Free Maxwell's Chain by M.J. Trow

took people in different ways. And it changed from day to day.
    Henry Hall continued. ‘Do you have a picture of Lara? Something recent?’
    The woman got up and fetched a picture from the windowsill. It was crowded with pictures, but there was only the one with Lara in it. ‘It’s not particularly new,’ she apologised. ‘It’s from when she was my bridesmaid.’
    ‘When was this?’ Jacquie asked.
    ‘August, year before last.’
    Henry Hall allowed himself a little mental tick in that box.
    ‘Nothing more recent?’
    ‘No. She left home a few weeks after this was taken. She didn’t take to my husband much.’
    Looking at the miserable old creature hunched grumpily on the end of the sofa, Jacquie could quite see why.
    ‘She had a place at university anyway – Bath Spa – so she would have been going, but…’ the woman’s face crumpled and she couldn’t speak for a moment. There was no move of affection from Crown, no urge to comfort her. ‘But, I expected her back, you know, from time to time. Vacations. Bringing friends back. We’d have made them welcome.’ The last sentence was a wail, a cry for understanding. ‘But we never saw her again. She never came back, not even for Christmas. We rang the university,but she had never even signed in there. She’d just disappeared.’
    Hall was struck, and not for the first time, by the distance of families. Two of his three had gone to university and he and Margaret had driven them both there, saw their rooms, got the feel of the place.
    ‘Did you report her missing?’ Jacquie asked.
    The woman looked confused. ‘No. Why should we?’
    The policepersons looked at each other, bemused. ‘Well,’ said Hall, ‘she was missing, wasn’t she?’
    ‘Well, yes…but…’
    ‘You’d had a row,’ Hall completed her sentence. ‘You knew she had left home on purpose.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose that’s it,’ she said. A slightly unpleasant smirk came over her tear-stained face. ‘And I was newly married. I was, well, you know, otherwise engaged.’
    There was a joke in there somewhere and Jacquie could hardly prevent herself from laughing out loud. And the thought that the miserable old sod caught in the grip of that huge sofa could keep anyone engaged was unbelievable. Maybe he was a multimillionaire with only three months to live. While everyone searched for the next, non-embarrassing , thing to say, there was the sound ofa key in the front door. The door into the lounge opened and a man walked in. He was around twenty-seven or so, dressed in fitness clothes, gym bag in his hand. Jacquie had to admit it; he was frankly gorgeous. Henry Hall was not as instantly smitten as Jacquie. He stood and held out his hand.
    ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I am DCI Henry Hall. And you are?’
    ‘Mike Crown,’ the hunk replied. He turned to Lara’s mother. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ He planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘I am so sorry to be late, but we went to another set.’ He looked at the old geezer. ‘Dad behaving himself?’
    ‘Not really,’ his wife said, gazing adoringly at him. ‘Sit down, darling. I’m afraid it is bad news.’
    ‘Oh, sweetie,’ he said, without a trace of emotion and turned to Hall and Jacquie. ‘It’s her, then. Been dead long? Since she went, I mean?’
    Henry Hall could not keep the ice out of his voice. Now that the family entanglements had been sorted out, it ought to have been better; in fact, it was slightly worse. ‘No, Mr Crown,’ he all but spat. ‘She has not. She has been dead just over two days. In the months between, we believe she has been living rough or in squats, with her dog. She has recently been selling the Big Issue in Leighford.’
    Crown seemed oblivious to his tone. He maybe better looking than his dad, Jacquie thought to herself, but he takes ‘horrible’ to new depths.
    ‘Oh, right. We wondered where she’d gone, didn’t we, darl?’
    Marianne Crown had lost all semblance of distress. Her daughter may be