Lying Beside You (Cyrus Haven #3)(66)

‘Only for a second,’ I say.

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Why?’

‘A poor identikit can deflect attention away from the real perpetrator.’

‘I don’t want to do that.’

‘You won’t,’ says Cyrus, who is annoyed with Cassie, not me. Serves her right. I’ve decided that I don’t want Cyrus finding a girlfriend. Nobody is good enough for him. Certainly not me. I’d be the worst. And he refuses to look at me like that, not with my pimple. No wonder he treats me like a child.

Cassie has stopped at an office. Inside, an old man is sitting on a high stool in front of a drafting table. He has shaggy grey hair and thick-lensed glasses that exaggerate the size of his eyes, making them bobble when he moves his head.

‘Hi, Frank. This is Evie Cormac.’

He gets to his feet and bows at the waist. ‘Hello, Miss Cormac.’

I laugh.

‘Did I say something to amuse you?’

‘Nobody ever calls me Miss.’

‘Would you prefer Evie?’

‘No. I like Miss Cormac.’

Frank points to a high stool next to him.

‘I’ll be back later,’ says Cyrus.

‘You’re leaving me here!’

‘I won’t be long.’

I sneak a glance at Frank, who is sharpening a pencil. He may look like a loveable granddad with his high-waisted pants and crinkly smile, but I don’t have a good history with coffin dodgers like him. I’m not saying they’re all bad – just the ones I’ve met.

‘Shall we get started?’ he says, leaning his elbows on his sloping desk. ‘Tell me about the man you saw in the car.’

‘I only glimpsed one side of his face.’

‘I can draw him that way. How old was he?’

‘Younger than you. Older than Cyrus.’

‘Forties or fifties?’

‘Forties.’

‘Could you get a sense of his height?’

‘He was sitting down.’

‘Low in the seat or high in the seat?’

‘High.’

‘What colour hair?’

‘Brown. He was wearing a baseball cap. His hair stuck out over his ears.’

Frank opens a book full of photographs of different faces, but the eyes and mouths have been covered, so I can only see their noses. Each photograph is captioned. Straight, convex, concave, wavy, upturned, snub, Roman, Grecian. I point to the upturned nose.

‘Could you see any of his nostril?’

‘No.’

Frank asks me about eyes and his eyebrows. The hairline. The forehead. He opens more pages, wanting me to pick out features that most closely match. He uses each of them as a starting point when he begins to sketch.

Sometimes I think I’m sure about a detail, but then I begin to doubt myself. Other features become clearer. His eyebrows were darker than his hair. And the arm of his glasses didn’t sit snugly over his ear. I don’t remember any tattoos.

‘What about his chin?’ asks Frank. ‘Some people have square jaws, or pointy chins, or they might have two chins like me.’ He lowers his chin to his chest, creating a roll of fat on his neck.

‘Only one chin,’ I say, ‘but it wasn’t very pointy.’

‘A chinless wonder,’ says Frank. ‘Maybe he’s posh.’

‘Why do you say that?’

He waves off the question and continues working. After what seems like forever, he shows me a partially finished drawing. I make him rub things out and start again. We seem to be going around in circles, swapping stuff in and out because I can’t decide.

‘This is how it works,’ says Frank. ‘Nobody expects us to produce a photograph. A likeness would be enough.’

‘But I want someone to recognise him.’

‘Yes, but it’s very rare that a random member of the public recognises someone from a police sketch. We’re doing this for his family and friends. People who might say, “Hey, that looks a little like Tom or Dick or Harry.”’

After another twenty minutes, he shows me again. I’m even less certain than before. The sketch looks like an invented person put together by a committee rather than someone who is flesh and blood.

Frank suggests we move on to the second drawing, the man who I saw duck out through the kitchen. The questions begin again and we talk about hair, noses, eyes and ears. I move my stool closer and watch as Frank sketches a handful of lines on the paper and slowly fills in the features, using shading to create depth.

He chats while he works, talking about his three children and two grandchildren. I ask their names. I don’t normally care, but I’d rather ask questions than be the one answering them. Frank tells me that he did a degree in fine art and wanted to be a painter, but his life changed when he got mugged one night walking home from the pub. Bleeding from a head wound, he was taken to hospital. While waiting to be stitched up, he asked for a pen and a piece of paper. He sketched his attacker and gave the image to the police.

‘It was published in the local paper and the man’s brother gave him up,’ says Frank. ‘That was my first collar.’

‘How many criminals have you caught since then?’

‘I don’t keep count.’