Little Face by Sophie Hannah Page A

unofficially. She ... she told me things that I'm going to
have to come clean about, once the investigation starts. You know I
don't deserve to lose my job, you know how good I am. . .
    `As do you,' she said flatly, raising an eyebrow. `How could I forget?
Without you, we'd all be scratching our ears and picking our teeth,
incapable of closing a single case.'
    `Yeah, well. When you're as shit as I am at most things, it's hard to
miss when, surprise fucking surprise, you find you can actually do
something well. And this-being a detective-is something I do well.'
    `Oh,
really?
So
how
come
you
never
mention
it?
You
should
have
said.'
    `Fuck off!'
    Charlie laughed. `Only you could boast outrageously and sound like
a victim at the same time.'
    And only you could patronise me in that particular fond, proprietorial, sneery way that makes me want to give you a good hard slap,
thought Simon. He said, `I know I've got no right to ask you but ...
any ideas about how I get myself out of this mess?'
    Charlie looked unsurprised. She shook a set of car keys in front of
his face. `Come on.'
    `Where?'
    `Somewhere we can't be overheard.' The canteen was a breeding ground for gossip. They pushed their way through the tables, chairs
and loud graphic jokes and headed out of the building.

    Charlie drove like a man, steering with two fingers, or sometimes
with her wrist, ignoring speed limits, swearing at other drivers. They
left Spilling on the Silsford road, with Radio Two blaring. Simon
only ever listened to Radio Four by choice, but had long ago given up
trying to persuade Charlie to compromise. Radio One in the morning,
Radio Two from one o'clock onwards, that was her rule. Which
meant Steve Wright in the afternoon, factoids, songs that should only
be played in lifts or hotel lobbies, everything bland that Simon hated.
    He focused instead on the flat, orderly landscape that was passing
too quickly. Normally he found it calming but today it looked empty.
It was missing something. Simon realised with a rush of embarrassment
that he was hoping to see Alice. Every face, every figure he saw that
wasn't hers was a disappointment. Desperate panic had given way to
a sort of mournful wallowing.
    What was it that he had seen in Alice that seemed to speak to
something similar in him? She was pretty, but Simon's feelings for her
had nothing to do with the way she looked. It was something in her
manner, a hint of unease, a sense that she was not in her element, that
she was negotiating unseen obstacles. It was how Simon felt all the
time. Some people knew how to glide effortlessly through life. He didn't, and he guessed Alice didn't either. She was too sensitive, too complicated. Though he'd only seen her in a state of extreme distress. He
had no idea what she was like before last week.
    Charlie would call him a fantasist, inventing Alice's character on the
basis of so little evidence. But weren't all perceptions of other people
based on such inventions? Wasn't it crazy to assume that one's family,
friends and acquaintances added up to coherent wholes whose natures
could be summarised and fixed? Most of the time Simon felt more like
a collection of random behaviours, each driven by an insane, anarchic
compulsion he didn't entirely understand.
    He shook his head when he heard Sheryl Crow's mediocre voice. Typical. Charlie sang along: something about days being winding
roads. Simon thought it was bollocks.

    Charlie slammed on the brakes just before they got to the Red
Lion pub, about five miles from town, and swan-necked into its car
park. `I'm not in the mood,' said Simon, his stomach protesting at the
prospect of alcohol.
    `Don't worry, we're not going in. I just didn't want to give you this
anywhere near the station.' She rummaged in her large black suede
handbag and produced a standard issue police pocket book, the sort
that every officer carried. Every incident of every shift, significant or