Alice – I doubt he knew… knows… she’s back. That’s the bloody stupid…’ She was either blinding herself with cigarette smoke or beginning to cry.
Dryden studied the seascape poster framed over the gas fire so that she could cry unobserved, never contemplating the possibility that she wanted an audience. ‘I need to find him too,’ he said, still looking away. ‘Did he say what he was doing exactly, how he was going to find Alice?’
On the wall hung a picture of Bob Sutton in uniform. Dryden guessed it was the military police. It was a sunny picture, with the white light bleaching out the edges, and a colonial mansion in the background fringed with palms. He nodded at the frame. ‘Overseas?’
She lit up. ‘Yes. I was born in Hong Kong. Dad was Royal Engineers. Bob was MP. It was a glamorous life – then.’
‘Could I borrow it? I’ll get it back within twenty-four hours, I promise. If we run a story appealing for witnesses, it would help,’ said Dryden.
She nodded and Dryden carefully took the picture down. There was a long silence in which he could hear the kitchen fridge humming.
She stood up and came over to take the seat next to him. ‘You married?’ she said.
‘Yes. Five years. But there’s been an accident – in a car. She’s in a coma. She probably won’t come out of it. Well, that’s what they say.’ He considered just how easy it was to tell strangers the truth.
They smiled at each other. ‘He found something,’ she said at last. ‘One night. He went out and when he came back he was…’
‘What?’ said Dryden, beginning to like her.
‘Excited. But he wouldn’t talk about it. He never wanted to talk about what had happened to Alice. I was angry about that, still am. It wasn’t up to him to put it right. It was up to both of us.’ She stubbed out the cigarette and lit a fresh one with surprising grace.
‘One of his so-called mates in the force sent him the pictures of Alice. Jesus!’ she said, thumping the onyx football down on the table top where it left an ugly dent. ‘He couldn’t take that. He sat on that sofa and cried like a child. Clutching the pictures. As if it mattered. At least it showed she was alive. Sometimes I think he was more interested in proving she’d been made to do those things, than finding out if she was alive. That’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? I’ve never seen him cry before. I was frightened… frightened about what he’d do to make things right again.’
‘Frightened he’d hurt someone?’
She nodded twice, taking two lungfuls of nicotine in and expelling the smoke in a fierce downdraft which almost reached the shag-pile carpet. ‘I begged him to tell me what he’d found – not the pictures, what he’d found out there,’ she said, nodding out through the fake mullioned windows towards the fen. ‘He said he would, the next day…’
She took a magazine from the coffee table and put it on her lap. ‘Blood,’ she said, flicking the pages. ‘There was blood – all over his handkerchief. I found it later – after he’d gone. He’d chucked it in the bin in the kitchen so I wouldn’t see. Lots of blood, really. I checked his clothes, it was just the handkerchief.’
‘So when was that? The first time he came home?’
‘The police asked that,’ she said, unblinking.
‘And what was the answer?’
‘Last Friday night. We were going out, that new Italian on Market Street. I’d dressed up.’
Dryden tried to imagine it.
‘He dragged himself in at midnight. Sober. I could always tell – can always tell.’ She looked out through the windows at the empty driveway.
‘What did he say?’
‘Said he was near. Close to finding her. Her,’ she flicked her chin upwards. ‘And all the time she was in some fucking bedsit in Camden Town.’ She regretted swearing but felt better for it. ‘Some fucking bedsit,’ she said again, but louder, prompting a nervous movement from the top of the stairs.
‘She’s OK?’ said Dryden.
‘She can’t remember. Not the pictures. So she ran away, and I don’t blame her. What did anyone expect her to do – the police said she’d almost certainly been given that drug – the date-rape thing. She can’t believe it’s her in the pictures either.’
‘And he went out again when?’
‘Next night. The Saturday. He wasn’t scared. I know when he’s scared, it wasn’t like he wasn’t in control of whatever it was…’
‘But he didn’t come back…’
She lit a fresh cigarette with the onyx boulder. ‘You could see his office… the police did,’ she said, standing. It was the spare room next to Alice’s. There was a PC, a card file box, and a telephone and fax. He clearly liked to bring his work home. Dryden flicked through the card file. Each one was for a separate job – the client’s details poorly spelt out in childish capital letters.
‘Bob Sutton Security,’ she said, and at last began to cry. ‘The job was the best he could get after the army. He didn’t have much of an education – no certificates. Nothing. It’s tough when you’re his age.’ Alice came in and wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck.
‘In the blue folder,’ she said, leading Alice away.
And they were. The same stud. Different girls, but all in the pillbox. But they weren’t pristine, like Alice’s shots, they were dog-eared, they’d been through many grubby hands.
And police statements, photocopied transcripts of taped interviews. Dryden guessed Sutton’s police contacts
