reached between DS Finborough and me. I appreciated his tact; it was too soon to name it. I forced out my question. “My mother told me she’d been getting nuisance calls?”
“According to her landlord, yes, she has. Unfortunately, she hadn’t given him any details. Has Tess told you anything about them?”
“No.”
“And she didn’t say anything to you about feeling frightened or threatened?” he asked.
“No. Nothing like that. She was normal, happy.” I had my own question. “Have you checked all the hospitals?” As I asked it, I heard the rudeness and implicit criticism. “I just thought she might have gone into labor early.”
DS Finborough put his coffee down, the sound made me jump.
“We didn’t know she was pregnant.”
Suddenly there was a lifebelt and I swam for it. “If she went into labor early, she could be in hospital. You wouldn’t have checked the maternity wards, would you?”
“We ask hospitals to check all their inpatients, which would include maternity,” he replied and the lifebelt slipped away.
“When’s the baby due?” he asked.
“In just under three weeks.”
“Do you know who the father is?”
“Yes. Emilio Codi. He’s a tutor at her art college.”
I didn’t pause, not for a heartbeat. The time for discretion was over. DS Finborough didn’t show any surprise, but then maybe that’s part of police training.
“I went to the art college—” he began, but I interrupted. The smell of coffee in his Styrofoam cup had become nauseatingly strong.
“You must be very worried about her.”
“I like to be thorough.”
“Yes, of course.”
I didn’t want DS Finborough to think me hysterical, but reasonable and intelligent. I remember thinking it shouldn’t matter what he thought of me. Later I would discover that it mattered a great deal.
“I met Mr. Codi,” said DS Finborough. “He didn’t say anything about his relationship with Tess, other than as a former student.”
Emilio still disowned you, even when you were missing. I’m sorry. But that’s what his “discretion” always was —disownership hiding behind a more acceptable noun.
“Do you know why Mr. Codi wouldn’t want us to know about their relationship?” he asked.
I knew it all too well. “The college doesn’t allow tutors to have sex with their students. He’s also married. He made Tess take a ‘sabbatical’ when the bump started to show.”
DS Finborough stood up; his manner had shifted up a gear, more policeman now than Oxbridge don. “There’s a local news program we sometimes use for missing people. I want to do a televised reconstruction of her last known movements.”
Outside the metal-framed window a bird sang. I remembered your voice, so vividly that it was as if you were in the room with me:
At the time, I dismissed your student intensity of emotion as something I’d grown out of years before. But in that police room I remembered our conversation again, because thoughts about birdsong, about Todd, about anything were an escape from the implications of what was happening. DS Finborough sensed my distress. “I think it’s better to err on the side of caution. Especially now I know she’s pregnant.”
He issued instructions to junior policemen. There was a discussion about the camera crew and of who would play you. I didn’t want a stranger imitating you, so I offered to do it. As we left the room, DS Finborough turned to me. “Mr. Codi is a great deal older than your sister?”
Fifteen years older, and your tutor. He should have been a father figure, not a lover. Yes, I know I’ve told you that before, many times, building to a critical mass that forced you to tell me in so many words to butt out, only you would have used the English equivalent and told me to stop putting my nose in. DS Finborough was still waiting for my reply.
“You asked me if I am close to her, not if I understand her.”
Now, I think I do, but not then.
DS Finborough told me more about the reconstruction.
“A lady working at the post office on Exhibition Road remembers Tess buying a card and also airmail stamps, sometime before two p.m. She didn’t say Tess was pregnant, but I suppose there was a counter between them so she wouldn’t have seen.”
