Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

‘It was a bit of a coincidence, really. At first, when we went down there, it was just the three of us — me, Emma and her friend Debbie, who was on the same course. The two girls were big pals, you know, and they went everywhere together. But there was a fourth bedroom in the house, and after a while we started to think we’d have to try to find someone else to share. To be honest, the rent was a bit of a struggle for the three of us. You don’t appreciate what expenses you’re going to have, you know — books and all that. Emma and Debbie had a lot of equipment to buy for their course work.’

‘And there would be socializing, I suppose?’ said Fry.

Dearden looked at her suspiciously. ‘Why do you suppose that?’

‘Well — student life. There’s a lot of socializing, isn’t there? Or so I’m told.’

‘A bit. But if you have any sense, you don’t go mad. Not if you want to get through your course with good grades, which we all did.’

‘I see. But life was proving a bit expensive, all the same?’

‘Yes. Things we hadn’t budgeted for — Council Tax, electricity, the phone bill. You know.’

‘Yes, I do know.’

‘Anyway, it was around then that Neil got in touch. He said he had a job to go to in Birmingham. It was a two-year contract on a development project on the inner ring road, as I remember. Neil wanted to know if we’d let him rent the other room in the house. Our parents weren’t too happy, but we talked about it between us, and we decided to go for it.’

‘Because he was somebody you knew, rather than a stranger?’

Dearden hesitated. ‘Well, the thing that really swung it was the salary he was earning. He was getting good money on this contract, and the rest of us were just students living on loans. So we thought he’d be useful.’

Fry wanted to do something to remove that smile now, but she needed to keep Alex Dearden on her side. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Murfin chewing more quickly, as if he had found something with an unpleasant taste in his mouth that he wanted to spit out.

‘Mr Dearden,’ said Fry, ‘did it ever occur to you that Neil Granger might have a particular reason for wanting to rent the room in your house?’

‘It was just convenience, I think. It can be quite hard to find reasonable rented accommodation, especially in a city with so many students.’

‘No, what I meant was — do you think he might have had an additional reason? A personal reason.’

Dearden still looked puzzled.

‘An interest in Emma Renshaw, perhaps?’

He raised his eyebrows then. ‘Good heavens. Neil? No, I think you’re wrong.’

He didn’t quite say ‘again’, but he might as well have done.

‘Thank you, sir. In that case, can you tell me about any boyfriends that Emma had during the time she was in the West Midlands? I’m sure she must have had some, despite what you said about the lack of socializing.’

Dearden shook his head. ‘There were a few boys Emma and Debbie talked about sometimes. I didn’t take any notice, really. When the two girls went out, they always seemed to go together. So I’m afraid I don’t know if there were any particular boys involved in their lives. Well, all right, I expect there were. But I’m sure Neil wasn’t one of them, Sergeant.’

‘Did Neil have his own friends while he was working in Birmingham?’

‘Yes, I expect so. Some of his workmates from the development project, I imagine.’

‘You don’t seem too sure.’

‘I didn’t ask him. I was busy. I was working hard for my degree. It wasn’t my concern where Neil Granger went in the evenings.’

‘Or Emma either?’

‘Well, no.’

‘Despite the fact that she’d been a friend of yours since you were very young?’

‘I don’t see what that has to do with it.’

‘I just thought you might have shown a bit more interest in what she was doing. A bit more concern for who she might have been getting involved with.’

‘Emma was OK,’ said Dearden confidently. ‘She was sensible enough.’

‘OK? A large city can be a dangerous place for a young woman away from home for the first time. There are all kinds of people she might have come into contact with.’

‘In Bearwood? The place was just boring, if you ask me. Not dangerous at all.’

‘But Mr Dearden,’ said Fry, ‘your friend Emma Renshaw never came home from Bearwood.’

Dearden stopped smiling and started to fidget in his chair. ‘I went through all this before, two years ago,’ he said. ‘I had the police on to me, and I had her parents after me about it constantly. I don’t know why Emma didn’t come home. I don’t know where she went.’

‘Are Emma’s parents still in touch with you?’

He laughed. ‘Every bloody week. One day, I’m going to take out an injunction against them for harassment. I mean it. I know they’re upset about Emma disappearing, and all that. But if you ask me, it’s turned their minds completely. They’re absolutely unreasonable.’

‘In what way, sir?’

‘Well, Mrs Renshaw phones me every single week to ask if I’ve seen Emma. And every time I talk to her, it’s as if she can’t remember having phoned me last week with the same question. And the week before, and the week before that. Every call she makes, it’s as if she thinks she’s asking me for the first time.’

Dearden leaned forward towards Fry. She could almost make out the designer logo on his T-shirt, but not quite.

‘And I know she’s going to keep phoning and phoning me,’ he said, ‘until I give her the answer she wants, which I can’t do. There isn’t even any point in changing my number at home, because she would only start phoning me here. And that would be a nightmare.’

‘It must be very difficult for her,’ said Fry.

‘What about me? It’s difficult for me, too. Isn’t there anything you could do about it? Couldn’t you have a word with her? It’s getting to be a real nuisance.’

‘OK, I’ll mention it, sir.’

Dearden sighed. ‘Yeah. A fat lot of good it will do.’

‘And Neil Granger?’

‘Neil again ? What about him?’

‘Are you still in contact with him?’

‘Not really.’

‘When did you speak to him last?’

Dearden shrugged. ‘It’d be a few months ago. I was visiting my parents, and I called in the Quiet Shepherd in Withens for a quick drink on the way back. Neil was in there, with some of his relations. The Oxleys, you know. So we didn’t say much to each other. It was just “hi”. There was no conversation.’

‘And neither of you mentioned Emma, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Dearden. ‘Neither of us mentioned Emma.’

‘This software you’re developing...’ said Fry.

‘It’s highly confidential at the moment.’

‘Can you give me a clue?’

‘Well, imagine this. The human brain can run routines and recurrent actions, just like a computer does. But occasionally, you get minor damage to the frontal lobes of the brain, which is the system governing attention. Then actions can still be triggered automatically, but out of sequence, or can’t be stopped. The psychologists say it’s the penalty we pay for being able to automatize our actions.’

Fry looked at Murfin, warning him not to laugh. She hoped that Alex Dearden wasn’t actually a robot but could be stopped at the appropriate moment.

‘It’s a bit like having a dodgy auto-pilot,’ he said. ‘For the psychologists, it helps them to understand human fallibility. From our point of view, it helps us to design the technology to allow for human error. It’s why computer programs won’t let you close a document without deciding whether you want to save it or not,’ he said. ‘But we’re going to take that concept a whole lot further. A whole lot further. I really can’t tell you any more than that.’