Human Remains

him.
    ‘Colin’s your man, isn’t he? The one you identified by phone records?’
    ‘How the hell did you know that?’
    He smiled.
    ‘I keep telling you you’re not my only source of information, Annabel. In fact, you’re the crappest source I’ve ever had, to tell you the truth.’
     
     
    ‘Here he is,’ Sam said, as the black cab stopped outside Colin Friedland’s address.
    The house was large, detached, set back from the road a little and on a slope above it. It was an old house, Edwardian by the look of it, likely to be worth a fortune. The search teams would have been through it from top to bottom, and, if they’d found anything at all, Colin would not have been released.
    We’d come here by car and waited, parked about a hundred and fifty yards away from the big house in which, according to the edited electoral register, Colin lived all by himself.
    ‘I still don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve by this,’ I said.
    ‘I don’t know either,’ he said. ‘I just don’t trust him. Do you?’
    ‘I need to get to work, Sam,’ I said. I’d been trying to call Frosty, trying to call the DCI, trying every number I could think of and leaving voicemail messages all over the place, but I hadn’t managed to get hold of anyone yet. The thought of Audrey Madison – whoever she was – missing for the whole weekend was developing an uncomfortable bubble of urgency inside my chest.
    Down the street, a figure got out of the taxi and leaned in through the window to pay. He looked as if he was counting out coins.
    ‘Is that him?’ Sam asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    The man who had been my angel turned away from the cab and towards us, seemed to look straight at us. Then he went towards the big villa, opened the gate and went up the path and out of our line of sight.
    They’d let him go.

Colin
     
     
    The house is cold, the vegetables in the pan smelling faintly rotten. I tip the water out of the saucepan and throw the vegetables in the bin. The refrigerator smells worse, and to my intense disappointment I have to throw away the salmon as well. And then of course I have to take the bag outside to the wheelie bin to dispose of it properly.
    They’ve been in here, although nothing appears to be out of place. The whole house smells of them and their boots, trampling over my carpets and disturbing the ghosts. I will make sure I get some sort of compensation when all this is finished with. They didn’t interview me – they went for humiliation and disrespect. I deserve better than that. I deserve their thanks.
    I spend several minutes walking from room to room, inspecting the house as though I’ve been away from it for weeks, not just a few hours.
    It takes a while for me to relax in here, but when that feeling comes it feels good. They have nothing they can charge me with, despite their best efforts, despite their crass need to try to humiliate me into saying something incriminating. I couldn’t incriminate myself even if I wanted to, because I’ve done nothing – NOTHING – wrong. I know it and they know it. It is deeply satisfying, this warm thrill of vindication spreading through my whole body. I sit down in my favourite armchair and let myself daydream, picturing the beauty of the transformations I’ve observed and loving them, loving them all.

Annabel
     
     
    ‘Sod it,’ Sam said, after half an hour of sitting in the car with nothing at all happening. He turned on the engine.
    ‘Thank goodness. Can we go to the police station now, please?’
    He looked at me closely. ‘Are you OK? I’m sorry, I didn’t think – seeing him again…’
    ‘It’s not that,’ I said, quickly, although I’d just about had a heart attack when Colin had looked up the road directly to where we were sitting. ‘I need to get back to work…’
    ‘I told you,’ he said, heading back towards the main road, ‘they won’t be expecting you; you’re still supposed to be on compassionate leave. And besides, we need to catch up with someone far more important.’
    As it turned out, Lindsay Brown lived just a bit further down the hill towards the town centre from Colin. It was a fairly substantial house that had been divided into flats. Lindsay and Audrey shared the bottom floor.
    ‘Oh,’ she said, opening the door before we’d even had a chance to knock.
    ‘Lindsay?’ asked Sam. ‘I’m from the
Chronicle
. You spoke to one of my colleagues, I believe?’
    ‘Yeah, um… I’m just on my way to