‘It was stolen,’ says Will Carter, pacing with a hand in his hair, the other on his hip. ‘Look, I know it looks bad but it honestly didn’t occur to me to mention it. I’ve been taken up with … just, you know, my whole mind is on Edie.’
Davy is stood with his back to the wall, behind Harriet and Manon, who are sitting at the table facing Carter. Davy has the sense that Harriet is using him as a ‘heavy’ though he doesn’t really have the face for it. He’s been told he always looks faintly embarrassed or surprised, so he’s trying to lean sardonically against the wall, as if he’s a mass of thick-set scepticism. Harriet is leaning, too – back in her chair, twirling a pencil about her fingers. The disbelieving detective. Manon, however, is sat forward, her position saying: I want to try to understand.
‘Go on,’ says Manon.
‘It didn’t seem important. I forgot about it.’
‘When and where was it stolen, Mr Carter?’ says Manon.
‘From my car. On Friday as I was preparing to leave. I left it on the seat, slammed the car door and ran in to get my bag. I was only going to be a minute, maybe it was more like five, but when I came out, it had gone.’
‘Did you see anyone – running away or near the car?’
‘No. I glanced in either direction but the street was empty. Maybe they were hiding behind a hedge or something, I dunno. I wouldn’t have gone after them anyway. I’m a coward when it comes to things like that – I don’t want to get punched. I think they must’ve been watching me and seized their chance when I went inside.’
‘And you didn’t think to report it?’ says Harriet.
‘I wanted to get on the road – my mum was expecting me. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think there was much the police could do. I thought it was my own stupid fault and I just had to suck it up. Anyway, I stopped at the Tesco phone shop in Kettering – it’s open late – and got a pay-as-you-go, just so I could give Edie a number, y’know, so she could call me in an emergency.’
‘Sorry, Mr Carter, but how did you not think this was relevant to our investigation?’ asks Harriet.
‘I don’t know. I just wanted you to find Edie. I was so worried, it didn’t occur to me.’
‘So you phoned Edith from Kettering?’
‘No, I texted.’
‘You didn’t want to talk to her about the fact you’d just been a victim of a crime?’
‘I tried to call her.’
‘You tried to call her,’ says Harriet, her voice dripping with exhausted frustration.
‘I did call but she was busy and she didn’t pick up. I knew she wouldn’t recognise the number so I explained in a text and she texted back saying “OK”.’
He has stopped in front of them.
Davy can’t see Harriet’s expression, but she is probably frowning. ‘Forgive me, Mr Carter, but perhaps you can see why we’re confused. You say everything’s perfect between you and Miss Hind, you say everything was normal in the run-up to her disappearance—’
‘OK, not normal.’
Harriet is gesturing at the chair in front of them, the patient mother. Carter sits at last.
‘One minute everything was normal,’ he says, ‘and then it wasn’t. One minute we were making dinner, watching Sherlock on iPlayer, and then – about a week ago, I guess – I dunno, she cooled off, like she was cross with me. Froze when I touched her. Kept saying she had loads of work on, as if she was avoiding me. I suppose that fits with what you said about her and Helena.’
‘Can you give specific examples?’ asks Manon.
‘Well, the Saturday before … a week before …’ He colours up, doesn’t know how to refer to the ‘event’ of Edith’s disappearance, which might or might not be her death. ‘She went out, I don’t even know who with, got really drunk, and on the Sunday she spent the whole day in bed with her laptop on her knees. And then in the afternoon, about three, she put a tracksuit on and her boots and took her car keys. When I asked where she was going, she said, “Out.” It went on like that, passing each other in the house like strangers. Then on Friday, the Friday I was going to Stoke, she was suddenly really full-on, emotional. We made love – this was in the afternoon – and I thought, oh, it’s all right again, it was just a passing thing. But she started crying immediately after – after the sex, I mean – and she said, “I’m sorry.” I suppose now she was talking about Helena, I dunno. I said, “What for?” And she said, “For being a bitch to you.” I said, “You haven’t been, not so I’ve noticed.” Which was bollocks, of course, I had noticed, but I was just glad she was back with me, I wanted to be close again, and I didn’t want to argue. Anyway, it seemed to make it worse. She snapped at me, “That’s right, Will, let’s tell each other lies.” I’ll be honest – I didn’t know what was going on.’
Poor chap, Davy thinks. He wouldn’t be the first man whose girlfriend was a mystery to him. What law is it that says you can’t be a hapless good-looking bloke – well, a model, pretty much, actually – in the wrong place at the wrong time?
‘It has taken you an awfully long time to tell us all this,’ says Harriet. She wants to nail him, wants his alibi broken and an arrest before Stanton can go clod-hopping all over her investigation. She’ll be thinking he set up the phone theft – stopped at Kettering to buy a PAYG as part of his alibi – then slipped back early to Huntingdon to murder Edith because he was furious that she was leaving him, or being unfaithful, or both. It was often both.
‘It was private, all right?’ says Carter, not quite shouting, but defensive. ‘My relationship with Edie is private and I didn’t want to tell you lot about it.’
Davy looks at the ringlets springing from the back of Manon’s head and wonders what she makes of Carter. He hazards a guess: Manon would say go easy, trace the phone, track his plates, follow up on the Tesco phone shop in Kettering and the petrol stations on his return journey. Because cases, as she was forever telling him, aren’t solved on hunches. They’re solved with dogged, stoic donkey work.