Sutherland let out a low groan, pressed his hand against the door. ‘Of course he’s sure. He wouldn’t have forced Josh to leave if he wasn’t.’
Ferreira tapped her key card on the reader and the door opened.
Sutherland bolted out through reception but still she stayed with him, following him down the front steps that he took two at a time.
‘Did Nadia talk to you?’ she asked. ‘Did she tell you anything that might help us find her?’
‘I’ve already said way too much.’ Sutherland fumbled his keys out of his pocket, dropped them and scooped them up quickly. ‘You know what happened now.’
‘We need to find Nadia.’
The locks popped on a nearby SUV and he veered towards it.
‘I can’t help you. Okay, you’ve had everything I know.’ He got into the car but Ferreira grabbed the door before he could close it.
‘Nadia could be in danger,’ she said. ‘Don’t you care?’
‘I’m sorry.’ He hauled the door shut and pulled out of the space.
Ferreira watched him leave, walking back to the steps where Billy was standing smoking.
‘It’s really unpleasant watching your girlfriend chasing after a younger, more attractive man,’ he said, holding out his cigarette to her.
She took a quick drag. ‘He’s terrified.’
‘Of you?’ Billy grinned. ‘He should be.’
DAY FIVE
SATURDAY AUGUST 11TH
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
She woke from a dream she couldn’t remember, her heart racing and the vague but fierce sensation of being chased driving her up from the pillow and out of the tangle of sheets, temporarily stricken by not knowing where she was.
Then she saw the heavy chrome lamp on the bedside table and the familiar ink-blue walls and the chair in the corner of Billy’s bedroom where she’d thrown her clothes last night when they got home from dinner. She sat back down again, brushing her hair away from her face, looking down at her bare feet on the runner, waiting for her heartbeat to calm itself.
The smell of bacon wafted in from the kitchen, along with a song she recognised, an Afro-Cuban band she liked and Billy insisted was weird and dated, although this was the second time she’d caught him listening to the playlist she’d made on the tablet he kept on the kitchen windowsill. They argued about music a lot, his taste running old and predictable, seventies classics he was too young for and the modern imitators of it. He said her taste was pretentious, which only meant he’d stopped paying attention to what was new sometime around graduating.
So much about him tended towards the conventional: the flash suits and the flash car, the dark and heavy decor in his flat, which she still struggled to imagine him furnishing. There was something comic about the idea of him in John Lewis going through fabric swatches, poring over them as he tried to match the particular mahogany-brown leather of the sofa to a specific teal for the walls. How long had he agonised over that wool rug in the centre of the living room?
Or maybe one of his exes was responsible for the look of the place? Maybe before her some other woman had nested in this flat, picked out the towels she now dried off with and the sheets they fucked on.
The thought provoked a vague pique in her and she decided she didn’t want to examine why.
Her mobile chimed as a text came in from Zigic.
He wanted to go and talk to Ruth Garner again, suggested that she might be more forthcoming about Nadia Baidoo than Sutherland had been. That away from Long Fleet she could give up the information they both thought she’d been holding back when they interviewed her there.
She texted back: What time?
Half an hour. He replied instantly.
She told him to pick her up. Then asked for forty-five minutes, wanting to eat whatever smelled so good.
There was a pot of coffee on the breakfast bar and she poured a cup before Billy noticed her behind him.
‘I was going to surprise you with breakfast in bed, but now you’re up …’
‘French toast?’ she asked.
‘With bacon and bananas. There’s maple syrup in the fridge.’
He looked pleased with himself this morning and she wondered if it was because she hadn’t brought up last night the obvious question of what he and Zigic were working on. Instead she’d let him suffer through a perfectly nice dinner and then a film and then sex where he applied himself with a degree of conviction that only confirmed her suspicion that he was up to something.
She wondered if he thought she’d been too busy to notice yesterday’s absence and Zigic’s ragged nerves, or if he simply hoped that by staying quiet about it, he could avoid having his judgement scrutinised.
Ferreira sat down at the breakfast bar, watching him plating up their food in his boxers and T-shirt and striped apron, giving it all the care and attention he’d learned from MasterChef.
He put her plate down in front of her with a flourish, then settled onto the next stool.
‘What are you doing today?’ he asked.
‘Ziggy wants to go speak to one of the Long Fleet nurses,’ she said, pouring maple syrup over everything. ‘Doubt we’ll be more than an hour or so. What about you?’
‘Gym, maybe. If you’re heading out.’
‘You’ll need the gym after this.’ Ferreira shoved a forkful of bacon and French toast into her mouth, let out a groan of pleasure. ‘Totally filthy.’
‘Just how you like it.’
They talked about nothing while they ate: a new box set he wanted to try, whether she needed anything picking up since he was going out, that her toothpaste was running low and what about that coffee, was it strong enough, should they switch? All achingly normal and domesticated and she wasn’t sure how they’d come to this point, when exactly he’d morphed into someone who monitored her toothpaste situation.
It felt like a lifetime since that first encounter, when she’d handcuffed him to the radiator in the living room and fucked him on
