hello,’ she says, laughing.

‘Hello,’ he mumbles, as if she shouldn’t make a joke of it.

His voice is gravelly, his eyes closed like a little rodent, bruised and nocturnal, so she wonders if he’s still asleep and wanting her out of his unconscious self, his sleepy, atavistic morning maleness. Oh joy.
Hello, you
.

His head is in her neck as they rock together, sleepily aroused, their faces still closed up, their cells thick with half-remembered dreams.

Over and over, all day in bed, wrapped in his grey linen sheets, her on top, bare-breasted, his face burrowed there; Manon trying to ignore the stoic glances from Nana, who has wandered in like a confused pensioner in a strip joint. In the shower, him insistent behind her, the water pouring down her neck and over the hard stones of her nipples and over his hand between her legs. They cannot stop, or when they stop they seem to start all over again, and each time it is new, each time they are remembering the last time and reinventing it too.

‘I’m going to give up my job and just have sex for a living,’ says Manon, in a shirt and knickers, her bare feet freezing on the kitchen floor.

‘Me too,’ he says, leaning against the counter eating toast. How is it that
not
touching, him being a few feet away, is erotic, a kind of come-on? ‘Our earnings might take a bit of a hit.’

‘Don’t care,’ she says, sidling up to him, putting a hand down his shorts. And she leads him back to bed.

My heart has made its mind up,

And I’m afraid it’s you.

She doesn’t want to leave this bubble, the two of them back at her flat now, exploring each other. She doesn’t want the abrasive world to shock them awake with its cold obligations. She looks at the two mobile phones, like black beetles on the side table – the work BlackBerry and the Samsung Android, which is for personal use – both switched off because when did she last have a life? When was the last time work took a back seat to the rich turbulence of her heart? She has earned this hiatus. She has earned the right to devote herself to Alan Prender
gasp
without disturbance, though the phones seem to drag her eyes to their black heft, and thoughts of whether she should check in with the office, and in particular with Helena Reed.

No, she will not. Her body is her antenna now and it chooses him, again and again. And she wonders, surprised, whether this will be her undoing. How much appetite is a woman allowed these days? She towers above him on all fours, feeling like an Alice who’s eaten the cake labelled Eat Me and now she is bigger than the room.