Page 69 of The Unforgiven

“Last Thursday. I’ve been away rehabbing in Portugal, and I wanted to concentrate so I told her not to text me. If I’m honest, we hadn’t been getting on and I’d told her that I wanted to break up. She wasn’t happy with that, so I wasn’t expecting to hearfrom her. She gives me the silent treatment when we have a row.” He was looking anywhere but me.

“Would she have gone to her parents?”

“They’re away. I paid for them to have a holiday in Tenerife. She wouldn’t go back there – I didn’t think she’d be anywhere but here, to be honest, because she wouldn’t tell her mates if we were having problems. She likes having a boyfriend as a footballer – probably more than she likes me, I think.” He sounded disgruntled. Hurt.

“Why did you tell her you wanted to end things?”

“I thought she was flirting with one of my teammates.”

Red flags were walking up and down the long living room.

“But you hadn’t discussed her moving out?”

“No. And she hasn’t moved out. Her stuff’s still here. The sink’s still covered with her make-up. Shall I show you?”

I followed him through the house to the stairs, then up to the galleried landing. It was one of the biggest houses I’d ever been in, and probably one of the most impressive, if you liked that sort of thing. Modern and light, hardly any colour.

I thought of Nate’s house, the wallpaper samples that’d been on the kitchen island, the original features he was trying to preserve.

They couldn’t have been more different.

“Here. This is our bedroom.”

He led me into a huge room with thick white carpet. I shucked off my shoes before entering, noticing that the bed was unmade, slept in on one side. There was an en-suite, or what would be the en-suite but was more like a master bathroom, on the opposite side to the door. I followed him there and saw exactly what he meant: foundation, blusher, primer, false eyelashes – they littered the counter.

“She hasn’t packed anything from here. Her make-up trolley’s there and she wouldn’t leave without taking that.” Hepointed to a platinum-coloured suitcase in the corner, open with even more make-up in it.

“Has she posted anything on social media?”

He shook his head. “I checked that and she hasn’t, which is weird. She’s got a big following partly because of me, but also because she’s a top make-up artist. She only does couple of shifts at Harvey Nicks a month now. Knowing Ev, she’s pretending she’s been kidnapped by this Push-Her or something so I’ll worry and not want to split up.”

“Would she do that?”

“Probably.” He sat down on the edge of a huge bath that looked out over the expansive garden. “It’s probably that, isn’t it?”

“It’s possible. Let me get some details from you. Have you contacted your friends, and hers?”

Kristian looked glum. “I don’t have any of her friends’ numbers. I’m not on social media to message them either. I messaged her parents, but I didn’t want to make them worry, especially if she was up to her old drama queen tricks.”

“You sound really unhappy with the relationship.” He certainly wasn’t leading me to believe that this was romance of the year. He was making me wonder whether he had something to do with her disappearance, if she had disappeared.

He nodded, still looking at the floor. “I was. Unhappy with it, I mean. But I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her.”

I took some more details: Evelyn’s mobile phone number and provider, a list of names of her friends and parents, a current photograph that he airdropped me.

“Is there anything else you’re concerned about? Anything that makes you think she’s missing as opposed to having gone to stay with a friend and not let you know?” It didn’t look like she’d packed, but then she had so much stuff, it would be impossible to tell if anything was missing.

“She knew one of the women who was killed – Brooke, I think it was. I know they followed each other on social media because they were commenting on each other’s videos and stuff. Evelyn talked about her a couple of times, slagging her off really, but I think she was jealous because Brooke went viral with something.” He lifted his head and looked at me, obviously upset now. “What do I do? Do I go out looking for her?”

“Get in touch with her friends that you can, maybe your teammate’s girlfriends if she knew any of them. We’ll contact her parents and be in touch with you. I’d advise keeping this out of the media but being prepared for it to break.” This was exactly what we didn’t want to happen. The resulting tsunami of press interest would cause hours of work to be spent managing that rather than finding out what’d happened to Evelyn. “Do you have someone at the football club to call so they can be aware if the media do find out and provide you with support too?”

He nodded, looking more certain. “We have a wellbeing person I can call. Should I do that now?”

“I think so. I’m going to call my boss – Detective Inspector Wrigley – and have him assign a family liaison officer to you. Is there anywhere I can make the call?” Because I didn’t want to do it in front of him. Just in case.

A woman is killed by a man who is either her current or previous partner every three days in the UK.

“Sure. There’s a room through the kitchen where Evelyn liked to film stuff. I’ll call Martine. She might come down here.” He ran a hand through his hair and then left me alone, already on his phone.