Christine Power.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked. Then she recognized him. ‘Ah. DC Mae.’ The finest splinter of ice in her voice.
‘It’s DS now, actually. How are you, Christine?’
She didn’t answer the question. This was the moment to say she looked good, that she hadn’t aged. But the truth of it was that every minute of the five years since their paths had last crossed was in stark evidence in each crease of her face, in the near-complete greying of her hair.
Kit cleared her throat.
‘This is DC Ziegler,’ he said. ‘She’s a Trainee Investigator.’
Christine pulled her gaze away from Mae and greeted Kit, turning on the smile that reminded him how she’d been semi-famous once. A reporter, back when women covering international stories were vanishingly scarce.
‘We’ve come for a chat with Ellie. Is she in?’ he asked, taking in what he could of the corridor behind her, given the lack of light. ‘We’re concerned about the whereabouts of a Matthew Corsham?’
Christine gave a tight shake of her head. ‘She’s not here right now, I’m afraid. Can I help?’
‘If you have a few minutes,’ Kit said, stepping forward.
The door opened a little wider as Christine stood aside, and Mae followed Kit into a square, magnolia-coloured living room. They were offered tea. Mae declined with a smile, but Kit groaned with relief.
‘Could murder one,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Coffee would be great, if you have it.’
Christine nodded and turned away, closing the door behind her.
Mae turned slowly to face Kit. ‘Ordinarily we avoid using words like murder.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Figure of speech, man. Lighten up.’ She shoved her hands in her pockets and looked around.
The place was as tidy as it could have been, but everything was shabby. The carpet was in tiles, worn down in places to the foam backing: decades of service had left the curtains with vertical streaks sun-bleached almost to white. Elsewhere: chipped paintwork, bare lightbulbs, no photos, no clutter of any description. And it was cold in there. He touched a radiator. Hadn’t been on that morning, and the dust on the control tap at the bottom said it had been longer. Like last year. This was more than slumming it.
‘They just moved in?’ Kit whispered, looking around. ‘I’ve been in homelier bus stations. Who doesn’t even have a single photo on the wall?’
She turned to the single line of paperbacks, standing on the deep sill of the single-glazed window, and bent her head to read the spines. Mae looked, too: Dissociation and Me; A Child of Many Parts; Fugue State: A Carer’s Guide. She glanced back at him, confused. He knew what was coming.
‘Yeah. Ellie’s … she’s not well. Mentally.’ Said it casually, like he was telling her Ellie was fond of horses.
‘OK. Like how?’
He lifted a shoulder, dropped it. There wasn’t time to explain properly. ‘Complicated.’
‘Try me.’
Mae checked round the doorway, then said, quickly, ‘It’s called DID. Dissociative Identity Disorder.’
Kit nodded. ‘Makes sense she still lives with her mum, then. Poor bastard,’ she added with a shrug, an unfazed gesture that made him suddenly conscious of how diametrically different their back-and-forth was from the relationship he’d had as a TI with his own mentor. One sniff of mental illness back then would have been enough to release a feverish tirade – sometimes delivered out of earshot of the target, sometimes not – about snowflakes and limp-wristed millennials. It would all be easier to stomach now if Mae could have convinced himself he’d stood up for the victims of DS Heath’s vitriol. But it hadn’t happened like that, had it?
And wasn’t that why he was here in this flat, right now?
He turned back to the books, ran his finger along the titles until he came to a slim paperback, cheaply made, well-thumbed. Its spine was peeling away to expose the glue beneath, but Mae knew it immediately. He handed it to her.
‘“A Splintered Soul: Collected Essays on Dissociation, Fugue and Recovery”,’ she read, whispering.
‘Chapter seven is Ellie.’
‘Seriously? What does—?’ Kit started, but she was interrupted by the sound of Christine coming back with the drinks. Kit put the book back and affected a smile.
The coffee was distributed, and Christine perched on the arm of the angular sofa. She folded her arms over her chest, crossed her legs at the knee. Mae thought of a Transformer toy he’d had as a kid. Bend and fold and click and bam, suddenly you had something totally different.
He cleared his throat. ‘So where’s Ellie right now, do you know?’
‘She’s not feeling good. Gone for some air.’ Then, to Kit, in a woman-to-woman tone, ‘She has anxiety.’ And to Mae: ‘As I’m sure you’ll remember.’
Kit nodded, sympathetic. ‘That’s no fun.’ She glanced at Mae, who gave her a slight tilt of the head: go ahead, your interview. ‘Mrs Power, we—’
‘Ms,’ Mae corrected her.
‘Ms Power, my apologies,’ Kit said. ‘We received a call from a workmate of Mr Corsham’s saying that he’s potentially gone missing, so we wanted to talk to Ellie about him.’
‘I see.’ She ran her hands over her face, stretching the skin under her eyes for a moment. She looked tired, but not the kind of tired that went away with a good night’s sleep. ‘I’ll ask her to call you, if you like? Although I’m not sure how much she’s been seeing him lately. She’s young. Keeping her options open.’
Kit smiled. ‘Do you know Matthew at all yourself?’
‘A little. We both work at the same hospital.’
Mae pulled out his notes. Frowned. ‘Really? Because I—’
‘Yes. Hanwell. I’m just a cleaner there. He’s in the photographic lab.’
‘That how Ellie met him?’ Kit asked brightly.
‘She was waiting for me in the canteen one day. They got talking.’
‘Sweet.’
Kit made a note, took a long slug of her coffee, then stood. ‘We’ll need to speak to Ellie as soon as possible. Could you give her this card, ask her to call?’
‘Of course.’
Kit thanked Christine and opened the door, making to leave. She made small talk as they passed to the hall, but it dried up at the front door. There was an awkward silence as Kit tied her shoes.
‘Christine,’ Mae said. ‘What happened before—’
She held up a hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. All I need is for you to treat her carefully. All right?’
He nodded, handed her a card. There was nothing else to say. ‘Could you have Ellie call us as soon as possible?’
Christine Power looked Mae full in the face. ‘Be gentle. Do you understand? My daughter is not like the rest of us. If one good thing came from the …’ she paused, skewering the word, ‘mess, back then, I hope you at least learned that.’