‘Colonel Bufton Tufton’s downstairs, and he’s not happy,’ says Kim.
‘Downstairs? Ian Hind?’ says Harriet.
‘Downstairs. Pacing like a caged bear.’
‘Did we have a meeting I’ve forgotten about?’ Harriet says to Davy, who shrugs, following her at a jog to keep up with her pelt down the stairs, while she says, ‘Probably here to bollock me about something.’ Then she stops and looks at Davy. ‘It’ll be the female lover line. I didn’t think he knew. Guess the FLO filled him in. Shit, he’ll be livid. Typical Stanton, out on a jolly when the shit hits the fan.’
‘Is everything all right, Sir Ian?’ says Harriet, waiting for Davy to enter, then closing the door to interview room one.
He is pacing up and down, fast, exactly as Kim described, like a bear in a tight space who hasn’t been fed.
‘Where is Superintendent Stanton?’ he says, his navy coat flying as he turns.
‘He’s not at HQ today,’ says Harriet. ‘What’s the matter, Sir Ian?’
‘You are systematically destroying my daughter’s reputation.’
‘I don’t think saying she had a female lover is derogatory, is it?’
‘It’s prurient,’ he says. Davy isn’t entirely clear what prurient means. ‘It’s salacious.’ Ah right, thinks Davy, that’s what it means. ‘It’s dirtying her in the mind of the general public, and they don’t need much assistance, let me tell you. You are riding roughshod over my family and I—’ He is stopped by a catch of emotion in his throat, except he appears to Davy to be too angry for tears.
‘Sir Ian, I promise you that is not our intention. We want to find Edith and we want to find her alive. We’ll do anything, anything at all, and that includes embarrassing her, and possibly you, though you have no reason to be embarrassed—’
‘My wife is crying on the bed, appalled about the things you’re saying about Edie, terrified about what your sergeant told us – about Tony Wright. I looked up his offences and they’re horrific.’
‘We have looked at Tony Wright, just as we look at all known offenders with appropriate previous convictions. It’s a line of—’
‘A line? You’ve told us some knife-wielding sexual predator might have had something to do with her disappearance and then you … you leave us to it?’
‘Wright has an alibi,’ Harriet says. ‘A very strong alibi. We are just keeping you informed. Look, I know this is upsetting. The reason we assign an FLO is to try to contain these sorts of fears and to answer any questions you might have. Try to calm down, Sir Ian. If you’d like to sit—’
‘No, I don’t want to sit. Everyone’s always telling me to sit or making me drink tea. I don’t like our FLO, and anyway, I want to know what you’re doing, what the investigation is doing. I don’t want to be patted by some mooning counsellor who wishes to contain me.’
‘We are looking at all avenues. Tony Wright is one of our lines of enquiry. Another is the possibility that Edith’s personal life – her lovers – is at the heart of what’s happened to her. We’re hoping the Crimewatch appeal will flush out new information.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he says. ‘Why, then, is your sergeant also talking to us about a boy – a boy called Dent, I think his name is.’
‘That is another line of enquiry.’
‘What do you mean “another line”?’
‘Taylor Dent’s body was found in the river near Ely last week. I think DS Bradshaw informed you of that, didn’t she? We are treating it as a murder investigation and we are looking into possible connections with the disappearance of your daughter. The two events had a similar time frame. It would be quite wrong if we didn’t look into connections between the two incidents.’
‘Forgive me, forgive me, DI Harper,’ he says, frowning and shaking his head. ‘How can you possibly focus your investigation if you are vaguely looking into everything? If you have multiple lines of enquiry, if you think it might be her love life, or it might be this lowlife, or it might be the boy in the river, then what on earth is your lead? Where is your focus?’ He turns, hones in on Harriet with cold, grey eyes in a way which, Davy notices, makes her pretend to read some notes on her clipboard. ‘Inspector, is it Tony Wright or Taylor Dent? You don’t seem to know. Or is it, in fact, that you’re out of your depth being SIO on a case this big, and so you’re frantically trying to investigate everything?’ He is downright scary-furious, like a headmaster telling her off.
‘I … we’re following up all possible leads,’ says Harriet, fingering the corner of a page.
‘Which is it?’ Sir Ian booms. His knuckles are on the desk and he’s hunched over Harriet. It’s as if he’s about to bang on the table.
‘It’s hard to say exactly,’ says Harriet. ‘At this point, multiple avenues—’
‘You’re supposed to be leading this enquiry, so lead it. Is it Taylor Dent or is it Tony Wright?’
‘To be honest, neither of them are holding up that well under scrutiny. But if I, I, I – if I had to, well, I’d say Wright is a stronger lead, but his alibi—’
Sir Ian exhales, straightens, and more gently says, ‘Right, so shouldn’t you be putting all your resources into Tony Wright then, DI Harper?’
Ian Hind marches out of the room and out of the station, into his Jaguar and back to London, they all hope.
Davy waits with Harriet outside interview room one. She is leaning against the corridor wall, head back, blowing out through pursed lips. ‘Fuck,’ she whispers. She opens her eyes and looks at Davy, still with her head back. ‘That was me at my finest. Watch and learn, Davy Walker.’
‘You certainly gave him what for.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’
‘At least he knows who’s boss,’ says Davy.
Kim is walking towards them, back from visiting Helena Reed.
‘How was she?’ asks Harriet.
‘Yeah, all right. She’s a bit out of it. I’m not sure she quite understands what it means in terms of the press an’ that.’
‘Did you make her aware?’
‘Did my best. I told her she might want to lie low, go and stay with family. Told her officers could sit with her if she wanted. She said she couldn’t go to family, was shifty about why, and said she didn’t need our support.’
‘OK, write it up, will you?’ says Harriet.