‘Not directly,’ Clare pointed out. ‘Sales and lettings are separate teams and we’re all out of the office a lot on appointments. Anyway, I don’t mean I want us to ghost them or anything, just stop hanging out. It all got too intense too quickly, didn’t it? And I know that was my fault. It didn’t develop the way a friendship should.’

I fell silent, more than content for her to do the talking. The thinking.

‘I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,’ she added, with typical Clare decency. ‘Life’s hard enough, isn’t it?’

My heart ached for her. She was worrying about hurting Melia’s feelings, when Melia was . . . Well, Melia was only acting her side of the friendship, even if she did it so naturally she couldn’t tell herself where the lines blurred.

‘Who was Dugald Stewart?’ I asked, as we passed his monument, a coterie of tourists taking photos on their phones. I’d left mine in the flat, the better to tune out the voicemails arriving from Melia.

‘You’ve asked me that before,’ Clare said. ‘He was a famous moral philosopher.’

‘Oh yes, the common sense guy.’

‘Exactly. We could do with a few more of those about the place.’

‘True.’ And for a brief moment on that hill it felt as if common sense really were all that was needed to save us.

*

On the train home – a slow skeleton service of the sort that made you lose the will to live – Clare groaned as she saw the work messages that had accumulated. ‘Who emails on Boxing Day, for fuck’s sake? The world’s gone mad.’

‘Did your couple make their offer on the house in Blackheath?’

‘Not yet. Tomorrow, hopefully. Oh, I’ve had a couple of missed calls from Melia.’

We exchanged a significant look, mindful of our conversation on Calton Hill.

‘Any voicemail?’

‘No. Should I call her back?’

‘Leave it till you see her at work tomorrow,’ I suggested, yawning.

The train was due into King’s Cross at 10 p.m. Normally, when heading home to London I felt a rock-solid conviction that I was travelling in the right direction, back where I belonged. Dick Whittington returned, ready to rule his city. But this Thursday evening after Christmas, by the time the houselights lining the tracks began to thicken, before we entered the deep cut into King’s Cross, I felt a sensation remarkably like dread.

27

27 December 2019

‘Dread? Why would you feel dread?’ Parry asks, and I realize I’ve lost track of what I’ve said aloud.

Not long ago, Melia gave me some advice: The best way to stop yourself saying stuff is to not think it. But how do you stop yourself thinking?

‘Because of all this.’ I motion to the space around us, the increasing tempo of late morning, the dizzying number of variables that might make the difference between a good day and a bad one, a good deed or a bad one. ‘Work, life, London. The craziness of it all. It’s overwhelming. Don’t you ever feel that after a few days away?’

It is almost ten thirty. I struggle to cast my mind back to the commute this morning. I remember the empty seat where Kit should have been; the strangely cryptic conversation with Gretchen; the welcoming committee at the pier. That self-indulgent sense of isolation at exactly the moment I was singled out: Is it just me?

And then this interview. Talking till my throat parches and my heart shrinks. Everything you know.

Merchison is suppressing a desire to stretch, I can tell from the tension in his shoulders, the squirming in his seat. If someone yawned, he’d yawn right back. Parry, younger, gym-fit, is holding up better, but his phone has rung two or three times during the latest portion of my account and even he is losing concentration. ‘Okay, we’ll leave it there,’ he says. ‘Our apologies to your manager for keeping you a little longer than billed.’

My eyes pop. ‘You don’t want me to make an official statement or anything?’

‘Not for now. Don’t go harassing anyone else involved in this investigation, mind you. If you do, we’ll be all over you for perverting the course of justice, understood?’

It’s not hard to guess their primary fear: that I’ll try to hunt down this other witness and force from her the details they’ve held so tantalizingly at bay.

‘That includes Mrs Roper,’ Merchison says. ‘In fact, keep everything we’ve discussed to yourself for now, all right?’

I frown. ‘What, even Kit going missing? Are you not putting out some sort of appeal?’

I had imagined grainy footage of an inebriated Kit staggering off the boat and up the jetty – ideally with the preceding fight scene left on the cutting room floor – played on all the news sites and the local TV news. Did you see this man on Monday night?

‘Not yet, no.’ They exchange a wary look, before Merchison explains: ‘In light of this conversation, we’ll need to consult with senior colleagues. It may not be appropriate to involve the public at this time.’

I stare, unsure how to decode this. I wonder if budget is a factor. Maybe those big media appeals are only for children and attractive young women, not feckless men with drug issues and debts, gone AWOL in office party season. Not so much tragedy as natural wastage. ‘You mean, what, you don’t want to jeopardize other cases, that kind of thing?’

‘That kind of thing,’ he agrees.

‘Can I talk about it with Clare, at least?’

They nod their assent and dictate a number for me to reach them on. ‘Call us straightaway if he gets in touch.’

‘Of course.’ I pocket my phone and get to my feet.

I can’t resist the opportunity to double back and take the stairs down, allowing me to track them in my peripheral vision. They remain at the table, phones in hand. Will they stay a while to hammer out a new hypothesis? Or hotfoot it to St Mary’s, hoping those houses closest to the Thames path will yield witnesses, accounts by children of having been woken on Monday night by scary drunk men shouting and scuffling?

Or maybe they’ll just go back to the station to wait for word that a body has washed ashore.

28

27 December 2019

I leave by the western exit and hover for a moment in the flat winter light, assessing. When I’m certain I’m not being followed, I allow my shoulders to relax and slowly exhale. I’m free.

For now.

I feel as shattered as if it were the end of a long shift. My lower back aches badly. Sciatica? A slipped disc? Middle-aged people’s afflictions I’ve chosen to disregard of late, believing that youth is transferable through bodily fluids. I have a sudden, unbidden thought: I am almost twenty years older than Melia. When she’s forty, I’ll be sixty! What are we doing?

Though the Comfort Zone is a five-minute stroll away, I turn in the opposite direction, towards the river, already dialling Regan to make my excuses: ‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve had to go home. It’s an emergency, a friend’s gone missing.’

Her reaction to the news is far more excitable than mine was. ‘That’s terrible! I can’t believe it! What do they think’s happened to him? Who is it?’

‘You know the guy I get the boat with? Kit? It’s him.’ Within five minutes, I’ve ignored the detectives’ instructions to keep the inquiry to myself. Already, I’m willing to exploit the currency of this crisis for my own gain. ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up, but the whole thing is . . .’ Hearing the sound of the milk steamer hissing and squawking, I stop. The whole thing is what? Impossible to process? Not really happening? ‘Confidential, so don’t say anything, got it?’