“But you haven’t called the police.”

I hesitated and shifted in my chair. “I thought this might be quicker.”

“In your opinion, as Mr. White’s friend, where do you think he is?”

“Perhaps he’s just gone away somewhere. Perhaps work got too much for him. I don’t think … I don’t think Peter’s very happy. He’s successful but—” I thought of how Peter had looked when I found him in the American Bar, the stillness as he had sat holding the whiskey tumbler with both hands. “People do that sometimes, don’t they? They just walk out on everything all at once, because they don’t know how to do it piece by piece. Your life doesn’t want to let you go. If you think about it too much, it won’t happen. You’ve got colleagues, projects, subscriptions, deliveries, memberships…”

Hutchinson nodded quickly. “And there’s nothing else you can tell me about Mr. White, about Peter, that may help me find him?”

“You don’t need to find him.” Now the detective looked lost. “I mean I just want to be able to tell his mum he’s okay, to know he’s all right. It might not be that difficult. On TV, the police just look at people’s phone records, or their email. I don’t know if that’s something you can do.” My eyes fell on the box of chicken. I could see his teeth marks. He saw me looking and I felt something shift between us. Mr. Hutchinson swallowed.

“What’s in the bag?”

“I found it at Peter’s place.” I was loath for him to see it, but I took it out and when he stretched out his hand, I gave the little telephone box to him.

“What’s this about then?”

I was suddenly overcome by weariness, a tide of it. I could have lain down on his carpet, inhaled the chip fat, and never woken up.

“There was a phone box outside my house when I was growing up. We didn’t have a phone, well, sometimes we did, but we were always getting cut off, so people would call me at the box at prearranged times, or on the off chance. It got burnt down. Like this. People were always vandalizing it.”

“It used to take ages to get connected again after you’d been cut off, didn’t it?”

“Yes.” In my lap, I gripped the strap of my handbag more tightly. A suspicion took shape that there would be other elements of my childhood that Mr. Hutchinson was familiar with: empty cupboards, say, or lying at school about what you got for your birthday. I wished I had waited for one of the other detectives to call back, someone smoother with a fancier office, someone less like a forlorn hedgehog.

“Do you think it’s relevant? The telephone box?”