‘She says he left her house in Stoke at 5.30 p.m. on Sunday evening. He says he took a longer route home because of Sunday roadworks, which means his journey took closer to three hours, getting him back to George Street at 8.30 p.m. He then spent half an hour searching the house for Edith, calling various people such as Helena Reed, before phoning her parents, and then us at 9 p.m. Now, we haven’t got that return journey on camera. Might be that the cameras are out on this route, we’re checking that, or that he was tailgated by a lorry or something, or that mud splashed on his plates, which prevented a reading—’
‘Or that he was at home murdering his girlfriend,’ snorts Stuart, with rather more confidence than is merited for a first day in the office, if you ask Davy, which no one ever does.
‘Ah, Fergus,’ says Harriet. ‘The floor’s all yours.’
Fergus Kelly, a neat man in spectacles, never a speck on his suit. He has worked in the press office for ten years, including through the mayhem of Soham, which shook him more than the rest of them because it laid waste to half his contacts and all the unsaid niceties that had previously governed the flow of information.
‘So, the tabloids are well and truly on to this now,’ Fergus says, pushing his glasses up his nose. He has a fresh outbreak of acne on his chin, incongruous for a man in his forties, but understandable when you combined stress with the heavily refined carbohydrates stocked in the canteen. One of his daughters has cerebral palsy. Davy doesn’t know what’s made him think of this, but something about Fergus being under pressure doesn’t seem fair. ‘Obviously we can use the press interest to flush out information, but we need to control it – all enquiries must go through the press office. The Hinds have agreed to do a press conference at 11 a.m. tomorrow and we may wheel Will Carter out to see how much he sweats. Obviously, in the first days, the press tend to be very helpful in promoting the police line. It’s after a couple of days,’ he rubs the sweat at his brow, ‘when there’s nothing new to report, they can become quite …’ He coughs into his fist. ‘It’s important there are no leaks,’ he adds, making eye contact with every member of the team, especially the new recruit, in a way that is pleading rather than authoritative. ‘And that we stay in control, as I say, of the flow of information.’
Manon
Manon runs her tray along the counter, looking into rectangular metal pans of beans, sausages, watery mushrooms, tomatoes from a tin and scrambled eggs that have congealed into a solid square. A permanent breakfast offering in a lightless room, at 8 p.m. on a Monday evening, for people who have ceased to observe normal day and night patterns.
‘Hello, missy,’ says Larry from behind the counter. He is from Gabon. His name can’t be Larry, but he allows it, this lazy Anglicising of his name. ‘You look tired, dahling. Is long shift?’
Larry is smiling at her. He is always smiling, even though he works punishing hours on minimum wage, serving cheap food to an almost entirely white Cambridgeshire police force. Occasionally she hears him speak a beautiful African French to a female colleague behind that divisive counter. Manon often resolves to ask him about Gabon and how he came to Huntingdon, but there never seems to be a right time.
‘Big case, Larry. No rest for the wicked. Beans and sausages, please.’
She takes her tray to an empty table and looks up at the television, which is bracketed near the ceiling. Sky News is rolling out a stream on Edith Hind’s disappearance. The red ticker along the base of the screen reads: Huntingdon latest: 24-year-old Cambridge student Edith Hind missing. Father is Sir Ian Hind, physician to the Royal Family.
She goes to get the remote control from another table. Around the room are a smattering of officers on the case or supplying auxiliary support, including Stuart, who has a habit of catching Manon’s eye in a way she finds faintly inappropriate. Davy is a couple of tables away. He picks up his tray and moves over to Manon’s table, looking expectantly at the telly as she flicks over to Channel 4+1 for the news.
‘Officers say they are very concerned about a twenty-four-year-old woman who went missing from her home in Huntingdon on Saturday night,’ says the presenter, ‘very concerned’ being code for ‘we think she’s dead’. ‘As Cambridgeshire Police launch a manhunt, we have this report.’
Their home affairs correspondent is stood in the grey slush outside Edith’s house. The blackness of the winter night is lit around him, white puffs emerging on his breath and flurries of sleet blowing about behind his head.
‘Police are investigating what happened to Edith Hind after she got home from a party in Cambridge on Saturday night.’ Manon saws into a processed sausage, its meat sickening-pale. Purest eyelid and spine, she thinks. ‘The postgraduate student was shown on CCTV laughing and singing at The Crown pub in Cambridge with friends. She and her friend Helena Reed then made their way back to Edith’s house, here in George Street, and said goodnight. What happened next is a mystery.