‘And you both returned home at around eleven thirty p.m.?’
They nod again. Cate says, ‘Roughly.’
‘And you were both in bed by midnight?’
Cate and Roan exchange a look. Cate says, ‘Yes, thereabouts.’
Roan nods and then he turns to the detective and says, ‘Well, I might have been a bit later than that. I seem to recall going outside for some reason.’
Cate stares at him.
‘I mean, it’s not particularly fresh in my mind, it was over a week ago, I wasn’t sober, but I do remember coming outside – I think I was putting some rubbish out. And I heard something. And I looked over the road and that guy, the one from the house opposite, he was just standing there.’
‘Standing there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘No. I was in the front garden, by the bins. I was out of view. I could see him through a gap in the hedge.’
‘And what was he doing, this man?’
‘Just standing, staring. He looked drunk. I’ve had run-ins with him before when he’s drunk. He stared at me once when I was outrunning, around the corner. Stood and stared for quite some time. When I asked him what his problem was, he just asked me if I was married. I thought it was … odd. And then there was that other time.’ He turns to Cate and gives her a complicitous look. ‘Remember, earlier this year, when Georgia was walking home in the dark and he got really close to her and was freaking her out.’
Cate stiffens slightly. She’s not completely comfortable with what Roan’s implying. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘that is true. And he is a bit odd, but that doesn’t mean …’
‘No,’ DI Currie cuts in. ‘No, you’re right, Mrs Fours. It doesn’t mean anything. Obviously. But it’s all worth making a note of.’ She turns back to Roan. ‘So this happened at roughly midnight?’
‘Yes, roughly midnight.’
‘And then you came back inside and went to bed?’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘And when you were out there, putting out the rubbish at midnight, apart from the man across the street, did you see anything else? Anyone else?’
‘No. That was all. The man across the street.’
‘Is it possible’, she continues, ‘that he might not have been staring at you, that he might have been staring at someone else?’
Roan wrinkles his brow. ‘I don’t know what you—’
DI Currie closes her notepad. ‘Would it be possible, do you think, for you to show me exactly where you were standing that night, when you saw your neighbour staring towards you?’
‘Sure,’ says Roan.
They all get to their feet.
Cate throws on one of Josh’s hoodies from the hallway and follows Roan. DI Currie follows Cate and they head out to the little wooden covered area in the front garden where the communal bins are located.
‘I was standing here,’ says Roan. ‘I put the bag in the bin. I’d just closed the lid and I saw him through here.’ He points out a gap in the hedge that grows in front of a low brick wall.
DI Currie stands in Roan’s place and peers through the gap. She stands back and peers around the corner to the front path and the metal gate at the bottom. Then she peers once more through the gap in the hedge. She writes something down in her notebook and then she shuts it.
‘Wonderful,’ she says, ‘thank you so much. I think that’ll be all we need from you both for now. But a last question, Dr Fours. I know you say that you hadn’t seen Saffyre since your final appointment with her back in March 2018, but can you think of any reason, any reason at all why she might have been in the vicinity of your house on the night she went missing?’
‘So, she was—’ Cate begins.
