Human Remains

me wrong, I’m very grateful… but it’s just… I’ve been so rude to you. Haven’t I?’ I gave up, then, feeling awkward.
    ‘You haven’t been rude. Not that I’ve noticed.’
    ‘I mean in the hospital when my mum was ill. I know you were trying to help. I just thought it was a bit strange that you turned up. It was like you were stalking me.’
    He coughed over his tea. ‘I did explain, I was there because of that body.’
    ‘Not the second time.’
    ‘No, but you can hardly call it stalking when I came to find you
once
to check you were OK.’
    ‘Once, and then you came to my house because I wasn’t answering my phone.’
    He didn’t reply, and I remembered I was trying to apologise and had instead accused him of being a weirdo and a stalker. I backtracked. ‘Although… you did kind of save my life…’
    ‘Yep,’ he said, his tone of voice suggesting he was starting to wish he hadn’t bothered.
    ‘And I am grateful. Really. For everything. And sorry, for being such a… pain.’
    He was quiet again. He wasn’t about to deny it.
    ‘What was your mum like?’ I asked Sam, doing my usual trick of changing the subject to avoid awkwardness and instantly making everything a hundred times worse.
    ‘She was lovely,’ he said. ‘I still miss her.’
    ‘Was it hard for you, when your dad started a relationship with Irene?’
    He smiled over his tea, the discomfort of our previous exchange apparently forgotten.
    ‘No, it wasn’t like that. I think me and Mum engineered it, to be honest.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘She didn’t like any of the carers she had until I found Irene. She wasn’t especially fond of Irene either – too bossy, she said – but she let her stay. I think she chose her not because she liked her as a carer, but because she could see that she got on with Dad. And with me.’
    ‘I like her. She’s been so kind.’
    I watched Sam drinking his tea, wondering why he looked so sad. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ I asked.
    ‘No. I was just remembering my mum. That’s all. I miss her. You must miss your mum, too…’
    ‘Yes,’ I said.
    I missed being a daughter, I thought, more than anything. I missed being useful to someone. Being important.
    An hour later, while we were sitting discussing the man they’d arrested, and what he might be like, Sam’s phone had beeped with a text message. It was Irene, to let us know that the cat had just turned up back at Keats Road. After that, with the heavy weight of inevitability resting on my shoulders, I’d picked up my untouched holdall full of the clothes that Irene had washed and ironed, even though I’d insisted I’d be fine to do it myself, and we’d gone back to the car. Clearly the cat and I weren’t quite ready to go home after all.
     
     
    Sam was still talking, parked in the bus stop. When he was finally able to interrupt the tinny voice I could just hear from his phone, he said, ‘That’s really interesting. Have you got the address?’
    He pulled a ballpoint pen from the driver’s side door pocket and selected a parking receipt from the pile in the central console, scribbling something on the back of it while the muffled voice continued.
    ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m on it. I’ll let you know. Ring you later. OK. Bye.’
    He turned to me, his eyes sparkling again. ‘Guess what?’
    I was still a bit pissed off with him for making me even later for work, however reluctant I was to go back to looking at criminal damage and sex offenders, but now I was curious with it.
    ‘No idea. What?’
    ‘One of my contacts tells me that a woman phoned in just now to report that her housemate went into town with friends from work on Friday night and hasn’t been seen since.’
    I frowned at him. ‘And?’
    ‘The woman’s name is Audrey Madison.’
    ‘Is that name supposed to mean something to me?’
    ‘You obviously haven’t been rooting around Facebook, have you?’
    ‘I’m not on Facebook.’
    ‘You should be,’ he said, pulling the car round in a wide U-turn and heading back towards the town centre. ‘It’s a fantastic research tool. Audrey Madison is the former girlfriend of one Vaughn Bradstock. Still not ringing any bells?’
    I shook my head. His cryptic delayed reveal was getting on my nerves.
    ‘He has a few friends on Facebook, unlike Mr Colin Friedland, who has only one: Vaughn Bradstock. In other words, the ex-girlfriend of Colin’s one and only mate has gone missing.’
    I stared at