35
Roan comes back from work early that evening.
Cate glances up at him from the screen of her laptop when he walks into the kitchen. ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘You’re back early.’
He walks past her and directly to the fridge and starts pouring himself a glass of wine before he’s even taken off his coat. He holds the bottle aloft and says, ‘Want one?’
It’s barely 6 p.m., but she nods.
‘How was your day?’ she asks.
‘Pretty grim,’ he says, unzipping his coat and taking it off. ‘Pretty bloody grim.’
She knows there’s no point expecting him to expand. It usually means a suicidal patient, or some violence or somethingappalling involving bodily fluids. It also sometimes means a set-to with a colleague or a superior. Whichever is the case in this instance, Cate doesn’t ask. She merely raises her wine glass to his and says, ‘Here’s to Friday night.’
He returns the gesture drily and gets out his phone, starts scrolling through something on his screen. Then he turns it to face her. ‘Have you seen this?’
She takes the phone, puts on her reading glasses and looks at the screen.
‘Oh my God.’
It’s a photo of the guy from across the street. His mouth is open and you can see his fillings and a grey tongue. He has blood encrusted on his forehead and his hair is greasy and slightly brutal-looking. It’s a shocking photograph. The headline above it says: ‘Is this Saffyre’s killer? Man taken in for questioning after “blood and phone case” found on his property’.
‘Did you see this happening?’ he asks her.
‘I didn’t no. But Georgia did.’
‘Did you know about the blood the detectives found?’
‘Yes. A journalist told us. Who told you?’ she asks.
‘A colleague. Well, many colleagues. It’s all anyone’s talked about today. It’s … fuck. It’s just awful.’
She looks at the page on Roan’s phone again. She imagines a million phones in a million hands, a million people looking at this man’s face, right now. This man who lives across the road from her.
She reads the story beneath:
Earlier today, Owen Pick, a 33-year-old college lecturer, was brought in by north London police for questioning regarding the disappearance of 17-year-old Saffyre Maddox. Pick, who lives in Hampstead with his aunt, Tessa McDonald, was recently suspended from his job as a Computer Science lecturer at Ealing Tertiary College, after allegations of sexual misconduct from several students. One student, Maisy Driscoll, told reporters that Pick had a reputation amongst the female students at her college for ‘being creepy’. She said that he had stroked her hair at a college party and shaken sweat into her face a number of times. The college would give no comment about Mr Pick’s employment with them.
Neighbours in his leafy Hampstead avenue describe Mr Pick as ‘odd’, ‘a loner’ and, one woman, Nancy Wade, 25, recalls being accosted by him on the street just before midnight on the night of Saffyre Maddox’s disappearance. She told reporters that Mr Pick ‘deliberately blocked my path. When I asked him to move out of my way, he turned nasty and abused me verbally. I was genuinely scared for my life.’
Ernesto Bianco, 73, who lives in the flat above Mr Pick and Ms McDonald, told reporters that this is not the first time Mr Pick has been questioned by the police in recent weeks. According to Mr Bianco, Mr Pick had previously been visited by the police inrelation to a string of serious sexual assaults in the area, including two in the immediate vicinity of his property. No one has yet been found or charged with these attacks. It is thought he will be questioned about these events too.
Unsubstantiated reports suggest that while searching the area beneath Pick’s bedroom window, police officers uncovered possessions, including a phone case, that are suspected to belong to the missing teenager. It is also thought that they discovered bloodstains on the brickwork close to Pick’s bedroom and in the grass below. Forensic officers are still on site and the case is ongoing. No body has yet been found and the search for Saffyre Maddox continues.
Cate hands the phone back to Roan. She thinks about how guilty she’d felt after sending the police to Owen Pick’s door those weeks earlier. But she’d been right, she thinks to herself now, she’d followed her instincts and her instincts had been absolutely spot on.
‘Did you read that bit?’ she asks him. ‘About the sexual misconduct at work. I mean, it looks pretty clear, doesn’t it? It must be him.’
Roan takes his phone from her outstretched hand. ‘Looks like it. Yes.’
Cate takes a sip of wine and looks at Roan thoughtfully. ‘But it’s still so odd, isn’t it? That she was here? On our street? I mean, why here? Of all the places? And why him and why her? It’s just …’ She shivers. ‘It’s unsettling.’
Roan shrugs. ‘I guess she didn’t live that far from here. And this is one of the roads you’d walk up to get to the village. Maybe it’s not that weird after all.’
‘But where was she really going? No one says they’d made arrangements to meet her?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Roan, spreading his arms. ‘I don’t know anything about her or her private life.’
