‘There’s a lot of hope in your voice, Colin,’ says Manon.
‘Let’s stick to the point,’ says Harriet. ‘Let’s say they were having an affair, preposterous though that seems – it doesn’t explain how they knew each other. How on earth did someone like Edith Hind meet someone like Tony Wright? And anyway, he’s still here, but she’s not, so it’s not like they’ve run off into the sunset together.’
‘Maybe he was blackmailing her,’ says Manon. ‘If it’s not sex, it’s money. Maybe he knew, I dunno, some dark secret about her and she had to pay him off. Would explain why she was calling him.’
‘So we need to look into his finances,’ says Harriet. ‘Any nice new tellies at his flat. I want the data off all phones and computers from his property. I want forensics from whatever vehicle he’s currently using. Let’s go downstairs, talk to Wright,’ she says to Manon. ‘Anything comes in from SOCO, come and get us.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us you knew Edith Hind?’ Harriet says, without preamble.
‘Oh aye,’ says Wright, and Manon can see he’s rankled, he’s had enough. ‘That girl that’s been abducted? She an’ I were pals! Ye wan tae cuff me now or wait for the van tae pull up? Shall we bother wi’ a trial or head straight tae Whitemoor, where you can BANG ME UP TILL I DIE?’
Tony Wright has stood up, knocking his chair backwards. His solicitor, a silently composed man in a grey suit with matching waistcoat, casts him a look and he sits back down.
‘Tell me about your relationship with Edith Hind.’
‘No comment.’
‘How did you know her?’
‘No comment.’
And so it goes on: every question, so that eventually everyone is going through the motions in a monotone, Wright not even waiting for Harriet to finish her sentences. Until she mentions Taylor Dent. At this, Wright looks genuinely quizzical, frowns, then says, ‘No comment’ all the same. There is a knock at the door and Harriet stops the recording, and they step out of the room.
‘His flat’s clean,’ says Kim in the corridor. ‘I mean, nothing obvious, No items of clothing or anything belonging to Edith,’ she says to Harriet. ‘No blood on anything. Forensics’ll take a bit longer though.’
‘Fuck,’ says Harriet. She looks at Manon. They both know, unless a miracle happens in the course of the afternoon, they’re going to have to let Wright go. ‘His brief’s going to be all over this,’ she says, ‘asking what evidence we’ve got to sustain an arrest.’
‘We can’t charge him with speaking to her on the blower,’ says Manon.
The only way to come down after a week of fifteen-hours shifts is to lose herself in a book or film, so here she is, standing on the cinema steps, head down against the cold, one hand in a pocket and the other texting Fly Dent.
What did you have at the Portuguese café?
Somefin new. She call it Manioc. She says she introducing me to new foods. Not too sure meself.
Was it nice?
Not really. It was yellow. And dry.
Do you think she could introduce you to vegetables?
We met. We didn’t get on.
She shuffles forward in the queue for My Life as a Dog by Lasse Hallstr?m, reluctant to flip the phone shut, so she is scrolling back through their conversation when a voice says, ‘You again.’
Fuck shit bollocks. She tries to think of something before looking up. He is the very last person she wants to see, not because she doesn’t like him (she’s all at sea over whether she likes him), but because she never thanked him, never called, and she can’t bear the awkwardness. Is it too late, she wonders, as she looks up, to cough violently and pretend she’s been in bed with flu?
‘Alan,’ she says. ‘How are you?’
‘Hurt and rejected,’ he says, smiling at her.
‘Oh God, I’m really sorry. It was nice of you, the eye drops, and look—’ she blinks at him – ‘all better!’
‘So I see.’
‘I kept meaning to call and say thanks. But work – it’s just gone mental.’
‘Yes, your work,’ he says. And he’s smiling ironically, as if he sees through her. And she feels annoyed at his presumption, because actually it has been mental.
‘It affects me. It’s important to me,’ she says.
‘Yes, sir, officer,’ he says, smiling again, his hands in his pockets.
‘I like you,’ she blurts, without realising she’s saying it out loud until it’s too late. The thought becomes the deed. ‘I sometimes show off because I like you.’ And as she looks at him, nothing seems honest at all, not even this.
‘Swedish season,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she laughs. ‘Swedish season.’
They stand there like that, as if they are an old couple, companionable, except her insides have clenched like an angry fist. Someone pays at the front and they shuffle forward a human width.