The Family Remains(26)

She looks down quickly and then up again. ‘Erm …’

‘It’s him!’ He taps his finger hard against the screen of my phone and I snatch it away. ‘The guy. The guy you were having the thing with when I met you. Kris. Kris Doll.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes! Look!’

He snatches my phone back from my hand and shoves it in front of the woman. ‘There,’ he says, zooming into the man’s face again, stabbing it with his finger again. ‘See. Kris Doll. Your ex.’

‘Oh,’ she says unconvincingly. ‘Yeah. It is. I didn’t recognise him.’

I want to get away from these two, now. Their energy is so toxic, I’m virtually choking on it. And I’ve had enough of this guy continuously banging on my phone screen with his big meaty finger.

‘So,’ I say, ‘Chris Doll? Is that D-O-L-L?’

‘Yeah. And Kris with a K. K-R-I-S.’

‘And do either of you have any idea where I might find him?’

They look at each other and then at me. ‘No,’ says the woman. ‘No. I haven’t seen him for years. We lost touch after I got together with Rob.’ She touches his arm reassuringly as she says this.

‘You don’t know where he lives?’

‘Well, I know where he used to live. But obviously he may have moved since then. And I know that he used to work down on the lake, doing the tourist row boats. But again – long time ago.’

‘That’s actually really helpful. Thank you so much. Sorry, I didn’t get your names?’

‘Er, yeah. Sorry. I’m Mati. This is Rob.’

‘Thank you, Mati. Thank you, Rob. I’m Josh. Josh Harris. Look, here’s my phone number. Just in case you remember anything later. About Phin. Or about Kris.’

‘What’s the deal?’ says Rob. ‘You lost somebody?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes. I have lost somebody. Someone very important to me. But hopefully I’m a step closer to finding him now. Thanks again.’

I shake their hands, I tap my forehead at the bartender, and I leave. Off to find Kris ‘with a K’ Doll, the row-boat guy, the ex, the key, maybe, to the strangely unfurling mystery of where the hell Phin Thomsen might eventually turn out to be.





24




Samuel


Thanks to the efforts of my remarkable colleagues in the forensics department, I am now enjoying a plethora of facts about the bones that were found by Jason Mott on the shores of the Thames. I pin the facts to the cork board in my office and gaze at them.

Young woman, 27–33, possibly with training as a dancer, bunions on both feet

Date of death roughly 1995

Blood type A

Body wrapped in a dark-coloured cotton towel from Yves Delorme. A similar towel today would cost around ￡200. Logo in use between 1988 and 2001

Leaves mainly from London plane trees and trees of heaven (often planted along avenues), but also some dead summer blossom from the PERSIAN SILK TREE, rare in London

Hair colour dark blonde

Small fracture to skull around the left-hand temporal bone



Currently a team of five officers is trawling the missing person records from 1988 to 1999 for a slight young woman, possibly a dancer, with dark blonde hair and, according to the forensic facial reconstruction sculptor currently working with the young lady’s facial bones, a rather pronounced weak chin. Given the quality of the towel which had once been wrapped around her body, they are particularly looking at those missing from well-to-do areas or families. Although of course this poor woman may have stumbled into the path of someone rich enough to spend two hundred pounds on a towel without being well-to-do herself. Another officer is briefing a so-called ‘tree-detective’ to find a point in London where the London plane and the Persian silk might coincide. And me … I am waiting. Waiting for my office door to burst open and for one of my team to walk in with a look of hope and possibility and say, I think I might have found her.

Because it is only a matter of time, and the only thing that stands between success and failure is the possibility – and it causes me genuine pain to consider it – that nobody ever reported this poor woman missing in the first place.





25




March 2017


Rachel waited three days before finally messaging Michael. Three days of going to sleep alone, waking up alone, checking her phone six times a minute. Three days of pretending that everything was fine whenever she saw someone she knew. Three days of ‘Yes! The honeymoon was amazing. Yes, married life is bliss. Yes, we will definitely have you over for dinner soon!’ Three days of feeling as if Michael had ripped her heart out of her chest in the Seychelles and still hadn’t given it back.

M, began her message. I don’t know what’s going on. I miss you. Please please can we talk?

Within seconds a reply appeared:

Hey beautiful. Miss you too. It’s been a crazy busy week. Dinner tonight? I’ll cook.

Rachel gasped as she read it. After three days of existential hell, that was how he came back to her? A crazy busy week? While she was slowly dying inside? She rolled her engagement ring around her finger a few times, trying to decide how she felt, how to reply. And then she breathed in deeply and typed: