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said. ‘Woman who lost her brother yesterday, thinks he’s dead or murdered, or kidnapped.’
    ‘Yesterday? Sounds like a nutcase,’ Neville said, then went outside to suck in some carcinogens. And have his fag.
    ‘You’ve been watching too many Humphrey Bogart films,’ I said, after he came back inside, ‘but, yeah, she’s fruitbats.’ I gave him a quick description of what had happened, while he extracted a second cigarette and rolled it around his fingers.
    ‘Maybe she’s lonely. Maybe she does this to get involved with someone. It’s easier than chatting up a stranger.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There’s something really not right about this. Something in her voice, in the way she looks at me – something not right, something edgy. She never blinks either. It’s like talking to a fucking owl. It’s making my shit hang sideways.’
    ‘Have another drink, then,’ he said. ‘It’s my round.’
    * * *
    Another drink or two with Nev was important, I felt. He was a good contact and he needed to be cultivated. We staggered out at a little before 10 p.m., both of us cultivated to arseholedom. The sky was the strange undark that you find in well-lit cities, a kind of white haze just veiling the limitless black beyond. The street was like the Olympia Car Show. I was trying to stop the tears from coming, but it didn’t seem to matter so much out here, in a biting December wind.
    ‘Christ, my eyes are watering it’s so fucking cold,’ I said, convincingly. Nev was fiddling with his camera bag.
    ‘Bollocks to the crusties,’ he said. ‘I’m going home. Hey, do you fancy a curry?’
    I pointed at my watch and shrugged, then I slipped off the curb and went sprawling in front of a 2CV, the driver of which leaned on his horn despite his speed being exactly 30 mph below the legal limit.
    I waved Nev goodbye and funny-walked through the mired traffic, angling up Sandridge Street and into St John’s Lane. The cold was making my cheeks numb, and my hands couldn’t get warm in the pockets of my jacket. I needed a piss and I was this close to turning back to the pub, intent on getting medievally trousered, when the tears got serious and I had to stop.
    Have you heard from Sarah? , Nev had asked. That was all. Five little words that knocked me back further than any punch or gut-kick I’ve received in the past three years, since she disappeared.
    No I haven’t heard from Sarah. Nobody has heard from Sarah. Because she’s dead. Everyone knows that, but they keep asking. They keep ripping me open.
    I told Nev what I knew. The police, as far as they could be bothered to look into a hopeless missing-persons case, had come up with no clues. My own hunt had reached plenty of dead ends, but I was always on the job, always sniffing her out. It was the longest case I’d ever undertaken and I was paying myself a piffling amount, but I would never stop. Even though she was dead. Especially as she was dead.
    ‘She’s not dead.’ I stopped on the pavement, half suspecting that it hadn’t been me who said the words. It was beginning to snow. I blew my nose and wiped my eyes. Astonishing what a sob can do to your drunkenness. I breathed in deep some of that shockingly cold, polluted air and crossed the road, trying to rub some feeling back into my face. Number 13, St John’s Way, this guy Phythian lived at, according to his jelly-head sister. Thirteen was how old Sarah was when she went away. It seemed I had thought about the events of 16th August 2012 for more time than I had ever actually spent with her, but that couldn’t be the case. Not yet. She would be sixteen now, and a young woman. She should have been in her first year at college, studying A-levels… Art maybe, or Music. Or maybe she didn’t fancy academe and was starting work instead. Or maybe she’d taken a year off, gone travelling, picked up a few skins and tried them on for size, tried out some different people, seen how her edges fitted in