as though there is nothing else he would rather be doing. He eats, she observes, mindfully.
‘So,’ says Miller, opening up his laptop, typing something into it and then turning it to face Libby. ‘Meet Birdie Dunlop-Evers. Or Bridget Elspeth Veronica Dunlop-Evers, to give her her full name. Born in Gloucestershire in April 1964. Moved to London in 1982 and studied violin at the Royal College of Music. Used to busk at the weekends and then joined a band called Green Sunday with her then boyfriend, Roger Milton. Roger Milton, incidentally, went on to be the lead singer in the Crows.’
He looks at her expectantly.
She stares back blankly. ‘Are they famous?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘Never mind,’ he continues. ‘Anyway, she jobs about with her fiddle for a few years before auditioning for a band called the Original Version. She starts a relationship with a man called Justin Redding and brings him into the band as a percussionist. According to interviews from the time, she was quite controlling. Nobody liked her. They had their big number one in the summer of 1988 and then released one more single with her and Justin, but when that tanked, she blamed everybody else, had a hissy fit and left, taking Justin with her. And that is the end of Birdie Dunlop-Evers’s internet life story. Nothing since. Just …’ He uses his hand to describe something falling off a cliff.
‘But what about her parents?’
‘Nothing. She was one of eight children, from a big posh Catholic family. Her parents are still alive, as far as I can tell – at least, I’ve found nothing to suggest that they’re not – and there are dozens of posh little Dunlop-Everses out there playing musical instruments and running vegan home-delivery services. But for whatever reason, her family didn’t notice or maybe just didn’t care that their fourth daughter disappeared off the face of the earth in 1994.’
‘And what about her boyfriend? Justin?’
‘Nothing. A couple of mentions of him during his brief phase as a percussionist on the two Original Version hit singles. But nothing else.’
Libby pauses to absorb this. How can it be possible for people to slip off the edge of existence like that? How can it be possible for no one to notice?
He turns the screen back to himself and types something in. ‘So,’ he says, ‘then I started looking into Phin. I got in touch with the Airbnb owner and said I was investigating a murder case and needed the name of the last person to rent his apartment. He was very forthcoming, clearly wanted in on the excitement. Justin Redding.’
Libby looks at him, startled. ‘What?’
‘Phin, or whoever that guy was, used the name of Birdie’s ex-boyfriend to check into an Airbnb.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Wow.’
‘Yeah, right?’ He types something else into his laptop. ‘And last, but by no means least, I give you Sally Radlett.’
He turns the screen towards her again. There is an older woman, silver hair cut into a helmet, horn-rimmed glasses, watery blue eyes, a suggestion of a smile, a light blue blouse unbuttoned to the third button, a pale collarbone, echoes of beauty in the angles of her face. Underneath her photograph are the words ‘Life Therapist and Coach. Penreath, Cornwall’.
‘Right town. Right age. Looks like the right career area generally – you know, life therapist. Kind of bullshit thing you’d end up doing, isn’t it? If you were in fact Sally Thomsen?’
He looks at her triumphantly. ‘What do you think?’ he says. ‘It’s her, isn’t it?’
She shrugs. ‘Well, yeah, I guess it could be.’
‘And there’s her address.’ He points at the screen and she can see the question in his eyes.
‘You think we should go?’
‘I think we should, yes.’
‘When?’
He raises an eyebrow, smiles and presses a number into his phone. He clears his throat and says, ‘Hello, is that Sally Radlett?’
She can hear a voice down the line saying yes.
Then, as suddenly as he’d made the call, Miller ends it. He looks at Libby and says, ‘Now?’
‘But—’ She’s about to start foraging for a reason why she cannot possibly go now, but remembers that she has no reason. ‘I need a shower,’ she manages.
He smiles, turns the laptop back to face him again and starts to type. ‘B and B?’ he says. ‘Or Premier Inn?’
‘Premier Inn.’
‘Excellent.’ With a few more clicks he’s booked them two rooms at a Premier Inn in Truro. ‘You can shower when we get there.’ He closes his screen and unplugs his laptop, slides it into a nylon