He increases the stretch by placing a hand on the top of his head and pulling gently. Even while doing this he wants to go to sleep. One side, then the other. He sees the department tilted on its side: Kim pouring herself some stewed coffee, Stuart sitting next to Colin, Harriet and Manon up front by the whiteboard, all of them gathering lugubriously, waiting for Fergus. Things are heating up in the press office.
Thirty-six hours missing. You’d expect a body or a firm sighting by now, or an injured girl, limping away from whatever trauma has befallen her. But this? Murkier and murkier it’s getting, and Davy doesn’t like the look of it.
He’s just come from interview room three, where Will Carter kept running a confused hand through his hair and saying, ‘Edith? And Helena?’ As if he and Manon had totally lost their marbles. ‘No,’ Carter mumbled. ‘No, I don’t think that can be right.’
‘Helena confirmed it to us,’ Manon said, without nearly as much sympathy as Davy would have liked.
He’s seen it all before, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less depressing – watching people reassess their entire surroundings as if buildings have been moved or reconfigured, roads diverted. The people they think they know have hidden lives: other women, other men, money stolen, debts hidden, a previous life in a cartel or on the game, children fathered in secret. It exhausts as well as fascinates him, churning it all up with their big stubby stick. Can’t you all just keep it simple, he wants to sigh. Can’t you keep it buttoned, keep your fists out of it, stop drinking, stop shagging? Isn’t life complicated enough?
And here was Will Carter, bewildered. He wasn’t standing up all of a sudden, like most of them did, trying to turn the table over and shouting, ‘You’re having a fucking laugh!’ or kicking a chair. No, he was rather genteelly running a hand through his hair, saying, ‘Edith and Helena? Seriously?’ And just looking mildly shocked.
‘Looking back,’ Manon said to Carter, and Davy thought, go easy, now, the man’s had a shock, ‘can you see evidence of that relationship?’
‘We were always together, always close, the three of us. I never questioned it. Shows what a fool I am.’ And Carter laughed in a self-deprecating way, which once again made Davy think, you poor chap.
Manon didn’t seem to share his sensitivity. ‘Perhaps you did know, Mr Carter,’ she said. ‘And became incensed by it. Jealous. Perhaps you came back early to confront Edith about it.’
‘No. I honestly didn’t know. And it makes me look like a total chump. And I know there are people who think you should know – you know, the inner workings of your nearest and dearest. But the fact is, if they don’t tell you …’
‘Did you have the feeling that Edith was going to leave you?’
Christ, Davy thought, give the man a sodding break.
Carter blew out through his cheeks. ‘No, no I didn’t. Are you going to tell me I’m wrong about that too? Listen, I can live with infidelity. A fling with Helena – it wouldn’t change how I feel.’ And his eyes brimmed with tears, fat droplets swelling to their bursting point but remaining just there, on the brink, beneath his slate eyes with their brown flecks. ‘But please don’t tell me she didn’t – doesn’t – love me any more. Please don’t do that, not with her missing.’
Davy had put a hand on Manon’s arm.
‘No, of course not,’ said Manon softly.
And Davy exhaled, feeling reassured she would not go in and sock him with the Jason Farrer fumble. One infidelity at a time, eh.
‘Money,’ Harriet says, bending her middle finger down in her new list of priorities. ‘Edith didn’t use banks. There was no cash in the house when we searched it. Now that either means Edith spent it all, or it was on her when she was abducted, or it was stolen and that her disappearance is the consequence of an aggravated burglary. Nigel, where are we with CCTV from the Post Office on the first of December?’
‘Owner doesn’t know how to burn it onto a DVD,’ says Nigel.
‘Well, go down there and do it for him,’ says Manon. She and Harriet exchange irritable glances.
Nigel shrugs. He’s been destroyed by life with newborn twins, thinks Davy, and now he’s too tired even to take umbrage. Have a dig, his dead eyes seem to say, I don’t care, as long as I can lie down.
‘Manon, can you take us through Will’s journey to Stoke and back, please?’ says Harriet.
‘We’ve got him travelling to Stoke, as he described, on Friday evening. He’s picked up by ANPR at three points on his outward journey and obviously his mother confirms his stay.’
‘Well, she would, wouldn’t she?’ mutters Harriet. ‘Sorry, carry on.’