Saturday 9th December 2023
Georgie
‘Something bad’s happened to him, hasn’t it?’
Ben looks up from his phone when Georgie asks the question.
‘Leo,’ she clarifies, her eyes wide. ‘Can’t you tell me?’
She and Ben are alone in the pub’s office now, and have been for some time. Kiri has gone to make a phone call – Georgie presumes to alert someone to track down Peter – and has been absent longer than expected. After Georgie told them about Peter and the scrapbook, there were questions. Lots of questions. Georgie was surprised and slightly irritated by how many were about her – why she was in the pub the morning she saw Peter, which window she was looking out of, why she didn’t go straight to the police.
In the end, though, Georgie didn’t give any of the answers she’d intended to. For once, she didn’t stick to her own plan. Is that why Ben seems uncomfortable in her presence now – because she veered in such an unexpected direction?
I saw him from the upstairs flat, she told them, abandoning her original, safer lie about seeing him from a downstairs window. I … was exploring.
Exploring?
And I didn’t take the scrapbook straight to the police because Peter is … one of you. I didn’t know whose toes I might be treading on. What I might be walking into.
She’d wanted to see their reaction to that. And it was Ben who seemed to react most strongly, frowning and starting to protest. Kiri cut across him with the professional line: I understand, Ms Fallows, but I can assure you this will be investigated in the same way as any other important lead in this case.
The phrase ‘important lead’ fed Georgie’s confidence. Now she looks steadily at Ben as she waits for him to answer her latest question.
‘He’s missing,’ Ben says, scratching his beard. ‘That’s all we know at the moment.’
‘There are rumours that he’s dead.’
‘They’re unfounded.’
‘Does that mean you can’t say?’
‘It means we don’t know anything for sure.’
Georgie nods. Somehow, she feels calm and agitated at the same time. She is trapped in this room, Ben is trapped with her, and it’s a bind or an opportunity, depending on how she plays it.
‘How long have you been a police officer?’ she asks him, flashing a smile as if she suddenly just wants to chat.
He still looks wary. ‘Twenty-odd years.’
She lets her smile twinkle just a little. ‘You don’t look old enough.’
His eyebrows twitch but he doesn’t respond. He seems humourless, she thinks, but then she remembers seeing him in photos, laughing and back-slapping with Peter and other colleagues.
‘So, you’ve worked with Peter a long time?’
He nods and fidgets with his beard again. Georgie thinks of Ethan’s chiselled jaw, always silky-smooth. She never saw it get even a tiny bit stubbly because they never spent more than a few snatched hours together. She never saw him with the flu, or in his slippers, or strolling round a supermarket. He will always be, to her, a beautiful man in a suit, or naked under hotel-room sheets, and she treasures those images but she feels robbed of all the other parts of him. Robbed of their chance to be together in the real world.
She couldn’t even go to his funeral. She can’t even shout it now: I loved Ethan Dean and he loved me.
She wants to. God, how she wants to. What’s stopping her?
‘Did you work on the Ethan Dean case?’ she asks. It’s the third time she’s allowed herself to say his name today. Each time more boldly, with more ownership, though she doesn’t know if anybody else can tell the difference.
‘Well, it wasn’t really a case …’
Georgie bristles. ‘Wasn’t it? A man died. He was only forty-eight.’
He blinks at her. She stares him down: yes, I do know how old he was.
‘But …’ He looks confused. ‘It was straightforwardly—’
The door swings and Kiri comes back in. ‘Sorry about that. Got tied up. We’ll try not to keep you too much longer, Ms Fallows …’
‘It’s fine,’ Georgie says smoothly. ‘I’m happy to help.’
Kiri looks between them, as if sensing tension, then sits back down and checks her notebook and her watch.
‘Where is the scrapbook now?’ she asks Georgie. ‘At your house, did you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s in the village?’
Georgie hesitates, trying to remember how she left the place looking. It seems a lifetime since she went to visit his grave early this morning. ‘I can take you there,’ she says.
Kiri glances at Ben. ‘We’ll need to collect the scrapbook as evidence. So, yes, once we’ve got everything we need here …’ She flips backward in her notebook, her eyes zigzagging. ‘It would be great if we can do that.’
‘I can do it,’ Ben says, stirring. ‘You should get home to your kids once we’ve wrapped up here, Kiri. It’s late.’
‘You’ve got a little one to get back to, as well,’ Kiri says.
‘He’s long asleep.’ Ben sounds tired himself. ‘I’ll just swing by Georgie’s on my way home. You’ve got further to travel.’
Kiri seems reluctant and Georgie recognises a fellow control freak. She eyes Ben again and thinks, no, I wouldn’t trust him with this, either. But she likes the idea of continuing their chat. She feels as if they were only just scratching the surface.