LITMIR.BIZ

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of friends, etc. I found Nick.’

      ‘Show me?’

      Robin scrolled back to September and a picture of a man in jeans and a maroon Adidas top. He was about thirty with curly hair cut short at the sides, left longer on top. Possibly – local pride – he’d been going for the Peaky Blinders look but it came off more Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables. The darkness of it made his skin look slightly vitamin-deficient by contrast but he was attractive, tall and fit, muscle visible round the shoulders under the burgundy nylon.

      ‘Hm. Is there just Facebook?’

      ‘No, Instagram too.’ Robin toggled to @BeccaWoods95’s curated vision of the world. Birmingham, UK. Food, books, fashion, design. 152 posts, 95 followers, 241 following.

      ‘The last thing was this, four days before she disappeared.’ She moved the cursor over a picture of a bowl of spiced chickpea soup reposted from a cooking blog. ‘About half of the posts are food-related, mostly photos of things she made, with little comments.’ She clicked on a square captioned ‘Sacher torte – worth every one of the 174,329 calories!’

      The rest was books and arty shots of silhouettes and trees, a few bits of interior design – nice chairs and rugs and kitchens – and then fashion, all pretty standard stuff. A woman in a green backless evening gown on a moonlit terrace was hashtagged Goals but the handful of reposts from fashion blogs were down to earth otherwise: women in superior combinations of boots, skinny jeans and enormous cardigans. It was a sort of rose-tinted, better-dressed version of real life. ‘And only three solo selfies – nothing by prevailing standards.’ A couple of weeks ago, in Shepherd’s Bush, Robin had seen a woman pouting into her phone by the green veg at Tesco.

      ‘Hm. What time did she say, again – Lucy?’

      ‘Four.’

      ‘I’ve just had an email from Roger Hanley; he can do four thirty at his office.’

      The Jewellery Quarter. ‘You take him, then; I’ll take her?’

      Maggie looked at her. ‘I thought – just for now – we could work together.’

      ‘Don’t worry, I’m fully trained.’

      ‘That wasn’t why I—’

      ‘It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m not going to fall apart.’ Brooking no argument.

      Maggie hesitated, then sighed – All right, against my better judgement. She reached for her coat. ‘I’m going to run down and get a sandwich. What can I get you?’

      ‘Nothing. I’m okay for now.’

      ‘Robin.’

      ‘Something simple then – cheese and tomato. Thanks.’

      Maggie shrugged the coat on. ‘Will you be all right here?’

      ‘For ten minutes, while you buy a couple of sandwiches?’

      The door closed and Maggie’s boots clomped down the steep wooden staircase towards the street door. The office took up two rooms on the third floor of a red-brick building at the nether end of Cannon Street, above a hairdresser, opposite a bridal shop and the entrance to the parking garage where they’d left the car. Coming in, Robin had seen the city centre shops she remembered of old, Poundland and Coral bookies, multiple outlets selling cheap sportswear, but just down the street, apparently, there was now a large branch of Jigsaw.

      ‘Oh yes,’ Maggie had said, ‘we’re getting proper posh. We’ve got a Jack Wills and a Muji within a two-minute walk now, get us. I’m very partial to the Japanese stationery, I’ve got to admit; I’ve bought all sorts of bits and bobs – little staplers and notebooks and what have you. Can’t resist it.’

      Downstairs, the door slammed shut. Robin stood up. Her eyes were dry from lack of sleep and the hour and a half she’d just spent staring at Becca Woodson’s life online. She stretched her neck and did a circuit of the dining table that dominated the main room. This was where Maggie took meetings, she said, and also where she did her desk work. The office had two laptops, one exclusively Maggie’s and an ageing Dell, which Robin would share with Lorraine, the woman who came in two days a week to do the billing and other paperwork. She was currently halfway through a fortnight in Lanzarote, Maggie said; she took a break in February every year, to help with her SAD.

      A desk and a bank of filing cabinets were housed in a second, smaller room that led off this one and got its only natural light from the glass panels along the top of the dividing wall. A handful of large leather-leaved plants dotted here and there and that was it, her new place of work.

      She took the kettle from its tray on top of the filing cabinets and carried it out to the miniature kitchen shared with the temp agency in the rooms across the landing. With some difficulty, she got it into position under the tap in the tiny sink and filled it.

      Back in the office, she brought up the West Midlands Police’s Twitter feed. She’d been checking it every ten or fifteen minutes, skimming over cycle safety and community policing notices to the frequent ones about serious crimes – another stabbing in Handsworth, a fatal hit-and-run in Balsall Heath, a slavery charge brought against two brothers in Lozells. There’d been a run of tweets with photos hashtagged MISSING. ‘Have you seen Bill Scott? He’s missing from West Bromwich and we’re really concerned for him. Please call 101 with any information.’ She’d scrolled through them looking – hoping – for Josh; instead, with a jolt, she’d seen Corinna’s face. Murder enquiry launched following Edgbaston fire. Corinna Legge (pictured) sadly passed away yesterday. Heart in her throat, Robin clicked on the link and read the short post on the police site but there was nothing new, still just the barest details of the fire, the search for Josh Legge (pictured), believed to have been at the scene when the blaze broke out.

      All the local news sources had the story – the Birmingham Post, the Mail and Midlands Today – but again, none of them had a single new detail. Either the police were keeping information back or they didn’t have anything.

      Corinna Legge sadly passed away yesterday. She read the words again. They were ungraspable, completely surreal. Aliens land in the Bull Ring; Elvis spotted at Villa Park; Corinna Legge sadly passed away yesterday.

      Yesterday – it was only technically still true. It was one o’clock, already almost thirty-six hours now since the neighbours had sounded the alarm, a day and a half. Rin was falling further and further behind, slipping away.

      Robin reached for the notebook and turned to a new page. ‘Assuming arson’, she wrote, and underlined it. Quickly, she put down everything that came into her head, the earliest ideas – botched burglary; extortion attempt; feud with a third party; the road rage she’d mentioned off the cuff to the police – and the ones that, as the hours had started to stretch, she’d begun to have to entertain: someone Josh had crossed in business; something at Corinna’s work; someone obsessed with one of them – a man or woman scorned, a bunny boiler; the partner of that person.

      Revenge.

      She read the list back. Burglary was still the only thing on it that seemed plausible. Rin and Josh woken in the small hours by a noise downstairs, investigating and confronting whoever it was they found, refusing to stand down. They would have tried to fight back, defend their home – yes, they would.

      The rest made no sense. Josh’s factory manufactured metal springs, and it had been going steadily for decades, probably a century at this point. People he did business with became family friends. Once, years ago, she’d been at theirs just before Christmas and he’d brought home six bottles of Scotch, all of them gifts from customers or suppliers. He’d shared another six between his sales manager and tool-maker. He was an old-fashioned manufacturer, making things that people needed and selling them, not some dodgy property developer, kicking tenants out of their homes, stiffing people on contracts.

      And for another woman to feel scorned enough, Josh would have to be involved with her, surely. He was kind, a gentleman

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