‘Maggie. You know I’d be buggered without this. Without you having offered me a job.’ It wasn’t just the money, she thought; if she’d had to spend another day without doing something, belonging to the world of people who had somewhere to be, work to do, she might actually have gone insane.
‘Oh, stop, I don’t need gratitude.’ Maggie pointed at the bag at Robin’s feet. ‘Pass me those, will you?’ She took the pack of iced buns and pulled one out. The floor heaters had loosened the slab of icing, which slipped sideways across the top like an ill-fitting toupee. Her mouth encompassed the thing without it even touching her lipstick.
‘Anyway, I’ve got a bit of a bone to throw you. It’s hardly Interpol but I do some work for women in tight spots,’ she said. ‘Sometimes just helping them sort a problem, sometimes it’s more serious. You can start off expecting one thing and it’s actually something totally different.’ She took another bite. ‘Like, last year, I had a bigamist. His second wife came to me, she had no idea, just knew something wasn’t right. I poked around a bit and that was it. I found him in the Peak District eventually with a whole other family: three kids, cocker spaniel, the lot.’
‘So it’s personal fraud work?’
Maggie shook her head. ‘Not really. Sometimes. It’s all sorts. I’ve had girls about to be sent overseas for marriages arranged by “uncles” who’d basically sold them as British passports – those both came word-of-mouth. One of them lived just round the corner from here, other side of Stratford Road. Her mother was the client – wanted more for her. I got her away, helped set her up elsewhere. Nice girl. She’s in Leeds now, doing a degree – we’re still in touch. I had a girl who was trying to get out of a cult. I’ve also had parents who just wanted to know about their daughter’s dodgy boyfriend. Research.’
‘How long have you been doing it?’
‘As long as I’ve had the business. Since I left the job.’
‘They know?’
‘Of course. And that’s how I get most of the cases. I’ve got a contact – Alan Nuttall, my old DS, DI now – and he rings me if something comes up, a situation where there’s no actual crime, nothing the police can do, or it’s like the bigamist: something’s off and I help find out what. He was prosecuted afterwards, obviously, once it was clear there was a charge to be brought.’
‘You’re a dark horse, Maggie Hammond. I had no idea.’
‘Need-to-know, like I said. And now you do.’
A lot of the Victorian houses Robin knew were Tardis-like, with inner proportions that seemed impossible from the outside, but this one was every bit as small as it had looked from the pavement. Dark, too; there was no fanlight above the front door, and the internal door to the front room was shut, blocking any light that way. As they followed the woman to the kitchen at the back, the phrase ‘down the rabbit hole’ came into her head.
It wasn’t just the lack of light or space, though given her choice of small mammals, Robin thought, she’d say Valerie Woodson was more of a harvest mouse than a White Rabbit. Her shoulders hunched as she scurried ahead of them, and though her colouring was sandy – once-auburn hair fading to an odd peach-grey – her eyes were so dark, they looked like buttons, currants in a bun. Maybe they’d adapted to the conditions.
It was brighter in the kitchen, where she stood dazzled in front of them.
Maggie smiled gently. ‘How about a cuppa?’
The woman spooned Nescafé into mugs Robin recognized as garage giveaways from twenty years ago while Maggie kept up a soft patter about the rain, the lead story in the Post on the table, a pot of snowdrops outside the back door. The kitchen was old but looked-after, the white Formica almost stain-free even as the red plastic handles dated it at warp speed. The fridge was covered with magnets shaped like pizza slices and strawberries, a London bus.
An ‘I heart Devon’ magnet anchored a photograph of Valerie and a girl of fifteen or sixteen. They squinted into the sun, arms around each other, their lop-sided smiles so similar they could only be mother and daughter despite the girl’s extra two or three inches and dark brown hair. She wore denim cut-offs and a turquoise vest top and, unlike her mother – the small visible area of whose shins was the colour of cream cheese – she was tanned. Behind them was a beach, unmistakeably British: windbreakers, buckets and spades, and one egregiously burned fat white back.
‘Torbay,’ said the woman as she carried the mugs to a small table. ‘Five years ago. Six this summer.’ She fetched a third chair from the front room. When they were all sitting down, they were elbow to elbow. Robin moved back a little, let in some air.
At close range, the woman looked ill. Her skin was paper-dry and blotchy, raw around the nostrils from nose-blowing. Her eyes were marbled with pink. When she saw Robin notice how her hands trembled, she moved them quickly under the table as though ashamed of the weakness.
‘She left a message just before eight this morning,’ Maggie had said in the car, ‘Alan gave her my number. I was in the shower, and when I called her back I got voicemail. Phone tag. Anyway, she got hold of me while you were getting the food. Her daughter’s missing, she says, has been for four days. We were in the vicinity so I said we’d come round, talk face to face.’
She sat forward now, silver bangles chiming against the table. ‘So tell us what’s going on, Valerie. As much detail as you can.’
The woman brought her hands back up and wrapped them round her mug as if it were a crystal ball. Plain gold wedding band, no engagement ring. Her nails were unpolished, cut short. In fact, all evidence suggested a complete lack of vanity. Her hair was cut in an unflattering pageboy, and she wore a pilled blue round-neck sweater and the sort of elasticated trousers sold from the back of Sunday supplements. If you saw her on the street, Robin thought, she’d barely register.
‘My daughter’s called Rebecca,’ she said. ‘Becca for short, never Becky – she hates Becky.’ A glimmer of a smile. ‘That’s her on the fridge, obviously. She was sixteen then – we went to Devon after her GCSEs.’
‘So now she’s twenty- …?’ said Robin.
‘Two. Her birthday’s in October.’
‘When did you last see her?’ asked Maggie.
‘Thursday. In the morning, before she went to work. Just before eight, like it always is.’
‘She lives here then? With you?’
Valerie nodded.
‘And have you heard from her at all since? Any calls, emails?’
‘No. Normally she texts me during the day – practical stuff, what’s for dinner – but that day, nothing. Then I found her phone upstairs.’
Robin sensed Maggie shift infinitesimally. ‘Where was it?’
‘On the floor, like she’d put it on the bed and it had fallen off. It was almost hidden by the valance – I called her from the landline down here and heard it ringing but I had to ring again to find it.’
‘How about her purse? Her handbag?’
‘She took those. She’d have needed her Swift card to get on the bus.’
‘And where’s the phone now?’
Valerie stood up and fetched it from the counter, a Samsung Galaxy in a sparkly mint-green case. They looked at it without picking it up.
‘Is it locked?’ said Robin.
Valerie Woodson nodded. ‘I don’t know the code. I’ve tried everything – her birthday, mine, her dad’s.’
‘Her dad is …?’
‘He’s dead. Graeme. He died when she was eight. Cancer.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Maggie.
‘Tell