Craig nods.
“And by date you mean..?”
“Probably getting railed by him right about now next to his guillotine.”
“Oh, well, lucky Phil,” I applaud. “So, you’ll be expecting a miniature Houses of Parliament on the kitchen table by the morning?”
“Which I will sell on eBay at the earliest opportunity,” Craig explains.
“Of course. And no railing to be had for yourself?” I ask.
“No, I’m far too busy to even flick on Grindr, let alone organise any form of railing.”
“So, everything’s… normal?” I test.
“Painfully so,” he says. “Wine?”
“Yes,” I say too quickly. Wine is honesty lube; I should say no. “A small one.”
He pours me a glass that would get you a VIP seat at the local AA meeting.I perch on a stool at the breakfast bar and watch him move around the kitchen with the tidy grace of a man who labels his spice jars and his emotions. I am briefly overwhelmed with love for him; then the love gets tangled up with the truth about Phil and James I have in my pocket.
“How areyou?” he asks, cop-calm, like he’s reading me my feelings.
I shrug a shrug that wants to be a sob. “Brittle chic.”
He gives me the look he uses on witnesses who won’t be drawn. “We’ll circle back. Sit. Eat.”
Dinner is a tray of roasted vegetables, salmon with lemon, and a bowl of couscous so fluffy it could headline Glastonbury. I chew in a way that hopefully communicatesappreciationand notpanic.
“Right,” he says, finally, when our plates look lived-in. “Chris.”
The name hits the table like a coin. I grip my glass. “Go on.”
“I pulled what I could,” Craig says. “Spoke to a mate who owed me a favour. Unofficially.” His tone does that policeman thing where disclaimers sound like threats to the universe. “ChristopherChristianson. Thirty-two when he vanished. Born London. Clean record, mostly. A few parking fines, nothing juicy. Up until just before he disappeared.”
My stomach tightens. “The corporate financial crime stuff?”
“So, he was part of a corporate advisory team that handled high-value acquisitions. About eighteen months before he vanished, the firm he worked for became the focus of a quiet investigation. Nothing public. Serious Fraud Office stuff. There were… irregularities.” He taps the counter with two fingers, a metronome of bad news. “False valuations. Inflated asset reports. A shell-company trail that didn’t add up.”
I blink. “You mean he was committing fraud?”
Craig shakes his head. “Kind of. Someone in his department was laundering funds through a consultancy project Chris had signed off on. Whether he knew it or not… that’s murkier.” He pauses before lowering his voice. “But whatisclear is that when internal auditors started sniffing around, Chris suddenly became a liability. If he cooperated, a lot of very wealthy people would go down. If he didn’t… well, he’d go down with them.”
My blood runs cold. “So he panicked.”
“More like he bolted,” Craig says. “Transferred what assets he had into cash. Closed accounts. Booked meetings he never attended. He didn’t just ghost his sister and friends—he ghosted an entire investigation. He vanished before anyone could question him. Before anyone could clear him. Or charge him. Very tidy timing.”
I grip the edge of the table. “So, he disappeared to avoid being arrested?”
Craig looks at me gently. “Or to avoid being used as a scapegoat. The case becomes nothing more than a missing person with low suspicion.”
“But Emma kept pushing,” I say.
“She did,” Craig says. He sips wine, watching me over the rim. “And she didn’t help herself.”
I brace. “Meaning?”
“Emma Christianson is… energetic,” he says, choosing a word like he’s picking a scalpel. “She’s already got two years inside for fraud. Came out last year.”
