the walls but no photographs of friends or family. I can hear

mumbling from the other end of the house but can’t decipher it.

It sounds like hangover talk.

I keep walking. The hallway takes me into a kitchen straight

out of the start of last century, and with rotting food lying around that could be from the same era. The kitchen bench has a Formica top patterned with yellow flowers and strewn with the remnants of fast-food packets. The coffee plunger is hot. I pour a cup just as Studly comes through. He doesn’t seem surprised at all that I’ve invaded his house and made myself at home. I figure it’s a student thing.

‘He’s tired,’ Studly says, summing up the hangover in an

ambitious lie.

‘He’s this way?’ I ask, heading out of the kitchen and back into the hallway.

‘Dude, I said he’s tired. He doesn’t want to talk.’

I turn around and stare at him, and there’s something in the

way I look at him that makes him decide he doesn’t seem to mind any more whether I go and wake David or not, as long as I’m

not bugging him. He shrugs and goes about riffling through the fridge for something that could be food.

David Harding’s bedroom is dark and smells worse than the

rest of the house. I turn the light on, but it doesn’t really help much. On the floor is a double mattress with no base. It looks like it’s had a dozen people jumping up and down on it. David

doesn’t look up. He has his head buried in a pillow.

I crouch down next to him.

‘David.’

‘Go away’

“I need to ask you some questions.’

“I don’t care.’

There are clothes scattered across the floor, pages from work

assignments and text books piled on the desk and chair. Food

wrappers and crumbs cover the carpet. I open the curtains and

let in some light. He groans a little. I roll him over, and for the first time he takes a look at me. His hair is sticking straight up around the back and the left-hand side from where the pillow has crushed it. There are gunks of sleep in the corners of his eyes.

His skin is pale, suggesting he doesn’t get out much. There is something that looks familiar about him, and I put it down to

the possibility I might have seen his picture in the papers when Rachel disappeared. He looks lost, the kind of lost only somebody in their twenties looks when they’re still at university racking up the degrees with no idea of what they really want to do in life.

‘Drink this.’

‘Go away’

‘It’s hot,’ I say, ‘and you don’t want to risk me spilling it all over you.’

He sits up and I hand him the mug.

‘What the hell do you want?’

‘To talk to you about Rachel.’

‘Let me guess — her mum asked you to come here, right? She

still thinks I killed her.’

‘I’m working for Rachel, not for her mother. Did you kill

her?’

‘Fuck you, man. And get the hell out of my room.’

“I found her body’

He sits up straighter and tightens his grip on the coffee mug.

‘She’s dead?’

It’s such a simple question. There is no emotion there, just a look of complete surprise, his mouth slightly open and his eyes slightly wider. No tears, no anger, no frustration. Just acceptance.

Acceptance of a question I think he’s been asking himself over and over — the big ‘what if. And finally the answer. What if she’s still alive? What if she isn’t?

‘She was found yesterday.’

Are you sure?’

I hand him the ring. He sits the coffee on the floor so he can look at it. He turns it over and reads the inscription. Then he slips it onto the tip of his finger and slowly spins it around.

“I gave her this,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t long before she disappeared.

I promised her that when we graduated I’d take her away from

here and we’d never come back.’

‘She hated it here? Why?’

“I don’t think she really did. I guess that’s the thing about this city, right? You can love and hate it at the same time. I think she just felt claustrophobic here, you know? She wanted to see the rest of the world, and I was going to show it to her. Where did you find her?’

‘She was buried in a cemetery’

‘Huh?’

‘She had been put into somebody else’s coffin.’

“I don’t get what you’re saying. She was buried?’

The emotion is coming now. His hands are shaking a little,

and his eyes are starting to glisten over, just as I’ve seen it dozens of other times in those who have lost loved ones.

‘We were exhuming a body’ I say. ‘The person we thought we

were digging up was missing. Rachel was there instead.’

‘Who were you digging up?’

A guy called Henry Martins. Ring a bell?’

He shakes his head. ‘Why would it?’

“He was a bank manager. You sure you’ve never heard of him?’

‘Does it look like I ever needed a bank manager? How’d she

die? Was she buried alive? Oh, Jesus, don’t tell me that.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘You’re not sure? Did you see her?’

‘Yes.’

“How’d she look?’

‘She was still wearing the ring,’ I say, which isn’t quite true.

SHow’d she look?’ he repeats.

‘She’s been dead two years, David. That’s how she looked.’

He runs both his hands through his hair. ‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘This isn’t right.’ He throws back the blankets and stands up. He’s

wearing a pair of boxer shorts, and his body is pasty white. He pulls on a pair of jeans.

‘It never is. Tell me what happened.’

‘What?’

‘When you last saw her, tell me what happened.’

‘Nothing happened. It was just a non-moment. I can’t even

remember.’

‘Sure you can. Everybody remembers the last moments.’

David’s moment turned out to be like any other. He had

dinner with her. They ate fast food while they studied. They

went to bed together, though he tells me the house was tidier

back then. They woke up together; he headed for class and she

went to find some breakfast. It was a slice-of-life moment that has probably been playing over and over in his head for the last two years. He’ll have been thinking about all the factors that had to come together for this to have happened. He could have

skipped class. His class could have been at a different time. Or hers could have been. They could have had breakfast together.

They could have had dinner separately the night before. Any link in the chain could have been broken and the result would be that they’d still be together.

The reality is, of course, they could have broken up or he could have got her pregnant and left her for a life of less responsibility, or she could have cheated on him. Young love can lead anywhere.

But it never should have led to this. He says he didn’t even know she was missing, that he figured she’d gone home that night and hadn’t called.

‘Was she having any problems?’

“None that she told me about.’

‘Anybody giving her a hard time? Hanging around? Anything

at all out of the ordinary?’

‘You don’t think I’ve been asked these questions? Man, I’ve

been over this with so many other people, and I’ve been over it with myself every single fucking day. I loved her. I still do.’

‘Where’d she go for breakfast?’

‘She ate at a university cafe. You guys already know that.’

I don’t feel the need to correct his impression that I must be a cop.

‘Humour me.’

He starts pacing the room. ‘She was spotted in there. She left around ten-thirty. She ate bacon and eggs smothered in tomato

sauce. I never figured out how she could eat that combination.

Then she left. And that’s all anybody knows.’

‘Was she supposed to meet anybody?’

‘She was going to class.’

‘Was she seeing anybody?’

‘What, like having an affair?’

‘Was she?’

‘Rachel would never have done that.’

‘Would you?’

‘Hell no. I loved her.’