Part 5 (1/2)

He relapsed into silence, this time studying Sarah instead of part of himself. It felt pretty phony; the Sherlock Holmes approach. Soon he'd tell her she'd been brought up in the North, bit her nails as a child, and had never been fond of dogs. Her expectations weren't altogether dashed when he spoke.

'You're a graduate, aren't you?'

'Yes.'

He looked pleased. 'Which college?'

'Birmingham University.'

'Oh, Birmingham. Yes, I've heard that's very . . . Eng lit, was it?'

In Glit.

'Yes.'

He looked pleased again. 'I can usually tell.' He got up to close the window. On the street below, work was starting up: two men with a jackhammer ripping a stretch of pavement, presumably for a very good reason. 'I was at Oriel,' he announced. 'English, yes. Taught by Morris. You know him at all?'

'I don't think so.'

'Retired now, of course. Well, dead actually. He wrote the book on the Romantics. Furious Lethargy. Wonderful man.'

'Mr Silvermann, I '

'You probably don't need the small talk. A lot of people need putting at ease, they come into my office. They're gearing up to tell me things they can't tell their closest friends, and it makes them nervous, so there I go with the small talk. But you don't need it.'

'Are you good at your job?'

'Am I good at it?' He turned to look at her. In the light from the window he looked younger. 'I won't lie. Philip Marlow, I'm not. But who is? Most of what I'm hired to do, I manage. I suppose that makes me good enough.'

'And what's that exactly?'

'Wandering husbands, missing kids. I do some process serving. But I'll be honest, a lot of it's running credit checks, you do most of it over the phone. I might as well be selling insurance half the time. There's days when it's like watching wood warp. You haven't made your mind up yet, have you?'

'I'm thinking about it.'

'You'll find better if you look around. But that might mean Reading or Bicester. I'm handy.'

'And you've an Oxford degree.'

'It helps the networking.' He produced from his pocket something which for an absurd moment she took to be a rape alarm, and triggered it into his mouth. 'Pollution,' he apologized. 'The air here, I find it hard to breathe. Would you like to tell me your problem, Ms Tucker?'

'I want to find somebody.'

'I can do that. It's difficult to go missing, you know. Really completely missing. There's so many records these days, you're under surveillance wherever you go. Credit cards, traffic control. You'd need to be an expert.'

'This is a four-year-old girl.'

'Probably not ex-SAS then.' He came back from the window and sat behind his desk again. 'I'm sorry, that was in poor taste. The girl's name?'

'Dinah Singleton.'

'She's not your daughter.'

'You sound sure of that.'

'Daughters do go missing, even very small ones. But mothers don't usually look to private investigators to find them.'

'She's a friend. A neighbour.'

He said, 'Singleton.'

'Not an immediate neighbour, actually. She lives up the road.'

'I've read that name recently.'

'Their house exploded.'

'Of course. The house in South Oxford, yes? The adults present were killed. They must have been friends of yours. I'm sorry.'

'I didn't know them. That is, I didn't know her. n.o.body knows who he was.'

'But you know the little girl.'

'Yes,' Sarah said. 'Sort of,' she amended.

Silvermann nodded. 'A friend of your own children, perhaps?'

'I don't have children.'

'And wish you did?'

'What on earth '

'I apologize. I'm simply trying to get a grasp on the situation, Ms Tucker. A little girl is involved in a tragic incident. She has since, I take it, vanished from view. You wish to find her. I'm curious about your motives, that's all. You say you sort of know her. You don't really know her at all, do you?'

'No.'

'But it's important to you that she be found.'

'Of course it is.'

'That hardly follows. Children vanish every day. Sometimes their own parents don't care.'

'Her parents are dead.'

'And you? Are you the Good Samaritan, Ms Tucker?'

'I don't think you get Good Samaritans any more.'

'This is true. We're too afraid of malpractice suits. How did the little girl come to vanish?'