‘She has a boyfriend.’

‘So?’

‘Shouldn’t you be talking to him? I don’t understand what you’re doing here.’

‘No one has seen or heard from Mel in thirty-six hours, including her boyfriend, flatmates and family.’

‘I haven’t seen her.’60

Behind him, an anemometer spun lazily, the cups pushing warm air around.

‘So if I check Mel’s phone messages and emails, I won’t find you in there.’

He stuck his bottom lip out. ‘Just about tutorials and the club, I think.’

‘You never sent her anything more personal?’

He swallowed and pulled at his earlobe.

Jenny folded her arms. ‘I have her phone and laptop, they’re not locked. You might as well save me the time.’

‘Maybe I sent a couple of texts.’ He looked as if he was about to vault over the ledge. ‘Asking her out.’

‘Even though she had a boyfriend?’

He shrugged.

Jenny had been through Mel’s phone and there was nothing in there from Bradley except emails about the club. That meant Mel had deleted the texts asking her out. Maybe she deleted other things too.

‘Is that it?’ Jenny said.

She wondered about digital forensics, getting back deleted data, whether she knew anyone who could do that stuff. But she was the wrong generation, if anyone could do it, it would be kids like Bradley or Hannah.

‘That’s all, I promise.’

Jenny decided to push it. ‘That’s not what her phone tells me.’

‘Really?’

Jenny stared. It was amazing the force of a hard stare from an angry middle-aged woman. He was wilting. He was used to being in control, the usual white, male privilege, maybe a dollop of Aussie bravado in there too.

He looked at the Pentlands in the distance, shrouded in advancing clouds.

‘Maybe I sent her a picture.’

Jenny managed to stop herself from sighing. ‘What kind of picture?’61

He rubbed at the small of his back, arched his shoulders.

Jenny shook her head. ‘A dick pic?’

He looked at the ground. Jenny heard golfers swapping banter over the hedge below.

‘What the hell is it with guys and dick pics?’

His face flushed and he avoided her stare.

She leaned in. ‘Would you like it if I sent you a photo of my vagina? Would that get you excited?’

He recoiled at the word vagina, like he’d never heard a woman say it before.

‘Well?’

She felt like a schoolteacher reprimanding a little kid. A mum putting him on the naughty step.

‘It was nothing,’ he said eventually.

He backed away as Jenny advanced towards him. She could see a tractor chugging through a field in the distance, a flotilla of gulls and crows in its wake.

‘Really?’

She was close to him now, caught his scent again in her nostrils.

‘Show me your cock then, if it’s nothing.’