Missing, Presumed

by Susie Steiner

  She runs her thumb over the edges of the stickers and they make a flicking sound, pleasingly stiff against the pad of her thumb. She turns it over in her hand again. It’s dead, of course, the battery run down. He must have found it on the ground somewhere.

  She returns the phone to the back of the drawer, hearing as she does so, Ian’s key in the front door. She pushes at the drawer to close it but it judders and sticks and as she pushes again, he is at the doorway, saying, ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘I just wanted a stamp,’ she says, unsure why she feels nervous. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  He comes between her and the desk and forcibly pushes the central drawer shut, then opens the drawer beside it and offers her a book of stamps.

  ‘Here,’ he says.

  Six Days Later

  Tuesday

  Manon

  She smiles, closing the front door, and puts her face up to the unseasonal January warmth: sharp, blinding sun, the sky too bright to look at. The air is steely-fresh in her lungs and the river sparkles like diamonds. She wonders how he’ll surprise her for Valentine’s Day. Flowers? A table at a secluded restaurant? A trip to Paris? How quickly being alone vanishes, a country seen from your departing plane – small and far below. Even a short time makes it a distant place, as if the body is quick to relish the enveloping heat in the new territory – love – forgetting it is new. One week or one month is enough to make a return unthinkable.

  She sinks down into the driver’s seat, flipping the visor against the unruly sun, rummages in her handbag for her sunglasses, then starts the car. Has Alan noticed the pounds she must have gained with all their Sunday fry-ups and Friday night curries? Has it put him off, the way contentment is causing her boundaries to blur? The more she expresses, it seems, the less he does, and sometimes she wishes they could return to the cinema steps, when she was demure and he was leaning in. He doesn’t like to text or email. Those hearty messages are all from her, sent in a rush of feeling which doesn’t need reciprocity, except that when she receives no reply she notices a darkening of her inner world. An image has stored itself in her mind: that skein of birds, landing and flying off on the bank opposite his barn, one touching down as another lifts up, as if they are set in opposition.

  She slows at the traffic lights, marvels at the sun’s glare off bonnets and wing mirrors, and smiles again, remembering her Sunday: head in his lap; the crinkle of the newspaper; her sleepy satisfaction as she read her book, saying, ‘Here’s a good word – agog.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘so is bosom,’ giving hers a squeeze, and then they were at it again.

  They are two. It’ll come. He is private; he has an English reserve which anyone would find charming. He doesn’t like to text, is all.

  A cloud passes overhead, its dark bulk ominous, and she lifts her sunglasses up onto her head. Still winter after all.

  The lights change and she presses her foot down, the car slow to respond. He maintains his Law of Week Nights: a full eight hours, padded silk lavender eye mask on. No sleep-filled rocking, not on a Tuesday. He has got his shit in a pile, his ducks in a row. Prim Prenderghast for Prime Minister! He is real and they are together; and yes the birds do fly off, but they land also, and she just needs to give it time.

  It was like she said to Bri when forced to help her move furniture around her mother’s soon-to-be-rented-out bungalow: ‘Loads of people like to take things slow, don’t they? It’s a normal part of—’

  ‘Over there, by the wall,’ Bryony had huffed, with insufficient interest, Manon felt.

  ‘It doesn’t mean he’s not into it. Hell, I’ve been in loads of situations where I’ve felt pressure and it makes you back off, you know? It’s just a human reaction.’ She was stumbling backwards, the soft pads of her fingers burning under the weight of Bryony’s mum’s Parker Knoll. ‘So the most important thing I can do—’

  ‘Coffee table now,’ said Bryony.

  ‘Is stay calm and not put any pressure on him. Y’know, slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.’

  It is so nearly there, this almost-love, if she could only stop herself from being too much. Every part of her reaches for him, un-haveable Alan. And as she lands, he flies off.

  In the wanting, in the yearning, which is so opposite to all the reluctant dates and ambivalent sex and the not-quite-liking anyone, she feels she has become more fully Manon; an ocean of Manon washing over him. Enough for both of them. She could live in the wanting. What could be more joyful than being certain of your feelings? An end to all those stop-start relationships. She feels sorry, now, for all those poor women out there compromising or fearful of commitment, wondering whether it would work out, or if there might be someone better. She’d been like that for seven long years with the boy from university, and when they’d split up she’d had no idea if it was the right thing, but anyway, all that’s behind her now.

  All is perfection in the new Alan era, and everything – his big shoes, his flappy coat, his Fungus the Bogeyman head adorned with silk and lavender eye mask, his Weekday Rules – has a rightness to it. What a wonderful father he’ll make, train sets scattered across his beautiful barn. He is so funny. Sometimes, when he makes a joke, she laughs so hard she does a little wee, although she can’t think of a funny thing he’s said exactly, not a precise example.

  She pulls up, nose of the car pushing at the underside of a bush, turns the key, and all is quiet like a heart stopping. She hauls her bag onto her knees as the car ticks and feels for her phone, the private one, just in case his love has emerged in text form, but the screen is unchanged. So she reaches out to him, as per, setting her fingers typing:

  Gawd, only Tues + am already knackered. Roll on takeaway night, angel cakes. Mx

  Davy

  He takes a sip of stewed coffee and watches out of the third floor window, a hand in his trouser pocket jangling his keys. He can see Manon slam her car door and then stop, holding her face to the bright sun, basking in it with her eyes closed. As if she is sodding holy.

  No more crying in the car park; no more laying her forehead on the steering wheel; no more snatching the lattes from his hand or wiping away smears of mascara. These days, it is Davy who grows impatient with the traffic, as if congestion were further evidence of all that’s wrong in the world. His planet’s out of alignment. A girl has been missing for more than a month; another is dead. They haven’t done their job, thinks Davy, and everything is at odds.

  Manon has become … breezy. Light. Polite to colleagues, interested in their adorable childrearing anecdotes when she used to make silent vomiting motions behind their backs.

  ‘Aw, what did the twins do on the weekend, Nigel? Run you ragged, did they?’

  It annoys Davy beyond measure, the bounce in her step.

  They’ve been watching Tony Wright this past week but he hasn’t put a foot wrong. The PM on Taylor Dent has come in but tells them nothing: Whether death occurred before or after the body was immersed into water is impossible to say. Injuries consistent with river damage. Toxicology inconclusive.

  The background checks on Garfield, as well as some uncomfortable questioning of the professor about his Facebook usage, were insufficient grounds for his arrest. No, it was all going nowhere. Garfield had shifted uneasily in interview but not, Davy thought, out of shame, his expression saying: I am a man. I accept my peccadilloes; why can’t you?

  The press have started to itch their beards in longer think pieces, analysing the parameters of the investigation. The police have looked too closely at her immediate circle, is the latest offering from The Mirror. Officers have not given sufficient thought to the possibility of a stranger, driving out of the night. A random attack.

  How people love to criticise, Davy thinks, shaking his head. It’s never a stranger. Well, almost never.

  And all the while, Manon is harping on about which new restaurants to try. ‘I’m ardent,’ she told him yesterday, sitting in the car with brown paper bags on their laps from the fast-f
ood place.

  They were on a surveillance job – drugs and prostitution. His lap was warm, his mouth filled with a synthetic coating of trans fats and salt. He murmured, hiding his irritation with a full mouth.

  ‘If there’s two people, I’m always the one who’s more keen.’

  He nodded, biting further into his cheeseburger.

  ‘Except when I’m not,’ she said. ‘Mostly, I don’t like people. And then I’m not ardent at all.’

  ‘Riveting,’ muttered Davy, staring ahead.

  ‘What I mean is, it takes me ages to find someone I think is really great and then, well, sometimes I knock them over with enthusiasm.’

  ‘Like a St Bernard.’

  ‘Bit like that, yes.’

  ‘Shall we have another cheeseburger?’

  She’d nodded, chewing. ‘Only 99p.’

  ‘I don’t think the price is the issue, is it?’ said Davy.

  ‘Get them in.’

  He ought to be happy for her but he isn’t, and Davy is getting used to his meaner thoughts being in the ascendance. He wonders if he should apply for a transfer – move far away and start over, away from the feelings which are making the minutes and the seconds lugubrious, but he has this new connection with Stanton, like the fragile push of a shoot from a seed, and he can’t pretend he hasn’t harboured hopes for what it might do for his career.

  Time itself has become heavy, the consistency of treacle, and yet he is sure time, for Manon, has sped up in the past fortnight. She talks about Nana as if it’s her dog. ‘Nana’s moulting,’ she says tolerantly, picking the hairs off her skirt. He pictures that stoic dog, ears like furry sails flapping at the sides of her head, and the image passes smoothly on to Chloe and those plates of straightened hair.

  He misses her. He misses her, he misses her, he misses her. Some nights he cries so much his pillow’s too damp to lie on. Seven miserable lonely days of missing someone he never should have been with in the first place, yet wanting her back even so. He wonders if he could overlook her lack of human sympathy and generalised air of bitterness, just so he could have the feeling of being together again. Perhaps he misses the chap he was before Helena Reed died, cheerfully intending to marry Chloe, his very own poisoned chalice. Simultaneously, like some sick, celestial seesaw, Manon’s personal happiness has supplanted his own, and every day he is faced with a vision of love’s smug young dream, written all over her just-had-a-shag face.

  He has raked a small but pleasing harvest of earwax under a nail and he rolls it now, between thumb and forefinger, turning from the window. He looks up to see Manon come in through the double doors. She smiles at him across the room and mimes lifting a cup to her lips, mouthing, ‘Coffee?’ at him.

  ‘Can I have your attention, please?’ says Stanton, with his ever-present files under his arm. He smiles at Davy as Davy comes near.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he says warmly, to which Davy says, ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Right, just a quick word, everyone. DI Harriet Harper is taking a leave of absence due to personal circumstances. Any issues arising come to me or DS Manon …’ He scans the room then finds her. ‘Ah, there you are, Bradshaw.’

  Elsie must have died, thinks Davy. Poor Harriet. She’ll be heartbroken.

  ‘You two can take it from here, can’t you?’ Stanton says to Davy and Manon, with a hand on Davy’s shoulder.

  It had begun at Helena Reed’s funeral on Friday. Davy stood beneath a black umbrella as the rain streamed in a wall around his personal octagon, all the mourners spattered in silver droplets, the puddles splashing at their patent pumps and polished brogues.

  Manon made some excuse as to why she couldn’t attend. There was a smattering of students and members of the faculty; Dr Young, looking ashen (Davy recognised him from his police interview). Will Carter attended in an impeccable suit, which flashed through the open flaps of his black raincoat. Davy had come to admire Will Carter. He carried himself with utmost decorum; didn’t over-emote at the front of the church but sat with elegant sympathy, paying his respects. He looked even more handsome in mourning clothes, especially the waistcoat element, which Davy never would have thought of himself. And his socks – even his socks, visible when he crossed his legs – were a perfect shade of blue, matching his shirt and tie.

  Ian and Miriam Hind attended, which surprised Davy because press innuendo surrounding Helena was still swirling, as if her suicide were part confession.

  Edith Hind lover found dead.

  Why did Edith’s girl end it all?

  Lady Hind wore a wide-brimmed hat, which forced her neighbours to duck and swerve while she remained serene. Her neckline sparkled with a collar of black stones. The Hinds cried more than was fitting for a friend of their daughter’s, and Davy could see they were in some way enacting a dress rehearsal for their own worst fears. Besides, there was no way of stopping your mind from wandering at a funeral, travelling into all sorts of dark imaginings about your nearest and dearest and how they might die and how you might feel. They were riveting like that.

  Helena’s own parents were not present, her father having suffered a stroke during the press furore over his daughter’s sexuality; her mother was described by the priest as ‘incapacitated’. ‘Our thoughts are with them,’ he said, ‘and it falls to us to mourn on their behalf a beloved daughter, friend, and student.’

  As the congregation filed out, Davy remained seated in his pew, looking forwards at the large photograph of Helena on an easel next to her coffin. He was staring at his guilt and at his failure to prevent something so wantonly destructive. And as he stared, he felt a body heave down next to him. Stanton’s breathing was strained, as if the fat was squeezing the very breath out of him like a fist. They sat together, staring at Helena’s image – her expression smiling and innocent of what lay ahead – and there was intimacy in that pew. The constable and the chief superintendent. Then, Stanton said, ‘Pint?’ and Davy accepted the invitation, in part because, without Chloe, he had nowhere to be on a Friday night. He thought it would be one long arse ache, that pint with the boss, but as they sat at the small round table, he found he was too tired for toadying, so he looked Stanton in the eye and told him how rotten he felt about Helena Reed, and how responsible. Stanton licked the foam off his upper lip and said, ‘If you can keep those feelings, Davy lad, – and let me tell you, every minute in the police will chip away at them – but if you can hold onto those human feelings, you might just make a good copper.’

  Wednesday

  Miriam

  ‘Mum?’

  It is Rollo’s voice calling and she follows it into the lounge, where the curtains are perpetually drawn.

  ‘Look at this,’ he says. He stands in front of the television, which is blaring the excessively jaunty theme tune to This Morning. The remote in his hand is still lolling at the screen. The television is never on during the day, except the odd black and white afternoon film when Miriam is particularly exhausted.

  ‘Why am I watching this?’ she asks.

  ‘Just wait and see.’

  The set is a cacophony of exposed brick, floral wallpaper, and primary-coloured soft furnishings, all yelling ‘CHEERFUL!’ at a bruising volume.

  ‘Here we go,’ says Rollo.

  The presenters – a blonde woman who resembles Bambi and a white-haired, curiously ageless man – have lowered their voices to denote ‘tragedy item’.

  ‘A month ago, twenty-four-year-old Edith Hind went missing from her home in Huntingdon. The police still don’t know what’s happened to her, but since then a series of lurid revelations have appeared in the press relating to her private life. Indeed, last week, the exposure led to her best friend, Helena Reed, tragically taking her own life. Today, exclusively on This Morning, we have Edith’s boyfriend here to talk about the girl he loves and to separate the facts from the fiction.’

  ‘That’s Holly Willoughbooby,’ says Rollo.

  ‘That can’t be her real name,’ says Miriam.r />
  ‘Shhhhh,’ says Rollo.

  Holly’s huge doe eyes are looking up from beneath a voluminous sweep of yellow hair. Her voice is laden with condolence, while along the bottom of the screen, Miriam notices, the next item is on flattering trousers, followed by a discussion on toddlers who bite. Something about the lighting on the show makes its world seem thin and breakable.

  ‘You were with Edith for two happy years and presumably you had no inkling of what lay ahead. You must be worried sick about her,’ says the ageless man, whose bronzed skin and white hair make him seem like a photographic negative.

  Will Carter smiles. He is resplendent in a slate blue open-neck shirt, an exact match for his eyes which, studio lit and in high definition, sparkle on screen.

  Ah yes, thinks Miriam, of course.

  ‘I’m worried and I miss her like crazy,’ he says, ‘but it’s also been devastating to see so many lies and innuendoes in the tabloids. It’s just compounded all our distress.’

  ‘You mean yours and her parents – Sir Ian and Lady Hind,’ says the ageless man.

  ‘That’s Phil,’ Rollo says to Miriam.

  ‘Has TV reversed the passage of time?’ asks Miriam.