Harriet appears in the kitchen doorway.
‘Manon, can you come through? Watch the floor, there,’ she says as Manon tiptoes towards the threshold. ‘Don’t step in the evidence. Manon, this is Will Carter. Mr Carter, this is Detective Sergeant Bradshaw. Mr Carter has reported his girlfriend Edith Hind missing. He returned home at 9 p.m. this evening to find the front door ajar, the coats in disarray and blood over there.’ She points to a larger spatter on the kitchen floor, and some on the cupboard door just above it.
‘Miss Hind’s phone, keys, shoes, and coat were all in the house,’ Harriet says.
Will Carter is pacing, running a hand through his hair. He is preposterously handsome, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a cable-knit jumper, as if he has just stepped out of a razor advertisement. Manon glances at Harriet, who gives her a look which says: Yes, you can shut your gob now.
‘Is there anyone she might be with – a friend or relative?’ asks Manon.
‘I’ve called everyone I can think of,’ says Carter. ‘I’ve called her parents; they’re in London. They haven’t heard from her. And her friend Helena, she was with Edith last night at a party. She says she dropped Edith back here at around midnight. Hasn’t seen or heard from her today.’
‘When did you last speak to Edith?’ says Harriet.
‘Saturday early evening, just before she went out with Helena.’
‘Did she sound her normal self?’
‘Yes, I mean, it was a very quick call.’
‘And I’m sorry, Mr Carter,’ says Manon, ‘you were where?’
‘I’ve been away for the weekend in Stoke. Visiting my mum.’
‘Is there anywhere she might have gone?’ asks Manon. ‘A favourite place? Might she have just wanted time alone?’
‘I don’t see where she could have gone without her keys or her phone or her car.’
‘Car’s outside,’ explains Harriet.
‘I’ve gone through the contacts on her phone, called people who were at the party on Saturday night, our friends at college. Everyone I could think of. No one’s heard from her. I started to panic. Her parents told me to call the police. I mean, not that I wouldn’t have called, but you never know if you’re overreacting, d’you know what I mean? Can you get officers out there looking for her? It just doesn’t feel right. Something’s not right.’
‘What about her passport?’ asks Manon. ‘Is it here?’
‘I don’t know,’ Carter says. He goes to one of the kitchen drawers. ‘She keeps it in here,’ he says, pulling it out. He turns, holding up a small burgundy book. ‘It’s here. There’s a second home, Deeping – it’s her parents’ place, about half an hour’s drive away, near March. Edith’s got keys, but they’re on her key ring, there.’ He points to a bundle of keys on the kitchen table amid bits of paper with numbers written on them, an open diary, and mobile phones. ‘And anyway, you can’t get there without a car.’
‘Someone else might have driven her, perhaps?’ says Manon.
He shrugs. ‘But who? The phone, her keys – she never leaves that stuff. I mean, who does?’
‘Is there any reason she might have wanted to frighten you? Were you on good terms?’ asks Harriet.
Carter is shaking his head before she has even stopped talking. ‘No, no, she wouldn’t. We were on the best of terms. Everything’s good. Better than good. When will you start searching? It’s freezing outside and she hasn’t got her coat.’
‘How do you know, sir?’ says Harriet. ‘The coats appear to have fallen all over the place.’
‘I checked,’ says Carter. ‘I looked through them. I don’t know if I should have, but I wanted to know if she had it or not.’
‘It doesn’t look like you’ve gone through them. They appear to be as they fell.’
‘It only took a cursory look to see that her coat is there – the green one. The parka with the fur trim.’
‘Might she have taken another one?’
‘She hasn’t, I know she hasn’t, and anyway, why would they be all over the floor like that?’
‘A word, Manon, please,’ says Harriet, gesturing outside the kitchen. They step around the blood drips in the hallway and into the lounge next door, which is under-furnished and struggling to emerge from the miasma of an energy-saving light bulb. They speak in low murmurs.
‘Blimey,’ whispers Manon. ‘He’s …’ She blows out through her cheeks.
‘Very agitated, yes. What do you think? Enough to qualify as a high-risk misper? Davy and I have done a search of the house. We need to scope this country place, Deeping, soon as.’
‘Anything upstairs? Any signs of struggle?’
‘Not that I can make out. I want to shut the place down so we don’t lose anything, get SOCO looking at that blood.’
‘She might have disappeared in the early hours this morning,’ says Manon, looking at her watch.
Harriet nods. ‘That’s twenty hours.’