Persons Unknown: A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick 2018. Susie Steiner

place to die,’ Davy says.

      ‘Yes. Very public. Who the fuck is stabbed at half four in the afternoon?’ Harriet’s swearing always peaks at a crime scene. ‘Let’s start with a statement from Mrs Cole, down at the station. Send someone to get her a change of clothes. She only lives over there, 5 Snowdonia Way.’

      ‘He looks well-to-do, not our usual lot,’ Davy says, nodding at the body.

      He steps across the seeping ground to take a look at the man’s face the right way up. He has pouches beneath his eyes the size of teabags, a Roman nose. In fact the whole head seems Roman: his hair, cut close, curling forwards towards his forehead like Caesar’s crown of leaves. What was it made of? Manon would know.

      As she walks away, Harriet adds, ‘Need to get the CCTV off the road and this footpath, if there is any.’

      Time is of the essence, even when your victim is dead. Witnesses move, rain washes fibres away, memories fade. The commuter who might have noticed something vital goes home to his family, eats dinner, watches TV and soon cannot distinguish between Tuesday and Wednesday. CCTV gets inadvertently wiped by a shopkeeper who knows no better; car number plates are forgotten, descriptions blurred with other memories. They don’t call them the mists of time for nothing.

      Investigations, Davy realises as he looks at his checklist without knowing quite where to begin, run on the energy of time, run against it sometimes if a living person’s in danger – a kidnap, say, or a kiddie lost. Other times it’s justice that runs against the clock. Given time, your perp can get rid of the weapon, wipe down his prints, cook up an alibi or hot-foot it to somewhere sunny. The Costa Brava is bristling with British timeshare criminals.

      Time blunts all.

      It’s a relief, now, to be in the warmth of the major crime unit: frying drips on the coffee-machine hotplate; the clack of fingers on computer keys; muffled mobile calls saying, ‘No I won’t be home, job’s come in.’ There is no one for Davy to call, no one who minds whether he stays out all night. There’s been no one since Chloe, and that ended more than a year ago. Not so much that she put him off all relationships, more that he didn’t get back on the horse, and now he’s not even in the vicinity of a stable.

      As with investigations, so it is with heartbreak: time drains the sharpness from the picture. When Davy’d first broken up with Chloe, she was in every thought he had. He cried every day when they separated, even though it was his choice (doom balloon that she was). Nowadays, he can think of her dispassionately as a significant ex, could even bump into her without a rise in his vital signs. The love has run cold, just like it will with the evidence if he doesn’t get a shifty on.

      Davy glances at his watch – 8 p.m. Being outside for three hours has made his checklist damp. He spent it standing in that patch of wood, sometimes taking a break to sit in an unmarked car, receiving updates from his DCs. Nothing from the hospital; nothing from house to house, except varying degrees of alarm; nothing from the roadblock.

      He’d spotted a scene guard smoking a fag and throwing it to the ground.

      ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at the fag butt.

      ‘What? Nothin’ to do with me,’ the chap said.

      ‘Better not be,’ Davy said, ‘because it’s going to be tested by forensics and if your DNA is anywhere near it, you’ll be in big trouble.’

      ‘OK, well, actually it might be mine,’ he said, picking the butt up and putting it in his pocket.

      ‘Victim’s name is Jon-Oliver Ross,’ Harriet told him, when SOCO were done. ‘Banking type from London. Business card says Dunlop & Finch Wealth Management.’

      ‘Never had call for a wealth manager myself.’

      ‘No, me neither. I find an overdraft is all the wealth management I need,’ Harriet said. ‘Anyway, we need to find out why he was in Huntingdon, when he travelled in and how. Fella that did it might not be local either. We’ve also got a photo of a woman found in his jacket pocket. A four by six of a blonde, real stunner. She’ll be an ex, so we better know who she is as soon as possible.’

      SOCO discovered drips of blood at wide intervals along the footpath leading away from where the body was found, and these are being analysed. The phone found on the body is an iPhone, latest version, locked with a passcode so as good as useless. Call data from the telecom company will tell them when texts were sent and to which number, but not their contents. For that, you need access to the handset. Same with apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat.

      Davy stretches back, trying to release the stiffness in his shoulders. The frenetic atmosphere has calmed somewhat. The Hinchingbrooke School kids have all gone home, there are no other reports of anyone being stabbed, so it’s looking less and less like a random psycho on the rampage, which doesn’t surprise him because it’s almost never a random psycho. Relationships are what drive people to murder, in Davy’s experience.

      DC Kim Delaney appears before him, her arms arranged like a forklift, piled with folded clothes. ‘Change of clothing for Judith Cole,’ she says. ‘Brought in by her husband. He’s downstairs.’

      ‘D’you want to talk to her about changing out of her clothes?’ Davy says. ‘Better coming from you, really.’

      ‘Why?’ Kim asks.

      ‘Oh, you know, you being,’ he coughs, ‘you know, a woman.’

      ‘So I have to have all the underwear chats, is that it?’

      Davy colours up. It’d be just his luck to fall foul of some kind of mishandling of the politics of the sexes.

      ‘No, no, of course not. I’ll do it then, shall I?’ he says.

      ‘Don’t be a twat, Davy. I was only joking.’

      ‘Oh,’ says Davy. ‘Oh, right.’

       Manon

      As they turn out the light and close Solly’s door, Manon whispers to Fly, ‘You’re so good with him.’

      She can hear her neediness, as well as the distant sound of Sol singing to himself; he will sleep on his front, bottom in the air like the ruck in a blanket.

      They stomp downstairs, Manon with one hand on Fly’s shoulder. ‘Hungry?’ she says.

      He doesn’t reply and she’s used to this. She’ll often have to say things five or six times before he responds. This is not particular to Fly – she’s heard of parents hauling their children for hearing tests, the doctor saying witheringly, ‘There’s a difference between not being able to hear and not listening.’

      ‘I’ll need your help when this one comes,’ she says, her other hand on her bump, and even as she says it she thinks, leave the poor boy alone, remembers some parent or other at school saying, ‘Never plead with children’ and the way she nodded, thinking, I’m always pleading with children. It’s my base position.

      Lighten up, she tells herself. He’s all right.

      And yet he isn’t.

      Five days ago, the school office called at 9 a.m. to say Fly hadn’t arrived at school.

      ‘I don’t understand it,’ Manon said. ‘He left half an hour ago in his uniform. Where is he?’

      ‘I was hoping you’d know the answer to that.’

      ‘Leave it with me,’ she said.

      First thing she did was run out of the house, jogging the route of his walk to school, all the while on her mobile phone, checking admissions at the hospital, calling Fly’s mobile over and over.

      She drove around Huntingdon, paced the high street, barging in and out of cafés.