‘This is your zone,’ he says.

‘Not at seven in the morning it’s not. I’m about to have a shower and get ready, why don’t you stay here a while and catch up?’

He scrapes the bowl for the last spoonful of cereal and swallows it down. ‘I need to be at work,’ he says, taking the bowl to the sink. ‘I need access to things there. Why are you so keen to keep me here?’

She shrugs. ‘All this, I suppose.’ She points upwards in the direction of the helicopters. ‘And that.’ She points towards the front of the house. ‘It’s unsettling. I mean, if something did happen to that girl, right here, right over the road, then maybe it’s not safe. I mean, do you think we should be thinking about keeping Georgia in at the moment?’

Roan stops, his back curved over the sink. He sighs, then turns. ‘Maybe ask the police about that? See what they say.’

She nods. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘maybe.’

He moves towards her, puts a hand on her arm. ‘It’ll be fine, whatever it is. I’m sure we’re safe.’ He picks up his bag, his coat, his scarf. ‘I will see you later. I’ll try and get back early tonight. Maybe we could even do something.’

She forces a smile. ‘Yes,’ she says. And then, before he disappears from view, she says, ‘Roan? Who’s Molly?’

He stops. Then he turns and looks at her. ‘Molly?’

‘Yes. I kept meaning to say. You got a card from her. Valentine’s day. Georgia opened it by mistake and I put it away because I knew you’d be cross about her opening your stuff. Then I forgot about it.’ She goes to the drawer and pulls it out. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’

Roan walks towards her and takes the card from her hand. She watches him open it and read it. He smiles. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘Molly! Yes. I know Molly. She’s a patient. Or at least, she was. I don’t see her any more.’

‘And she has your address?’ She shows him the envelope.

He looks slightly confused. ‘She does appear to, yes.’

‘How?’

He takes the envelope from her hand and stares at it for a moment. ‘I literally have no idea,’ he says. ‘I mean, maybe it was in my office, on a letter or something?’

Cate takes the card from him and puts it back in the drawer. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘you should be more careful.’

He gives her a strange look. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You’re right.’

He kisses her briefly on the cheek and then he goes.

She grips the back of a chair, feeling her heart racing in her chest, the sickening rush of adrenaline caused by the confrontation. She hears the front door slam, but almost immediately she hears it open again. She hears Roan’s voice in the hallway and then a female voice.

The door to the apartment opens and Roan walks back in, with DI Angela Currie following behind.

‘No problem,’ he’s saying to her. ‘No problem at all.’ He catches Cate’s eye. ‘This is DI Currie. She just wants to ask us a few questions.’

Cate touches her collarbone. ‘Me too?’

‘Yes, please. If you have the time?’ says the detective.

‘Sure. Yes. Can I get you anything? A tea? Coffee?’

DI Currie taps a plastic bottle of water in her hand and says, ‘Thanks, but I’m fine.’

Roan leads her into the living room. She sits on the armchair. Cate and Roan sit side by side on the sofa.

‘So,’ DI Currie begins, ‘sorry to bother you this early in the morning, but it literally just came to our attention, and I have to be honest, I don’t really know how we missed this before, but having interviewed you both separately regarding this missing person case – Mrs Fours as a potential witness and Dr Fours as someone who worked closely with Saffyre – it has only just come to our attention that you both live here. And obviously that throws a very different complexion on things; opens up a whole new angle. So I hope you don’t mind if I ask you both a few more questions?’ She smiles and then she looks upwards and says, ‘Bloody helicopters. I’m so sorry. It must be a nightmare. But we’re nearly done now. They’ll be gone soon. I promise.’

She pulls a ballpoint pen and notebook from her shoulder bag.

‘Mr Fours, we spoke a couple of days ago about Saffyre coming under your care for a while and you confirmed that you stopped your sessions with her roughly a year ago?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you didn’t see her again after that?’

‘No. Or, as I told you yesterday, I saw her around the area a couple of times, but not to stop and talk to.’

‘So after you signed her off from treatment, that was the end of your relationship with her?’

‘Yes. That’s correct.’

‘Great,’ says DI Currie, ‘thank you for clarifying that for me. And then, on the night of February the fourteenth, Valentine’s night, it was the two of you that had dinner together, in the village?’

They both nod.

‘And you both returned home at around eleven thirty p.m.?’

They nod again. Cate says, ‘Roughly.’

‘And you were both in bed by midnight?’

Cate and Roan exchange a look. Cate says, ‘Yes, thereabouts.’

Roan nods and then he turns to the detective and says, ‘Well, I might have been a bit later than that. I seem to recall going outside for some reason.’

Cate stares at him.

‘I mean, it’s not particularly fresh in my mind, it was over a week ago, I wasn’t sober, but I do remember coming outside – I think I was putting some rubbish out. And I heard something. And I looked over the road and that guy, the one from the house opposite, he was just standing there.’

‘Standing there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘No. I was in the front garden, by the bins. I was out of view. I could see him through a gap in the hedge.’

‘And what was he doing, this man?’

‘Just standing, staring. He looked drunk. I’ve had run-ins with him before when he’s drunk. He stared at me once when I was out running, around the corner. Stood and stared for quite some time. When I asked him what his problem was, he just asked me if I was married. I thought it was … odd. And then there was that other time.’ He turns to Cate and gives her a complicitous look. ‘Remember, earlier this year, when Georgia was walking home in the dark and he got really close to her and was freaking her out.’

Cate stiffens slightly. She’s not completely comfortable with what Roan’s implying. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘that is true. And he is a bit odd, but that doesn’t mean …’

‘No,’ DI Currie cuts in. ‘No, you’re right, Mrs Fours. It doesn’t mean anything. Obviously. But it’s all worth making a note of.’ She turns back to Roan. ‘So this happened at roughly midnight?’

‘Yes, roughly midnight.’

‘And then you came back inside and went to bed?’

‘Yes. That’s right.’

‘And when you were out there, putting out the rubbish at midnight, apart from the man across the street, did you see anything else? Anyone else?’

‘No. That was all. The man across the street.’

‘Is it possible’, she continues, ‘that he might not have been staring at you, that he might have been staring at someone else?’

Roan wrinkles his brow. ‘I don’t know what you—’

DI Currie closes her notepad. ‘Would it be possible, do you think, for you to show me exactly where you were standing that night, when you saw your neighbour staring towards you?’

‘Sure,’ says Roan.

They all get to their feet.

Cate throws on one of Josh’s hoodies from the hallway and follows Roan. DI Currie follows Cate and they head out to the little wooden covered area in the front garden where the communal bins are located.

‘I was standing here,’ says Roan. ‘I put the bag in the bin. I’d just closed the lid and I saw him through here.’ He points out a gap in the hedge that grows in front of a low brick wall.

DI Currie stands in Roan’s place and peers through the gap. She stands back and peers around the corner to the front path and the metal gate at the bottom. Then she peers once more through the gap in the hedge. She writes something down in her notebook and then she shuts it.

‘Wonderful,’ she says, ‘thank you so much. I think that’ll be all we need from you both for now. But a last question, Dr Fours. I know you say that you hadn’t seen Saffyre since your final appointment with her back in March 2018, but can you think of any reason, any reason at all why she might have been in the vicinity of your house on the night she went missing?’

‘So, she was—’ Cate begins.

‘We don’t know anything for sure yet. We’re looking at dozens of possibilities. But that is one possibility, yes. So, Dr Fours, can you …?’

Cate looks at Roan. Roan shakes his head, firmly. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No. There is absolutely no reason I can think of why she would have been here. None.’

‘And you definitely didn’t see her?’