The Missing Hours by Emma Kavanagh Page A

together on the sofa, wondering how their world had shifted this time. ‘Fine’ is perhaps overstating it.
    But I don’t say that. What I say is ‘Mogs?’
    Orla looks up at me, her face flushed like she has been caught out. ‘It’s what my brother used to call Selena.’
    Selena wipes her eyes and smiles a small smile. ‘It was after Mog the cat. I told him on one of our first dates that they were my favourite books when I was a kid. It kind of stuck.’ She shakes her head slowly. ‘I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you what happened. But I can’t.’
    I don’t know what it is, maybe a shift in the light, maybe a small movement that Selena makes. But I am staring at her sweater, at what I took to be mud.
    Selena sees me looking, sits up a little straighter. ‘What?’
    ‘Dr Cole,’ I say. ‘Is that blood?’

A good man
    DS Finn Hale: Wednesday, 9.15 a.m.
    I HANG ON the pavement, Cardiff traffic roaring. The door to the offices of Hartley & Newell stands ajar. I am, I admit, steeling myself, bracing for what comes next.
    People flow past me, some stopping to give me a look, the rock in their particular stream. That would have to be my Native American name.
    But then perhaps they are looking at me like that because they aren’t blind, because they can see that I look like a bag of boiled dog shit. As it were.
    It was gone two when I got in last night. Even Strider was too tired to care, a brief glance, a quick wag of the tail, nothing more. I tumbled into bed, still fully clothed, lay there wishing I’d thought to put the heating on the timer, wishing that this old building had something even vaguely resembling insulation, and then, when I got really pathetic, wishing that I had someone who could have turned the heating on for me. I fell asleep at that point, insomnia a useless force against the need to escape introspection.
    The pavement shimmies beneath my feet. An overweight woman wearing a backpack scowls at me and I grin back. She speeds up. Seems reasonable.
    I look up at Hartley & Newell, then sigh heavily, theatrically, push my way through the flowing bodies. Where the hell are they all going? That’s what I want to know. Is there a party to which I’ve not been invited? I slowly climb the three broad steps.
    It is the scene of a tragedy. You would know that even if you didn’t know. There is an air here, a heavy mist of grief. From a back office, someone talks in soft tones. One voice, no corresponding reply, so a phone call I’m guessing.
    I walk to the reception desk, offer the girl behind it my warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Hale.’
    The girl looks up at me. My God, she’s thin – the kind of thin where the head is bigger than the body, like you are balancing a ball on a stick. I wonder when she ate last. Where her parents are. And realise that, yes, I am officially getting old.
    ‘What?’ She looks confused, like I have spoken a foreign language.
    She isn’t wearing make-up; she is agonisingly pale, pretty in a suffering kind of way. She looks like she is twelve years old. Okay. Maybe not twelve. Twenty-two? Twenty-three at a push.
    ‘I’m CID. I’m here about …’
    ‘Dominic,’ she says quietly.
    ‘Yes,’ I agree.
    She doesn’t say anything for a moment, just looks down at her bitten nails. Then, a breath of air. ‘He was such a good man.’
    There is the click of a phone settling into a receiver, slow clacking footsteps. Bronwyn Hartley leans against her office door and offers me a thin smile. ‘DC Hale.’
    ‘It’s DS now.’ The words slip out and I curse myself. Like she cares.
    Bronwyn nods, but I’m not sure she has actually heard. Her mascara has run, formed thick lines around her eyes. I know Bronwyn, in that ambiguous way that I know many people – the same way I knew Dominic. That is to say, not at all, not really. I know her to say hello to. I have sat across a table from her as she works to defend the indefensible.
    ‘You all right, Fae?’ Bronwyn looks