You Will Never Find Me Read Free Page B

rather the ‘suspect distance’.
    â€˜I’m Detective Inspector Weaver,’ said the male officer, taking in the couple in front of him: a tall slim black woman with cropped hair and almond-shaped eyes and a blond-haired man with intense green eyes who looked as if he kept himself in fighting condition.
    â€˜And I’m Detective Sergeant Jones,’ said the female officer.
    â€˜We’d like to see Amy’s room,’ said Weaver.
    â€˜And the note,’ said Jones, staring down at the coffee table.
    Boxer handed it over. The note passed between the officers.
    They all went up to Amy’s room.
    â€˜Have you established what she’s taken with her?’
    â€˜Well, as you can see, there’s nothing in here. She’s stripped it bare.’
    â€˜Without you noticing anything?’ asked Jones.
    â€˜I’ve been working on a very demanding case this last week and she was supposed to be staying with her grandmother up in Hampstead. But clearly she was dropping in here after school and removing all her stuff,’ said Mercy. ‘Tonight was her first night back home. She said she would join us at a restaurant in town but didn’t show. I came back, checked her room, found the note.’
    â€˜I understand from the desk sergeant that you saw Amy when she left the house this afternoon,’ said Jones.
    â€˜She had a small rucksack, that was it.’
    Mercy described what Amy had been wearing. The officers didn’t take notes. They asked for all the details of friends and relatives, the places Amy was known to frequent, her money situation. Mercy talked them through it but omitted Amy’s involvement in the previous weekend’s cigarette smuggling jaunt between the Canaries and London that she’d uncovered. She wanted to investigate that little scenario herself. She told them what she knew about Amy’s finances—that she had a debit card and a bank account but didn’t know how much she had in it.
    â€˜We’ll need some up-to-date photos,’ said Weaver. ‘And er . . . a DNA sample would be helpful. Hair? A toothbrush?’
    Mercy was momentarily frozen by this: the possibility that they might have to match DNA with a body. She gave Boxer a curious glance, which he didn’t understand, and went to the corner of the room where she knew Amy dried and brushed her hair, but not a single strand of her long ringlets remained.
    â€˜I don’t believe this,’ said Mercy. ‘She’s hoovered the room.’ ‘Let’s go back downstairs for the next bit,’ said Weaver. ‘And we’ll check the vacuum cleaner while we’re at it.’
    In the kitchen Mercy gave them the vacuum cleaner but the bag had been changed. Mercy blinked at the thoroughness. She offered tea and coffee, which were politely refused. They reconvened in the living room. Boxer and Mercy sat. The policemen stood in front of the fireplace.
    â€˜What we need to talk about now is any . . . er . . . events that you can think of that might have been a factor in Amy wanting to leave home,’ said Weaver.
    â€˜She’s always been a strong, determined girl, but she was very sweet and loving until some sort of hormonal explosion at fourteen, when she went up to her room as one sort of person and came down the following morning as another. That crisis has deepened over the years, to the point of continuous antipathy towards me in particular—seeing as we are the ones living together—and Charlie whenever she has the opportunity. But no, there wasn’t a specific incident,’ said Mercy.
    Weaver and Jones turned their hard faces to Boxer.
    â€˜Look,’ said Boxer, open-palmed, ‘I’m not going to paint myself as totally blameless. I’ve been an absent father much of the time. I had a job that took me out of the country for more than half the year.’
    â€˜What job was