“I’m sorry if I’ve said something to upset you.”
“Upset me, no. I think you like disagreeing with people, Professor, because it makes you feel superior or smarter than everybody else. But contrary to what you might think, I’m not some dim-witted plod who doesn’t read books and thinks Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.”
It’s a good line. It reminds me of something a friend of mine might have said: Vincent Ruiz, a former detective inspector with a flair for the telling phrase.
“Do you know how many murders I’ve investigated?” he asks.
“No.”
“How many bodies I’ve seen?”
“No.”
“Stabbed, shot, strangled, drowned, poisoned, electrocuted; tossed off cliffs, shoved in barrels, cut up in bathtubs, wrapped in carpets, burned in cars and fed to pigs. You think you understand people, Professor, but I’ve seen what they can do. I understand more about human behavior than you ever will.”
The lift has arrived. The doors open.
“What is your wife’s name?” I ask.
The DCI pauses. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I was just thinking that you should change that shirt before you go home. You’ve been wearing it since yesterday, which means you didn’t go home last night. You were with another woman, at her place. Lipstick—left side of the collar, below your ear. You didn’t have a spare shirt so you wore this one again and sprayed it with her deodorant.
“I also noticed the box of chocolates in your office—expensive, Belgian—for your wife. You must like this mistress a lot, but you don’t want the affair to wreck your marriage. Good luck with that…”
Drury hasn’t moved a muscle.
“Dead bodies don’t interest me, DCI. I deal with the living.”
There is a difference between
a runaway girl and a missing one. Runaways are like spare change lost down a crack in the sofa. You might find it eventually, but it’s not like winning the lottery.
We slipped through the cracks, disappeared from the headlines. Out of sight, out of mind. George said that nobody cared except him. He was our guardian now. He would look after us.
I wanted to believe him. There were times when I looked forward to hearing him moving boxes and uncovering the trapdoor. Tash always hated him. She knew him better than I did. She knew more about men… what they wanted, what they did.
We were an odd couple, but that didn’t stop Tash and me from being friends. I walked like a pigeon. She walked like a model. I wore shorts and trainers. She mini-skirts and platform shoes. I was into running. She thought sport was a waste of time.
I had blotches on account of my psoriasis. Tash had perfect skin, so free of blotches and spots it was like looking at one of those mannequins you see in shop windows—the normal-looking ones, not the ones that could be bald aliens. (She once tried to hide my blotches with foundation, but it made me look like an Oompa Loompa.)
We were born two weeks apart in the same hospital and went to the same primary school. We thought we were going to be separated after that, but Tash won a scholarship to St. Catherine’s, which helped pay the fees. Her dad works as a scaffolder. Mine works as a banker. Her mum has a job in a supermarket. Mine doesn’t work at all.
We seemed to have nothing in common, but still we were friends. I spent most afternoons at the training track, doing wind sprints and pulling a truck tire across the grass. Tash thought this was hilarious, but she didn’t make me feel stupid. And it’s not like she wanted an ugly girlfriend to make her look good. There were way uglier girls than me.
I think Tash liked my family more than she liked her own, particularly my mum who is the Bingham equivalent of a Stepford wife. She calls herself a “home-maker,” which means she does yoga on Monday, tennis on Wednesday and golf on Friday. Before she married she was a model. She said it was on runways, but most of her scrapbook photographs are from motor shows.
She’s very elegant and graceful and nothing ever creases or smears around her. She’s like a doll that you’re not allowed to play with, but instead have to keep it in the original box because one day it’s going to be worth a lot of money.
I’ve never been interested in fashions and make-up and girly things, which disappointed my mother. I sometimes wonder if they got the babies mixed up at the hospital and she was supposed to bring Tash home.
People always talked about me as “the runner” and “that tough little thing” or “the tomboy.” Mum despaired, but Daddy showed off my running trophies and said I was the next best thing to having a son. Being “next best” was like coming second, but I couldn’t be expected to win everything.