“Oh God, yes, totally. It was the jeep that sealed it for me.”
“But that wasn’t the man?”
“No, the man would be seventyish by now, I reckon. And he was very elegant and well-dressed, very tall. But did you hear what the man said about the jeep belonging to his landlady’s ex? That must have been her. The pretty wife. She must still own the house. And maybe she finally got rid of the old pervert.”
“So that guy, Mr. Tucker. You’ve never seen him before?”
“No. It was just the three of us that night. And the screaming child upstairs.”
“It’s such a strange coincidence,” says Dexter. “Freakish almost.”
“I know,” says Jane, but then, her life has always worked like this, she feels; there’s always been a strange pattern to things, invisible threads making invisible connections, leading her from one bizarre episode to the next.
“Well,” she says, “that’s that. The Hugo Incident is officially over.”
“I feel sad about it,” says Dexter.
Jane thinks about Hugo curled into a neat ball on her bed last night, slumbering peacefully between her own dogs, and nods. “Me too.”
Her phone rings then. It’s Hester, the vet.
“Jane! Hi! Glad I caught you! Do you still have Hugo?”
“No. We just left him with his owner. Is anything wrong?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. At least, there’s nothing wrong with the dog. But I just heard something weird, from Helen Yaxley. You know, the woman with all the donkeys? She has that annex on her land that she rents out. And she’s been renting it out to a young woman. She arrived a week ago with, according to Helen Yaxley, a small white dog. Helen didn’t catch the dog’s name, but she agreed that it was probably a West Highland. Anyway, Helen went to check in on them this morning. The back door to the annex was unlocked. The girl’s stuff was still there. There was a filled mug of tea on the counter. Hand-washed underwear hanging up to dry. Half-eaten bowl of cereal congealed on the kitchen counter. And no sign of the girl, or of the dog. The police are on their way there now. I just thought you might want to know. Maybe you can let the owner know? It might be a friend of his. Someone he knows?”
Jane lets her fork drop onto her plate and eyes Dexter urgently. “Yes. Right. Definitely. We’ll go back. We’ll tell him. And the girl. What was her name? Did Helen say?”
“Yes,” says Hester. “Her name was Rose. Rose White.”
chapter five
STUART, TEN YEARS EARLIER
She has that look about her. It’s clear as day, despite the neatly combed hair, the collared jacket, the little white dog at her feet. It’s only just gone midday. It’s Tuesday. She might want the world to think that that’s a glass of soda water on the table in front of her, or even a lemonade, but I know, and she knows, that it’s a vodka tonic. A double. I can see it in her eyes, the sad gleam of relief as the vodka diffuses into her bloodstream. I can picture her, all morning, counting down the seconds, the minutes, the hours until the time turns from 11:59 to 12:00, from uncivilized, unthinkable morning drinking to being just like everyone else in this pub in the back streets of Hampstead. She drinks here instead of at home because then she’s not drinking alone. She’s drinking with other people who are drinking. The other people drinking here are not like her and she knows it, but still, it makes her feel more normal. Less like she has a problem. But she does have a problem. I know she has a problem, just by looking at her.
I lift my fresh pint from the bar and carry it toward her table.
“Nice dog,” I say. “Westie?”
She nods.
“How old?”
“Nearly a year.”
“Oh,” I say. “Still a baby, then. He’s being very good. Surprised he’s not trying to drag you out of here.”
I regard the dog, my pint, the woman.
“Do you mind if I join you?” I say.
She looks horrified, which is fair enough. I’m a strange man approaching her on a Tuesday lunchtime in her local pub. I see her eyes go from my pint to my face to the door and back again.
“Why?”
“Because I thought you might prefer company to drinking alone?”
