“I suppose … I suppose Peter might have done it. I didn’t want to think so at the time. But, there was a boy we both liked. It was all very many years ago.”

“Teenage stuff then. Unrelated?”

“It was strange that it was there. Nothing else. There was an accident. Not then, a bit later. It’s all tied up with this place, this manor we used to go to, a game we played. We all felt guilty afterward. It ruined a lot of things, friendships, trust.” I swallowed quickly.

“So he might be upset, then.” Hutchinson put the telephone box down on the table and I scooped it up quickly and put it back in the carrier bag. “Might be … dwelling on the past?”

“Do you usually find them? Missing persons, that is.”

“Most of the time. The kids, teenagers I mean, they can’t keep off Facebook or WhatsApp. Half the time, they post pictures of themselves in their mates’ bedrooms. And then with adults, usually they’re just evading their other half, living half a mile away with someone else. It’s marital, most of it. And people don’t make the effort, they want to use their bank cards.” This had been his opportunity to inspire me with confidence. Instead, he sounded almost disappointed.

“Why do you do it?” The question slipped out. “Be a detective, I mean.”

Mr. Hutchinson blinked slowly. “Why do you do your job?” When I didn’t answer—any satisfactory kind of answer was evading me—he looked down and furrowed his brow. When he looked up, he said, “I like puzzles. Always have. Even though the answers are almost always the most obvious and boring thing you could imagine, there’s a feeling when you’re trying to solve a case, a certain feeling, especially when you’re getting closer, that is. I used to be a chef at a Wetherspoon’s. Nothing wrong with feeding people, especially when they’ve got a couple of pints inside them. This is better.”

After we’d sat with that for a bit, I asked, “What will you do? To find Peter.”

“As you say, I’ll start with the phone. I know people at the providers. It could be very quick. I’ll let you know as soon as I have anything. If we don’t get anywhere, there are other steps we can take.”

He cleared his throat and told me both his hourly and his day rate. I gave him my credit card details, which seemed to cheer him, and saw myself out, fleeing off down the stairs and then out into the street. Despite the difference in surroundings—the therapist had had sunny rooms in a villa in Chelsea—there was something similar about the two encounters, the stream of questions, the flood of weariness.