Harriet takes a circular tin of Vaseline, green and white, from the depths of her handbag. Without looking at it, she twists off the lid and dabs some onto her middle finger, stroking it across her lips so they glisten. Her gaze is on the middle distance. These shifts are ageing us, Manon thinks. She keeps glazing over too, and when she does, her mind returns again and again to Deeping – its painterly swathes, colours murky and creative – perhaps because it’s the polar opposite of police HQ, all pale laminate and strip lighting. The exposure of dark corners.
People are preparing to go home. ‘We can’t keep you all here indefinitely,’ Harriet said. ‘Get some sleep. See you back here at seven tomorrow morning.’ Coats being threaded onto leaden arms, bags gathered, families phoned. (‘Yes, Dawn, I know it’s late. Well, I’m sorry, but there wasn’t anything I could— Shall I pick up something for us to eat?’)
‘Don’t walk home tonight,’ Harriet says, and Manon blinks into focus, sees her flicking her hair out from under her coat collar.
‘No, I’ve got the car. Hang on, I thought Carter was our suspect.’
‘Yeah, well, you heard Stanton.’
She’d been in on the meeting, Stanton hitching up the back of his belt, his belly its counterweight, while he told Harriet she didn’t have the evidence against Carter: ‘No body, no forensics, no witnesses, nothing.’
‘We need to shake him up,’ Harriet said, but she was already on the back foot.
Stanton doesn’t want the headlines, the pay-out in compensation if they’re wrong and the press going to town. His manner had said: You’ve both got a bit over-excited, but now my steadying hand is back on the tiller. ‘We wait,’ he told them. ‘We investigate all avenues. Trace. Interview. Eliminate.’
‘Just … don’t walk,’ Harriet is saying, covering a yawn with her fist. ‘You don’t know – we don’t know – who’s out there.’
‘Anything on unknown-515, that mystery number on Edith’s call register, Davy?’ says Manon, as he walks towards them.
‘Nothing,’ he says.
‘Fancy a lift?’ Manon says.
He seems to falter, then says, ‘OK, yes, thanks very much.’
Manon’s wipers push doggedly at the rain but do little to dissipate the fog on her windscreen, so she winds down a window, letting in sprays of wet. Rough winds buffet the car as she pulls on to the A14 to avoid the cordon which has closed George Street and created gridlock in central Huntingdon. She’ll follow the ring road around to suburban Sapley, where Davy lives. The roads roar with wetness and the damp mingles with the musty interior of her car. On the banks of the motorway, just visible in the dark, are the last sketches of snow being pummelled by the rain.
‘Have you got any hobbies, Davy?’ she asks, peering into the dark.
‘I do, yes,’ says Davy. ‘I do my mentoring at the youth centre, kids in care. I like a spot of gardening, though I haven’t got a garden at the moment. I do help look after my mum’s.’
‘See? You’ve got plenty of hobbies. I haven’t got one.’
‘Why d’you ask?’
‘I had to fill in a hobbies section – for the dating site – and I drew a complete blank. I literally don’t have any. So I’ve decided to get hobbied up.’
‘And how is that going?’ asks Davy, with a hopefulness that would imply he’d never met Manon.
‘Awful. I hate it. I mean, what’s the point of doing something just for the sake of it, when it isn’t your job?’
‘Well, to relax.’
‘I even went to a pottery class so I’d have something to type in. But I just couldn’t get past the pointlessness of it. I mean, it’s not like I’m ever going to have a pottery wheel in my lounge, to relax with.’
‘You don’t know that. Demi Moore had one in Ghost,’ says Davy.
She looks at him, but he maintains his cheerful gaze straight ahead.
‘So I’m going to try Zumba instead,’ says Manon. ‘Thought I’d go tonight, actually. Help me wind down. It’s been quite full-on. Do you find that – difficulty falling asleep?’
‘Nope, not me. My head touches the pillow and bosh, I’m off. Did Harriet suggest that – the Zumba, I mean?’
Manon shoots him a sharp look. ‘No, she did not. Why? What’s she said to you?’
‘Nothing, no, nothing. It’s just good if we all keep fit, that’s all,’ says Davy. ‘For catching villains. Ah, here we are,’ he says, patting his knees. Manon slows the car and Davy gets out, then leans in through the open door. ‘Right, well, cheerio,’ he says.
He waits, but she doesn’t respond, so he closes the car door.