‘Nice road,’ he says. He presses on his key fob and the car answers with its electronic whup-whep. The lights flash twice and they walk along a pavement sparkling with frost, their breath smoking and their hands dug into their pockets. It’s a relief to be out of the frenetic heat of HQ – a million conflicting sightings of Edith and the deceiving infiltration of reporters who are back on the story.
A ribbon of mist curls through the tops of the trees. He looks into the front gardens: chequerboard tiling and the bare stems of magnolias or lilacs; bicycles chained to black iron railings; bay windows so clean they seem liquid and topped with little proud roof turrets in grey slate.
They have come to the posh part of Cambridge – Newnham – to re-interview Barbara Garfield, wife of Edith’s Director of Studies, after she called and told them she had new information to share. Didn’t everyone, after Crimewatch?
Be nice to live somewhere like this, he thinks – so comfortable with itself. Those front patches are tended by people who listen to Gardeners’ Question Time and know the names of shrubs. He bets the houses’ insides are worn but bookish, not smelly-depressing shabby, like the places they visit for work, pushing their jumpers up over their mouths and noses. No, this is easy-does-it shabby. I-know-who-I-am shabby. Persian-rug shabby.
‘Grantchester Street,’ he says, checking in his green book.
‘Left at the end here,’ says Manon.
They walk a little further.
‘Did you see,’ Davy says, ‘Stuart’s got a new iPad?’
‘That’s more Colin’s bag than mine,’ says Manon.
‘Nice one, latest kind, y’know – white one, thin as you like. Says he can’t get used to the touch screen. Just wonder how he afforded it, that’s all. Didn’t think CIs got paid that much—’ He is winded by a body slamming into him from the left. Someone who has hurtled out of the gate from one of the houses they have just passed. ‘Woah,’ he says, catching her about the shoulders. ‘Slow down. Are you all right?’
The girl is stooped over, crying, and when she looks up, Manon says, ‘Helena?’
She doesn’t speak. Her eyes are red raw, her lips swollen, and she is shaking.
‘Helena,’ says Manon again. ‘What are you doing here? Is everything all right?’
‘Everyone will know,’ she says, with pleading eyes. ‘Why did he say that, about a female lover? Why did he have to say that on telly? Everyone will know. It’s all over the papers. They’re going to want to know who.’ And she collapses into Davy’s chest.
‘Didn’t an officer come and warn you about Crimewatch? I thought DC Kim Delaney—’
‘I didn’t realise, I didn’t know how huge it would be,’ Helena says, her eyes wide with fear. ‘The television. It was on the television. I don’t know what I thought … I didn’t take it in.’
‘No one knows about you,’ says Manon. ‘It won’t come out, about you and Edith.’ She and Davy look at each other over Helena’s head. ‘No one is going to release your name, Helena. As far as the press knows, you are just the friend she was out with on Saturday night.’
‘Look, anyone comes after you, you call me,’ says Davy, pushing her away from his chest so he can dig in his pocket for a card with his number printed on it, and so that he can look her in the eye, too. Tell her it’s real. They will protect her. ‘Now get yourself home and lay low. D’you need a car? I can get someone out here—’
‘No, no,’ she says. She wipes the wet from her nose with the back of her hand and the movement makes her seem like a little girl. ‘I can get home.’
She is looking down at Davy’s little white card, with its silver star symbol topped with a royal crown and the words Cambridgeshire Constabulary following the blue circle.
‘Would you like an officer with you at your flat? We can arrange that,’ he says.
‘Why are you here?’ says Helena abruptly. ‘What are you doing on the same street as my, my, my friend … I have a friend who lives here.’
‘Just routine enquiries,’ says Manon, smiling, but this seems only to increase the terror in Helena’s eyes.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ says Davy. ‘I think I should drive you. I’ve got a car just around the corner.’
‘No, no,’ and she bridles, shaking Davy’s hand off her shoulder. ‘I’ve got somewhere to go right now. I’m not going straight home, you see. I’ll be all right.’ She sniffs. ‘It’ll all blow over, right? This storm, it’ll pass.’
Manon and Davy watch her as she turns and scurries, hunched and quick-footed, away from them down Grantchester Street.
‘Don’t like the look of her,’ says Davy. ‘We should call it in. Tell Harriet she seems vulnerable.’
‘Yup, we’ll flag it up when we get back to the office after this,’ says Manon.
Manon
‘Have you finished yet?’ asks Manon, smiling at him.
‘Not yet, no,’ Davy says, sneezing another three times.
‘Goodness me,’ says Mrs Garfield. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Do you have a cat?’ asks Davy.