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‘Amy, this is insane. Of course I haven’t killed her! I haven’t done anything with her. Come on, you must know this is crazy.’

‘Then what were you doing in her flat that weekend she went missing?’

‘Getting a box set.’

‘
What?
’

‘I lent Becky my
Breaking Bad
box set before I’d seen it all, and she’d had it for ages. I’d gone round before to ask for it back but ended up leaving without it … I really wanted to watch it but she wasn’t in … so I let myself in. I just grabbed it and came straight out again. I forgot to double-lock the door on the way out.’

She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. But it was such a mundane excuse, so straightforward, that she felt her conviction wavering, her fear beginning to drain away.

‘But … why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?’

His face coloured. ‘I was embarrassed, wasn’t I? I hardly knew you and I didn’t want you thinking I’d been creeping around your sister’s flat while she wasn’t there.’

‘Which is exactly what you had been doing.’

‘I wasn’t creeping. I went straight into the front room, found the DVDs, grabbed them and left.’

‘What day was this?’

His eyes flicked upwards, like he was trying to look at his brain. ‘Last Sunday – the day you turned up looking for Becky.’

Her breathing had almost returned to normal now. ‘I don’t know whether to believe you.’

Gary took a small step towards her, but she said, ‘Uh-uh. Don’t come any closer.’

‘Amy, I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. I would never hurt you. I …’ He trailed off, looking pained.

‘What?’

‘I’m in love with you, Amy.’

‘Oh, hell.’

‘I know you don’t feel the same way. I get that. I can deal with it. But I swear on my mother’s life I would never hurt you. Or Becky. I don’t know what’s happened to her either – and no, I don’t think she’s buggered off to Asia, either. I’m just as worried about her as you are.’

‘I doubt that.’

He shrugged. Then he stared at the ground and chewed his lip.

‘What is it?’ she demanded.

‘There’s something else I need to tell you.’

She backed away again. She could hear music coming from one of the flats upstairs. If she screamed as loud as she could, surely someone would hear her and come running? Why hadn’t they heard her before?

‘Go on then, tell me,’ she said.

‘Let’s go upstairs. I don’t want to talk about it in a public stairwell.’

‘No way.’ She looked through the door. ‘Let’s go outside. Where there are people.’

They left the building and crossed the road to the park, Gary limping quite badly. Suddenly surrounded by life, playing children, sunbathers, joggers and dogs running around, Amy felt a lot safer. The sun was warm on her face and her pulse slowed. They sat either end of a bench, half turning towards each other.

‘So?’ Amy said.

He hesitated. ‘You know that night you were in Becky’s flat and someone tried the door?’

‘Yes …’

He couldn’t meet her eye. ‘That was me.’

Her jaw fell open. ‘You
what
?’

‘I’d been to the pub and then when I got back I thought you’d be gone. I didn’t notice your bike outside. I just wanted to check, see if Becky had come back. But then when you called out, sounding scared, I panicked. I thought that if you knew it was me trying to let myself into the flat, you might think I was weird or that I had something to do with Becky’s disappearance. I was quite drunk. Anyway, I ran off and then I had to lie and tell you I was in the pub and go along with the whole thing with the police … I’m really sorry.’

She stared at him, incredulous. ‘I don’t believe you, Gary.’

‘It’s true, I swear.’ He stretched his leg out and rubbed his kicked knee, still not looking at her.

‘No, I mean, I can’t believe you would do that. I was terrified. And you are clearly a very good actor – you had me completely fooled.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. It was stupid – but it was also totally innocent. I hated that I’d scared you.’

She folded her arms. ‘Or maybe you thought if you scared me, I’d be more likely to come to you looking for comfort.’

‘No, Amy, it wasn’t like that. It was just one of those things where you panic and then find yourself trapped and having to lie. I feel shitty about it. That’s why I’m telling you now.’

‘Hm,’ Amy said.

He squirmed, his face turning pink. Amy scrutinized him. She did like him, and felt confident that he was a good guy. But she couldn’t allow it to go any further than that. She wasn’t ready.

‘Listen, Gary, I like you too. And the other night was fantastic, it really was. But I told you – I don’t do relationships. I’m not ready, not after everything that happened with Nathan. I’m pissed off that you lied to me, but I suppose I get it, under the circumstances.’

The only word she could think of to describe Gary’s expression was ‘crestfallen’. But he nodded. ‘I’m really sorry. If I ever meet this fucking Nathan bloke, I’m going to punch him in the head.’

She smiled faintly. ‘As long as you promise to video it and upload it to YouTube.’

‘Deal.’

Amy watched a squirrel descend from a nearby tree, grab a discarded crisp and shoot back up the trunk. It made her think of Boris, who had been badly neglected the last couple of days. She would take him on the longest walk ever later.

‘So, if there’s really nothing else you need to tell me,’ she said, ‘I’m going to go home now and walk Boris. I don’t think we should see each other for a while.’

‘Oh, Amy, I said I’m sorry I lied to you.’

She stood up and he stayed seated, staring up at her like a little boy.

‘It’s not just that. It’s all of it, Gary. I just think we need some distance from each other. It doesn’t mean I don’t ever want to see you again – as a friend, I mean – but not right now. And – I’m sorry about your knee, I hope it’s OK.’

He opened his mouth to protest but then shut it. He looked like a beaten man.

‘So,’ Amy said, ‘I’m going to go now. I don’t want you to contact me unless you hear anything that can help me find Becky, OK?’

He nodded and she walked away, her insides aching.

Back at home, Amy gave Boris a cuddle, then went upstairs and ran herself a bath. These days, she always took a bath with the door open, and she could hear Boris padding around downstairs. She didn’t want to think about any of it, needed to let her brain rest for an hour, so she leafed through a crafting magazine, looking at a complicated pattern for an Aran dog sweater, trying to work out if it was within her capabilities and, if it was, whether Boris would deign to be seen dead in it. He got so cold in winter.

Unfortunately, the magazine reminded her of how little work she’d done since Becky had disappeared. Never mind knitting dog jackets, her business was going to crumble from beneath her if she didn’t spend some time on the site.

Though how could she when all she could think about was finding Becky? How could she do anything? A mammoth To Do list began to populate itself inside her head and before she knew it she was out of the bath, wrapped in a towel, sitting at the kitchen table with her notepad and computer.

She spent almost an hour checking her site stats and making a list of things she needed to do urgently, and another list of things that could wait. The site seemed to be ticking along without her. There were no crises to deal with. The customer-service company she’d employed was answering emails, the community members were chatting among themselves, orders were coming in and being automatically forwarded to the vendors, traffic and registrations were steady. She felt relieved.

Next, she turned her attention back to Becky. So much had happened in the last few days. She felt the need to write another list, to break down what she knew so she could work out what to do next.

She had started by contacting the men from CupidsWeb. She had met Ross, the owner of Wiggins the spaniel, and decided he had nothing to do with it, and had ruled out Shaun because he had been in Canada. There was the third man, though, Daniel, the one who appeared to have no visible presence online. He hadn’t replied to her message. She quickly logged in to CupidsWeb and checked. Still no message. Interesting that all his profile photos were set to ‘private’, she noted. Did that mean that he had something to hide? She typed out another message, asking him to get in touch, and pressed Send. She made a note to follow it up if he still didn’t reply.

Then there was everything with poor Katherine. Amy could hardly believe that she was dead, and of a drugs overdose. It wasn’t the kind of thing that happened to schoolteachers. The police had told her that Kath had died from an overdose of cocaine mixed with something called china white, a synthetic form of heroin that was far stronger than heroin itself.

‘If she had no tolerance to it, and took a large hit, her system wouldn’t have been able to handle it,’ DC Amristy had told Amy on the phone. She also told Amy that they had indeed arrested Fraser on suspicion of supplying the drug. ‘We found a text on Miss Devine’s phone that she had sent to Mr Fraser Elliot thanking him for a gift which we assume to be the bag of narcotics.’

‘I need you to ask Fraser what he knows about my sister,’ Amy said. ‘Anything that will help me find her.’

‘Do you think he was supplying your sister with drugs too?’ Amristy had asked.

‘No. But I know he slept with her …’

DC Amristy had seemed confused. ‘I don’t understand what this has to do with Katherine Devine.’

Exasperated, Amy had explained the whole story once more, and Amristy had taken it down, promising to pass the information to the missing-person’s coordinator.
Again
, Amy had almost said.

I’m on my own, she thought.

The question was,
did
Becky’s disappearance have anything to do with Katherine? All she knew for certain was that they had both been using CupidsWeb, had both slept with Fraser and now, she knew, they had both been using this awful Casexual site. But while Katherine had been found dead in her flat, Becky was missing. No one had sent an email from Kath saying she was going away. The circumstances were entirely different. But then again, it seemed too coincidental that something awful could happen to both of them within a week of each other. While she didn’t believe Fraser had done anything to Becky, there had to be some connection.

She patted Boris’s bony head. Could Becky have been into drugs too? Had she got involved with drug dealers? Did Fraser know anything about that? Maybe she should talk to the police again about Fraser, see if they would let her talk to him.

She had insisted to everyone that Becky was not into drugs, but she had never thought that her sister would use casual hook-up sites either.

‘I sound like a real puritanical prude, don’t I, Boris?’ she said to the dog.

She tried to gather her thoughts, stop them from wheeling around the inside of her skull. The only thing Amy could do was stick to the few facts she had, and her suspicion that one of the men Becky had met online must know something that could help her find her sister. And Fraser, she was sure, was a dead end. Yes, he had slept with Becky, and through him she had found out about the hook-up sites. But Fraser giving lethal drugs to Katherine didn’t mean he had anything to do with Becky’s disappearance.

She picked up the sheaf of printouts from Casexual.com, and picked out the one that had disturbed her most: the message from the guy who called himself TooledUp.

She stared at the photo he had provided with the email, which she had also printed out, in colour. He scared her. Perhaps her view of psychopaths was stereotypical, but that’s what he looked like. She couldn’t understand how Becky could ever be attracted to someone like him. But maybe she was lying to herself: most women had at some point felt the lure of dangerous men, bad boys who just wanted to fuck you and didn’t want to talk about their emotions afterwards. She smiled to herself, thinking about Gary. Then her frown slipped as she examined TooledUp’s picture.

She had been thinking that, even though she was afraid, she was going to have to contact him through Casexual. But, looking closely at the photo, she thought there might be another way, though it was a long shot.

He was looking into a mirror, and in the reflection she could see, behind him, a window with no curtains or nets, and a view out onto the street. On the other side of the street she could make out a shop of some kind. But she couldn’t quite make out its name.

She logged back into Katherine’s Casexual account and found the original message and the photo. She opened the photo file and blew it up to full size on her screen, zooming in on the shop. It was blurry, but luckily the file was large, so she didn’t lose too much definition. Squinting, she could make out the name of the establishment:
JEANS LAUNDRETTE
.

Noting the misspelling of ‘laund
e
rette’, she Googled it, but nothing came up. It wasn’t the kind of place that would advertise itself online. But if she could find it, she would be able to find out where TooledUp lived, and she had an idea.

I parked opposite Amy’s flat and waited. I was in the black Focus, the cheap car I use when I want to be inconspicuous.

I could see her moving about inside the flat, could detect steam on the window of the bathroom. I licked my lips, thinking about going in. I drowned a girl in a bath once, simply held her under the water until she stopped thrashing, one hand on her throat, holding her under, the other hand between her legs, a finger inside her. I could have done the same to Amy – if I didn’t have plans for her.

The dog was a problem. Greyhounds are, according to
Wikipedia
and the numerous doggy forums I checked out, gentle and docile – unless you’re a small fluffy creature. But it was risky, and I don’t take chances. Especially now, when I’m so close to getting what I’ve always dreamed of. The last thing I want is a dog bite making me sore on my special day.

So I waited, and watched.

Amy was frustratingly careful with her privacy settings online. Her Facebook page was locked down unless you were her friend, and she barely tweeted. She hadn’t been on Twitter since putting out the appeal about Becky. Her website, Upcycle.com, was remarkably impersonal – she barely even got a mention on the About Us page.