‘Colin,’ Manon says, squeezing Colin’s shoulders, and it’s like a puff of cigarette smoke plumes out of his jumper. ‘What’ve you got for me today? We’re going to find her, I just know we are.’
She hangs her jacket on the back of her chair and reaches into her bag for her purse. She wants to eat and she’s thinking: bacon roll, sausages, egg yolk bursting over buttered toast. She is ripe with the eating; her hips seem wider, her breasts fuller. A Manon bursting forth to fruition. She is bovine, sleepy-ravenous, sensual. She wants him to move in, but he’s kept his head, his beautiful Alan Prenderghast head. He ducked home last night, saying he had an early start in the morning – ‘need to be fresh for Monday’ – and he’d kissed her, kissed her again, and they were kissing through the open door of her flat, him with his silly flappy coat on. Her lips hurt and when the door closed, she missed the kiss they had not had. He rang the doorbell and her heart flipped over itself, puppyish and bright. She opened it and grabbed him and he was pulling his coat off and they were at it again, she in an open shirt, astride him on the corduroy sofa.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she said onto his lips.
She begins to text him, bouncing back in her chair – Hello you, you gorgeous chunk of hunk – but is stopped by a thud and a billow of air towards her face.
‘I take it you’ve seen these,’ says Harriet, hand on the pile of newspapers she’s just slapped down on Manon’s desk.
Manon straightens. Helena’s face stares back at her. The headline says: Girls were lovers beneath a red masthead. The blood plummets from Manon’s head, leaving it cold, fear tickling up her hair follicles. She looks at Davy, whose colour has drained away.
‘Who named her?’ Davy asks Harriet.
‘We don’t know. Could’ve been anyone. I’ve sent a couple of uniforms to her flat just now, soon as Fergus showed me these. They’re authorised to gain access if she doesn’t respond. I’ve tried her phones but there’s no response and all her mailboxes are full.’
‘But we sent a liaison,’ Manon says.
‘Who she sent away,’ Harriet says. ‘Told the officer she was going to stay with friends.’
It might be all right, it can still be all right if Helena is found safe and well. She pictures Helena’s terrified face looking up at them, tear-streaked. And the phones she turned off, how they lay immobile on the table next to the bed where she writhed, partaking of Alan Prenderghast.
Manon closes her eyes slowly, her body churning as shame begins its slow seep, like blood. The one time. The one time …
‘You warned her, Kim,’ Harriet is saying, ‘about Crimewatch?’
‘Yeah, she seemed all right about it, quite calm, but this’ll be different,’ Kim says, nodding at the newspapers.
‘And you put in the risk assessment paperwork on the Thursday?’ Harriet says to Manon, who nods.
‘If she said she was staying with friends,’ says Manon, feeling for an exit, ‘she won’t be at the flat. When will officers be there? When will we know?’
‘Dispatched ten minutes ago. They’ll call me,’ Harriet says. ‘In the meantime, Colin is going to take us through Graham Garfield’s hard drive in a mature and innuendo-free manner.’
Colin turns to his desk. ‘Lots of drafts of his books on the Victorians, essays on George Eliot, work by his students, some assessment forms from the university, that kind of thing. But—’ and he pulls his glasses down from his head, clicking his mouse and the laptop’s screen tessellates with web pages, a bright and flickering collage of pornography – ‘he was into all sorts. Asian Babes. Big Fatties Who Want It. Frisky Housewives. A man of many interests.’ Colin is scrolling and clicking with great fervour. ‘Anyway, more significant than all that is this,’ he says, swivelling around to show everyone the screen. All Manon can see are several lines of web links all beginning ‘Facebook’.
‘What is it?’ Manon says.
‘Graham Garfield looked at Edith Hind’s Facebook page five times every night the week before she disappeared. And since. Forty visits or thereabouts. Specifically, he has clicked on these pictures – selfies, I believe they’re called.’
He brings up several shots of Edith: eyes yearningly intense, looking straight into the lens, one with a jumper falling off her shoulder, one in which she is lying on a bed, holding her phone above her. Just you and her.
‘Doesn’t prove anything,’ says Stuart. ‘She put them out there. Why do that if you don’t want to be leered at?’
‘Proves he had an unhealthy interest in her,’ says Harriet.
‘What sort of bloke wouldn’t go clicking about on those? She’s a hottie. What did she expect when she took them?’ says Colin.
‘Erm, freedom? Autonomy?’ says Kim.
‘Come off it – lying on the bed like that, all come and get me,’ Stuart says.
‘She might not know any better,’ says Kim. ‘Everyone’s a dick at twenty-four.’
Miriam