Missing, Presumed (9 page)

She gazes into the middle distance, yawning while the room settles. They’re waiting for a morning briefing with Harriet, who is ensconced in her office with Stanton and the search adviser.

Colin is bowing his head low over the desk and muttering in Italian.

‘Posso avere quella senza aglio?’
he says to his iPhone.

‘What are you doing, Colin?’ says Manon, rubbing at the grit in her eye again. She pulls out her eyelid and blinks downward.

‘My Learn Italian app,’ Colin says. ‘Translation – can I have that without garlic? Can’t stand the stuff, nor can Gwyneth.’

‘P’raps Puglia isn’t your ideal holiday destination then,’ says Manon, the blinking not having made any difference.

‘Don’t see why they can’t cater to our tastes,’ says Colin, ‘seeing as we’re paying.’ He rocks back with his glasses pushed up onto his bald pate. Manon wonders: did Gwyneth look into Colin’s small, bloodshot eyes and say, ‘You are the UKIP-voting misogynist for me’? She must have done – they’d been married for thirty-odd years. And there was luck in that; you were lucky if you could be happy with what life threw your way (even if it was Colin) instead of generally dissatisfied, as Manon is. Colin’s Google searches were testament to the richness of their life together – boutique hotels in Margate, painting courses in Giverny, walking tours of the Tyrol.

‘Look, here’s one of the pensioni we’re staying in,’ Colin is saying, scrolling through some images of wafting muslin curtains framing a view of the sea.

This is one of the many things Manon hates about the open-plan office, apart from the way it favours crazed extroverts – it throws up so much envy. She’s regularly stabbed by it: envy of Colin and Gwyneth’s tour of Puglia; envy of Nigel and Dawn’s gurgling newborn twins; even of Davy and Chloe’s Friday night takeaway in front of the telly.

Stuart is leaning against the wall, his gaze intense into the room so that every time Manon looks up, she seems to catch his eye. Only his third day in the job, yet he has a strangely dominating effect on the department. His hands had brushed her neck as he helped her off with her coat, sending a charge through her, and she made a self-deprecating reference to over-doing the exercise last night. ‘Won’t be trying that again,’ she said. ‘From now on my fat arse stays on the chair.’

Her legs and arms have seized up completely, so that she can barely put on or take off a coat, and her attempts to zip up her boots this morning resulted in her rolling across the floor in a ball like some petrified hedgehog. She takes a sip of coffee. The tiredness has hit her forcefully – a wall she must scale. It’s always worse for a night’s sleep which, instead of giving the mind and body nimble new energy, seems to transmogrify exhaustion into cement.

Edith Hind is all over the morning papers, every front page carrying pictures of Sir Ian and Miriam. Most of it is straight reporting, but Manon noticed a couple of columnists in the mid-market titles commenting on the couple’s demeanour. ‘When all a parent can say of the child they love is that they were “very academic”, we need to look again at our value system,’ wrote one mop-headed moralist.

She looks down at the sheet prepared for her by Davy, detailing Edith’s known movements in the week before she disappeared. ANPR cameras have picked up one trip to Deeping in the G-Wiz on Sunday, 11 December, a week before she disappeared and the day after her affair with Helena began.

‘Looking forward to Christmas telly?’ says Davy, to no one in particular, as if trying to cheer up the room in general. ‘I’m going to be watching
Polar Express
.’

Manon has clasped her two hands around her mug. ‘Did you notice,’ she says, ‘Edith Hind and Will Carter didn’t have a telly?’

‘It’s not a human right,’ says Davy.

‘Bloody is,’ says Colin, without looking round.

‘I can’t stand people who don’t own tellies,’ says Manon.

‘How very reasonable of you,’ says Stuart, his eyes meeting hers, his arms crossed over his chest.

‘Shall I tell you why?’ says Manon, looking back at him.

‘Think you’re going to,’ mutters Davy.

‘Because they just watch loads on iPlayer and then go on and on about not having a telly to people who do have tellies.’

‘D’you want to know my theory?’ says Colin.

‘Oh God,’ says Manon, ‘close the windows, someone might hear.’

‘I think Edith Hind fancied a meat feast pizza, a movie, and a good ol’ shag without having to boil any mung beans or discuss the metaphysical poets.’

‘Right, yes, thank you again, Colin.’

Harriet and Stanton have entered the department and Harriet is clapping her hands for silence and saying loudly, ‘Right everybody,’ at which point Stanton says, ‘Harriet will be taking this briefing. I’ve got a press conference downstairs at nine. I think you should know, however, that my line will be that it is now more than seventy-two hours since she went missing and that, in our view, it is highly likely Edith Hind has come to harm.’

He’s reacted, Manon thinks, to Thackeray in that press conference and the criticism surrounding their last high-risk misper. Twelve-year-old Lacey Pilkington disappeared three years ago on a Peterborough estate. Stanton was SIO, then as a DCI. In a standard review, his investigation was criticised: officers had been blinded by the belief the girl was alive, which delayed appropriate action. It should have been upscaled to a suspected homicide sooner, and as a result, time and evidence were lost. Stanton, they said, had become hidebound by the emotions of the victim’s family. Who, incidentally, Manon recalls bitterly, were the ones who’d killed her.

‘I shall also be making clear,’ Stanton is saying, ‘that the main focus of our investigation is her complex love life.’ He turns, nods, and says, ‘Thanks, Harriet,’ then walks out of the department.

‘Ian Hind is going to
love
us,’ says Manon.

‘Not long now,’ says Miriam, sitting in the moulded plastic chair of interview room one. ‘To see Rollo, I mean.’ She can smell vending-machine instant coffee, dispensed in those squat brown cups that crackle in the hand.

Ian doesn’t answer her. He is pacing still. She doesn’t know how he keeps going; he seems to expend so much energy every minute of the day and isn’t resting at night either. He has been out there, standing next to the parish priest who joined the community in prayer, doing his best to hide his distaste for the members of the public joining the search (and failing, in Miriam’s opinion: she’s never seen a thank-you speech so faltering and pinched), paying to print posters, T-shirts and balloons emblazoned with Edith’s smiling face and the date 17.12.2010.

He was pleased, at first, that Detective Chief Superintendent Gary Stanton was overseeing, as if someone at his own level was finally in charge –
a chap
– someone who could actually make something happen. Then he watched this morning’s press conference on Sky. It caused him to puff, then stand up and walk around the room, then tut again, the tension fizzing off him and transferring itself to Miriam.

More than seventy-two hours. Edith has been gone more than seventy-two hours and there is a palpable cooling in the atmosphere surrounding the investigation. It has slowed. Officers have returned to normal shift patterns. The search is ongoing, dogged, hundreds of police inching forward with sticks or torches or in diving suits, but Miriam has sensed it no longer contains the urgency of searching for someone alive.

She takes a deep breath, leans her head back, and closes her eyes. She’s not sure she can take another night in this town – another night sweating and dry-mouthed in that airless hotel room; another meal in the bar, at a slippery table, her clothes infused with the smell of deep-fat frying. She can’t wait to see the back of Huntingdon, its dirty snow, pound shops and grey, hunkered streets. She realises she harbours a fantasy that when she leaves this place, she’ll leave behind this nasty business – the terrible feelings, the sleeplessness, the way her mind oscillates wildly between terror and blankness. Back in Hampstead, she might return to the woman she was only four days ago, preparing for Christmas, snipping stems of eucalyptus, steeping dried figs in brandy, untangling strings of white pin lights. She feels a growing anger with Edith for putting her through this, as if she were some limitlessly absorbent sponge for her daughter’s mess. And then her anger makes her cry again because she wants nothing except to have Edith back.

‘Sir Ian, Lady Hind,’ says a male voice, and Miriam wipes her eyes and sees DCS Gary Stanton, DI Harriet Harper and DS Manon Bradshaw, all three re-introducing themselves.

Oh no, oh no, they must have found a body. Why all three like this? Like some ghastly triumvirate. Miriam looks up at them, a hand clasped over her mouth, her eyes flicking from one to the next.

‘There’s nothing new to report,’ says DS Bradshaw, acknowledging her terror.

‘What the hell was all that this morning?’ Ian is saying.

‘I felt I had to say what I thought,’ says Stanton, calmly. ‘I’m sorry if it was upsetting for you.’

‘Do you have any idea what the tabloids are going to be like after this?’ says Ian, though Miriam knows that it is the ‘come to harm’ line which has upset him more than any of the salacious things they said about Edith’s love life. He cannot, will not, bear it.

‘We need information. The press is the best way to flush that out.’

‘You effectively told the press she’s dead.’

‘We have to be realistic …’ says Stanton.

‘You have to find her, that’s what you have to do. Find her. Stop posturing and just bloody well find her—’ says Ian, stopped by tears which seem to ambush him.

Miriam’s gaze has settled on DS Bradshaw, who is leaning against the closed door, her hands behind her back. Beautiful curls, unruly. She’s always observing, and she now returns Miriam’s gaze, though neither woman smiles.

‘We feel,’ says DI Harper, ‘that you would be more comfortable back at home, rather than holed up in a hotel in Huntingdon surrounded by the press.’

‘What you’re saying is, you’re giving up,’ says Ian. ‘You’re closing down the search and you don’t want me breathing down your neck.’

‘Absolutely not,’ says Stanton. ‘This is not, in any way, a scaling down of the case. The search for Edith will continue at full tilt and you will be kept fully informed by your liaison officer.’

‘Great, you’re sending us away with a depressed shadow,’ says Ian. ‘Do we get to keep her for Christmas?’

‘Ian,’ says Miriam, almost in a whisper.

‘Your liaison officer is there to support you. We simply don’t feel it’s sensible to keep you in Huntingdon,’ says Stanton. ‘But please be reassured this is not a scaling down of the case.’

Of course it bloody is, thinks Miriam.

‘I won’t allow this to go cold,’ says Ian. ‘I won’t allow you to stop searching for our child. If I have to call Roger …’

He is standing beside her chair, and Miriam takes hold of his hand and squeezes it, then presses it against her lips and closes her eyes tight to stop the tears from coming, because the smell of him, and the soft feeling of the hairs on the back of his hand against her cheek, and the way he is fighting so hard for them both, for all of them, is making her well up.

‘I know it’s hard,’ says DS Bradshaw, much softer than either of her bosses. ‘Leaving this place – it must feel like leaving Edith. But you can’t stay in Huntingdon indefinitely. And your home is less than two hours away so …’

‘They’re right, darling,’ says Miriam, looking up at Ian, still holding his hand against her cheek. ‘We’re not doing any good here. We might as well go home and sleep in our own bed. But please God don’t make us take that basset hound of a woman with us.’

‘It’s for the best,’ says DI Harper, ‘and I can assure you there will be no diminution of effort or dedication.’

‘There will be no diminution of effort?’ says Manon, as she and Harriet climb the echoey staircase to MIT, without Stanton, who has gone off to stoke his belly with another large lunch. ‘Bit of a mouthful, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh look, he gets right on my tits. I can’t think straight with him looking at me, thinking—’ Harriet puts on an upper-crust Sir Ian accent – ‘What manner of fuckwit are you?’

‘Yes, he’s a bit … austere.’

‘A bit?’

‘Well, he’s worried. I’d want my dad to do the same.’

‘S’pose. She’s a bloody cold fish, too.’

Manon stops, a hand on Harriet’s arm so that she turns on the stairs. ‘No, she isn’t,’ says Manon. ‘She isn’t at all. She just doesn’t put it all out there.’

‘We really need to get on and identify the people in the Post Office queue,’ says Harriet. ‘Nigel’s got the footage but some of them are shielded by hoods or they’re just standing at the wrong angle.’

‘We can get the staff to corroborate with their paperwork. Where’s Will Carter staying?’

‘Not with Helena Reed, that’s for sure. We’ve let him go home to Stoke but asked him to stay put so we can keep him informed. The Hind brother’s due in this afternoon. I want you and Davy to interview him as soon as he arrives, OK? What are you up to tonight, anything nice?’

‘Another date,’ says Manon. ‘To be honest, I’d rather look at a thousand hours of local authority CCTV.’

They sit in a row in conference room one, waiting for the child protection briefing, everyone on their smart phones. Manon has just received the latest demand for a dating update from Bryony. She’s next to Nigel, who has turned his back to the room and is hissing into his phone, a hand cupped over the mouthpiece. Dawn, obviously. Colin is downloading confirmation of his Ryanair flights. Kim is yawning, her feet up on the chair in front. The room is an oasis of police-blue – blue foam chairs, blue curtains, blue carpet – and smells of brewing coffee. It is filling up, people shuffling along the rows, slight bend at the knee: ambulance crews from Hinchingbrooke, passport control, CID. People nodding, saying hello. A few uniforms, rustling fluorescent jackets with zips and toggles and crackling radios, which make them seem larger than the rest. Amazing she can’t find a date among this lot.

Davy, to the other side of Manon, is sat bolt upright, his neck straining upwards so he can look at the woman at the podium, who is shuffling papers before she begins.

‘You should listen,’ he says to Manon. ‘This stuff’s important. You wouldn’t believe what’s happening out there.’

But Manon is texting Bryony.

This one’s a poet. Therefore not simply fucktard, but fucktard who cannot pay mortgage
.

‘Hello everyone, and thanks for coming,’ says the mousey voice at the podium. ‘I am Sheila Berridge, head of child protection services.’

Manon’s phone vibrates.

You don’t know that. He might be laureate-in-waiting. Anyway, I admire you for being dating daredevil. B

Manon yawns, hears the words ‘cross-sector involvement’ and ‘joined-up thinking’ waft across the room towards her.

‘We all need to be aware of the crisis in our children’s homes and how this spills out into all our sectors.’ Sheila Berridge warns of unprecedented numbers of children entering the care system as more and more families bump and skid below the poverty line. There are currently sixty-seven thousand children in care in England, she says.

Davy leans in to Manon, whispers urgently, ‘Sixty-seven thousand. That’s a city three times the size of Huntingdon.’

‘A city of children,’ says the woman at the podium, as if she and Davy are telecommunicating, ‘children with their attachments broken, the majority – seventy per cent – having experienced abuse or neglect. Once in care,’ she continues, trying to get above the shuffling and bleeping and restlessness of the room, ‘many children experience the instability of multiple short-term placements. They are more likely to go missing, making them vulnerable to harmful situations such as sexual exploitation.’

‘I see this all the time,’ Davy whispers to Manon, ‘at the youth group. I mean, they’re
children
.’

‘The pattern of neglect,’ says Sheila Berridge’s harried voice, ‘is getting worse. We know of gangs of men who prey on girls in care, getting them addicted to alcohol and drugs, then grooming them for sex. Paedophiles are operating in many care homes. This affects all of us, every agency in this room.’

Manon looks to the other side of her, away from Davy’s keen expression, and sees Nigel yawning. He casts her a look as if to say, ‘Boring, huh?’

‘We must be aware of how difficult these children are to help,’ says Sheila Berridge, her voice now raised and powerful, ‘and to be mindful that they
must
be listened to, however much they change their stories, however dangerous and unpredictable they seem. We must listen to what they tell us. We must take them very seriously indeed.’