Juliet led the way through the weeds to Jordan’s front door. She’d thrown on a blazer over her jeans and flowery blouse, but it didn’t dampen the humanising effect of her casual clothes.
She pressed the doorbell while I twisted the binding of my notepad, trying to squash down the guilt squirming in my belly. Juliet would have rushed back no matter what I’d said. The only way to stop her abandoning her family would have been to withhold information, and that would not have gone well.
‘Stop it,’ she murmured.
I dropped my hands to my sides. ‘What?’
‘Feeling guilty.’
The door opened, revealing a rail-thin man. His coppery hair was swept off his forehead, his pointy nose prominent. Full sleeve tattoos covered his once pale arms, his narrow face the only place not invaded by ink.
‘Mr Haines?’ Juliet checked. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Juliet Stern and this is Detective Sergeant Gabe Martin.’
‘That was quick.’ His voice was as unusually high as Jordan’s. ‘We were told not to expect you for hours. Call me Andy.’
A line bisected Juliet’s forehead as we were ushered inside. ‘We’re here to ask Jordan about a fire on the Dunlow Estate.’
‘Oh.’ Andy’s face clouded. ‘You’re not here because he’s missing?’
We walked into the cramped living room and Jordan’s dad settled into the armchair near the French doors. Juliet and I sat on the sofa. She stared out at the patch of neglected lawn.
‘Jordan’s missing?’ I flipped open my notepad.
‘Yeah. He didn’t come home last night.’ Andy rubbed at his chin, his elbow a sharp point through his shirt. ‘Sometimes he comes home late and forgets to text to say he’s staying out, but he didn’t come home before we went to bed. We called around his mates. None of them has seen him and he hadn’t said anything to them about what he was doing. We waited until this morning and called the police.’
Upstairs, a floorboard creaked.
‘We know Jordan was at the memorial for Melanie Pirt yesterday morning, and later he was in an altercation with another boy,’ I said. ‘You have no idea what he did after that?’
Andy ran a hand over his slicked-back hair. ‘I picked him up from the police station, but he scarpered when we stopped at some traffic lights.’
‘You have no idea where he went?’ I asked. Jordan must have been desperate to escape. Did he want to go to the estate, or could he not bear to be in close proximity with his father any longer?
‘He doesn’t tell me much these days.’
Andy stopped speaking as Jordan’s mum appeared in the doorway, her hair piled into a messy bun on top of her head. She started when she saw Juliet and me. The skin of her face reddened, except for a misshapen purple bruise across her left cheek and forehead.
Juliet stood, roused from her staring match with a dandelion outside, but Jordan’s mum shied away. She scurried out of the room, her progress upstairs marked by uneven creaks. Juliet sat down, breathing through flared nostrils.
‘I hope your wife’s okay?’ I broke the thick silence.
Andy shrugged. ‘She’s fine. She fell down the stairs last night, bumped her head.’
Juliet’s hands fisted in her lap. Such an obvious lie, but we couldn’t pursue a charge of domestic abuse without a strong witness or inclination from the victim. We had neither.
‘To confirm, you’ve not seen Jordan since you picked him up from the station yesterday?’ I asked.
‘That’s right.’ Andy’s voice was cool. ‘And he’s in trouble now, right?’
‘As Juliet said, we’d like to ask Jordan about a fire on the Dunlow Estate. We don’t know whether Jordan was involved, but could you give us a call when he comes home?’
‘But he’s missing,’ Andy said. ‘What if he’s got nothing to do with it?’
‘Officers will be around later today to discuss opening a missing person’s case.’ I tapped my pencil. ‘Could we please have a sample of Jordan’s handwriting?’
‘What for?’ Jordan’s father wasn’t a kind man, but he had some protective instincts towards his son.
‘We forgot to get one the other day.’ I pressed my thumb into the side of my notepad rather than look away from Andy’s piercing eyes. ‘It’s standard procedure.’
He stared at me for a second, then bent to search through the papers under the coffee table. I tried not to make my sigh of relief too obvious. If Jordan was missing, we needed to get a sample of his handwriting from his home. Coming back with a warrant would have caused an unnecessary delay.
‘Here.’ Andy passed me a dog-eared magazine. ‘Jordan and his mum were doing the crossword together the other day.’
I kept my face expressionless as I scanned the clues, the distinctive capitalisation of every T bouncing off the page. I rose from the sofa and Juliet followed suit. ‘Thank you for this. We’ll make sure someone is sent around to start a missing person’s case as soon as possible.’
Andy led the way to the front door. He watched us walk to the car, his unwavering gaze causing prickles across the back of my neck. Once the door snapped shut, I glanced at the house. Jordan’s mum stood at an upstairs window. She jumped and disappeared, like someone inside had shouted her name.
I climbed into the car and turned the key in the ignition. Juliet stared at Jordan’s house until I pulled away.
‘Did you notice how she held herself?’ She mimicked cradling her arm. ‘There was more damage done to that woman than we could see.’
I indicated at the end of the road. I hadn’t been as watchful as Juliet, more focused on getting answers from Jordan’s dad.
‘The handwriting is a match?’ Juliet leant into the head rest, closing her eyes. ‘Do you think Jordan started the fire?’
‘He might have,’ I said. ‘Someone was lurking outside the manor before the fire started. Jordan’s absence and his tendency towards hurting people won’t help his case if he had nothing to do with it.’
‘If he wasn’t there, who was?’ Juliet mused. ‘What were the Dunlows like when you talked to them?’
‘Same as usual.’ I swept across a mini roundabout. ‘Dunlow treated me like I was scum. The boys were scared.’
‘Do you think any of them started the fire?’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘Why would they? We’ve already searched the house.’
‘But maybe we didn’t find everything.’ Juliet opened her eyes. ‘You said the fire might have originated around the fireplace? Maybe someone was burning evidence and it got out of hand.’
‘Or maybe someone wanted to distract us?’ I bit my lip. ‘The sooner Jordan turns up the better. The Dunlows aren’t going to give anything away.’
I was beginning to think they were all much better liars than I’d given them credit for. Or their lies were so many and varied that it was hard to spot the truth between them.
At least Jordan was an open book. He might bluster and lash out, but it was all done honestly. Despite Leo’s claims that he loved Melanie, he hadn’t broken down in the way Jordan did on hearing she’d died. Leo wasn’t spiralling in grief. There was a stillness to him that reminded me of his father. He was untouchable, by us and by the death of someone he’d loved.