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30
Samuel
Philip Dunlop-Evers is a small man with thinning hair and a weak chin. He wears a white polo shirt with blue jeans and cheap leather shoes. I button my suit jacket and stand to greet him with an outstretched hand.
‘Thank you, Philip, for coming at such short notice,’ I say.
‘It’s no problem at all. I mean, it’s my sister, after all. I can’t think of a better reason to cancel a few plans and get on a train.’
‘Take a seat. Please.’
He sits and peers at me. He looks as if his head is spinning with thoughts. Hardly surprising.
‘Philip. We recently received a call from a mud-larker. Do you know what a mud-larker is?’
He nods.
‘He had found some bones washed up. A full set of human bones. We believe, Philip, that they may belong to your sister, Bridget.’
‘Birdie.’ He says this in a whisper.
‘Yes. Birdie. Of course. So if you don’t mind, if you’re OK, I wanted to run through some details with you. Just to confirm. Tell me, Philip, what happened the last time you saw Birdie? Can you recall?’
‘Yes. Very clearly. She was sort of famous at the time.’
‘I hear she was once in a pop band.’
‘That’s right. They had a big hit; it was number one for weeks. She was jetting off all over the place. It was … We’re a musical family, but it wasn’t quite the thing, you know, to be so …visible. We were all a bit taken aback by the whole thing. She and the band were doing a gig at the Corn Exchange so she spent the night with Mum and Dad rather than in a hotel with the band. I was, what, fourteen? Fifteen? I remember it clearly. There was a big row between Birdie and my mother. There wasalwaysa big row between Birdie and my mother. My mother doesn’t really like girls, you see. She had six boys and two girls and never got on with either of them. After that Birdie didn’t come home. Not once. I know my sister saw her from time to time – she would know more about that period of Birdie’s life – but she passed away a long time ago.’
‘Ah. Was this perhaps the sibling deathbed request that alerted your parents to Birdie’s disappearance?’
‘Yes. Jenny’s death. We tried everything to track Birdie down, but nobody seemed to know anything. None of the band members. She’d had a boyfriend, Justin. No sign of him, and obviously thiswas the mid-nineties. Nobody had social media. Nobody had mobile phones. No internet. We just hit a wall. We didn’t know what else to do. We all sat with Jenny until she passed and then, after the funeral, one of us – my brother Dicky, I think – reported Birdie missing to the police. And, well, you know the rest.’
‘And Justin. The boyfriend. What can you remember about him?’
Philip shrugs, as if it’s the first time he’s ever given a moment’s thought to his sister’s boyfriend.
‘You never thought that maybe …?’
‘What? That he had something to do with Birdie’s disappearance? Well, yes, of course. Of course we all thought that. But when the police couldn’t find him either it just seemed more likely that they’d either absconded together or died together. And Justin was a softie. A lapdog. He wasn’t a killer. I mean, at least that wasmyimpression.’
‘What did Justin do? As a job, I mean?’
‘He was a … well, he claimed to be a musician. A percussionist. He played the tambourine in Birdie’s band. Clearly that’s not exactly a career as such. I assume he had other skills. He was a bit of a hippy. Scruffy. Outdoorsy. A bit flaky.’
‘So, Birdie and your mother had an argument. Birdie left. And do you know where she was living at this point?’
‘In London. That’s all we knew. With Justin. And a cat.’
‘She had a cat?’ I make a note in my notebook.
‘Yes. I seem to recall she got the cat without checking with her landlord. He was going to kick them out and so they were house-hunting.’
‘And you don’t know where she ended up?’
Philip sighs. ‘She had a plan, she said. She knew someone with a big house who might be able to put them up for a short while.’
I feel a muscle in my cheek twitch. ‘A big house?’
