The address turns out to be a tower block, one of the few left on this side of town. After Grenfell we’d done a big investigation into these blocks, tried to find out how many more were death traps, coated in dangerous cladding, at risk of infernos. I’d been haunted by thoughts of fire for a long time after covering Grenfell. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those people, trapped like animals on the upper floors.
This must have been one of the death trap blocks, because it looks like they are starting to strip it. The outside is covered in scaffolding, billowing tarpaulins hitched to it like ragged sails. It looks as grim as ever.
These blocks are all the same inside. The same piss smell in the lift, the same blokes eyeballing you on the staircases, the same blood-red scrawls of graffiti on the peeling grey walls, the same stagnant, overflowing wheelie bins. As the lift creeps up to the fourteenth floor, I think how it must have felt for people living in these buildings, when Grenfell happened. To read about how, on the upper floors, the windows only opened an inch. All the families trapped there had to huddle around them, take turns to breathe. Everything else was choking, suffocating blackness. The windows in these flats are like that too. Not for the first time, I think how lucky I am to own my tiny one-bed in Dartmouth Park, to have dodged the rental trap so many graduates like me have fallen into. Paying hundreds of pounds a month just to live somewhere like this. Somewhere where the windows only open up an inch.
When I knock on the door of the flat, it sounds hollow. I hear the pad of slippered feet approach the door, then, finally, it opens.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’m Katie. I’m a friend of Rachel’s.’ I’m not sure this is quite true, but it feels necessary.
The girl looks at me. She is wearing fluffy pink slippers over a pair of black tights, a cheap polyester work dress. She has a large forehead, her hair scraped back.
‘Jane,’ she sighs. ‘You’d better come in.’
HELEN
The new detectives turn up a few days later. It’s a freezing night. Daniel and I have been to the cinema. When we get back, they are waiting in a car parked right outside our doorstep.
The female one is tall, boyish-looking, a thick scarf right up to her chin, tucked into a long Puffa jacket. ‘I’m DCI Betsky and this is DI Hughes,’ she says. Her words turn into clouds of steam in front of her face. Bits of sleet are settling in DI Hughes’s trendy beard.
Daniel opens the front door, gestures for them to come in, pushes the pram out of their way. The detectives wipe their shoes carefully. Blackened slush melts into puddles on the floor. We lead them into the kitchen. I offer to take their coats. They both decline. I decide not to bother with coffees this time.
‘I assume this is about Rachel,’ I say. ‘Is there any news?’
DCI Betsky looks at me. ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Thorpe,’ she says. ‘Rachel is still missing.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. ‘I have been trying to call your colleagues – the ones I spoke to before.’
The two detectives glance at one another.
‘Just to see if they’d found her or anything.’
‘The detectives you met before were from Greenwich CID,’ DCI Betsky says, slowly. ‘The investigation has now been passed over to specialist crime. We’ll be leading things from now on.’
There is a pause.
DI Hughes clears his throat. ‘Is it all right if we take a look around her room?’
‘Her room?’
‘The room where Rachel was staying prior to her disappearance. Just to see if there’s anything there which might help us.’
Daniel and I glance at each other.
‘We’ve actually just repainted it,’ Daniel says.
The detectives stare at us.
‘You have repainted the room she was staying in,’ DCI Betsky repeats.
I feel suddenly sick. ‘It’s going to be the nursery, for our new baby,’ I explain. ‘No one said … no one said …’
‘I see,’ says DI Hughes. ‘All the same. If you don’t mind.’
Daniel leads them up the stairs. I prepare to follow, but DCI Betsky raises a palm in protest. ‘Please,’ she says, looking down at my belly, ‘there’s no need, Mrs Thorpe. I’m sure your husband knows the way.’ She doesn’t smile.
I perch on a stool, a blast of heartburn flaring in my chest. I lean forward a little, listen to the floorboards creaking, the muffled sound of them asking Daniel questions. They are up there for what seems like a long time. I try to flick through a magazine on the sideboard, but I can’t seem to focus on anything in it.