Emma allowed herself enough human frailty to not spend any more time at the station that day. She walked up and down the high street, dreading the prospect of facing David. She stared at the blank page in her mind. It filled up with doodles and wiped itself clean over and over again. Theories without information, speculation with no way to follow up. It was purpose that drove her, and yet she found herself doing what everyone on the island seemed to do sooner or later when they had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. She slid into The Rock, started drinking, and waited for something to happen.
Ten minutes later her glass of white wine dripped condensation onto the counter. The smell in The Rock never changed, like tallow candles and spilled beer. Or had it been dust and cheese-and-onion potato chips? Normally she wouldn't drink during working hours, but it was only a glass, and it would help her think. She ignored the wine and speculated at Jessie, who was trying to change a keg of bitter.
“It's fishy, isn't it? Why would Gregory's wife not know where he is?”
“I couldn't say, Ma'am.”
“I mean, I can't even say he's gone away to hide. We're all assuming he's not gone off and killed himself as well.”
Jessie gulped.
“Jessie, what do you know about Gregory?”
“He's sort of... normal. Nothing unusual I mean.”
“Always. We could prevent every crime if we profiled people of average height with no hobbies.”
She looked down at her glass.
“They knew each other. So he would have known if Evan was depressed, and said nothing. Maybe it was a suicide pact. That would raise the question of Mr. Browne's mental health, which of course the wife will know nothing about either. Jessie, do you know if Lily Browne has ever-”
There was no one behind the bar. Jessie could be heard struggling with the empty keg in the backroom.
“Right, steady girl. You'll scare the locals, talking to yourself like this.” She turned to the back of the room where Red was in his usual spot by the little wood-burning stove in the corner. She remembered that thing being bigger yesterday. On the other hand, Red hadn't changed. She wondered, if he ever stood up would there be a Red-shaped impression on the stool? Could the police place him at a crime scene by matching his ass print to the mold he made in this seat? He nodded at her. Right. Of course. That's what happens when you stare at people for a long time.
She crossed the flypaper floor and sat across from him.
“Where's Darren this morning?”
“Home sick, is what my Sarah tells me. Cambourne?”
“Yes?”
“Constable Cambourne, here to help Ned.”
“That's right. Do you need something from me?”
“You came and sat next to me, Constable.”
“Right. I wanted to ask you a little about Gregory Browne. You said he was close to Ned.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Gregory Browne and Ned Sommers were friends, weren't they?”
“Yes, they went fishing together.”
“So you said.”
Red stared at her through a tight squint. “When was this?”
“Yesterday afternoon. Not twenty-four hours ago. In this room.”
“If you say so.” Red took a drink of his beer and glanced around, as if looking for Jessie to come to his rescue.
Emma stared without self-consciousness. “Do you mean to say you don't remember talking to me about the downs? You had a cousin or something, broke his leg?”
“I'm not sure what you mean. That could be Alex. Did you talk to him?”
“No, I talked to you. Here. Yesterday. I...” She didn't know what to say next. If he was the village drunk whose brain had been pickled years ago, then the joke was on her. And if she had in fact gone completely mad it would not be wise to continue. She leaned as far back on the stool as she dared and tried to sort out what she knew about the island for sure.
Like every small community everywhere, any given person on South Alderney knew the deep dark business of every other person. The information was there. But there was a shocking nonchalance about an entire person, a significant fraction of the population, going missing. This was combined with either a powerful collective stupidity or a deliberate effort to convince her she had lost her mind.
It was working. The split in the path in front of her presented two options. To the left she could accept that there was nothing to learn about Evan's death, at least nothing logical that could be uncovered by good old-fashioned police work. Down the other path she could follow her own intuition, or lunacy, whichever the little voice in her head turned out to be. Peering down the first path, it was clear that nothing waited there but quiet, nothing but time and time and time and everything that came with it.
“Do you think Sarah is at home now?”
“If you can catch her here, that would be the easiest. She does a little odd work for Jessie sometimes. It’s me and Sarah alone in the house these days, so there’s not much reason to sit around at home. We tried that and it nearly drove us mad. We only see each other now for supper. She told me about this story she read. She gets the paper every month off of Beatrice. She told me a story she read that reminded her of Ned. It was about a man in the Amazon, a savage. Turns out, your man’s in a tribe that was wiped out, and he’s the last one left. So he’s wandering the jungle by himself, right?”
Emma nodded. It was
