CC: You feel she’s telling you something. Can you say a bit—
EP: It was like she was telling me to stay scared. Like it was a warning.
They said nothing until they were back at street level, outside the Powers’ flat. Fine rain sieved across the street, and Mae shrugged up the collar of his pea coat. Kit strode back to the car, heading for the driver’s seat.
‘Well that was weird,’ she said, when Mae was in beside her.
‘In what way?’
Kit frowned into the middle distance. ‘I spoke to the guy at the hospital, Leon, right? The dude who called it in.’ She turned to him. ‘And he gave me Ellie’s name as someone who knows Matt and said how he’d said she volunteered there. So I called the HR office and got them to find her address. He searched for Power on the staff system – he spelled it out loud as he typed it in – and he said “Here it is, one entry, first name Eleanor”. Hers was the only record they had. Which means Christine isn’t on their system, even though she works for them.’
‘Maybe she’s agency staff?’
‘That’s what I thought, but everyone needs clearance at a hospital, surely? Kids and vulnerable adults at a hospital, you need a DBS or whatever.’
Mae frowned, went to get his phone out, but Kit was eyeballing something in the rear-view.
‘What?’ he asked, turning in his seat to see.
On the pavement, staring into the car, was a young man. Caucasian with black, tightly curled hair, a faded band T-shirt under a checked flannel shirt. Early twenties, but already a little old for the gloomy, emo vibe he was projecting.
Kit was out of the car and coming round the front before Mae was even out of his seatbelt. ‘Help you?’ she asked him, brightly.
Mae joined them on the pavement.
‘Doing surveillance?’ the guy said. His voice was scratchy, something Mae immediately put down to the yellow plastic wallet of rolling tobacco protruding from his top pocket.
Kit already had her pad out. ‘How do you mean?’
‘The people in the van!’ His jittering glare ricocheted endlessly between them. ‘I’m not stupid.’
Which may or may not have been true, but what Mae knew with a reasonable level of certainty was that he was a nutcase. Kit, on the other hand, needed maybe a little more field experience.
‘We’re the police, CID,’ Kit said, and gave their names, proper by-the-book. ‘We’re checking out a possible missing person. Do you live round here?’
He nodded across the road to the rear access of a shop that sat underneath the Powers’ flat. Mae had clocked it on the way in, a Polish place.
‘I see a lot.’ The young man pointed enigmatically to his eyes with the V of his index and middle fingers, then turned the gesture on the street. ‘But what I want to know is, what are you doing with the van? You want to listen to what I’m saying in my own house?’
Kit glanced around. ‘Can you see this van now?’
‘I’m not imagining it! It’s just gone, right now, obviously!’
Kit nodded diplomatically and tucked her pad away again. Mae couldn’t fault her professionalism: she gave him the non-emergency number, closed the conversation, stayed polite and respectful. The guy was still talking when Mae swung his own door shut.
‘… parabolic microphones, serious kit, and if it’s not you, it’s MI6, or SO-15, or whatever, and I know about it. I know, OK, man?’
Kit waited until they were around the corner before she took her eyes off the road. ‘Jesus. Get that a lot?’
Mae laughed, and got out his phone.
By the time they hit the Boston Manor Road he’d found what he expected to find. Not only was Christine not on her employer’s records – at least not under her own name – but there were no records on Christine or Eleanor Power at that address anywhere else. No entry on the local government system, NHS, banks, credit agencies, nothing.
Didn’t happen by accident.
So, what? Were they hiding? Why?
Kit turned on the radio, flicked quickly away from Heart, found nothing, turned it off.
‘Christine Power was pleased to see you though, yeah?’ she said, biting the edge off a wry smile. ‘Big DS Mae fan. Ker-azy pheromones coming off that one.’
‘Kit. Please.’
She lifted her hands from the wheel in surrender. ‘Just saying. But what did she mean about—?’
‘Can we leave it?’
She blew out her cheeks. ‘What’s next then? Open-door search then grade it? I couldn’t get hold of the guy at the moorings, but I can go down there now, sure I’ll find someone to let me in. Won’t take long.’
The open-door search was the first point of call usually, checking the missing person’s home in case they’d got sick or stuck or injured anywhere. But if it was a narrowboat it was going to be a pretty quick job.
‘After lunch,’ Mae said, suddenly aware of the chasm in his stomach. ‘I’ll go to the marina, you hit the phones. Talk to his manager about what he got sacked for.’
His phone buzzed against his leg and he pulled it out, checked the screen: Nadia. Turning in his seat for whatever privacy he could get in a five-door, he hit the green button.
‘Are you OK to pick Dominica up from violin?’ his ex-wife wanted to know. ‘I’ve just been asked to go to this meeting.’
No hi, no how’s things. And it was Dominica now instead of Bear, like they couldn’t even agree on the name of their kid. ‘Sure.’
‘And bring her back at half eight?’
‘Yep.’
‘Mike’ll be here, OK, so … just so you know.’
Mike. Who had ten years on Mae, twelve on Nadia, although a stranger could easily place him in his mid-sixties because the guy was utterly, relentlessly grey. It wasn’t like Mae hadn’t tried to find something interesting about him, something likeable. Mid-west American, drove a Citroen, played badminton three times a week, with a record that couldn’t be cleaner if it had been formulated in an aseptic lab. Never so much as a day late with his TV licence. There was, of course, more than a slim chance that Nadia’s attraction to Mike was all Mae’s fault. That ten years with him had turned his funny, brilliant, game-for-anything wife into a reliability junkie. Or maybe it was just that maybe Mike happened to be hung like a centaur.
‘Mike. Sure.’
Nadia sighed. ‘Try to do something fun with her after, OK? She always comes back from you so … I don’t know. Flat.’
He took the screen from his ear and thumbed the red circle until he could feel the casing start to bow.
‘Touch-screen means you only have to touch it, you know,’ Kit told him.
‘Uh-huh. And advanced driving means keeping your eyes on the road.’