Emily Barr - The Sleeper

She was much more businesslike, less casual, than I would have expected, considering that we were talking about an adult who had simply not shown up at her own house. Very soon I came to suspect from the urgency of their questions that the police knew something we did not. I fumbled with the coffee, put it on the gas ring, and went straight back over to them.

‘We had unsuccessful fertility treatment,’ Sam was saying, ‘and so we decided to look into adopting from abroad. Trouble was, we’d spent our savings. We needed some cash. Lara was offered a six-month contract working back in her old line of work in London. She’s in property development – a project director, working on a development at the back of Tate Modern. She’s brilliant. The money was literally three times what I earn at the shipyard, with some extra allowances towards travel and all that. So she went off to do it.’ He sounded as if he were not expecting to be believed. ‘She’s doing it for us, so that we can start the adoption process. That’s why.’ His voice cracked and he started to cry.

‘Now,’ said Jessica, sitting on the sofa beside him. DC Alexander took the single chair, and I hovered on my feet, close to the kitchen. ‘So here’s the thing. This is not going to be easy to hear, I’m afraid. When last night’s sleeper train arrived at Penzance this morning, the First Great Western staff discovered a body in one of the cabins.’

Sam gasped. I reached for the wall to steady myself. The coffee whooshed and bubbled like a steam train. The words ‘she’s dead’ filled my mind, repeating themselves on a loop.

‘A man ’s body,’ DC Alex said quickly, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the coffee. ‘Not your wife’s. I do apologise.’ He looked at Jessica. ‘We should have made that clear. Penzance station is closed until further notice, and the train is a crime scene. Every passenger is being questioned by our colleagues in Penzance, working for the MCIT.’ He looked at our blank faces. ‘Major Crime Investigation Team. In this context, obviously your report of Mrs Finch’s disappearance is being taken extremely seriously. We were asked to come because Penzance had no spare manpower, but they are quite likely to want to talk to you soon, if Mrs Finch does not turn up safe and well. If she does, they will, of course, want to speak to her urgently.’

I went to pour the coffee. The percolator only made enough for two cups, so I gave them to the police. Sam did not look as if he would be able to swallow anything; and I knew I could not.

‘Did this man die of natural causes?’ I managed to ask, as I carried the cups shakily to the officers. An elderly man having a heart attack on the train would be almost palatable, verging on the ordinary. I imagined him lying on a train bed, whatever such a thing was like, and clutching his chest, his face contorting into the last grimace it would ever make. In my mind he was very old, so old that everyone would immediately be able to say that he’d had a good life and at least he was active right up to the end: ‘He was amazing, wasn’t he? The sleeper train at his age!’

That man’s death would not have given rise to a crime scene, and I knew it.

‘Early indications,’ said Jessica blankly, ‘are that this is not the case. It is being treated as a suspicious death. Thanks, this coffee’s brilliant. Beyond that, we are waiting for more details. The body was discovered by staff shortly before arrival into Penzance; they go round the cabins ensuring everyone is awake. All the passengers were detained at the station, fingerprints taken, travel tickets seized and so on.’ I saw Sam sit up, transparently hoping that this explained Lara’s disappearance, but of course she continued: ‘As Mrs Finch would have left the train at Truro, she was unlikely to be among them. We checked, of course, when we got your call, and indeed, she was not on the train at that point.’

She was very calm, though her fingers fiddled ceaselessly with a piece of lined paper she had folded into a fan shape. When she sipped her coffee, the cup trembled slightly. I wondered how often Falmouth police had to deal with something like this. I was sure that most of their time must have been spent issuing fines for dog shit and policing the students’ exits from what nightclubs there were in the early weekend hours.

I decided to make coffee for Sam and me, partly because he would probably need it – I certainly did – but mainly to give me an excuse to walk away. I listened to them taking Sam through Lara’s movements again, as methodically as they could make him do it. I could not believe that I had stumbled into this.

‘So you have no idea whether or not she got on the train?’ DC Alex asked. I clicked the gas on and watched the blue flames licking the side of the coffee pot once more. ‘Did she normally let you know when she was at Paddington station, or leaving work? Would you speak on a Friday night?’

Sam sounded defensive.

‘When she started the job, she’d call twice a day. Then, you know, she kind of settled into it and we didn’t need to be on the phone all the time. We always speak at some point during every day, though. No matter what. There are people she talks to on the train every week,’ he said quickly. ‘They’d know if she was there. There’s a woman who lives in Penzance. Ellen. Lara likes her a lot. And I think there was a man too, though she hasn’t mentioned him for a while. But she used to go for a drink with them on the train. Loads of people would know if she caught it or missed it. Those same people you’re talking to …’ His voice tailed off.

‘She checked out of her hotel as usual,’ I called over. ‘I rang the place where she stays, this morning. They said she left as normal.’

In fact, the man had said ‘they’ left as normal, but I was trying not to consider that as anything other than a harried hotel receptionist using the wrong word. I was certainly not going to be mentioning it to the police in front of Sam.

‘The moment you hear from her,’ said Alexander Zielowski as I poured the second lot of coffee into two stripy mugs, ‘please let us know. Instantly. This is absolutely crucial. Tell her to contact us as a matter of the utmost urgency. Meanwhile our colleagues will be asking the other passengers for any information that could help us trace her movements.’

There was something gentle about Alex Zielowski, and I liked the way you could tell that he had depths. If I was colouring him in, I would use a gentle pale blue, my favourite colour. I was intrigued about what might be going on under his surface. I never met new people, ever, and this morning, under the most unsettling of circumstances, I had met several.

I was colouring in the police (Jessica was orange, with some more vulnerable yellow around the edges) in an attempt to stop thinking about Lara. Someone was dead, and she was nowhere. I fought hard not to picture her twisted body lying in a track-side ditch, flung from the train by a shadowy figure because she had seen too much.

Now Jessica took over the questions, wondering, in a far blunter way than Alexander had, whether Sam and Lara had argued last weekend, whether she was the sort of person who would sulk, whether there was any reason he could think of for her to have stayed away. Did she, Jessica wondered, ever mislay her phone and purse? Did she have any ongoing medical problems? It went on and on. In the light of the man’s death, these looked like kind questions, questions that, if answered the right way, could bring Lara back with an apology for all the bother.

While she was mid-probe, and I was trying to busy myself clearing up the kitchen, Alexander took a phone call. As soon as I heard his tone, I stared at him and focused. He wandered towards me as he spoke, to take him away from Sam. Jessica was pretending to concentrate on Sam telling her that he and Lara never argued, ever, but I could see that she too was listening intently to her colleague.