Time has slowed, thickening the air so that Manon can hardly breathe. There is a metallic taste in her mouth like blood.
Davy says, ‘I was calling her all weekend but it went straight through to voicemail. I should’ve gone down there. I don’t understand it – she had my number. I told her to call if she needed anything.’
He is sweating, a red patch creeping up his neck.
‘Apparently she rang in here late on Saturday night,’ Harriet says. ‘Call was taken by late-shift auxiliary staff, didn’t know who she was, wrote a note in a book, didn’t do anything about it. As with any death where there has been police contact, I am self-referring this to the IPCC, which will conduct an investigation alongside Professional Standards. Check if we did right by Helena Reed in our duty of care.’
‘When?’ says Manon, and she is surprised her voice is audible because she feels as if she is under water. ‘When did she—?’
‘Sometime on Sunday. The PM will tell us more.’
In the silence which has fallen over the department, Harriet tells them how it took a while for the officers to find Helena Reed. Her flat was spotless and deserted, all the cups washed up. It was, they said, how you would leave a property if you were going away, and that’s what the officers thought at first.
‘She’s gone away, that’s all, gone to stay with friends, just like she said,’ said the uniform.
‘Hang on, in here,’ said his colleague.
They saw the note first, laid out on a perfectly made bed, and then they found her, hanging from the hook on the back of the bedroom door, using the cord from her dressing gown.
‘Oh sweet Jesus,’ Manon gasps, a palm over her mouth. It is as if Helena had tidied herself away.
The note said:
That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.
‘Bloody Cambridge students,’ says Colin. ‘Why can’t they leave a proper note like everyone else? You know You never cared or I was all alone.’
‘Someone hung her out to dry,’ says Davy, and Manon realises he is staring at Stuart, his fists squeezing open and shut, almost imperceptibly, at his sides.
‘We don’t know that,’ says Stuart, trying to keep it light, but the vein standing up on his neck gives him the frozen look of a chameleon trying to blend with his rock.
‘How did they know about Helena Reed and Edith?’ Davy demands, and he won’t take his eyes off Stuart, approaching him from across the room, and they all seem paralysed, the bystanders. There is so much guilt by association.
‘Well, it’s not hard to work out, is it? Edith’s best friend, with her on the night she disappears. Could’ve come from anyone; anyone in this building could’ve spoken to their wives or their girlfriends about it,’ Stuart is saying, stepping backwards. ‘Or one of the students, like Jason Farrer. He wasn’t exactly discreet.’
‘Except they don’t tend to run with it unless it’s come from the police, do they, Stuart?’ Davy is saying, and Stuart tries to walk casually behind a desk to put some distance between himself and Davy.
‘Still,’ Stuart says, ‘there’s no proof that it came from us.’
‘I’ll find out,’ says Harriet, ‘and whoever leaked it will be out on his fucking ear.’
Which isn’t true. Manon knows it; everyone in the room knows it, except possibly Stuart. Leaks are impossible to trace and no journalist will ever name their source. The tabloids could have got this titbit from anyone.
‘Or she – out on her ear,’ says Stuart.
‘Get him away from me,’ says Davy, low and quiet, watching as Stuart makes urgently for the double doors, his mobile phone already at his ear.
‘Did she try you, Manon?’ Harriet says. ‘Did you have your phone on?’
‘Course,’ says Manon, turning to look out at the car park but seeing nothing of the view. ‘I mean, reception’s a bit patchy, and I was in and out …’ Manon’s face is prickled with a white heat, like an allergy.
‘Hanged,’ she murmurs to herself. She’s seen lots of victims of hanging, knows exactly what they look like – pale and bloated head to one side of the elongated neck, abrasions from the ligature. Sometimes they have fallen. Sometimes the tips of their toes touch the floor. She’s surprised the hook on the back of the door held her, but Helena Reed was not a substantial person.