And there’s someone who will definitely want to know about this.
Chapter 31
TOM
Craig’s door opens before I’ve even knocked, like he’s been standing there with a stopwatch and a lecture prepared.
“Get in,” he says, scanning the street behind me like I’ve turned up with a press pack and a marching band.
Inside smells like coffee and laundry — comforting, domestic, suspiciously competent. Phil appears in the hallway tying his laces, all cheekbones and cardigan, like a man who could host a Radio 4 show on a Tuesday afternoon.
“Hey, Tom,” he says, smiling. “I’m heading out. You two behave. Craig, don’t interrogate him for sport.”
Craig kisses him like a man who absolutelywillinterrogate me for sport. “Back by ten?”
“Or eleven,” Phil calls, already halfway out.
The door shuts. Craig folds his arms. “Right. Sit. Talk.”
I flop onto their sofa and become briefly obsessed with a cushion because it looks designer and I don’t know how to sit near expensive textiles without sweating.
“So,” I say, picking fluff that doesn’t exist, “yesterday was… a lot.”
He gives me the detective face: neutral, patient, smugly inevitable. It’s the look he wears when suspects confess to parking on double yellows. “Start at ‘a lot’ and proceed chronologically.”
“Pete told me not to come back.” The words come out too fast. “He had bruises, Craig. Real ones. Dark. Cheekbone, jaw. He wouldn’t say, but—”
“From James?” Craig says, as if reading from a script.
“Yes. Probably. And then—” I inhale through my teeth. “I got followed by a car. Again. I thought I may have been imagining it the first time. I’m self-aware enough to know both are possible.”
He doesn’t even flinch. “What car? Registration?”
“Registration? No idea. I was busy panicking. Grey BMW. Could also have been a toaster.”
Craig sighs in a way that suggests I’ve let down the entire constabulary.
I continue. “But that doesn’t matter, because I confronted the driver.”
One of his eyebrows tries to make a break for it. “You what?”
“Yes, like slammed on the brakes and forced them to stop—”
“Very unlike you.”
“Yes, very, I was high on adrenaline.But, I’m glad I did.”
“Who was it?”
“It was Emma, Chris’s sister.”
Craig blinks, processing. “Chris? The ex?”
“Yes, the mysteriously vanished ex, who disappeared two years ago. She says he was with Pete for a while, but wasn’t getting along with James.”
Craig huffs. “So, why was she following you?”
“She’s desperate to find her brother. Thinks he’s gone into hiding. Thinks James knows more than he’s saying. Thinks I can help.”
