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I closed my eyes and listened to the doll. That’s the only way I can put it: it’s not like I was expecting the thing to talk to me. But it’s a kind of synaesthesia, I guess: I don’t have a mind’s eye, I have a mind’s ear. It takes a while, usually, but if I focus my mind and shut out all distractions then most things have a tune, or at least a note or two, attached to them.

This time it didn’t take a while: it didn’t take any time at all. Raw emotion hit me like a wall. I must have gasped, because Steve was staring at me with surprise and concern – and maybe, underneath that, with something like distaste.

Abbie’s emotions when she held her rag-stuffed friend must have been enormously powerfuclass="underline" powerful enough to linger there, like a recording, for me to pick up. Or maybe the power came from the sheer simplicity, because there was really only one impression there: desperate, aching unhappiness, so deep it was like being at the bottom of a well without knowing how you’d fallen into it.

It took an effort not to throw back my head and howclass="underline" if I’d been alone that’s probably what I would have done, because emotion that strong, even when it’s somebody else’s to start with, throws you off balance in all kinds of surprising ways if you can’t vent it somehow.

It took an equally intense effort to put the doll down again: it seemed welded to my hands. After I’d done it, I took a few seconds to recover before I tried to talk.

So Torrington got in first. ‘Is there anything there?’ he asked.

I nodded wordlessly.

‘A – a trail you can follow?’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ I said. It came out more brusquely than I intended – probably the after-effect of all that black misery, still sloshing around my system, but in any case I’m lousy at the bedside-manner stuff: I hate having to explain myself, even to intelligent people who can meet me more than halfway. I tried, anyway. ‘I’m reading old emotions, not current ones. I’m not reaching out to Abbie wherever she is now, just . . . getting a sense of her, as she was when she was alive. But yes, there’s something there. Enough so that I’ll recognise her if I ever see her, or get close to her. It’s a start.’

‘A start?’ Steve repeated. Solicitors know the importance of a contract, even when it’s just a verbal one.

‘Can I keep this stuff overnight?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’

I nodded, feeling a weight settle on me that was different from the weight of Abbie’s emotion. ‘Then here’s what I’m offering, if you’re still interested. I don’t know if I can bring Abbie back to you. Like I said, that depends where she is. If her spirit’s gone on to the next station on the line, whatever you want to call that, then nobody can find her for you and nobody can get to where she is. But I may be able to give you an answer to that question – let you know what the odds are. And if she is still around – still with us – then there are a few things we can try. If she isn’t . . .’ I shrugged. ‘Well, at least you’ll know where you stand. Is that any use to you, or would you rather shop elsewhere?’

Torrington was nodding emphatically, and he started to discuss payment – which most prospective clients get to at a much earlier stage of the conversation. I decided to dodge that issue for now, because I still wasn’t sure how far I could run with this. If I did hit a brick wall I’d want to just tell them that and get away clean: the hassle of returning a deposit would add all kinds of awkwardness to a situation that was already nasty enough. ‘You can pay me if I decide to take the case on,’ I said.

Torrington looked alarmed. ‘But you said—’

‘This first part is just triage. Just – testing the ground. Let’s keep it on that basis for now. There’s no point you laying any money down, in case I come up with a blank. But if you leave it with me overnight, we can talk some more tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to go over this stuff a bit more thoroughly.’

Torrington took the hint and stood up to leave.

‘Should I call you in the morning?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got your number,’ I countered. ‘I’ll call you.’ Looking into his eyes, caught in the headlights of his grief, I relented slightly. ‘Tonight. I’ll try to call you tonight. I should have a bit more information for you then.’

I saw him to the door and he started down the stairs. Before he reached the bottom he looked back, as if conscious that I was still watching. Caught out, I closed the door. There’s something magnetic about tragedy. What I was doing was the equivalent of slowing down on the motorway to watch a wreck on the opposite carriageway. I felt a brief twinge of unease and self-disgust.

I felt something else, too: a sense of puzzlement that I couldn’t quite nail down. The Torringtons had just aired so much dirty linen in front of me, and bared so many wounds – metaphorical and otherwise – that in some ways I felt I knew them a hell of a lot better than I wanted to. But at the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about their relationship that I wasn’t getting; some point where I’d added two and two and got to five. Maybe it was that barbed-wire tangle of emotions I’d picked up from Mel, and the fact that fear seemed so dominant there. Not just one fear, either: all sorts of fears looping through one another. Her love for her husband was strong, too, and it came through so loud and clear it seemed almost like religious devotion. But the fear wound itself around that, too, like some kind of pathological bindweed.

Well, even if I took the job I wasn’t signing on to give them relationship therapy. No sense in worrying about it.

I went back to the sprawl of objects on the desk, but I knew as I stared down at them that I wasn’t ready yet. I needed to fortify myself for that particular journey.

Grambas looked up from his sudoku book as I walked into the café. ‘So,’ he called out, tucking his pen behind his ear, ‘you got a job, Castor?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe. I told them I’d think about it.’

He wiped his clean hands on his dirty apron. ‘Yeah,’ he commiserated, ‘must be tough, your slate being so full. Not knowing whether or not you can squeeze anything else in . . .’

‘Double coffee,’ I grunted. ‘To go. Hold the sarcasm.’

As he was pouring the thick black Greek coffee into a styrofoam cup, Maya walked in with a plastic washbowl full of chipped potatoes. ‘Castor’s in a sour mood,’ he told her.

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I knew that.’

‘You knew it?’

‘Sure.’

‘How’d you know it?’

‘He was awake.’

I got out of there before they could start doing old music-hall numbers. The rain was letting up so I took the coffee and my Abbie-hangover up to the bridge on Acton Lane, where there’s a bench that gives a view out over both the railway cutting and an overgrown, factory-backed stretch of the Grand Union Canal. Call me a hopeless romantic, but that vista appeals to me somehow: London with her pants down, but still trying to keep her dignity.

I sat and sipped the hyper-caffeinated sludge, trying to rein in my black mood while bringing my nerves’ responsiveness up to a point where it might be dangerous to drive. The two goals were probably mutually exclusive, but in the absence of whisky the coffee was what I felt I needed right then.

The painful intensity of Abbie’s residual emotions had taken me by surprise. Okay, psychologically speaking, teenagers are perfect storms: when they’re sad, they’re very, very sad. But still . . . an attractive girl from an affluent middle-class family? Parents who seemed to dote on her, and clearly couldn’t cope with her loss? What was her tragedy? What had made that tide of misery well up inside her to a point where it overflowed into her toys and left a residue that wouldn’t fade?

I wanted to know. And I guess, in the end, that was why I’d said maybe instead of no.

I finished up the coffee, which didn’t seem to have helped much, and headed back to the office. I could leave this until later, but it was on my mind now. I might as well find out how far Abbie’s orphaned treasures would take me. I wasn’t going to be thinking about much else if I put it off.