Roan comes back from work early that evening.

Cate glances up at him from the screen of her laptop when he walks into the kitchen. ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘You’re back early.’

He walks past her and directly to the fridge and starts pouring himself a glass of wine before he’s even taken off his coat. He holds the bottle aloft and says, ‘Want one?’

It’s barely 6 p.m., but she nods.

‘How was your day?’ she asks.

‘Pretty grim,’ he says, unzipping his coat and taking it off. ‘Pretty bloody grim.’

She knows there’s no point expecting him to expand. It usually means a suicidal patient, or some violence or something appalling involving bodily fluids. It also sometimes means a set-to with a colleague or a superior. Whichever is the case in this instance, Cate doesn’t ask. She merely raises her wine glass to his and says, ‘Here’s to Friday night.’

He returns the gesture drily and gets out his phone, starts scrolling through something on his screen. Then he turns it to face her. ‘Have you seen this?’

She takes the phone, puts on her reading glasses and looks at the screen.

‘Oh my God.’

It’s a photo of the guy from across the street. His mouth is open and you can see his fillings and a grey tongue. He has blood encrusted on his forehead and his hair is greasy and slightly brutal-looking. It’s a shocking photograph. The headline above it says: ‘Is this Saffyre’s killer? Man taken in for questioning after “blood and phone case” found on his property’.

‘Did you see this happening?’ he asks her.

‘I didn’t no. But Georgia did.’

‘Did you know about the blood the detectives found?’

‘Yes. A journalist told us. Who told you?’ she asks.

‘A colleague. Well, many colleagues. It’s all anyone’s talked about today. It’s … fuck. It’s just awful.’

She looks at the page on Roan’s phone again. She imagines a million phones in a million hands, a million people looking at this man’s face, right now. This man who lives across the road from her.

She reads the story beneath:

Earlier today, Owen Pick, a 33-year-old college lecturer, was brought in by north London police for questioning regarding the disappearance of 17-year-old Saffyre Maddox. Pick, who lives in Hampstead with his aunt, Tessa McDonald, was recently suspended from his job as a Computer Science lecturer at Ealing Tertiary College, after allegations of sexual misconduct from several students. One student, Maisy Driscoll, told reporters that Pick had a reputation amongst the female students at her college for ‘being creepy’. She said that he had stroked her hair at a college party and shaken sweat into her face a number of times. The college would give no comment about Mr Pick’s employment with them.

Neighbours in his leafy Hampstead avenue describe Mr Pick as ‘odd’, ‘a loner’ and, one woman, Nancy Wade, 25, recalls being accosted by him on the street just before midnight on the night of Saffyre Maddox’s disappearance. She told reporters that Mr Pick ‘deliberately blocked my path. When I asked him to move out of my way, he turned nasty and abused me verbally. I was genuinely scared for my life.’

Ernesto Bianco, 73, who lives in the flat above Mr Pick and Ms McDonald, told reporters that this is not the first time Mr Pick has been questioned by the police in recent weeks. According to Mr Bianco, Mr Pick had previously been visited by the police in relation to a string of serious sexual assaults in the area, including two in the immediate vicinity of his property. No one has yet been found or charged with these attacks. It is thought he will be questioned about these events too.

Unsubstantiated reports suggest that while searching the area beneath Pick’s bedroom window, police officers uncovered possessions, including a phone case, that are suspected to belong to the missing teenager. It is also thought that they discovered bloodstains on the brickwork close to Pick’s bedroom and in the grass below. Forensic officers are still on site and the case is ongoing. No body has yet been found and the search for Saffyre Maddox continues.

Cate hands the phone back to Roan. She thinks about how guilty she’d felt after sending the police to Owen Pick’s door those weeks earlier. But she’d been right, she thinks to herself now, she’d followed her instincts and her instincts had been absolutely spot on.

‘Did you read that bit?’ she asks him. ‘About the sexual misconduct at work. I mean, it looks pretty clear, doesn’t it? It must be him.’

Roan takes his phone from her outstretched hand. ‘Looks like it. Yes.’

Cate takes a sip of wine and looks at Roan thoughtfully. ‘But it’s still so odd, isn’t it? That she was here? On our street? I mean, why here? Of all the places? And why him and why her? It’s just …’ She shivers. ‘It’s unsettling.’

Roan shrugs. ‘I guess she didn’t live that far from here. And this is one of the roads you’d walk up to get to the village. Maybe it’s not that weird after all.’

‘But where was she really going? No one says they’d made arrangements to meet her?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Roan, spreading his arms. ‘I don’t know anything about her or her private life.’

She sighs. ‘Just to think,’ she says, ‘that time he was following Georgia last month …’

‘Well, thank God she had the common sense to call you.’

‘Yes. Absolutely. I can’t even …’

‘No,’ Roan says, shaking his head gently. ‘No. Neither can I.’

Cate watches from her bedroom window that night, to see if the police bring Owen Pick home. But the street is quiet. A fine drizzle falls from a black, clouded sky. She can see the silky filaments of it through the yellow street lights. The police ribbon has gone from the road, but is still taped across the gate into the building site. It’s the weekend tomorrow. Do police carry out forensic searches of crime scenes at the weekend? She has no idea. She hears a sound behind her and turns, expecting to see Roan, but it’s not, it’s Josh.

‘What’re you doing?’ he says.

‘Just seeing what’s happening over there.’

He puts a hand on to her shoulder and she covers it with hers.

‘I feel sorry for him,’ he says.

She turns and looks at him.

‘Who?’

‘Him,’ he says. ‘The guy over there. I feel bad. Everyone will just think he did it, whether he did or not.’

‘What makes you think he didn’t?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ he says. ‘It’s just, innocent until proven guilty and all that. But people, you know, they like having someone to blame, don’t they? They like knowing who the bad person is. Who to throw the eggs at. The rocks. I feel bad for him.’

Cate turns and looks at her boy. She puts a hand to the side of his face and cups his cheeks, feels the suggestion of three-day-old boy-stubble, soft as summer grass. ‘You’re such a lovely boy,’ she says. ‘Such a lovely boy.’

He smiles and rubs his face against her palm, then draws her towards him for a hug. She feels the bones of him, the sinew and the tendon. He smells of the fabric conditioner she uses. He smells of something else, too, a slightly tobaccoey smell. She wonders if he smokes. And if he does, she wonders if she minds. She smoked at fourteen. In fields and by railway tracks and behind walls and hedges. She smoked Silk Cuts. She stole them from her mother and then when her mother found out and started hiding her Silk Cuts, she smoked roll-ups instead. Can she be angry with him for doing what she herself had done?

She feels that in the current climate of murder and blood she does not mind that her son might be smoking. Maybe she will mind later on. She lets him go and smiles.

‘I’m sure justice will be served,’ she says reassuringly. ‘I’m sure the right person will be punished.’

36

It is nearly midnight. Owen is still sitting in a pale blue room with a long narrow window and a two-way mirror. DIs Currie and Henry are still sitting facing him. On the table on front of them are two empty paper cups, the wrappings of three Kit Kat bars, four empty sugar packets and three wooden stirrers. Owen drags his finger through the edges of a small puddle of tea and makes a tentacle out of it. He does this seven more times, until it is an octopus.

Apparently they are awaiting a report from the guys who’ve been ransacking his bedroom all day. Barry sits next to Owen, picking at his cuticles. He wears cufflinks with green stones in them and a lilac and green checked shirt. He looks incongruous in this room with the bland, identikit detectives, the peeling walls and Owen himself, who is starting to feel very stale and unfragrant.

Owen hasn’t told Barry about the Rohypnol in his sock drawer. When Barry walked in four hours ago, Owen had taken one look at him and realised the only reason he was here was to get paid. There was no smile of recognition or of empathy, no suggestion that Barry had ever seen Owen before in his life. He’d been businesslike to the point of cruelty.