‘No. It’s OK.’
The café is next to the post office in the same squat stone building, which overlooks a bridge and the tidal channel. Tables and chairs are arranged on the footpath, beneath a striped awning that is fringed with fairy lights. The menu is handwritten on a chalkboard.
A woman wearing an apron is righting upturned chairs and dusting them off.
‘Kitchen doesn’t open till seven,’ she says in a Cornish accent. ‘I can make you tea.’
‘Thank you,’ replies Sacha, who chooses a long, padded bench, facing the door, where she can scan the footpath and parking area. Old habits.
‘I’m alone,’ I say.
She regards me silently, sitting with her knees together and her hands on her lap.
‘It’s a pretty village,’ I say, glancing at the fishing boats and yachts. The first rays of sunshine are touching the tops of the masts. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘That’s not relevant,’ she replies, reaching into her pocket where she finds a small tube of lip-balm, which she smears on her lips.
‘Show me the pictures.’
I take out another four photographs and slide them across the table. The pictures show Evie as she is now, almost eighteen.
‘She dyes her hair a lot,’ I explain. ‘Different colours.’
‘Her eyes haven’t changed,’ says Sacha, running her thumb over Evie’s face, as though tracing the contours.
‘Her freckles come out in the summer,’ I say. ‘She hates them.’
‘I’d kill for her eyelashes.’
Sacha arranges the photographs side by side, changing the order to suit her eye, or some unspoken design. ‘Did they find her parents?’
‘No.’
‘What about DNA? Missing persons?’
‘They searched the world.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She became a ward of court and was given a new name because nobody knew her real one.’
‘I thought for sure that someone would claim her.’
‘That’s why I’m here. I’m hoping Evie might have said something to you – given you some clue.’
‘You’re wasting your time.’
‘But you found her.’
‘That’s all.’
The next silence is longer. Sacha puts her hands in her pockets to stop them moving.
‘How much do you know?’ she asks.
‘I’ve read your statement. It’s two pages long.’
The swing doors open from the kitchen and two pots of tea are delivered. Sacha flips the hinged lid and jiggles her teabag up and down.
‘Have you been to the house?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘And read the police reports?’
I nod.
Sacha pours tea into her cup.
‘They found Terry Boland in the front bedroom upstairs. Bound to a chair. Gagged. He’d been tortured to death. Acid dripped in his ears. His eyelids burned away.’ She shudders. ‘It was the biggest murder investigation in years in north London. I was a special constable working out of Barnet Police Station. The incident room was on the first floor.
‘Boland had been dead for two months, which is why they took so long to identify his body. They released an artist’s impression of his face and his ex-wife called the hotline. Everybody was surprised when Boland’s name came up because he was so small-time – a rung above petty criminal, with a history of assault and burglary. Everybody was expecting some gangland connection.’
‘Were you involved in the investigation?’
‘God, no. A special constable is a general dogsbody, doing shit jobs and community liaison. I used to pass the homicide detectives on the stairs, or overhear them talking in the pub. When they couldn’t come up with any leads, they began suggesting Boland was a drug dealer who double-crossed the wrong people. The locals could rest easy because the bad guys were killing each other.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I wasn’t paid to think.’
‘Why were you sent to the murder house?’
‘Not the house – the road. The neighbours were complaining about stuff going missing. Bits and pieces stolen from garages and garden sheds. My sergeant sent me out to interview them as a public relations exercise. He called it “bread and circuses”: keeping the masses happy.
‘I remember standing outside number seventy-nine, thinking how ordinary it appeared to be, you know. Neglected. Unloved. But it didn’t look like a house where a man had been tortured to death. The downpipes were streaked with rust and the windows needed painting and the garden was overgrown. Wisteria had gone wild during the summer, twisting and coiling up the front wall, creating a curtain of mauve flowers over the entrance.’
‘You have an artist’s eye,’ I say.
Sacha smiles at me for the first time. ‘An art teacher once told me that. She said I could experience beauty mentally, as well as visually, seeing colour, depth and shadow where other people saw things in two dimensions.’
‘Did you want to be an artist?’
‘A long time ago.’
She empties a sachet of sugar into her cup. Stirs.
‘I went up and down the road, knocking on doors, asking about the robberies, but all anyone wanted to talk about was the murder. They had the same questions: “Have you found the killer? Should we be worried?” They all had their theories, but none of them actually knew Terry Boland. He had lived in the house since February, but didn’t make their acquaintance. He waved. He walked his dogs. He kept to himself.
‘People cared more about those dogs than Boland. All those weeks he was dead upstairs, his two Alsatians were starving in a kennel in the back garden. Only they weren’t starving. Someone had to be feeding them. People said the killers must have come back, which means they cared more about the dogs than a human being.’
The waitress emerges again from the kitchen. This time she brings a chalkboard and props it on a chair.
‘What about the robberies?’ I ask.
‘The most valuable thing stolen was a cashmere sweater, which a woman used to line her cat’s bed.’
‘What else?’
‘Apples, biscuits, scissors, breakfast cereal, candles, barley sugar, matches, magazines, dog food, socks, playing cards, liquorice allsorts … oh, yeah, and a snowdome of the Eiffel Tower. I remember that one because it belonged to a young boy who lived over the road.’
‘George.’
‘You’ve talked to him.’
I nod.
Sacha seems impressed with my research.
‘George was the only person who saw Angel Face. He thought he saw a boy in an upstairs window. George waved, but the child didn’t wave back.’
Sacha orders porridge and berries, orange juice and more tea. I choose the full English breakfast and a double espresso.
She is relaxed enough to take off her coat; I notice how her inner layers hug her body. She brushes stray strands of hair behind her ears. I’m trying to think who she reminds me of. An actress. Not a new one. Katharine Hepburn. My mother loved watching old movies.
Sacha continues. ‘None of the neighbours could explain how the thief was getting in, but I suspected they were leaving their windows open or the doors unlocked. I rang my sergeant and gave him the list. He said it was kids and I should go home.’