A Cast of Vultures by Judith Flanders

to collect that data.’ He sighed. ‘Tell me what you know, I’ll pass it on.’
    I did, but apart from the link, I didn’t know anything else, and I couldn’t see it would interest the police: they’d known his last name, and probably now knew he had been reported missing. The only thing that was odd, and I doubted the police would care, was that Viv liked him. She didn’t give out her trust lightly, and she approved of him. Still, I hadn’t looked around his flat and thought, Wow, this looks like a drug dealer lives here . Drug dealers might well be pleasant socially, and have flats that looked no different from anyone else’s. It wasn’t my area of expertise.
    I finished, ‘The police probably met Viv when they went to search his flat. She has his keys.’ I didn’t add that she’d acquired them after he’d vanished, not before. Or that we’d been in the flat. There are some things that a girl doesn’t have to share.
    Jake didn’t make much of it. He went back to putting his files together, and I took the cups over to the sink before I began to pack the manuscripts I was working on into my bag. As I did, Jake was reminded. ‘My “partner”?’ he asked. ‘Do we run a dental practice?’
    I didn’t bother to look up. ‘The way publishing is going, it might be sensible to retrain. I’d be a demon with the floss.’ I went back to my bag. ‘I just hate “boyfriend”. You’re not a boy. And that’s not what you objected to. You were marking your territory.’
    He was silent, which meant both that I was right, and that he hadn’t known that’s what he had been doing. It didn’t matter. Things had gone better than I’d hoped. I hada kitchen garden in embryo that I didn’t have to work in, a part share in a nascent dental practice, and Jake and I were no longer quarrelling.
    It was only when I got home that evening that I remembered I hadn’t told Steve what Jake did for a living. Nor could I find the paperwork he had left for me.

C HAPTER F OUR
    N OW THAT I had nothing to occupy me, the questions I’d been blocking out with work during the day came roaring back. I wanted to find out about the house, and about Harefield, if it was in fact him. I texted Jake: Will you be home for supper?
    Twenty minutes later, there was still no reply, no matter how many times I picked up my phone. I even shook it once, but that didn’t dislodge any messages that had got stuck in cyberspace either. I stared at my bag full of manuscripts. It wasn’t that I had nothing to keep me busy, but I was antsy, and wanted to be up and doing. I just didn’t know what I should be doing. So I searched systematically for Steve’s papers. I hadn’t absent-mindedly filed them – there wasn’t an extra folder on my desk, and I carefully checked the drawers. I hadn’t binned them. I went through the recycling box outside to make sure of that. They weren’t in the kitchen drawer where I keep my shopping list.
    After an hour, I admitted defeat. I looked out the window. It would be daylight for ages. I could go for a walk. I could water the back garden. I needed to do laundry, or I could visit Mr Rudiger. Instead I did what I knew I was going to do from the moment I left the office. I got my cycle out and went to find Viv and hear what she’d managed to dig up on Harefield, and give her my news. I could have rung her, but that seemed less purposeful. Going somewhere made me feel as if I were acting, not just reacting. To what, or about what, was less clear.
    The drawback to this brilliant plan, I discovered ten minutes later, was that Viv wasn’t home. So instead of hanging about in my sitting room, I was hanging about on her doorstep. I looked at my watch. I’d give it ten minutes. If she wasn’t back by then, I’d go home and start supper, and do some work. It was still hot, but the building across the road blocked out the worst glare of the late-afternoon sun. I sat down by her front door and pulled out my phone.