one.’
Matthew Corsham’s boat was a red and green narrowboat, last on the stretch, past a mains hook-up board. Reasonable nick from the outside. Through a window in the front end – the fore? – the place looked tidy, nothing immediately suggesting forced entry. Moving along he tried the next window when the boat suddenly listed, the water slapping underneath the pontoon. Jupp had grabbed the thin handrail running along the edge of the roof and was hauling himself up, keys in hand. But after an extended fumble with a circular padlock, he grunted and gave up, huffing and stepping down clumsily from the gunwales.
‘Changed the bloody locks. Supposed to supply the management with a working key at all times.’ So much for the Anarchists’ Manifesto of three minutes previously. ‘You can have a look through the windows, but I’m not breaking the door without my brother’s say-so.’
Jupp turned to head back the way they’d come.
‘Do you have CCTV here?’ Mae called after him.
‘No. And I’ve got jobs to do.’ He paused to light a cigarette, then stumped off back towards his office.
Mae stepped up onto the deck. The smooth metal was slippery under his feet as he braced to shove back the hatch. It wouldn’t give, so he ducked down to the level of the two tiny doors that came up no higher than his thighs. Cupping his hands between his forehead and the glass, he peered inside.
Bear would have given her thumbs to live in there. Not that there was enough money in the world to pay him to endure what looked like several inches of negative headroom, but the attraction of the cosy, simple lifestyle in evidence there wasn’t hard to imagine. Shallow shelves tucked under the windows held books and a few video games, secured against the inevitable rocking with taut lengths of curtain wire. A crocheted blanket was stretched neatly over the back of a sofa, and the few feet of wall space between the single-glazed windows were covered in mismatched picture frames holding photographs.
He was about to leave when something caught his eye. A single sheet of paper on the table opposite the wood burner and a pen next to it. Mae went along to the window next to the table, to get a better look. Carefully bending into a crouch on the narrow ledge beneath the glass, he wiped the rain from his eyes and squinted in.
It was a list. Toothpaste, toothbrush, razor. Blue holdall, phone, charger, wallet, tickets. Camera, film, batteries. All the items on it crossed off.
He read to the end. Footsteps approached, and he waved Jupp away with his free hand as he brought himself up to standing. ‘All right, I’m coming.’
But when he turned, Mae saw that Jupp was long gone. The person who had passed him, who was now on the back deck and unlocking the door with her keys, was Ellie Power.
The dirty remains of the afternoon sun quivered in the puddles at my feet as I approached the marina. The office was closed up, but as I headed down to towards the boats I saw Mr Jupp. He threw his cigarette on the ground like a dart when he saw me, and came lumbering up the gangway.
‘We’ve got the bloody police down here, looking for Matthew,’ he said, passing me. ‘You’ve got keys, you bloody let him in.’
Shit. Fear swelled in my chest, inflating in seconds. But I made myself go down before I could change my mind. Before I’d had a chance to think through what I was and wasn’t going to tell him, there was Ben Mae, hanging off the side of Matt’s boat.
‘All right, I’m coming,’ he said, waving me away without looking up.
I cleared my throat, and he turned.
‘Ellie.’
‘DC Mae.’
He smiled. ‘Been a while. It’s DS now. I’m the lead on Missing Persons, so that’s why I’m …’ he trailed off, gesturing at the boat, the yard. Me.
‘Congratulations,’ I said.
We stood there for a moment, before I remembered what I was doing. I climbed up, got both locks open and swung the tiny doors open and slid back the hatch.
‘Coming in?’ I asked him.
‘Are you inviting me?’
‘That’s vampires, isn’t it?’
He laughed and gestured at the door. ‘After you, then.’
The familiar smell rose up around me as I went down, a woody warmness with the slight tinge of damp. I half-expected him to be there but the boat was empty. I stepped down into the cabin. Mae started to follow me in, but paused on the steps. He gestured at the four coat hooks next to the door.
‘Should these have anything hanging on them?’
‘It depends.’ I frowned, thinking of the last time I’d been there, when I’d hardly had room to hang my own raincoat. Matt loved being on foot, but winter was forging on and he was skinny. Usually, those pegs were draped with his layers.
I went in and sank into the built-in sofa. It was as if the place had been exorcized. So cold in there. The few square feet of hearth under the wood-burning stove had been swept after its last use, and the shallow pile of the fabric of the upholstery was sticking up unevenly, recently vacuumed. Usually the windows wept condensation, but now they were dry. Which only added up if there had been no breath to wet them. I unzipped my rain-soaked top and hung it above the stove. Mae came in and abruptly slammed his head on the ceiling.
‘F … lipping hell,’ he said, rubbing his scalp where he’d hit it. I almost wanted to laugh: Matt had a permanent bruise on his hairline at the front where he continually banged his head coming in. Unscrewing his eyes Mae said, ‘This is not sensible for a man of his height.’
I fiddled with the keys, rolling the cork float-ball keyring around in my palm. Mae nodded at them.
‘Mr Jupp couldn’t get his to work. Reckons the locks had been changed.’
I nodded. ‘First time I’ve used these ones. The old locks had just got rusty.’ Matt had said he’d been meaning to change them for ages, and had given me the set of keys as an afterthought, less than a week ago. He’d rolled down the window of his car and called me back after we’d already said goodbye outside the flat. Keep them to yourself, he’d said. You never know who might want to break in and swipe my dirty underpants.
‘You know why? Security worries?’
I gave it half a moment’s thought, and shook my head. ‘Not that I know of. No. He would have said.’
‘Sure? His colleague said the hospital had been expecting his laptop back, so—’
‘He’s lost it.’
‘OK,’ he said, his notebook out now and pen poised. ‘Details?’
‘I don’t know any more than that. He asked me to check around the flat.’
‘But you didn’t find it?’
‘No,’ I said, irritable. But now I thought about it, Matt hadn’t found it and I hadn’t asked. Guilt pecked at me as I ran that phone call back: he’d sounded really worried, but I hadn’t offered to help. ‘Does it matter?’
Mae made a search me face. ‘It wasn’t … stolen, or anything? You’re sure?’
‘Look, I really don’t—’ I started, then I broke off. Processed what he was saying. ‘Why did the hospital want it back?’
Mae took a breath before he answered me. There was a look on his face that I couldn’t interpret. ‘West London NHS Trust had him on rolling freelance contracts,’ he said, watching