ONE MORNING, ABOUT a week after Valentine’s night, Owen’s doorbell rings. He waits for Tessie to answer it, but she appears to be out.
After the second ring, he goes to the intercom and says hello.
A female voice responds. “Hello. Is this Owen Pick?”
“Yes.”
“Good morning, I’m Detective Inspector Angela Currie. We’re making door-to-door inquiries about a missing person. Could I ask you to spare a minute to answer a few questions?”
“Erm…” He peers at himself quickly in the mirror by the front door. He hasn’t shaved for three days, and his hair is in dire need of a wash. He looks dreadful. “Yes, sorry, sure. Come in.”
Angela Currie is a heavy-set young woman, short and broad, with disproportionately small feet. She has what looks like naturally blond hair braided across her hairline and tucked into a bun at the back. She has a nice face and is wearing a flick of black eyeliner across each eyelid.
Behind her is an equally young man, introduced as Police Constable Rodrigues.
“Could we come in?”
“Er…” Owen looks behind him at the open door to Tessie’s flat. How to explain that there is nowhere to sit in his own home, as his aunt won’t let him in her living room? “Is it OK if we talk out here?” he says.
He is aware that this makes it sound as if he is trying to hide something.
“It’s my aunt’s flat,” he explains. “She’s a bit funny about letting people in.”
DI Currie tips her chin to look into the space visible through the crack of the apartment door. “No problem,” she says.
They settle themselves on the small bench next to the stairs leading to the two upper-floor flats. It wobbles precariously, not really designed for sitting on but for resting parcels and such on. DI Currie has to sit with her head bent slightly forward to avoid the mail baskets nailed to the wall above.
“So,” she begins, “we’re investigating the disappearance of a local girl. I wonder if I could show you some photographs?”
Blood rushes to Owen’s head. He doesn’t know why. He nods and tries to cover the hot parts of his face with his fingers.
DI Currie pulls a printout from an envelope and passes it to him.
It’s a photo of a pretty girl, mixed race by the looks of it, though hard to ascertain precisely her ancestry. She’s wearing large hoop earrings, and her hair is worn in a similar style to DI Currie’s, a kind of tight plait close to the skull holding it to one side. She’s wearing what looks like a school uniform and is smiling.
He passes the sheet back to the detective and awaits another question.
“Have you ever seen this girl before?”
“No,” he says, his hand moving from his face to the back of his neck, which he can feel growing blotchy and hot. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Where were you on the night of February the fourteenth, Mr. Pick?”
He starts to shrug; then DI Currie says, “It was Valentine’s night. That might make it easier to recall.”
He sucks in his breath, covers his mouth with his hand. Yes. He knows what he was doing on Valentine’s night.
“Were you home? Or out in the local area? Might you have seen anything?”
“No,” he says. “No. I was out. I went for a dinner. With a friend.”
“Ah. OK. And what time did you get home? If you can remember?”
“Eleven thirtyish. Maybe midnight.”
“And how did you get home that night?”
“I got the tube. From Covent Garden to Finchley Road.”
“And did you maybe see anything strange walking back from the tube station? Anything untoward?”
He draws his hand across his mouth and shakes his head. He thinks back to the strange episode on the street, when that pretty girl had called him a creep and he’d called her a bitch. It feels like the twisted remnant of a strange dream when he thinks about it now, as if it didn’t really happen. Everything about that night now feels dreamlike, faded in parts like an old photograph.
“No.” He shakes his head slowly. “No. Nothing.”
He sounds like he’s lying, because in a way he is.
“And you said you live with your aunt? Is that…” She looks at a list on a clipboard. “Tessa McDonald?”
He nods.
“And where is Ms. McDonald?”
“I don’t know. She’s probably in the village. Shopping.”
“Great, well, we’ll be back again, I’m sure, once we’ve built up a better picture of the situation. In the meantime, maybe you could pass my card on to your aunt when she gets home, ask her to give me a call if she can remember anything about that night.” She peers up the staircase. “Anyone else in, do you know?”
He shakes his head. “No idea. You can ring on their doorbells, if you like.”
She smiles, clicks her ballpoint pen shut, slides it into her pocket, and says, “No. I’m sure that will be fine. Maybe I could leave some more of these here?” She points a couple of printouts toward the mailboxes above the bench. “And some more of my cards?”
“Yes,” he says, getting to his feet. “Yes, of course.”
“Well,” she says, hitching her leather bag up higher onto her shoulder, “thank you, Mr. Pick, for your time. I really appreciate it. I’m just at the end of a line if you, or anyone else, remembers anything.”
“You know,” he says, his eyes feeling suddenly too big for his head as a buried memory bursts through the clouds, “I did see something that night. I saw someone. Out there.” He points through the front door to the house opposite. “Standing outside that house, in the dark, just sort of looking in. I thought it was a man at first. And then they turned around and it was a girl.”
“A girl?”
“Well, at least I think so. It was hard to tell, because they had a hood up.”
His eyes drop to the page in his hand; he reads the description of what the missing girl was wearing just as DI Currie says, “What sort of hood?”
“Like, a hoodie? I think?”
“How tall was this girl?”
“It might not have been a girl. It might have been… I wasn’t sober. I’d had some wine. Quite a lot of wine. I can’t be sure.”
“This person, how tall? Roughly.”
“I genuinely can’t remember.”
“And roughly what time was this?”
“Just as I got to my front door. Midnight. Ish. Maybe later.”
“And it wasn’t”—she taps the printout with her fingertip—“it wasn’t this girl?”
“I really, really don’t… It was dark and, like I say, I’d had some wine. I really don’t…” He’s started to talk very fast and he’s aware that he sounds panicked. He’s wishing he hadn’t said anything now about the strange girl in the hoodie. The police would be gone now, and he could be safely back in his room.
“Well, actually, that’s very useful, thank you so much. I’m glad you were able to remember that for us. And if you don’t mind, we’d like to be in touch again. Once we’ve had a chance to talk to people who live across the street.”
The people across the street.
The people who give him dirty looks whenever they pass.
The skinny blond woman with the annoying face.
Her thunder-thighed daughter.
The ridiculous father with the leggings, running up and down that hill in the dark as though seeking oblivion.