Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner Page A

from the
Mail on Sunday
. We’re doing a special piece on Edith Hind and I wondered if you wanted to tell us, you know, what she’s really like – as her best friend. It’d really bring the piece to life. I’m sure you’re worried about Edith and obviously coverage like this raises her profile, so if you wanted to talk, you know, to help the police appeal, then you can get in touch with me on—. I really look forward to hearing from you, Helena. Thanks, then. It’s Bethan Jones, by the way.’

Davy
     
    He lowers his head to the left, feeling the long stretch down the side of his neck, then to the other side. His body is beginning to take umbrage at having been in a broadly vertical position for more than twenty hours. Evening now – a full night and day on shift – and they’re waiting for the 6 p.m. briefing. Only last week he’d heard a radio programme about research showing the toll night shifts take on the body, tearing through its natural rhythms, giving you cancer.
    He increases the stretch by placing a hand on the top of his head and pulling gently. Even while doing this he wants to go to sleep. One side, then the other. He sees the department tilted on its side: Kim pouring herself some stewed coffee, Stuart sitting next to Colin, Harriet and Manon up front by the whiteboard, all of them gathering lugubriously, waiting for Fergus. Things are heating up in the press office.
    Thirty-six hours missing. You’d expect a body or a firm sighting by now, or an injured girl, limping away from whatever trauma has befallen her. But this? Murkier and murkier it’s getting, and Davy doesn’t like the look of it.
    He’s just come from interview room three, where Will Carter kept running a confused hand through his hair and saying, ‘Edith? And Helena?’ As if he and Manon had totally lost their marbles. ‘No,’ Carter mumbled. ‘No, I don’t think that can be right.’
    ‘Helena confirmed it to us,’ Manon said, without nearly as much sympathy as Davy would have liked.
    He’s seen it all before, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less depressing – watching people reassess their entire surroundings as if buildings have been moved or reconfigured, roads diverted. The people they think they know have hidden lives: other women, other men, money stolen, debts hidden, a previous life in a cartel or on the game, children fathered in secret. It exhausts as well as fascinates him, churning it all up with their big stubby stick. Can’t you all just keep it simple, he wants to sigh. Can’t you keep it buttoned, keep your fists out of it, stop drinking, stop
shagging
? Isn’t life complicated enough?
    And here was Will Carter, bewildered. He wasn’t standing up all of a sudden, like most of them did, trying to turn the table over and shouting, ‘You’re having a fucking laugh!’ or kicking a chair. No, he was rather genteelly running a hand through his hair, saying, ‘Edith and Helena? Seriously?’ And just looking mildly shocked.
    ‘Looking back,’ Manon said to Carter, and Davy thought, go easy, now, the man’s had a shock, ‘can you see evidence of that relationship?’
    ‘We were always together, always close, the three of us. I never questioned it. Shows what a fool I am.’ And Carter laughed in a self-deprecating way, which once again made Davy think, you poor chap.
    Manon didn’t seem to share his sensitivity. ‘Perhaps you did know, Mr Carter,’ she said. ‘And became incensed by it. Jealous. Perhaps you came back early to confront Edith about it.’
    ‘No. I honestly didn’t know. And it makes me look like a total chump. And I know there are people who think you should know – you know, the inner workings of your nearest and dearest. But the fact is, if they don’t tell you …’
    ‘Did you have the feeling that Edith was going to leave you?’
    Christ, Davy thought, give the man a sodding break.
    Carter blew out through his cheeks. ‘No, no I didn’t. Are you going to