Emily Barr - The Sleeper

I had been back to see Sam once, and then only briefly. I could not bear to be near his pain. That, I knew, was bad of me. He told me about his hours in custody at a centre in Camborne, the forensic checking of his computer and his car and his home. ‘That was the good bit, though,’ he added. ‘It didn’t feel it at the time, but at least things were happening, then.’

His mother was frail yet formidable, his brother thick-necked and shouty, and Sam had all but clung to me as I extricated myself. I told myself that I owed him nothing; but I knew I should have stayed longer. He had no friends to speak of, and he had lost his wife twice over, and he was plainly hating the company of his family.

DC Alex showed up on my doorstep the day after she went missing. That had been unexpected and unsettling. It was Sunday lunchtime, and I was cooking. I was not expecting anyone, and when the bell jangled, Laurie sighed.

‘I don’t want to see anyone,’ he said. ‘Not unless it’s Lara Finch herself. I’ll be upstairs. Don’t tell them I’m here.’

‘Yes, your highness,’ I muttered as he stormed off, but not loud enough for him to hear.

The policeman, tall, skinny and kind, looked at me apologetically as he stamped on the doorstep to keep warm.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have called, I know.’

‘Um. That’s OK.’ He was being oddly informal, and I could tell from his face that there was no good news. ‘Come in,’ I said, because I had to. I trusted Laurie to stay shut away upstairs for as long as he had to. He would, I knew, go to any lengths to avoid the police.

‘I just wanted to talk to you as a friend of Mrs Finch’s,’ he said, when we were inside. ‘Oh, you’re cooking. That smells amazing. I really am sorry to interrupt. Are you expecting people? Is it a bad time?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Really. Have a drink. My boyfriend’s not here. I’m not expecting anyone else.’ Suddenly I wanted a proper drink. Laurie and I did not often drink alcohol. ‘I suppose I can’t offer you a glass of wine? Is that banned if you’re working?’

‘I wish I could. A coffee or something would be lovely, though. Sorry, Iris. All you do is make me coffee.’

‘Oh, this is only the second. I think that’s OK.’

He stood in the kitchen while I made the coffee, and explained that he wanted to have an informal chat.

‘This whole case is so bizarre,’ he said. ‘So enormously unusual. I can’t get my head around it. Mrs Finch seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth.’

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘That’s surely where you come in?’

‘I know, I know. Though I’m not even involved any more. Going to visit Mr Finch was the extent of my involvement. I’m Falmouth, and, as you know, it’s being run by the MCIT out of Penzance. But it’s not often something this bizarre happens down here.’ He pulled himself up on to the worktop. His legs were so long, his feet nearly reached the floor. ‘I like your skirt, by the way. Is it vintage?’

That made me laugh out loud. My skirt was an ancient floral dress I’d bought from a charity shop. I’d had to wash it three times before it stopped smelling of musk and dead people.

‘Charity-shop vintage, not couture vintage. Thanks, though. It’s actually a dress.’ I lifted my cardigan to prove it.

And then I was smiling at him, and he was looking back at me, and I was enormously confused.

‘So. Lara,’ I said quickly. ‘Yes. I didn’t know her that well, actually. I had no idea she was seeing Guy Thomas. Poor bloke. Because he’s dead, I mean. Not because he was seeing Lara. Oh, you know what I mean.’

‘I do.’ He nodded solemnly. ‘It seems it was only the regulars on the train who knew about the connection between Lara and Guy. And the hotel staff, if they cared. And her sister, actually, and her godfather in London says he had an idea but that he hadn’t met Mr Thomas.’

‘How are her family?’

‘They’re how you would expect. Look. I’m sorry to have to do this, but could you just tell me how it was that you were with Mr Finch yesterday morning? I mean, there’s no suggestion that there was anything untoward. I know he’s already been released without charge. It’s just … if a woman’s illicit lover is dead; you have to look to her husband. And when you go to visit the husband and find he’s with another woman, well …’

‘They teach you that in police school?’

‘Fairly early on, yes.’

I told him exactly what had happened. I went through the day from the moment I woke up until the point at which Sam was taken away in the police car.

‘And your partner?’ he asked. ‘Would he be happy to give a statement, if we needed him to? Just to tie everything up? Though I can’t imagine it will be necessary unless anything changes.’

That gave me the confidence to say, ‘I’m sure that would be fine.’

‘Could I just take his name?’

I didn’t have the presence of mind to lie to the police. I could not do anything except say it.

‘Laurie Madaki.’ I instantly wished I could retract, and carried on speaking, too quickly. ‘Look, I’m having a glass of wine. Are you sure you don’t want to join me? Just a small one?’

Alex grinned and jumped down from the worktop.

‘I could be persuaded. I go off duty in twenty minutes. You’re my last job of the shift. So no one would ever know. Thank you. That would be lovely.’

I tried not to think of Laurie, upstairs and seething, and told myself he could not possibly have heard me telling his full name to a police officer. Instead, I opened a bottle of velvety red wine and sat down with the oddly engaging policeman, feeling my betrayal with every nerve-ending in my body, yet callously revelling in it.

If I were single, I thought, I would be drawn to Alex Zielowski. I would be pulled into his orbit. I would want to know everything about him. If I were single.

And then he had coordinated my visit to Diana, as Sam’s representative, and here I was because I was desperate to meet her. As I walked up to the Thomas family’s front door, the journalists kept shouting. They should have gone away by now, moved on to the next big story. The trouble was, none of the proper news was anywhere near this salacious. This was about sex and death and railways; the economy, by contrast, was dull and depressing. Everyone wanted a scandal, and the entire country was going wild about Lara.

Guy had had a Twitter account, rarely used, which suddenly, posthumously, had nearly half a million followers in place of its previous twenty-seven. Everything he had ever written on it (which was not much) had been held up for inspection and found disappointing: almost all he had ever done was link to news articles from the Guardian and the BBC. It was generally agreed to be the most boring Twitter account ever, and despite the scrutiny, no coded messages between the lovers were found within it. Lara, meanwhile, had an essentially never-used Twitter account and a long-dormant Facebook account that was similarly and unsurprisingly unyielding. That morning I had seen a desperate article on a tabloid website headlined: ‘Can a successful woman really have only 47 friends? “A psychotic need to exert control,” says top psychologist.’ The barrel was being scraped.

The door was varnished wood, with a brass knocker which bounced when I picked it up and released it. Diana Thomas opened the door instantly; she was far better-looking in real life than she was on the television or in the papers. She was taller than me, with wavy black hair cut in a straggly bob with grey threaded through it. She looked terrible, of course; everything she was going through was etched on to her face, but she tried to smile.

‘You’re Iris,’ she said, with a glance at the excited press pack who were leaping around behind the gate taking her photo. ‘Come in, quick.’