‘She could have been waiting for someone,’ says Manon.
‘That was my thought,’ says Harriet. ‘Two wine glasses out ready for a rendezvous, one of them becomes a weapon. We’ll see what forensics tell us on that score.
‘Two: search ongoing, including dogs. Polsa should be on board by midday today. That’s Police Search Adviser,’ she says to the new chap. ‘The search teams, in other words. Three: house to house. Four: FLO and victimology. Five: media. We’ll get a photo of Edith out this morning. I’m meeting with Fergus in an hour to discuss Press strategy. Six: intel work. Colin, you’ve got her phone and her laptop. Let’s trace her car reg on ANPR – that’s Automated Number Plate Recognition, for our new recruit here. And Will Carter’s too, while we’re at it. I want all of the council’s CCTV looked at. Seven: persons of interest. That’s Will Carter, obviously, and Helena Reed, the friend she was with on Saturday night. Is that enough to be getting on with?’
‘Hypothesis, boss?’ asks Nigel. Manon says he’s needy, always looking to senior officers for answers. Davy would never express something so judgemental, though it’s fair to say Nigel is permanently exhausted since having the twins.
‘I would say she’s opened the door to someone she knows or at least to someone she wasn’t immediately afraid of. The blood indicates an injury, possibly when someone tried to remove her from the house. The amount of blood doesn’t suggest a murder on site; it’s more likely it’s come from a cut of some kind. A sexual encounter of some sort? He makes advances, she’s not keen, and there’s a blow from the wine glass in the tussle. All supposition at this point. We are within the golden hour, so let’s press on.’
Manon
She pulls out a swivel chair and wheels herself next to Colin, who smells of bonfires – the obscure brand of cigarettes he smokes.
‘What’s her phone telling us then?’ she asks.
‘In terms of the victim’s usage, nothing past 8 p.m. on Saturday night, when she texts the friend, Helena Reed,’ says Colin.
‘What does she say in that last text?’
‘“There in five. E.”’
‘Anything else?’
‘Before the party she does some texting. Someone called Jason F.’
Manon reads Colin’s screen.
What time u getting there? E
Later, somewhere to be first.
Don’t be long, will you?
Why not?
Wouldn’t like you to miss anything …
‘There are others, too,’ Colin says. ‘She texts her tutor, Graham Garfield, to say, “Hope to c u tonite.” He replies, “What’s going down?” Trying to pretend he’s not fifty-seven, if you ask me.’
‘And she says?’
‘“Karaoke, tequila, and bad behaviour.” To which he replies, “On my way!”’ says Colin.
‘What about Facebook?’
Colin clicks on his screen and up pops a collage of Edith – her neck, her arms, brown legs crossed, laughing, her head thrown back. Edith cuddling a cat. Edith in cut-off shorts. Edith wearing a Stetson. Black and white, some with colours blown out by Instagram, which gives them a smoky, Seventies sheen. Beneath these are comments to the tune of ‘Gorgeous!’ and ‘Beautiful, beautiful girl’ and ‘Stunning’. Each photo is ‘liked’ by Will Carter. In a few she’s in a living room, stretched out on the sofa with her feet in Will Carter’s lap as he nurses a goblet of red. In many of the images, another girl is somewhere off-centre or in the background, curled in an armchair reading; just a half of her face, a lick of her hair.
Over four hundred photographs.
‘They’re all of herself, pretty much,’ says Colin.
Edith’s posts are random music lyrics, Bruce Springsteen mostly. The odd literary article about Seamus Heaney or Toni Morrison. Bo Diddley is my new jam. Nick Cave is my new jam.
‘She has four hundred and eighty-two “friends”,’ Colin adds, drawing quote marks in the air.
‘D’you know how many I’ve got?’ says Manon, a yawn stretching her face, while Colin scrolls down. ‘Four. One’s my dad. One’s the electrician. I’m not even sure I know the other two.’
‘She’s a member of these groups,’ says Colin, clicking again. ‘Guerrilla Gardeners.’
‘What do they do?’
‘They grow food on communal ground. Recipes … Here’s a photo of a hot pot they made using free veg picked from a community wasteland garden. She’s a member of Cycle Power – a lobbying group which aims to ban cars.’
‘Scroll up a minute. What’s that?’ says Manon, pointing at the screen.
Colin clicks on the image and Manon reads Edith Hind’s caption:
Bunting made from recycled copies of the FT. Happy Christmas, planet!
She and Colin look at each other.
‘It’s a wonder she wasn’t murdered sooner,’ says Colin.
‘Those are exactly the sorts of thoughts I want you to keep to yourself,’ Manon says, rising. ‘Keep at it, Colin. Her hard drive, Google searches, matches on all her phone records.’ And then she marches across MIT to Harriet’s office.
‘So what was the interview with Carter like?’
‘Seems genuinely worried,’ says Harriet, hitching at her bra strap. ‘Keeps crying, pacing, asking for an update on the search. We need to be all over his weekend in Stoke. We can ask the Hind parents a bit more about their relationship, and the friend, Helena, whether there was anyone else in the background, boyfriend-wise. Tabs are already ringing the press office, Fergus said.’
‘It won’t be like Soham,’ says Manon. ‘Not in this climate, not after phone hacking. Things have changed.’
‘Don’t bet on it, not with her parents being who they are.’
‘Who are her parents?’
‘Sir Ian and Lady Hind. He’s an ear, nose, and throat surgeon. Fits the Royal grommets or something.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Yup. We have to tread carefully; the type who’ll complain over anything.’
‘Is it a ransom job then? He must be worth a bit.’
‘We’d have heard from them by now. Anyway, I’m not handing this to any centralised fucking crime unit, no way.’
She gets up, pacing behind the desk, as if the speed of her thoughts is physical. The wings of her jacket are pinned back by her hands on her hips. She’s full of fire, unbridled. If Manon ever went missing, she’d want Harriet to head up the search.
‘Once Polsa’s on board, the pressure will ease off a bit,’ Harriet says, as much to herself as to Manon.
The police search adviser and his specialist teams knew how to find people, or at least where to look. They would take the search further and wider than that clumsy first night: across meadows, along railway tracks, into woods, behind the doors of lock-up garages, in attics and cellars, and soon enough down below the opaque surface of rivers.
Harriet looks at her watch. ‘Eight thirty. If she went missing shortly after midnight on Saturday, then we’re talking thirty-two hours. It’s sub-zero out there.’
‘I’ll send someone to bring in the friend, Helena Reed, shall I?’
‘Yup. I’ll go and talk to the parents. Urgh, this is the bit I hate – they’ll be frantic. Then I’m meeting Fergus in the press office. We’ll probably do a short briefing at 11 a.m., just me and the agencies and locals. Got to get those photos of the girl out and an initial appeal. We need to look at her bank activity. Can you start someone on that?’
Manon and Davy slip into interview room one, where Sir Ian is pacing in a navy wool coat.
‘So, hang on a minute, you’re saying there isn’t a DCI on duty to run the search for my daughter?’ He has an imperious face, straight nose, pale eyes and thin lips. Charles Dance without the ginger colouring.
‘DC Walker and DS Bradshaw enter the room,’ says Harriet to the recording device. ‘It’s quite normal, Sir Ian, for a DI to run a case such as this. If you’d like to sit down, there are a number of things we’d like to ask you.’
Lady Hind, who sits at the table opposite Harriet, takes his hand and holds it to her cheek, then kisses the back of it and this seems to give him pause. Her hair is grey, in a straight bob, with a beautiful streak of white framing her face. Her coat hangs expensively, her fingers glinting with diamonds.
‘Sit down, darling,’ she says, her voice quavering with suppressed tears. ‘We must help them in any way we can.’
Sir Ian takes up a chair next to his wife.
‘Thank you,’ says Harriet. ‘Edith’s phone shows a few missed calls from you over the course of the weekend, Sir Ian. Were you having trouble reaching her?’
‘We always have trouble reaching her, don’t we?’ he says to Lady Hind. ‘She’s terrible at calling back. So we call, and we call.’ At this he gives Harriet a strained smile. ‘We were anxious to know her plans for Christmas, weren’t we, darling?’
‘She hadn’t told you her plans for Christmas?’ Manon asks, directing the question at Lady Hind.
‘Edith’s fond of prevaricating. She can be … non-committal, would you say, Ian? With us, anyway. We’d agreed she and Will would spend Christmas with us in London and then she’d said, “You never know”, or something to that effect.’
‘You never know what?’ asks Manon.
‘I took it to mean she couldn’t be certain Will would join us.’
‘So there was trouble between them?’ Harriet says.
‘No, not trouble,’ says Lady Hind. ‘Ambivalence, I’d say. They’re only twenty-four, after all. They’re not married.’
‘And this ambivalence,’ says Harriet, ‘would you say it was more on her part than his?’
‘Yes,’ says Lady Hind.
‘Has there been any violence between them – heated rows, say? Would Edith have reason to be fearful of Mr Carter?’
‘No, no, no,’ says Sir Ian. ‘It’s not like that. It’s ordinary stuff. Will is a marvellous fellow, devoted to Edie.’
‘But if he sensed her feelings were cooling, perhaps—’
‘Detective, we are not that sort of family. I’m sure you deal all the time with people whose lives are chaotic, who drink and brawl and abuse one another. But none of us – these things are not part of our lives, our experience. I’d be very surprised if Will is involved in this.’
‘Right,’ says Harriet. ‘Can you think of anyone who would want to harm Edith?’
The Hinds look at each other, their expressions bewildered. ‘No, we really can’t,’ says Lady Hind. ‘Can you tell me, how do you … Please, you have to find her, I can’t … The thought of her lost, you see …’ Her eyes brim as she looks at the officers, one to the other.
‘I’ll explain how we go forward from here,’ says Manon. ‘Search teams will work in concentric circles out from the house and, at the same time, we’ll be building a picture of Edith, working outwards from her most intimate circle – yourselves, Will Carter, Helena Reed. We’ll look at all aspects of her life, based on what you tell us, her phone, computer, bank cards. So it’s important you leave nothing out.’
‘She doesn’t have any bank cards,’ says Sir Ian. ‘She feels the whole banking industry is corrupt. According to Edie, if none of us used banks, then the whole global economic collapse wouldn’t have happened. It’s not a view I share, but she holds these beliefs very strongly. If she could pay everyone in muddy vegetables and repaired bicycle tyres, she would, but her landlord wouldn’t have it.’
‘OK, so how does she live? Where does her income come from?’ asks Harriet.
‘Me,’ he says. ‘I give her a MoneyGram transfer via the Post Office every month – £1,500 on the first. She pays the rent on the cottage in cash to the landlord – that’s £750, I think. He lives next door. I pay the utilities directly from London. The rest she lives off.’
‘So there would’ve been quite a lot of cash in the house,’ says Harriet. ‘She would have been seen collecting wads of it at the Post Office …’
‘Look, I feel it’s risky,’ says Sir Ian. ‘And I’ve argued with her about it. I’ve said I’d rather she has a bank account into which I can transfer the funds. But she just won’t have it. She says someone has to break with the status quo. I think she’d prefer not to receive any money from me, to do everything her own way, on her own terms. Twenty-four-year-olds are like that. So I don’t argue with her because I want her to have my help.’
‘Also,’ says Lady Hind, ‘and we discussed this, oh God, endlessly, because it worried us, but we reason that £750 goes more-or-less straight to the landlord, so it’s not as if it’s all under the bed.’
‘You get to a point,’ Sir Ian adds, and it’s as if he and his wife’s sentences are a continuation, ‘where you don’t want to fall out with your children because you don’t want to lose them. The balance of power shifts, you see. I want her to have my money and these are the terms on which she’ll have it.’
‘How many people know about this cash arrangement?’
‘Well, Will, of course. We have sort of been supporting Will by default because he lives in the house and we pay for the house,’ says Lady Hind. ‘As to others, Edith doesn’t keep quiet about her views. She’s quite vocal.’
‘So this weekend,’ Harriet says, ‘there should have been how much in the cottage, at a guess?’
Sir Ian glances at his phone. ‘It’s the nineteenth, so she’s halfway through the month,’ he says. ‘Christmas is a bit more expensive, so I’d imagine no more than £300. Surely not enough for someone to …’
‘You’d be surprised,’ says Harriet. ‘Why not pay her rent directly? Why not transfer that, like the utilities?’
‘The landlord gives her a slight reduction in return for cash-in-hand. I assume he’s fiddling his taxes somewhat.’
‘Fifteen hundred pounds is a generous allowance,’ says Manon. ‘Is she extravagant?’
‘Quite the opposite. Edith believes in treading lightly on the earth.’
‘But she has a car.’
‘An electric car,’ says Lady Hind. She swallows, and Manon sees she’s keeping down a swell of desperation. ‘A very old electric car. A G-Wiz. It used to be my run-around. Edith needed it when she moved to Huntingdon – to get to lectures and supervisions at Corpus and to Deeping, which is only half an hour from here.’
‘We’ll need to take a closer look at Deeping, I hope you don’t mind – get our forensic teams out there,’ says Harriet.
‘It’s almost impossible to get to without a car. Middle of the Fens, about three acres,’ says Sir Ian. ‘Quite a rough place, really. Edith loves it there but, like I say, without the G-Wiz …’
‘She might have gone with someone else,’ says Harriet.
He nods. ‘Would you like my keys?’
‘No, it’s all right, I’ve got Edith’s set. Can I ask, is there any way she could gain access without her keys? A spare set at the property, perhaps?’
‘Yes, in the porch, high up. If you feel along the architrave, there’s a key resting there for emergencies,’ says Sir Ian. ‘The house is in the middle of nowhere. Hardly anyone even knows it’s there, so we’re quite lax on security.’
Harriet is writing in her notebook. She looks up and says, ‘Now, we just need to get an account of your movements over the weekend so we can eliminate you both from the enquiry.’
‘Yes, of course,’ says Lady Hind. ‘We were at the theatre on Saturday night with friends. King Lear at the Almeida. After the theatre, we went for supper at Le Palmier – six of us. We left there about midnight. Yesterday, we were at home mostly with the fire on – it was so cold. Ian went to the office briefly in the morning, didn’t you? I made a monkfish stew for lunch. In the afternoon, we pottered about at home, reading, I watched bits of a film – one of those World War Two black and white ones. Ian was in and out of his study. In the evening, I took a del
ivery from my florist – she was getting all her Christmas orders out, hence why she was delivering so late on a Sunday. Then – this was about nine – Will rang, worried sick about Edith.’
‘And your friends at the theatre,’ Harriet says. ‘Could we have a list?’
‘Rog and Patty,’ says Sir Ian, looking at Harriet’s notebook. ‘That’s Roger Galloway and his wife Patricia. I’m sure their security detail will confirm everything for you.’
Manon, Davy, and Harriet shoot a glance at each other and Harriet says, ‘A word outside, you two.’
‘Don’t say anything,’ hisses Harriet, like an angry swan. ‘Don’t fucking say anything until we’re in my fucking office.’ Manon is right behind her as she pelts up the staircase. Those, she thinks, are some mightily clenched buttocks.
Once in her office, Harriet turns, breathless. ‘Fuckety, fuckety fucking fuck,’ she says. ‘Right, I’ve thought of a name for this case. We’re calling it Operation Career Fucking Suicide.’
‘Let’s just calm down,’ says Manon. ‘So he was at the theatre with the Home Secretary. All that means is that his alibi probably stacks up.’
‘Ye think?’ says Harriet.
‘It probably is quite tight, to be fair,’ says Davy.
Manon and Harriet look at each other, Harriet turning up her palms.
‘Right,’ she says, ‘so if we thought the press were all over it before, we should see what happens when they get hold of this. Not just the Royal Family, but “did the Home Secretary interfere with the investigation in any way?” Well, that’ll be the Guardian. Before I know it, I’ll be in front of some sodding select committee at the House of Commons having my career buried under a steaming pile of procedure. I predict a call from Galloway to the Commissioner in—’ she looks at her watch – ‘oooh, the next couple of hours?’
Missing, Presumed Page 4