‘We can have it back to you in a week,’ says Manon.
‘Really, I’d love to help, but I can’t manage without it for a week and anyway, there’s nothing on it. Nothing that would be of any interest to you. Look, I’m really sorry, but I’ve got a study group in five minutes.’
‘Mr Garfield?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’d hate to come and arrest you at the college.’
‘Why would you arrest me?’
‘Because an arrest gives me automatic powers to search and seize.’
There is silence on the line.
‘I’d hate to, you know, create a scene. Uniformed constables at the porter’s lodge, asking where you are. Our panda cars with their flashing blue lights outside the college – we love putting our lights on. Officers marching across the quad towards your rooms. All those students standing around watching. You know what Cambridge is like – terrible for gossip. But I’d have to do that in order to get your laptop, you see. But if you handed it over voluntarily, we could keep it all nice and quiet.’
Davy starts the engine as Manon puts her mobile back in her bag. As he pulls out, he says, ‘To the college, then?’
‘Yep.’
‘By the way, I’ve spoken to my mate – the mentoring buddy. In Brent. Said she’s looking out for Taylor’s brother, Fly, is it? She had meetings with education welfare and with the school, and they have agreed to work together to keep him at home with his mother.’
‘Great. That’s great.’
‘Actually, she thinks he’s amazing.’
I know he’s amazing, she thinks. ‘How d’you mean?’
‘Well, the school said he’s gifted. A great little reader. They said you’d expect a child in his situation to fall off the curve, but he’s top of his class.’
‘Does that somehow make him more worthy of being saved?’ she says, in a bid to cover an involuntary flush of pride in Fly Dent. After all, why should she feel pride? It’s not as if he’s hers.
‘Makes him of interest to them,’ says Davy, eyes fixed cheerfully on the road. ‘My mate’ll keep an eye on him. Fly’s mum’s really sick, you know that, right? Hasn’t attended any of her hospital appointments. If she dies, he’ll be taken into care. Just to warn you.’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she says, her hands having already dug out her mobile phone, working on a text to Fly.
How is school?
OK, if you like that sort of thing.
What did you have at the Portuguese café?
Why d’you care?
Cos I’m paying.
Oh, OK. Toast and jam.
White or brown?
Actually, it was kind of red.
Haha. White or brown toast?
Back off, DS Auntie.
Davy
It’s a short drive to Graham Garfie ld’s college rooms in Corpus, and while Manon runs in to pick up his laptop (just her, nice and quiet, like she promised), Davy sits in his driver seat, checking his BlackBerry. His original request for information from EE about unknown-515 had yielded nothing, but that was before Christmas, so as soon as he was back from his festive break he requested an update, and this has just dropped into his inbox.
Manon is heaving down into the passenger seat, having put Garfield’s laptop onto the back seat.
‘He wasn’t happy,’ she says, breathless and rustling in her coat.
Davy is shifting in his seat, making himself more upright. ‘Unknown-515,’ he says, reading.
‘What about it?’
‘It’s been topped up. Biggleswade, the BP service station. Two weeks ago.’
‘That’ll have CCTV,’ she says. ‘Let’s head out there.’
‘Shouldn’t we, y’know, head back to the office, drop off the laptop, give Harriet the heads up on Helena Reed?’ asks Davy.
‘Nah,’ says Manon. She’s excitable, he’s seen that look before. When she gets the bit between her teeth, she doesn’t want to stop. ‘Come on, Davy, this could be it – this could be the thing that solves it. You and me, and a collar.’ She lifts and lowers her eyebrows at him, a bit comedy. ‘To Biggleswade!’ she says, raising aloft an imaginary sword.
Davy shakes his head and drives.
As they pull into the BP forecourt, Manon is already peering about its low slab of a roof for cameras.
‘CCTV for December twenty-third,’ she says at the counter, showing her badge to the cashier. ‘Have you got it stored somewhere?’
The cashier, a spotty young man of about twenty, is shaking his head. ‘Wiped at the start of the year,’ he says. ‘I only know ’cos I was in that day.’
‘Were you on duty on December twenty-third?’ asks Davy.
‘Nope, don’t know who was. I’d have to get my manager but he’s not about right now.’
Davy turns round at the squeak of the shop door and sees Manon already leaving. He jogs after her as she strides about the forecourt, scanning the London Road and its wide-spaced bungalows left and right.
‘We can speak to the duty manager, get the rota off of him,’ Davy suggests to her back.