Lock Me In

‘Christine Power was pleased to see you though, yeah?’ she said, biting the edge off a wry smile. ‘Big DS Mae fan. Ker-azy pheromones coming off that one.’

‘Kit. Please.’

She lifted her hands from the wheel in surrender. ‘Just saying. But what did she mean about—?’

‘Can we leave it?’

She blew out her cheeks. ‘What’s next then? Open-door search then grade it? I couldn’t get hold of the guy at the moorings, but I can go down there now, sure I’ll find someone to let me in. Won’t take long.’

The open-door search was the first point of call usually, checking the missing person’s home in case they’d got sick or stuck or injured anywhere. But if it was a narrowboat it was going to be a pretty quick job.

‘After lunch,’ Mae said, suddenly aware of the chasm in his stomach. ‘I’ll go to the marina, you hit the phones. Talk to his manager about what he got sacked for.’

His phone buzzed against his leg and he pulled it out, checked the screen: Nadia. Turning in his seat for whatever privacy he could get in a five-door, he hit the green button.

‘Are you OK to pick Dominica up from violin?’ his ex-wife wanted to know. ‘I’ve just been asked to go to this meeting.’

No hi, no how’s things. And it was Dominica now instead of Bear, like they couldn’t even agree on the name of their kid. ‘Sure.’

‘And bring her back at half eight?’

‘Yep.’

‘Mike’ll be here, OK, so … just so you know.’

Mike. Who had ten years on Mae, twelve on Nadia, although a stranger could easily place him in his mid-sixties because the guy was utterly, relentlessly grey. It wasn’t like Mae hadn’t tried to find something interesting about him, something likeable. Mid-west American, drove a Citroen, played badminton three times a week, with a record that couldn’t be cleaner if it had been formulated in an aseptic lab. Never so much as a day late with his TV licence. There was, of course, more than a slim chance that Nadia’s attraction to Mike was all Mae’s fault. That ten years with him had turned his funny, brilliant, game-for-anything wife into a reliability junkie. Or maybe it was just that maybe Mike happened to be hung like a centaur.

‘Mike. Sure.’

Nadia sighed. ‘Try to do something fun with her after, OK? She always comes back from you so … I don’t know. Flat.’

He took the screen from his ear and thumbed the red circle until he could feel the casing start to bow.

‘Touch-screen means you only have to touch it, you know,’ Kit told him.

‘Uh-huh. And advanced driving means keeping your eyes on the road.’

13. (#ulink_1e9d1e36-52d1-5836-b18a-d027c4161c99)

Ellie (#ulink_1e9d1e36-52d1-5836-b18a-d027c4161c99)

Quarter of an hour passed before I felt halfway normal. After the police left and the panic subsided, Mum brought me sweet tea, made herself late waiting until I could convince her I was fine. She fetched the duvet from the bedroom and tucked me in on the sofa, then checked the time and swore softly under her breath.

‘I have to go and make up for that shift.’ She bent to kiss me goodbye. ‘Just stay put. Don’t let anyone in.’

‘All right, Mum.’

She tapped her fingers on the edge of the mug, running something through her mind. ‘They’ll go to his boat next, I should think,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Maybe they’ll find something there.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing.’ She found a brief smile, shrugged her shoulders.

When she finally left, I got straight up from under the duvet and went into her room, pulling a corner of the curtain aside to watch her through the window. She paused at the car, glanced up at me, and touched her fingertips to her lips. Then got in and drove away.

Maybe they’ll find something.

She meant a note.

Was there a note?

I wasted no time. I pulled some shoes on, and looked for my raincoat before remembering I’d been unable to find it earlier. I dug around in a drawer until I found the fleece-lined zip-up hoody I’d borrowed from Matt and refused to return. I left the flat with Siggy still tiny and shuddering in my chest.

14. (#ulink_ab7f00f9-eb58-5851-be30-8d6d15c3517d)

Mae (#ulink_ab7f00f9-eb58-5851-be30-8d6d15c3517d)

Mae bit into his bagel. Pinned to the fabric-covered room divider behind his workstation was a page from a set of ACPO guidelines, thoughtfully printed out and displayed by whoever had last occupied Mae’s desk. IF IN DOUBT, THINK MURDER, it read. It had been there so long that the drawing pins had gone rusty, and snagged on the cloth when Mae pulled them out. He balled it up to lob, with flukily perfect aim, into the recycling, just as Kit walked in.

‘Like things spic and span, don’t you?’ she said, looking around, holding a pen drive and standing in a strict at-ease. ‘Speaks of a need to instil order.’

Mae held out his hand for the drive. ‘Spare me the amateur mind reading. What have you got?’

‘Apart from a first-class honours degree in psychology?’

He laughed, then stopped. ‘Really?’

She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I can see into the very blackness of your soul,’ she said, before breaking into a grin. ‘No but seriously, tidy people do tend to crave reliability and control, and you tend to crave the things you didn’t get as a kid. Just saying.’

He opened his mouth, shut it again, totally at a loss for what to say. What to even think. ‘You do remember that I’m your boss here, right?’

She shrugged. ‘Fluid thing, though, hierarchy, isn’t it? Anyway,’ she said, leaning over him to slide the drive into a port and commandeer his keyboard. ‘Headlines. I couldn’t get hold of the person who dealt with Corsham’s contract but the HR person I spoke to said it looked like he was on short contracts and just hadn’t been offered a new one. I’ll keep trying for his direct line manager though, see if there’s any more to it.’

Mae nodded, scanning the document she’d opened. ‘Any more workmates?’

‘The guy he shared an office with said he was talking about buying some vintage lomo gear.’

‘Lomo?’

‘Kind of cult photography thing. Analogue, retro stuff. Apparently Corsham had been reading up on the ones where you take the picture and they spit the thingy out, and you …’ she mimed waving a wet photograph, ‘you remember?’

He scrolled through the rest of the notes, ticking off the lines of investigation. Matthew Corsham was an only child, estranged from his father since infancy; mother dead from cancer a few years previously.

‘DVLA have a 1989 soft top Golf Cabriolet registered to him,’ she told him, pointing it out lower on the page. ‘I’m going to run a search on that in a sec. He’d been for a few after-work drinks but no particular mates – sounds pretty shy – and he hadn’t been in the job that long.’ She lifted her hands, dropped them, underwhelmed. ‘Not much to go on though. He’d signed up for a few socials with a local photography group. I’ve emailed the guy who organized it to see if he made any friends there.’

As Mae read, the picture emerged of a quiet, unremarkable man. He’d moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh a couple of years before, then down to London only a few months ago. From what Kit had managed to trawl in a couple of hours, they were looking at an average twenty-something bloke, without a particularly vibrant social life, with good, normal, healthy pursuits. Vintage cameras. The gym. Batshit crazy girlfriends.

In the pause, Kit moved her feet a bit before telling the floor, ‘So I found that book online, A Splintered Soul. That chapter on Ellie.’