‘Relaxing.’
‘I can’t wait to go to work tomorrow, just to have a sit-down. Canteen lunch? Whaddya say? I’ll buy you a watery soup to cheer you up. Or are you frontline officers too important?’
A familiar prod, beneath which is Bryony’s peevishness over all the excitement she thinks she’s missing out on. She’s an officer at Cambridgeshire too, but mostly desk-bound since the children – filing court papers or on disclosure.
‘My diary is remarkably free at the moment,’ Manon says. ‘Never know what the day’ll throw at me though. So yes, great. In theory. One-ish?’
‘Don’t know if I can hold out that long. I’m on toddler time. And Manon?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’ll be all right, you know. You’ll find him – the right man. I just know you will.’
Manon puts the phone down and shuffles under the duvet. She turns the dial on the radio, hears the reassuring murmuring which blends into the fuzz before sleep, when all her darkest ideas bubble up. ‘Victor Bravo, one-two, VB quite concerned by what we’ve got here. Can I have a supervisor please and can you notify on-call SIO.’
Manon opens her eyes and sits up. She knows what the gaps mean, what Oscar One in the control room is getting at, without being able to state it over the airwaves. Something serious. The balloon’s gone up. Senior Investigating Officer? That’s jumpy. Others will be hearing it too and start heading that way, but George Street is around the corner from her – five minutes if she jogs it. She hears DI Harriet Harper’s voice over the radio, saying she’s on her way.
Manon can get this, it’s hers. She flings back the duvet, listening intently to the radio while she pulls on trousers with one hand, reaching for her phone with the other.
‘Missing female,’ says Harriet on the phone. ‘Signs of a struggle. Meet me there.’
The cold cuts into the short gap between Manon’s scarf and her hat, but the place it hurts most is her toes. Bloody Chelsea boots. She might as well have worn flip-flops, and she’ll likely be out in the cold all night, at best in a stationary car with a phone pressed to her ear. She digs her hands deeper into her pockets and hunches her shoulders up to her ears, hearing the clean squeak of her boots in the fresh powder. The trees hold lines of snow like sleeves on every branch. The snow has made a rather unprepossessing urban street (one of the routes out of town and close to the railway line) prettier than it is. As she turns up the garden path to number 20 – a neat little worker’s cottage, identical to its neighbours – she uses a gloved hand to free her mouth of scarf, but Davy speaks first.
‘High-risk misper; looks like it, anyway,’ he says, stamping in the snow. He claps his hands. The tip of his nose is glowing red.
‘Any sign of forced entry?’ says Manon.
‘Door was open, but not forced. There’s some blood, hallway and kitchen, not that much of it, to be fair, and the coats on the floor,’ says Davy. ‘Where’s your paper suit?’
‘Where’s your scene log?’ she says, looking past him into the house.
‘Shit, you got me,’ he says, smiling, and she is reminded how good it is to be around DC Davy Walker. His simple affable kindliness. If all men were like Davy, there would be no wars.
‘Can I get a suit from your car?’
‘Here you go,’ he says, holding up his keys. ‘I’ll start a log now. Don’t tell Harriet.’
She returns, rustling in white paper, her egg-shaped hood encasing her face, and holds Davy’s arm as she pulls on some blue outer shoes.
‘Very fetching,’ he says.
‘I think so,’ says Manon, at his knees. ‘Who’s in there?’
‘Harriet and the missing girl’s boyfriend. She’s keen to shut the place down. I’d wait out here if I were you.’
Manon straightens. ‘Bollocks, I won’t touch anything. Why’ve we not got a DCI on this?’
Davy shrugs. ‘Christmas rota. Draper’s on an aggravated burglary in Peterborough. Stanton’s in the Maldives. Staffing’s back to the bone.’
She steps into the hallway where the coats have dropped from their hooks like fallen soldiers. They scatter the floor. Some of the hoods retain the pointed imprint of the hook on which they hung. Light anoraks (one navy, one red), a fleece (grey), two thick winter coats of the padded kind, one an olive parka with fur trim, the other navy. Leaning against the wall is a rucksack with the handle of a tennis racket poking out; some trainers line the skirting; a Hessian shopper with the words ‘Huntingdon Estates’ written on it. In front of her, on the laminate floor leading to the kitchen, are a couple of drips of blood – not a copious spattering or pooling of the kind they saw in killings, but the type of blood that might come from an injury such as a cut.