‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You mean, kind of like a distraction burglary?’
‘Sort of. It’s the same with an interview. You’re more likely to get the full story if they invite you in. Less effort, less mess, less grief all around. Sometimes you’re more likely to get to the truth by being nice than by trying to smash the doors down with a battering ram.’
‘Right,’ Holt said, taking another sip of his coffee. ‘I get what you’re saying.’
Do you though? Do you, really?
‘Feels to me like there are other factors in play that we might not be aware of. It’ll be interesting to see what forensics come up with from the stuff we recovered from the fire. Any joy with the CCTV from outside the café?’
Holt shook his head.
‘Not yet. There’s a council camera at the junction but it’s too far down to pick up activity outside the Caffè Nero. The place opens in a few hours so I’ll head down then. Got the trace set up on Devlin’s mobile as well, just in case it turns up or she miraculously starts using it again when she gets home later.’
‘Did you track down the taxi driver yet?’
‘Working on it.’
‘Good. I’ll cover off the station staff at Marylebone.’
‘What about her?’ Holt nodded back towards the interview room down the corridor. ‘Our little navy wren?’
Gilbourne flipped the cigarette away into the darkness, the glowing tip spinning end over end until it disappeared into the street below.
‘We let her think about things for a few more hours,’ Gilbourne said, blowing smoke. ‘Then we go again.’
‘Nicely?’
Gilbourne gave him a half-smile.
‘You’re catching on, Nathan.’
20
There’s another hour in the interview room going back and forth over my story, a short conversation with the duty solicitor after both detectives have left, then I’m led into a frigid cell that’s bare apart from a thin blanket and a dull metal toilet in the corner. Finally, I’m woken by the clank of the door unlocking, the desk sergeant informing me that I’m being released for the time being.
Betteridge, the duty solicitor, gave me a card for his firm when he left. He was evasive when I asked what would happen next: that was down to the police and any other evidence they might find. If they could corroborate my story with any of the other parties involved, then the threat of criminal charges would recede. If not . . . they would probably bring me in again and go from there. I should beprepared for any eventuality, he had said. Until then, I have to remain in London, keep the officers informed as to where I was staying, make myself available for further questioning as and when required; and I’m prohibited from contacting any of the other people involved in my case. Which shouldn’t be difficult as I have no idea who any of them actually were.
There are more forms to sign. The clock above the desk tells me it’s nearly five in the morning by the time a taxi is called to take me home. I need to find somewhere else to stay for a few days, but my exhaustion is blanketing everything and all I want to do is lie down in my own bed. It’s only as I’m walking up the short path to my front door that it occurs to me I have no keys to get into the house. I’m grateful, for once, for Richard’s old habit of leaving a spare back door key in the rockery by the side gate. It’s still there, tucked under the third rock from the left. I blow the dirt off it, breath steaming in the cold pre-dawn air.
I let myself in, turn on the lights and stand in my little kitchen. The house is still, silent and cold, and it feels different somehow, as if it belongs to someone else. Maybe to my old life. That life was Richard and marriage and IVF, waiting and heartbreak, month after desperate month, year after year. But that world doesn’t exist anymore. It’s gone. History.
This is a new world, a new day. A world with Mia in it.
And not just her: a man who wanted to take her away, to harm her. A man who has my phone, who might know where I live. Am I safe here, with the pre-dawn darkness still pressing in around my kitchen windows? I fetch the landline and begin to dial, then stop, my thumb hovering over the keypad, my brain sluggish with fatigue. Slowly, I replace the handset in its cradle. It’s only just gone 5 a.m., too early to disturb Tara and wake her boys with a phone call. She gets little enough sleep as it is. Instead I check the chain across the front door, the deadbolt, the patio door and the back door, then check them all again before heading upstairs.
I try to sleep, dropping my clothes in a ragged line across the bedroom floor and crawling under the duvet. But it’s already too late, the sun creeping into the bedroom, slanting through the edges of the curtains, rush hour traffic starting up its low hum nearby. I’m alert to every other sound, every creak of the house slowly warming up, every set of footsteps on the street outside, every car passing by. Try as I might, I can’t seem to drift off, even for an hour of sleep. My body aches with tiredness, with the throb of injuries, but my brain is still going a hundred miles an hour and refuses to stop. I’m still wired from a day and night full of confrontation and unanswered questions. The strange black-clad man on the train; Dominic, with his anger and paranoia; the two detectives with their questions.
And now home. Or at least, my house. Our house, as it had been until three months ago. Richard and I had given up our one-bedroom flat on Highbury Park Road five years ago – the flat where we’d first lived together, where we’d dreamed and made plans and returned from honeymoon – in favour of a sensible family home a few miles further out. Five years in this modern end-terrace with its small garden and two-and-a-half bedrooms and a decent primary school nearby, a dozen Tube stops further out of London. Five years waiting for the arrival of a child that had never come. Richard increasingly distant and evasive over the last year, spending more time working late in the office, more time avoiding life at home. More time with the woman who was now carrying his child.
After an hour I give up on sleep and shuffle into the bathroom, standing under the shower for fifteen minutes, letting the hot water pound the back of my neck. I think about Mia, the last time I saw her. The thin, bird-like woman from social services who had taken her away, who had made Mia cry as she manhandled her into the scuffed plastic car seat. Eventually I put on old jeans and a sweatshirt and a fresh bandage on my foot.
It’s Wednesday. It’s supposed to be a normal working day but I’m owed some time off in lieu so I take the day off, emailing my boss to apologise for the short notice. What else is happening this week? Shopping delivery arriving tonight, Pilates tomorrow, work drinks on Friday night – someone’s leaving do that I already know I won’t be able to face. As for next week, next month? I can’t think that far ahead anymore.
I call my bank and credit card company to cancel all my cards and have new ones reissued. I dig out my old iPhone from the bedside drawer and walk the ten minutes to the high street to buy a new SIM card. Back home I log into my iCloud account, saying a little prayer that the automatic backup has worked as it was supposed to. I feel a little thrum of happiness in my chest as the saved images begin to drop in and there is Mia, tiny and perfect, sleepy and content after the bottle I gave her in the café. One picture. This is all I have of her. But it lifts me, warms me, a bright spot on a dark day.
I call my mobile provider to get my old number transferred to the new SIM. All this practical everyday stuff seems ridiculous, meaningless, set against the last twenty-four hours. I keep flicking back to the picture of Mia, just to remind myself that it’s still there and that she really exists. I set it as the new screensaver on my phone, then remove it again, feeling like a thief, a fraud, for having someone else’s child on my screen. I’ll just keep it in the phone’s gallery instead. A secret.
At noon, I give Tara a call. The conversation is full of noise from her three boys, fighting and shouting and screaming in the background all at once, a wall of yelling that makes me hold the phone away from my ear. During a short lull in the mayhem, she tells me that the eldest is off school with a sick bug, the middle one has an ear infection and the youngest, Charlie, a raging case of the terrible twos manifesting itself in some epic potty-training failures.
