‘I’ll be back later,’ says Cyrus.
‘You’re leaving me here!’
‘I won’t be long.’
I sneak a glance at Frank, who is sharpening a pencil. He may look like a loveable granddad with his high-waisted pants and crinkly smile, but I don’t have a good history with coffin dodgers like him. I’m not saying they’re all bad – just the ones I’ve met.
‘Shall we get started?’ he says, leaning his elbows on his sloping desk. ‘Tell me about the man you saw in the car.’
‘I only glimpsed one side of his face.’
‘I can draw him that way. How old was he?’
‘Younger than you. Older than Cyrus.’
‘Forties or fifties?’
‘Forties.’
‘Could you get a sense of his height?’
‘He was sitting down.’
‘Low in the seat or high in the seat?’
‘High.’
‘What colour hair?’
‘Brown. He was wearing a baseball cap. His hair stuck out over his ears.’
Frank opens a book full of photographs of different faces, but the eyes and mouths have been covered, so I can only see their noses. Each photograph is captioned. Straight, convex, concave, wavy, upturned, snub, Roman, Grecian. I point to the upturned nose.
‘Could you see any of his nostril?’
‘No.’
Frank asks me about eyes and his eyebrows. The hairline. The forehead. He opens more pages, wanting me to pick out features that most closely match. He uses each of them as a starting point when he begins to sketch.
Sometimes I think I’m sure about a detail, but then I begin to doubt myself. Other features become clearer. His eyebrows were darker than his hair. And the arm of his glasses didn’t sit snugly over his ear. I don’t remember any tattoos.
‘What about his chin?’ asks Frank. ‘Some people have square jaws, or pointy chins, or they might have two chins like me.’ He lowers his chin to his chest, creating a roll of fat on his neck.
‘Only one chin,’ I say, ‘but it wasn’t very pointy.’
‘A chinless wonder,’ says Frank. ‘Maybe he’s posh.’
‘Why do you say that?’
He waves off the question and continues working. After what seems like forever, he shows me a partially finished drawing. I make him rub things out and start again. We seem to be going around in circles, swapping stuff in and out because I can’t decide.
‘This is how it works,’ says Frank. ‘Nobody expects us to produce a photograph. A likeness would be enough.’
‘But I want someone to recognise him.’
‘Yes, but it’s very rare that a random member of the public recognises someone from a police sketch. We’re doing this for his family and friends. People who might say, “Hey, that looks a little like Tom or Dick or Harry.”’
After another twenty minutes, he shows me again. I’m even less certain than before. The sketch looks like an invented person put together by a committee rather than someone who is flesh and blood.
Frank suggests we move on to the second drawing, the man who I saw duck out through the kitchen. The questions begin again and we talk about hair, noses, eyes and ears. I move my stool closer and watch as Frank sketches a handful of lines on the paper and slowly fills in the features, using shading to create depth.
He chats while he works, talking about his three children and two grandchildren. I ask their names. I don’t normally care, but I’d rather ask questions than be the one answering them. Frank tells me that he did a degree in fine art and wanted to be a painter, but his life changed when he got mugged one night walking home from the pub. Bleeding from a head wound, he was taken to hospital. While waiting to be stitched up, he asked for a pen and a piece of paper. He sketched his attacker and gave the image to the police.
‘It was published in the local paper and the man’s brother gave him up,’ says Frank. ‘That was my first collar.’
‘How many criminals have you caught since then?’
‘I don’t keep count.’
I look at the new drawing.
‘It wasn’t really a beard. More like bum fluff on his top lip,’ I say.
Frank makes the alterations.
‘And his eyes were more hidden by his eyebrows,’ I say. ‘And his bottom lip was thicker. What do you call that bit up there?’ I point to my own lips.
‘The cupid’s bow?’
‘Yeah. It was straighter.’
Frank works on his own for another ten minutes, while I wander about the room and peer out the window. He has a family of Smurfs on the window sill, who look like they’re dreaming of escaping across the parking area and into the distant trees.
‘How about this?’ he asks, turning the drawing to face me. My breath catches and I feel myself lean back as though trying to get away.
‘That’s him! The man at the bar.’
45
Cyrus
Cassie has been tracking Anders Foley’s movements in the days before and after Maya Kirk went missing. Every mobile handset transmits a signature ‘ping’ that searches for nearby phone towers known as base stations. By measuring the time that it takes for these pings to reach a particular tower and be returned, it’s possible to estimate the distance the handset is from the tower. If the signature ‘ping’ is picked up by a second tower, technicians can establish a general area; and a third tower will allow the signal to be triangulated, providing a more precise location.
‘This is Foley’s phone on Sunday evening,’ says Cassie. ‘He met Maya at the Canalhouse at seven-forty. They stayed for about an hour and then walked to the Lace Market.’ She traces the route on a satellite map with her fingertip. ‘It’s about a ten-minute walk, up Middle Hill. They stopped at a bar called the Blind Rabbit on High Pavement and then went on to the Little Drummer, which is only three minutes’ walk away.’
‘What time did they leave?’
‘The CCTV puts them in St Peter’s Gate at ten-fifteen. Foley’s van was parked here.’ She taps the screen. ‘From there, they drove to Maya’s house, arriving at ten-fifty-six.’
She shows me the route they took to Hyson Green, pointing out Maya’s house on the map.
‘How long was he there?’
‘Forty minutes, give or take. He left before midnight and drove directly back to his house in West Bridgford. His phone remained at that location until nine o’clock the next morning when he went to work.’
‘What about in the days that followed?’
‘Home. Work. Home again. He had IT call-outs, which the police are checking.’
‘He could have left his phone behind at any of those locations or carried a second handset.’
‘True.’ She calls up a satellite map on which she has plotted every journey that Foley took using different colours to indicate the days. There are no unexplained routes or unusual patterns. Maybe Hoyle is right about an accomplice.
Cassie taps her front teeth with the end of a pen.
‘This other missing woman – Daniela – if we tracked her phone, I could cross-reference her movements with Maya and see if there are similarities. Places they visited. Mutual friends. It may give us something.’