Missing, Presumed (14 page)

Bryony’s husband Peter opens the oven door with padded hands like paddles and lifts out an angrily spitting pan. He holds it before him, the furious beast, the God of their lunch, and the room fills with the atavistic smell of meat fat. The trail of it curls across the room to Manon in the corner armchair – the salty maple smell of the meat – and together with the dry white wine she is sipping, it works on her stomach juices to produce the sweet anticipation of being fed.

The windows of the kitchen are fogged, as if the world Bryony and Peter have created – the roast lunch, the baby she is putting down for a nap, the toddler playing Lego in the next room – has erased the outside because it is not needed. This world, their world, is inside.

‘Looking good, elephant woman. Shouldn’t you get that seen to?’ says Bryony as she enters the room.

Manon puts a hand to her left eye. ‘Yeah, probably.’

Bryony and Peter move around each other at the counter, a nonchalant ballet of putting forks in the dishwasher, getting out bowls, broccoli steam hitting their faces, carving the meat. And Manon watches them. Isn’t this what she should have? Isn’t it what she should want? She knows she comes here, like the third child, to inhale some of it, to slouch in the soft cushioning of the corner armchair where passivity is king. Sometimes she is pricked by jealousy – or at least she wants to possess it. Not wanting to leave or not having the energy to pick herself up and send herself out into the cold world alone. She rubs the infected eye and it re-opens slowly, the picture watery, as if she is looking through smeared glass. Those vicious shards of loneliness cannot seem to prick them in here, in this inner world, where someone has taken an eraser to the view. But its innerness is also airless.

‘D’you know what drives me nuts?’ Bryony once said. ‘I can’t even take a shower without some kind of family summit on the logistics of being out of the room for ten minutes. Never mind pop to the shops.’

It’s not these notional practicalities that bother Manon. It is the loss of separateness, the dependence which might cause her to meld formlessly into someone else until she no longer knows where she begins and ends, until she is no longer capable of saying, ‘You might like that, but I don’t like it, because I am different from you, separate from you.’ Or ‘I will not eat now. I will eat later.’

‘We changed the clocks,’ Bryony is saying from across the room, sliding some cauliflower cheese from a foil tray into a serving bowl, ‘so it said midnight. Then we said, “Cheers, Happy New Year!” and went to bed. About nine thirty, wasn’t it?’

‘About that,’ says Peter. ‘Just think of all the poor bastards out there getting drunk and snogging strangers.’

‘I know, I pity them,’ says Bryony. ‘I mean, who would want that kind of sleazy, low-rent thrill?’

Manon takes another slug of wine. ‘I went to the cinema.’

‘See? She’s one of us,’ says Bryony.

Their three-year-old son Bobby comes gambolling into the room on fat little legs. He is all cheeks and brilliant eyes. Manon notices Bryony’s involuntary smile.

‘Hello, little chap,’ says Manon, setting down her glass and lifting him onto her knee. She has the urge to shower him in affection, not because she loves him – she feels, in fact, an angular separateness from other people’s children – but because she loves Bryony and she can make a display of it this way. ‘Shall we do “This is the Way the Lady Rides”?’

‘Lady wides,’ says Bobby.

‘Cuddle first,’ says Manon, and she folds the boy’s solid body in her arms and luxuriates in the cashmere of his cheek against hers. She kisses him and when he begins to struggle, squeezes him tighter. ‘One more kiss,’ she says and then blows a raspberry into his neck, which smells of warm bread, but he is shouting, ‘Lady wides!’

The lunch is devoured in twenty minutes. Their lips glisten with the meat fat as they suck on bones. Bobby begins to fidget in his booster seat and knocks over his cup of Ribena.

‘Come on, sausage,’ Peter says to him. ‘Let’s go and watch
Top Gear
.’

When they have gone, she and Bryony pour themselves more wine and sit together at the kitchen table, strewn with cloudy glasses and smeared plates. Manon is wiping hers with a finger and licking the gravy off while she tells Bryony about the cinema and Alan Prenderghast, and it’s as if she can’t wait to, as if she’s been waiting for Peter to take Bobby off, so she can launch into it.

‘He’s nice, but he’s not boyfriend material,’ she says. ‘He’s forty-two.’ She is picking at charred roast carrots, wiping the little chunks in gravy and popping them in her mouth.

‘I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but you’re not in the first flush of youth yourself. Forty-two is the perfect age for you.’

‘No, but … just, no. He’s not, I dunno. He’s really uncool. Like massive trainers, bad flappy trousers.’

‘So take him shopping.’

‘He’s got big ears.’

‘You’ve got no neck.’

‘He didn’t go to university.’

‘Jesus, Manon, who fucking cares?’

‘He
has
got a nice barn.’

‘There you go then.’

‘He’s just kind of … odd.’

‘Odd is good. You’re really odd. It’s one of my favourite things about you. Stop doing that,’ and she removes Manon’s plate. ‘Ice cream?’

Manon shakes her head. Bryony yawns and stretches her arms up and forward, until her muscles judder.

‘Anyway, how’s disclosure?’ asks Manon. ‘Is the filing getting to you?’

‘No, the exciting news is I’ve been seconded – HOLMES support on a trafficking ring. Massive case, joint ops between border control and public protection. Really good.’

‘You mean girls trafficked into prostitution?’

‘Yeah – some girls in a brothel in Luton are talking. But also just ferrying illegals in across the border. Lorries of Afghans, Syrians, wherever there’s a war, basically, coming in through the ports. P&O Ferries, that kind of thing. You would not believe how leaky our borders are right now.’

‘Think I would.’

‘Anyway, it’s really interesting. Nice change from
Fireman Sam
.’

‘They charging anyone?’ asks Manon.

‘Not yet. Looking at a chap – an Afghan called Abdul-Ghani Khalil.’ Bryony has got up, taking their plates over to the sink. ‘Couple of the prostitutes mentioned him, and a neighbour said he thought Khalil was making a fortune bringing people in, but not enough to charge him yet.’

Manon’s mobile phone has begun to vibrate across the table. ‘Hang on,’ she says to Bryony. Manon stands and her insides swim with the wine. She is loose, but she must hold it together because Harriet is on the phone.

‘Harriet,’ she says brightly, a finger pressing her other ear shut against the tinny sounds of
Top Gear
from the next room and the clatter of Bryony stacking the dishwasher.

‘The body from yesterday, the jumper,’ says Harriet. ‘We don’t think it is a jumper.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s from Cricklewood, name’s Taylor Dent.’

‘
Cricklewood?
How’s he ended up in Ely?’

‘Exactly. Can you come in? Stanton wants a briefing.’

Harriet hangs up. She has no time for pleasantries at the beginning and end of phone calls.

‘Can you drive me in, Bri?’ she says as her phone thunks to the bottom of her handbag. ‘I’ve had too much to drink.’

‘Yes, sure thing. Just let me put my shoes on. Don’t want anyone at the nick to see me in these,’ says Bryony, slipping off her bright fur slippers with bunny ears – pre-teen pink, the colour of the sunset through Alan Prenderghast’s double-height windows.

‘Sit down, Manon,’ says Stanton, his back to them.

Harriet is already seated on Manon’s side of the desk, her crossed upper leg bouncing outwards. She is reading a brown file, which drips downwards at its corners.

Stanton is standing by the window, wearing a navy shirt with an ebullient floral pattern on it. Boden, from the looks of it – a Mrs Stanton purchase, Manon guesses, fresh from the packet for a New Year’s Day family lunch or knees-up with the neighbours. She imagines him dad-dancing, his teenage children rolling their eyes.

Manon has always liked Gary Stanton. He’s straight, in that suburban, slightly overweight, Kia-driving, golf-playing way. He can rub along with the boss class without taking umbrage. As a result, he has slid noiselessly up the ranks. No flashes of brilliance. No feuds, either.

Harriet hands Manon the file as Stanton turns, reaching back to scratch his shoulder blade.

‘Taylor Dent,’ he says. ‘What’s he doing in one of our rivers?’

‘He killed Edith Hind, then killed himself?’ says Harriet. ‘He was Edith’s bit of rough, her dealer? She owed him money?’

‘What if he’s the link between Tony Wright and Edith?’ asks Manon. ‘Tony’s gofer.’

‘We need to look at all of it. I want George Street and Deeping swept for his DNA. Annoying there are no cameras around Deeping. I want you two liaising with the Met on Dent’s background, links to Wright. I want interviews with the Dent family. Did he know Edith? Was there any connection through friends – a dealer, the Hind brother? Every avenue. Let’s look at routes from London to here, CCTV at King’s Cross around the time he disappeared, roads, ANPR any vehicles he might have had access to.’

Stanton looks depressed. Last thing he needs is a fresh murder enquiry clogging up officers’ time, slowing up the Hind investigation; more forensics and an expensive postmortem draining his budget.

‘Phone work,’ he says. ‘We need to check this Dent boy’s number against Edith’s phone and against Carter’s and Reed’s. Let’s see if he’s unknown-515.’

‘Will Carter’s alibi holds up,’ Harriet says to Stanton. ‘His return journey from Stoke was verified by the cashier at the Texaco garage in Corby. We showed her a picture and she said, “Oh yeah, he was
lush
.” ’ Harriet reaches for her bra strap but her arm stops mid-air and she lays it back in her lap, like a dead thing. Has someone – Elsie? – told her she’s a fidget? Still, her foot is going. Kick, kick, kick, as if the energy must escape from somewhere.

Manon has opened Taylor Dent’s file and is reading. Seventeen years old from Cricklewood, North London. Mixed race. Nigerian father, whereabouts unknown. Irish mother, Maureen Dent, known alcohol and substance abuser. Taylor Dent made his money the way lots did: bit of this, bit of that. Knock-off gear, cigarettes off booze cruises sold in markets or to nefarious newsagents. If he dabbled in drugs, he didn’t appear to partake in them.

‘Says here he was arrested for indecency in 2008 but let off with a caution,’ she says, frowning.

‘Had some high-profile customers,’ says Stanton, ‘who didn’t wish a prosecution to come to court.’

Stanton has a look of distaste. He is a man who likes to avoid confrontation, like a loyal dog tied to a railing – he does not wish to bark or snap, certainly not at the wrong heels.

‘Interesting,’ says Manon, still reading. ‘Says here Dent was clean.’

‘Well, to our
knowledge
,’ starts Harriet. ‘A forensic postmortem will tell us more.’

‘Not necessarily,’ says Stanton, turning away from them back to the window where the sky has darkened to a slate blue, smeared with the yellow street lamps over the car park. ‘Toxicology will have washed away. PMs on river deaths are pretty inconclusive, in my experience. He’ll have been beaten about by tree roots, got at by animals. Cause of death unascertained, I’ll put money on it. To think that’s what we pay them three grand for.’ He shakes his head.

Manon guesses he’s marvelling at the riches of forensic pathologists in their BMWs with cream leather seats.

‘Speaking of money, the cost of the Hind investigation is getting to the point where the Home Office is going to have to bail us out. I’ve had a note from Sir Brian Peabody about it.’ He waves a bit of paper at them. ‘Polsa teams, SOCO, television appeals. Now this forensic PM and more officers on Dent. The profile of it, well, it’s making our good Commissioner jumpy.’

‘What’re we supposed to do?’ asks Harriet. ‘Stop looking for her? Not look as hard?’

‘Just look more cheaply,’ says Manon.

‘They’re not pulling the plug,’ says Stanton. ‘But we’re under scrutiny, that’s all. If we had a body, then we’d have an unlimited murder budget, but Edith Hind – it’s moot whether she’s a high-risk misper, a suspected homicide, or even just a misper in Peabody’s view.’

‘Is there anyone who seriously thinks she’s alive?’ asks Harriet.

‘Look, Peabody’s just looking ahead,’ says Stanton. ‘Enquiry gets to this size, and there’s always an enquiry into the enquiry, questions in Parliament about how much we spent, what result we got and why we didn’t know it was “so-and-so” three weeks before we caught him. Everyone throwing in their wisdom with the benefit of hindsight. Doesn’t help that Hind is mates with Galloway. I can see how itchy Peabody is about that. There are already mutterings about a review of our investigation by another force.’

‘Bound to happen, sooner or later,’ says Harriet.

‘Manon, I want you to go to Cricklewood first thing tomorrow. Liaise with Kilburn CID. Visit the Dent family, get what you can out of the mother and the brother. Then you can pop up to Hampstead and update the Hinds.’

‘Perhaps she should inform Sir Ian that his dear friend’s austerity budget means there aren’t enough resources to find his daughter,’ says Harriet. ‘Let’s see him bring
that
up at their next Hampstead dinner party.’

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ says Stanton, with a smile at Harriet that says:
we’re on the same side.

‘Least I don’t have to tell them we’ve hooked their daughter out of the Ouse,’ says Manon.

Stanton closes the door to his office. They watch him turn the spindle on his Venetian blind and disappear.

‘D’you need a lift anywhere?’ asks Harriet, as she and Manon put their coats on.