The Various Haunts of Men (38 page)

‘God, sorry … I was miles away. Thanks – sounds good.’

‘Low blood sugar. Makes you tired and faint and cross. Giovanni’s fegato alla Veneziana will sort it. Come on.’

They ran down the concrete stairs and out through the doors to his car laughing. Stay the moment, Freya thought quickly, looking up at the starless, moonless night sky,
please God, stay the moment.

In the car she realised that she looked as if she was at the end of a long day at work, not at the beginning of an evening out. The cream-coloured pashmina was as near as she got to being dressed up. The next thought was that he must like her if he invited her out no matter how she was looking.

The restaurant was a glowing warm oasis, one of the small, old-fashioned
Italian places that made no concessions to interior design and twenty-first-century food fashion.

‘I love it because it’s straight out of the sixties,’ Simon said, as they were greeted effusively by the proprietor and given a cosy table in an alcove near the window. ‘Look, the candles really do come in Chianti bottles with straw waistcoats.’

‘I hope there’s a proper pudding trolley.’

‘Oozing
cream from every pore.’ The menus arrived, the specials of the day were described lovingly by a waiter with the sort of Italian accent people used to joke
about. ‘The difference is that the food is fantastic. There may be prawn cocktail but it contains huge, salty fresh prawns in the most wonderful creamy home-made mayonnaise and the veal is thin as tissue paper and the liver melts in your mouth.’

‘The best sort of comfort food.’

A bottle of Chianti arrived and was poured, ruby red, into huge glasses.

‘Comfort drink,’ Simon lifted his to her and smiled, that devastating, extraordinary smile. The restaurant was full but there was no one else at all in the room, in Lafferton, in the world. This is happiness, Freya said, this, now. Perhaps I have never known what it was until tonight.

And then they talked, as they had talked on the evening in his flat, filling in more of the spaces they had left then, discovering more about each other’s lives, talked about Simon’s last visit to Italy and the preparations for his next exhibition, a little about the choir – but he didn’t sing, wasn’t interested in music, liked silence; about cricket, which he played for Lafferton police and also in
his mother’s village; about his childhood again, which Freya thought he was still trying to explain to himself as much as to her; his being a triplet and also the different one of the three seemed to intrigue rather than trouble him. They moved to her childhood, the Met, and then her marriage which she had glided over quickly the last time; it was like Simon’s childhood – she needed to try and understand
and explain it to herself, and as she talked about it to him now, she thought she might at last have begun to do so. They went on to books – they had similar tastes in fiction – food – he cooked but was not, he said, unacquainted with Tesco’s Finest range –
Meriel’s charities. They did not talk about work. The restaurant food was exactly as he had said, old-fashioned and unfashionable 1960s Italian,
wonderfully cooked, wonderfully fresh. They gazed at the pudding trolley for several nostalgic moments – tiramisu, sherry trifle, coffee and brandy mousse, crème brûlée, chocolate gateau, with jugs of golden cream – but in the end passed it up in favour of cappuccinos.

The restaurant emptied. They sat on, talking. Rain battered suddenly against the windows.

Simon Serrailler caught her glance
and held it. ‘Thanks for this,’ he said and smiled again.

Freya heard Sharon Medcalf’s voice in her head. God, he’s broken more hearts than I’ve had hot dinners. And chirpy Nathan’s, his face worried for her. Barking up the wrong tree there, Sarge.

She looked across the table. Oh no, absolutely the right tree.

Simon stirred his coffee. ‘You like it in Lafferton, don’t you?’

‘Love it. I should
have moved long before I did. I’ve been lucky to find friends so quickly too, lucky with people at work. Lucky.’

‘Sorry to have blighted it all with the drugs op.’

She waved her hand. But then, for a moment, broke out of her trance of bemused delight, remembering the others, remembering what she owed them.

‘Just one thing, sir – it’s work though, so if you’d prefer not …’

‘No, fine. And it’s
Simon in here.’

She felt herself flush. Focus, she said, focus. ‘I’m unhappy that the missing persons case has been downgraded.’

Serrailler sighed. ‘I know, I understand how much you’ve put into it, but the Super had a good look at the files and said enough. I couldn’t honestly justify putting up a fight. The public appeals drew precious little and we’ve no evidence of foul play. Without that,
we simply can’t give it high priority any longer. You know that. We’ve thrown an awful lot at it, you know.’

‘Supposing these women have been murdered?’

‘But we’ve no reason to suppose they have.’

‘Something has happened. They didn’t go off voluntarily. I just know that. Nor did the mountain biker, and nor for that matter did Jim Williams’s dog.’

‘I think we’ll leave the dog out of it.’

‘There’s something … I know there’s something.’ She crushed a sugar cube into fragments on the tablecloth with the back of her spoon. ‘Come on, you agree with me, don’t you?’

Simon shook his head. ‘Probably. But whatever gut feeling you and I have won’t –’

‘– justify any more resources. God, I hate that word.’

‘What – resources?’

‘Why don’t we all just say what we mean, which is money? It all
boils down to money. People’s lives boil down to money.’

‘No. The first tiny scrap of evidence that any of these missing people has come to harm and we upgrade the whole thing and put everything we’ve got on to it.’

‘I’d better go through the scrap heaps again then.’

The waiter was ostentatiously brushing non-existent crumbs off the table next to them.

‘God, we’re the last. What time is it?’

Simon laughed. ‘Twenty past twelve.’

Freya reached for her bag but he was already on his
feet and Giovanni was coming over to him, handing him the bill. The whole thing was accomplished swiftly and smoothly. He’s done this plenty of times. He’s been here plenty of times. Who? When? How many …?

Stop that. It doesn’t matter. You are here, this is now.

‘I’ll walk you up to the taxi rank in the
square.’

‘No, it’s not far, you’re almost on your own doorstep.’

They went out into the narrow lane and at once heard the bolts being drawn across the restaurant door.

‘I think we may have outstayed our welcome,’ Freya said. ‘Look, I’m fine on my own.’

‘Not at this time of night, even in Lafferton.’

‘I’ve been on the beat in some shady bits of London.’

‘Forget you’re a copper. Think of yourself
as a young, attractive and therefore vulnerable female.’

This is now. This is the beginning. This is all.

They reached the empty town square. At the rank on the far side, a couple of cabs waited, both empty, but as they neared them, a driver appeared.

‘In a puff of smoke,’ Simon said. ‘They go into holes in the ground for warmth.’

A wind came snaking down the open square towards them. Freya
pulled the pashmina up more closely around her neck.

And then it was over, the engine had started, Simon opened the cab door and closed it after her so quickly she was mumbling her thanks as they were moving off. She looked back to see him raise a hand briefly, and then go off in the direction of the cathedral and his flat. She came crashing to earth, in the back of the taxi which smelled of
cold leather and stale smoke. He had not made a move to kiss her on the cheek, to touch her shoulder, to do anything other than smile again, say goodnight,
and put her into the cab. But her reaction lasted only until she stepped inside her house and switched on the lights. It was still comfortably warm. She sat on the sofa and went over every moment of the evening, every word he had spoken, every
look he had given her, every nuance of everything, and when she went to bed, could not sleep and so went over it all again.

It was not until the following morning that she remembered the night she had gone to stand in the dark close outside his building and seen him arrive with the small woman in a trench coat and walk with his arm round her, to her car.

Giovanni’s, she thought at once, they
had been to Giovanni’s.

She walked the whole way to work. It took forty minutes and the wind was so bitter Freya could hardly feel her face as she went in through the doors. DC Nathan Coates came fast down the room as soon as he saw her.

‘Thought you were never coming, Sarge.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Elderly woman gone missing. Neighbour reported her going out at about half past six yesterday evening,
on foot … hasn’t come home all night.’

Freya pulled off her coat and scarf and flung them on to her chair. ‘Go on.’

‘Neighbour has key. Went in last night. Everything normal, but there were some clothes laid out on the bed as if she’d been choosing what to wear.’

‘Coat and handbag gone?’

‘Yeah, she hadn’t just slipped to the letter box.’

‘This morning?’

‘No sign. Everything the same as when
the neighbour went in. No note or message.’

‘Relatives?’

‘No. Widow. No children.’

‘Age?’

‘Seventy-one.’

‘I need some coffee.’

In the canteen there was the usual morning smell of frying bacon, the usual hubbub. Freya bought two coffees and they went over to a table by the window.

‘Right. Similarities with our other missing women?’

Nathan stirred three packets of sugar into his cup. ‘Woman
out on her own. No apparent reason to disappear. No messages. No note. No traces. Though it’s early – we haven’t done the full checks yet.’

‘Uniform will have to go to the railway station, bus terminal, hospital and so on. Differences?’

‘She was nowhere near the Hill.’

‘That’s the most significant.’

‘She’d got dressed up properly to go out.’

‘So had the others in their way – the biker and
Angela Randall were wearing gear for cycling and running and following a known routine, Debbie Parker was wearing clothes to go for a walk. I mean, none of them had slipped out in their nightie and curlers.’

‘What do you think, Sarge?’

‘I think we’ll go and see this neighbour – and then I hope we can get the DCI to take it seriously, upgrade the whole inquiry again, before someone else goes
missing.’

Across the room, a table of uniforms exploded with bellows of male laughter. She had always liked the camaraderie of the station, watching the different ways people unwound and let off the tensions of a difficult shift, with
jokes, laughter, backslapping and loud mutual support. There were disagreements, and friction – not everyone got on well, not everyone trusted everyone else, but
that was inevitable in places where people worked together closely under pressure, punctuated by long spells of boredom. Whenever there was a particularly upsetting case – a murder, child abuse, a bad accident – ranks closed, quarrels were set aside, everyone pulled together in unspoken agreement. Policing would be intolerable if that were not the case and Freya had always been grateful for it,
in London, and now here.

She drained her coffee cup and tidied up Nathan’s sugar bags neatly.

‘Gawd, Sarge, it’s worse than having a wife. Is this what it’s going to be like, I ask myself?’

‘Do I hear right?’

She glanced at Nathan as they swung through the doors out of the canteen. His pock-marked, lovely-ugly face was beetroot red.

‘Hey!’

‘No, no, listen, I haven’t said anything, hold on
… only you made me think, that’s all.’

‘Well, don’t think too long.
Do
.’

‘It was you saying that about not losing Em … I mean, I don’t know what it’d be like not having her. If she got fed up of waiting for me and went off. Like you said.’

At her desk, Freya picked up a clean, empty plastic pot and dropped some loose change into it. ‘OK. It’s a start.’

‘What?’

‘I’m saving for your pop-up
toaster.’

She picked up a Magic Marker pen and wrote in large black letters ‘NATHAN’S WEDDING PRESENT’.

He grabbed it from her and wiped it off with his sleeve. ‘Get out, they’ll have my trousers off next time I come in, whoever sees that. Have a heart, Sarge.’

‘OK, but the clock’s ticking, Nathan. Now come on.’

‘I love these little streets,’ Freya said as they turned into Nelson Street and
drove down slowly looking at the numbers. ‘They can’t have changed much since they were put up by the Victorians as working men’s cottages. There are a lot in London like this, though most of them are yuppified now all the old ladies who used to whiten the step every morning have died off. They suit people and they always did – unpretentious, good gardens at the back, neighbourly. Just right.’

‘You missed your vocation, Sarge … there’s 39. Should’ve been an estate agent.’

Pauline Moss was looking out for them from the window and came to the door as the car drew up. She wore an overall, and looked distraught.

‘She isn’t back, there’s been no call, nothing …’ she said, leading them into her crowded living room and shifting a tabby cat off a chair. ‘Here, let me just wipe it before you
sit down, you’ll be all over his hair.’ She scrubbed vigorously at the cushions with a cloth and her hand, and inspected the result carefully. ‘I left it till half past eight, only then I just had to ring you, it isn’t normal. I’ve been up all the night worrying about her. Where’s she gone, she never goes off like that, she hasn’t spent a night away from home for years – not since long before Harry
was ill and that’s at least three years, must be.’

‘I take it you know Mrs Chater well?’

‘Ever so well, we’ve been neighbours nearly thirty years. When her Harry and my Clive was alive, we were
all friends together. Then Harry was ill for so long and after he died I’ve kept an eye out for her. She’s been brave, really brave, and tried hard to keep going like before, but it’s been a struggle.
We don’t live in each other’s pockets you know, we have our own – what is it they say now, our own space – always have respected that. But we see each other most days, we have coffee or tea, or maybe go shopping or she comes into mine to watch a programme she likes, or I go to her and we maybe have a game of cards.’