Missing, Presumed (5 page)

Manon had watched them as the hubbub went on around her: Davy all animation, eyes on Chloe as if she were lit by some celestial cone, describing something to her. Chloe was looking over his shoulder, her face unmoving. She was a woman in a perpetual sulk and Davy was forever chivvying her out of it.

‘Face like a slapped arse,’ said Kim Delaney, looking across the room with Manon. ‘Dunno what he sees in her.’

But to Manon it makes perfect sense. Davy’s at his best when rectifying. He often comes into the office with a carrier bag destined for the youth centre where he volunteers – ‘Choccy Weetos for Ryan’, ‘Rex needs socks’ – and the brightness in his eyes tells her how much satisfaction this tenderness gives him. Warming up a frozen, miserable girlfriend is his destiny. If Davy got together with someone indomitably cheerful … well, Manon doesn’t know what he’d do with himself. End it all, probably.

‘I believe this leads to the abode,’ he says, as they turn down a wooded track. Bare tree branches bend over the car and verges rise up on either side. The sky seems to darken as the countryside burgeons around them.

‘Drop the Shotley guff, will you?’ says Manon, irritably. Davy loves the jargon they inculcate at police school. He’s forever saying the suspect ‘has made good his escape’ with his ‘ill-gotten gains’.

‘Bit peckish?’ says Davy, reaching into his pocket for a rich tea biscuit, which he hands to her.

‘This place is a bit Hansel and Gretel, isn’t it?’ says Manon, eating the biscuit and peering up at the menacing tree fingers that reach for each other above the windscreen. The car is rocking over stones.

‘Shouldn’t be far down this track,’ says Davy.

The track is bordered by logs, sawn ends forming a honeycomb grid. Their tyres plough through mud, which splinters with ice in places. The light lowers a notch, soaked up by the seaweed-gloss leaves on a row of bushes – rhododendrons, Davy says – ribboned with snow.

He is hunched towards the windscreen as they emerge in front of an ivy-clad house, broader than it is tall, with a pitch-roofed porch and a carport to the side. The house is ensconced in countryside, the woodland growing denser and darker to the sides and behind them.

With their arrival, a sensor light has clicked on above the front door – a rectangle of fire in Manon’s eyes. The ivy running up the walls of the house is straining in at the windows, whose wooden frames are painted greyish green.

‘Glad I’m not Polsa having to search this place,’ she says.

Davy turns off the engine so that all they can hear is its ticking and a blackbird, its lonely cry seeming to tell them the place is deserted.

Manon pats along the high shelf of architrave in the porch, and there it is, among dust and dead insects – the key. She puts it in an evidence bag, then uses Edith’s set in the lock. The brass knob, green-gold, is icy even through her latex gloves, and its round skirt-plate rattles loosely. They step into a black-and-white tiled hall with slate-blue walls. The house smells of wood smoke and the outdoors – an oxygenated, muddy smell that is not quite damp. An umbrella stand is filled with brollies and walking sticks, and to their left – Manon peers around the door, painted mustard yellow – is a boot room, wallpapered with Victorian images of birds as if in a shooting lodge. She squats next to a line of wellingtons – one black pair and three green – and touches the mud that cakes them.

‘Davy?’ she calls, and he appears by her side. ‘Does this look fresh to you?’

She swaps places with him and follows the hallway out to a baronial-scale lounge. The ceiling is double height, the walls blotchy with blood-red lime wash. There is a grand open fireplace with white stone surround – the sort you could rest an elbow on when you came in from fishing in the Fenland rivers. A charred black scar runs up the back of the brickwork in the hearth. Manon squats beside the grate but it contains only the cold, crocodile husks of burnt-through logs.

The fire is surrounded on three sides by red sofas patterned with fleur-de-lys and collapsing with age and gentility. She can imagine the Hinds reading their Dickens hardbacks or their subscriptions to the
New York Review of Books
, fire roaring and some string music playing in the background.

From the lounge is a staircase leading up to a minstrels’ gallery and off it, the bedrooms. Manon is feeling her way, the house cast in painterly shadows. Swathes of muddy colours curling up the staircase or viewed through an open bedroom door: mustard, rose, slate blues and grey, one leading on to the next. She pushes open a door to a vast bedroom – Ian and Miriam’s, she assumes, because it is furnished with a grand French bed, its headboard framed in ornate gold and upholstered with grey linen. There is an imposingly dark French armoire, too, its bottom drawer slightly open. Manon walks to the window – a long cushion in the same grey linen has created a window seat with two Liberty-print pink blossom pillows at either end. From here she can see the front drive and their car, and she has an urge to go towards it, to drive away.

She jumps at the sound of a door slamming and her heart thuds in the shadows of the mansard window.

‘Boss?’ calls Davy, entering the room.

‘Have you checked all the downstairs rooms?’

‘I have.’

‘Right, well, let’s check the rest of the rooms up here and the outbuildings. Then Polsa can take it from there.’

‘Not a bad little bolt-hole,’ says Davy.

Manon shivers. ‘Gives me the creeps.’

They’ve left her waiting in interview room two and in the waiting, she can’t help but rehearse what she’ll say, though she fears the rehearsal will make her appear guilty, like trying to make your face seem natural when going through passport control in Moscow or Tehran – the more you think about it, the more rictus your expression becomes. Not that she’s ever been to those places, but even in the queue at Brittany Ferries she has made a point of catching the immigration officer’s eye and smiling, so as to say, ‘You won’t find any contraband in
my
backpack.’

The strip light above Helena’s head fizzes then plinks, as if there’s an insect dying inside it. She’s always rehearsing, having imaginary conversations in her head which pre-empt real encounters – like she’s rehearsed her return to Dr Young’s couch after the Christmas break and how she’ll tell him all that has happened with Edith. She used to rehearse her sessions so much that when she first started with Dr Young, it had taken quite a long time to get her to diverge from the script and ‘allow things to emerge’, as he put it.

Helena hears a door slam somewhere in the corridor, brisk footsteps, and her heart quickens at the prospect of someone coming in. She sits upright, brushes at her skirt, but the footsteps clack past the door and drift away. She slouches again. They are keeping her waiting deliberately in this empty room with only a Formica table with metal legs and blue plastic chairs – two on the other side of the desk to where she is sitting, so presumably there will be two of them. Outnumbered by detectives. She’s never met a detective before.

‘Hello,’ she mouths, picturing herself half rising and putting out a hand. ‘I’ve never met a detective before.’ Then she catches her reflection in a pane of brown-coloured mirror set in the wall, her lips moving soundlessly (or like a psychiatric patient, depending on who’s watching).
Is
anyone watching?

‘I wanted to get Edith home safely,’ she murmurs, her eyes flicking to the mirrored wall. ‘I never imagined that home wouldn’t be safe, that something could happen to Edith
after
I had dropped her home to George Street.’ No, saying that seems to implicate Will. She must phrase it some other way. Just go back to the beginning. Keep the narrative simple.

Edith had shouted, ‘Geronimo!’ and tipped back another tequila shot, one of many she drank at The Crown that night. Then the barman rang last orders.

Helena told Edith they should go, it was 11.30 p.m., they’d miss the bus back to Huntingdon otherwise. And anyway, she was tired – hot, tired, and fed up. The Crown was heaving; she was jostled by the crowd – townies, rowers, Corpus postgrads like herself and Edith.

‘What are you studying, Miss Reed?’ she imagines being asked.

‘Psychology. I’m a psychology fellow. My PhD is on gratification and its links to obesity.’

The door opens and a woman walks in – dishevelled, with a mass of curls. Behind her is a young man, about Helena’s age, with an open face and friendly, sticky-out ears.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ says the woman, holding out her hand. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw; this is Detective Constable Davy Walker. We just need to ask you a few questions.’

‘No, I mean, yes, of course.’ Her heart beats so hard she fears it might be audible. While they set down notepads and fiddle about with a recording device, Helena puts a hand to her cheek, hoping the heat she can feel there is not visible. ‘I don’t know anything,’ she blurts.

‘If you just wait a moment,’ says DS Bradshaw. ‘We can begin once I get this machine set.’

A long beep is emitted from the recording device.

‘Most postgrads live in Cambridge, don’t they?’ asks DS Bradshaw.

‘Yes. Most, but not all. There are apartments for married couples and single rooms provided by the college, but we – Edith and Will, and later myself – moved out towards the end of our undergraduate degrees. To Huntingdon.’

Edith and Will, and later myself
. It would be foolish to mention how they teased her about her own move to Huntingdon. Edith was always teasing.

‘It’s cheaper,’ Helena remembers saying to them, rather defensively. ‘And I like the quiet, y’know? Being in halls can be so … claustrophobic. I’ll definitely get more work done here and the commute’s easy-peasy.’

‘It’s all right, Hels,’ Edith had said, not even looking up from chopping vegetables. ‘We know you’re our stalker.’

‘Wouldn’t your Christmas do normally be in the college? In Corpus Christi?’ the detective asks.

‘Well, yes and no. The graduate bar can be a bit damp. Jason – Jason Farrer, he’s an English PhD like Edith – wanted something a bit livelier. They can be a bit socks-and-sandals, the postgrad lot.’

‘Socks and sandals?’

‘Yes, you know, drilling down into the minutiae – sex life of chives, that kind of thing. All very nerdy. They’re not the best at letting their hair down. Jason arranged the Christmas do – he chose The Crown.’

‘And Edith, how did she seem?’

‘Well, drunk, to be honest. She wanted to do karaoke. She was doing tequila shots. I told her we should go – this was about 11.30 p.m., last orders.’ Helena stops.

DS Bradshaw waits. ‘How did Edith react? Did she want to leave?’

Helena thinks back to Edith sticking out her tongue in Helena’s direction, then swivelling on the balls of her feet to the makeshift dance-floor-cum-karaoke stage.

‘Miss Reed?’

‘Yeah, no, she was fine. She gave us a terrible rendition of “Use Somebody” by the Kings of Leon.’ Helena stops again. She must be careful where this ventures.

DS Bradshaw is looking intently at her, waiting. ‘Something you’re remembering? About the evening?’

‘I’ll tell you who was sniffing around that night,’ says Helena. ‘Graham Garfield, Edith’s Director of Studies. Asked me where Will was. Bit predatory.’

‘Predatory how?’ asks DS Bradshaw.

‘Well, he’s always hanging around the students, y’know? Even though they’re half his age. He was watching Edith, watching her singing, and he just had this look. He saw how out of it she was.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

‘I told him Will was away for the weekend, but that things were – are – solid between them. Edith and Will, I mean.’

‘And you say you got the guided bus home?’ Manon says.

Helena Reed is shifting about, straightening, crossing and uncrossing her legs. ‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘You know, the one that runs along railway tracks part of the way, between Cambridge and Huntingdon.’

She wears a coral scarf looped tightly about her neck and a camel cardigan buttoned up – a rather Parisian, precise attire. Manon has an irrational mistrust of very tidy-looking people. They work too hard at concealment, and besides, she doesn’t understand how they pull it off. Manon seems to emerge from her flat, even at the start of the day, with a rogue bulging shirt button showing a flash of bra, or a smear unnoticed in the half-light of the bedroom (she often finds herself wetting a bit of toilet roll in the second floor toilets and going at a stain, only to lace it with beads of wet tissue).

Helena’s knees are pinned together and her pencil skirt is smoothed tight (Manon covets the idea of the pencil skirt, much as she covets the idea of being a tidy person, but hasn’t the knees for it). Helena Reed is held in, Manon decides, and rather concerned with what others see, though as soon as Manon passes this judgement, she wonders if it isn’t genetic – the whole personal tidiness thing. One is destined to become one’s mother, after all. This thought makes her smile to herself – there are worse things.

‘I led Edith off the bus and walked her back to George Street,’ Helena is saying. ‘It was snowing and a bit slippy – she was tipsy and rather giggly, so I had to hold on to her. And when we got to the cottage, I got her keys out of her bag to let her in.’

‘And you closed the door behind you?’

‘Yes, it self-locks when you close it – a Chubb, you know what I mean. I led her to the kitchen, helped her to take off her coat—’

‘This was the green parka, with the fur trim?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘The night at the pub, the people who were there. She was flirting with Jason Farrer, the guy I mentioned? Bit of a letch, in my view. I s’pose I told her off a bit.’

‘Did you have an argument?’

‘Not an argument, no. She shrugged it off, really; told me I was being an old prude.’

‘Did you or Edith get out two wine glasses while you were there, to have another drink?’

‘No, God, no. She’d had more than enough and I was tired. I didn’t even take my coat off.’

‘Did she seem anxious, frightened of anything, or anyone?’

‘No, she was happy – drunk and silly. If anything, it was me who was grouchy.’

‘Did she talk about Will Carter at all?’

‘Not really. At one point she said I was “as bad as Will”, meaning boring, I s’pose.’

‘Edith’s mother mentioned a certain cooling between Edith and Will. Do you think Edith wanted to end the relationship?’

‘Not to my knowledge. She complained about him sometimes, but that’s normal, isn’t it? If you’re suggesting that Will had something to do with Edith disappearing, that’s mad. He’d never—’

‘Just answer the question, Miss Reed.’

‘No, she didn’t mention breaking up with him, not to me.’

‘Did they fight – physically?’

‘No, God, no. Look, it wasn’t like that. Will wouldn’t say boo to a goose. His worse crime is that he can be a bit dull.’

‘Were you aware that Edith kept a lot of cash in the house?’

‘The MoneyGram transfers? Yes. We all thought it was a bad idea, but Edith’s a bit of a warrior in that way. She won’t be budged.’

‘Did you notice any cash lying around in the house on Saturday night?’

‘No. It’s not like she leaves wads of twenties by the kettle. She isn’t stupid. She hides it in various different places. Will will know better than me. You know, a tin in the kitchen cupboard, another in the bathroom. That sort of thing.’

‘Who else knows about the money?’

‘Only her friends. Not anyone who would rob her, I don’t think.’

‘Going back to Jason – you say Edith was flirting with him. Flirting how?’

Helena frowns. ‘You know, giggling with him. I … I don’t want to … I don’t want to land her in it.’

‘I think we’ve gone beyond that, Miss Reed. Edith has been missing for thirty-five hours now. Time is very much of the essence.’

‘So, OK, Edith and Jason went outside the pub. I don’t know what they were doing, maybe just having a cigarette.’

‘How long were they outside together?’

‘Oh, not long. Five minutes. I know because I was casting about for her. I wanted to leave. She came back in, I had her coat ready, and we left pretty much straight away.’

‘Thank you, Miss Reed. If you wouldn’t mind waiting here for a bit longer, we may have some further questions for you shortly.’

‘Thank you for coming in, Mr Farrer,’ says Manon, setting her clipboard down on the table in interview room three while Davy fiddles with the recording device, saying the date and time and names of everyone in the room.

Jason Farrer leans back in his chair, legs wide apart, one elbow bent behind him on the chair’s backrest. He wears a yellow knitted waistcoat with leather buttons, brown baggy corduroys, and a checked shirt. His hair hangs in a foppish wave across one side of his face. He straightens as she takes up her seat opposite him.

‘Look, I want to help in any way I can.’ His aristocratic accent comes as a shock – surprising to hear and awkward to deliver. He is barely moving his mouth, the words escaping out the sides.

‘Bit unusual, isn’t it, for postgrads like Edith and Will to live outside the town – as far as Huntingdon, I mean?’ says Manon.

‘Not just unusual, practically unheard of. Everyone lives in Leckhampton, where the dining room is and the bar. But they’re like that, Edith and Will. Superior. Like being out on a limb.’

She’s wrong-footed by his candour. Charmers like him normally fight hard to mask themselves with affable decency towards absolutely everyone. Then he leans forward towards her across the desk, his hands clasped, and she realises he’s drunk. Rolling drunk. The ethanol rises off him in an energetic dance with the air.

‘They have a project,’ he says.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘To live truthfully. Grow food, cook wholesomely, cycle, or chug along in that trumped-up lawnmower of hers. I think they thought student digs would corrupt them. Course, her father pays for everything – the house, the
evil
gas and electricity. She is Will’s flexible friend in so many ways.’

‘Who’s driving this project then – Edith or Will?’

‘Oh, they’re both really into it. The aim is to live a simple but, I s’pose, pure life. They called it living truthfully, which made me want to self-harm. I thought it was vanity. You have to understand – Edith and Will are the most beautiful specimens Cambridge will ever produce. When they got together in our final year, it was like Kate-Middleton-Barbie had found Ken.’

‘Sorry, I don’t get it. How is growing fresh food vanity?’

‘Life’s a competition,’ says Farrer. ‘Their superior lifestyle was their quickest route to looking down on people. I mean, that’s why people do it, isn’t it? Grow loads of chard? It isn’t because they
want
chard. I mean, no one
buys
chard. It’s so they can tell someone else they grow chard. And that someone will go away worrying about the fact they don’t grow chard.’

‘Except you.’

‘I’ve never wanted to grow chard.’

They look at each other. Farrer is slumped, lolling with the drink. He lets out a little girlish giggle, like gas bubbles escaping – then puts a hand in front of his mouth to stifle them.

‘You do realise you’re being questioned in relation to the disappearance and possible abduction of a young woman,’ says Manon.

‘Sorry,’ says Farrer, another little giggle escaping involuntarily. ‘I find it hard to take anything seriously. Look, they used to bang on about it endlessly.’ His words are not quite slurring but rolling up against each other, like waves swelling out at sea. ‘You know, “Here’s some organic muffins I made.” “Will is at home, fashioning us a table out of reclaimed crutches.” It was tiresome.’

Manon nods.

‘Still, it’s not enough to murder someone, is it?’ says Farrer. ‘I mean, you don’t think Edith was abducted because she had a curly kale glut, do you?’

‘You don’t seem very concerned,’ says Manon.

‘That’s me all over.’

‘Can we go back to Saturday night at The Crown? You were with Edith at the bar.’

‘Yes.’

‘And what made the two of you go outside?’

‘She put her mouth next to my ear and whispered, “Let’s go outside, Farrer.” Very sexy it was, too.’

‘Had she been flirting with you in the run-up to that night?’

‘God, no. Edith always treated me with the utter contempt I deserve. That’s what made it so exciting when she came on to me.’

‘So you went outside. Then what happened?’

‘Well, lots of heavy breathing. She was up against me, against the wall of the pub. It was freezing and dark. She was whispering sweet nothings in my ear. Then we had … Well, I’ll protect her honour, if you don’t mind. Then she suddenly stopped and went back inside.’

‘I’m sorry, we’re going to need some detail. Did you kiss?’

‘I’ll say.’

‘Did it go further than that?’

Farrer smiles at Manon but she has done too many of these interviews to be squeamish.

‘Digital penetration?’ she asks.

‘You make it sound so romantic,’ he says.

‘Answer the question, please.’

‘Yes.’

‘Consensual?’

‘I had given my consent, yes,’ he says, giggling again.

‘How did Edith call a halt?’

‘She pulled my hand out from her knickers, straightened her clothes, and went back inside the pub.’

‘Did you follow her?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘You didn’t want to pursue her, to finish what she started?’

‘Yes, I can see how you’d think that,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘But I’m not really the type to pursue anything. I don’t really have it in me.’

‘You’re doing an English PhD at Cambridge,’ says Manon. ‘You must be able to pursue things rather vigorously.’

‘Gosh. Vigorous. What a terrific word, Sergeant. It’s certainly never been used to describe me. But you’re right, of course. Poetry is my secret weapon. Give me a spot of Gerard Manley Hopkins and I soar. In all other areas of my life, I’m a total fuck-up. No one believes I’ll finish my PhD, least of all me.’

‘How did you get home from the pub?’

‘I walked – well, fell, really – down Grange Road to my rooms in Leckhampton House. Porter’ll confirm it, and no doubt some of your evil big brother cameras have me weaving about the streets. And then I spent the night with the lovely Ros or Rosie – at least, I think that’s her name – who happened to be in the kitchen when I got back. Your chaps are checking with her now, I believe.’

‘And Edith went back in to find Helena Reed.’

‘The Limpet. Whenever Edith turns around, the Limpet’s sure to be there.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Ask yourself why Helena lives in Huntingdon. I mean, Edith and Will, they’re cocks with a project. But Helena? What’s she doing there? Bit suffocating, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Go on.’

‘Ask the Limpet what Edith gave her as an early Christmas present.’

‘Why don’t you stop beating around the bush, Mr Farrer, and tell me what you mean.’

He stops, looks down to the floor by his side, his arms dangling, and Manon wonders if he’s going to be sick. He has the soaked-in drunkenness of someone who’s been marinating in it for some time – days, probably.

‘They were at it. Edith told me – when we went outside the pub together. Of course, it could be she was just trying to turn me on.’

‘What did she say exactly?’

‘She said she’d been having it off with Helena and now she couldn’t get rid of her.’ He lets out another high-pitched giggle.

‘Did you expect this type of behaviour from Edith?’ asks Manon.

‘Well, no, it wasn’t typical. But Cambridge is full of people toeing the line, swotting in libraries to please Daddy, and then rebelling and taking up crack or throwing themselves out of a tower. You know we actually have a
day
called Suicide Sunday. It’s a fucked-up place, once you get under the skin of it. I figured Edith had just freaked out like the rest of us.’

The adrenalin has swept away Manon’s tiredness as she and Harriet pummel down the stairs towards interview room two, back to Helena Reed.

‘Is he reliable?’ Harriet asks, pushing through the double doors.

‘No, not at all. He’s drunk and feckless. But I don’t think he’s got any reason to lie about this.’

‘Unless he’s covering his own tracks.’

‘Let’s just see what she has to say.’

Helena looks up at them as they enter the room. Kim is standing by the wall with her hands clasped behind her back.

‘I told you, we’re friends,’ says Helena. She unloops her coral scarf and places it on her knees. The colour is high in her cheeks. ‘I’ve known her since our first day at Corpus. Sorry, may I have a drink of water?’

‘Just friends?’ asks Harriet, leaning both elbows on the table and scrutinising Helena.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she says. She looks up as Kim places a plastic cup in front of her. ‘Thank you.’

‘Jason Farrer says you and Edith were lovers,’ says Harriet.

‘Well, Jason Farrer’s lying,’ she says. ‘He’s not exactly trustworthy.’

‘He says Edith told him, when they went outside the pub together.’

She is looking wildly now at the two of them sitting opposite her, and Manon senses she cannot see them. Her skin has taken on a sweaty sheen.

‘Oh God,’ she whispers, covering her entire face with her hands.

‘Were you jealous when Edith went outside with Jason Farrer?’ asks Harriet.

Helena keeps her face covered.

‘Did you confront Edith about it when you got home to George Street? Things get a bit heated?’

‘No, no, no,’ she says, still with a hand shielding her eyes, her face directed at the door, away from their gaze. ‘It wasn’t like that … It was … I don’t know how to explain it to you because I don’t understand it myself.’