Blind to the Bones by Stephen Booth Page B

young?’
    â€˜I don’t see what that has to do with it.’
    â€˜I just thought you might have shown a bit more interest in what she was doing. A bit more concern for who she might have been getting involved with.’
    â€˜Emma was OK,’ said Dearden confidently. ‘She was sensible enough.’
    â€˜OK? A large city can be a dangerous place for a young woman away from home for the first time. There are all kinds of people she might have come into contact with.’
    â€˜In Bearwood? The place was just boring, if you ask me. Not dangerous at all.’
    â€˜But Mr Dearden,’ said Fry, ‘your friend Emma Renshaw never came home from Bearwood.’
    Dearden stopped smiling and started to fidget in his chair. ‘I went through all this before, two years ago,’ he said. ‘I had the police on to me, and I had her parents after me about it constantly. I don’t know why Emma didn’t come home. I don’t know where she went.’
    â€˜Are Emma’s parents still in touch with you?’
    He laughed. ‘Every bloody week. One day, I’m going to take out an injunction against them for harassment. I mean it. I know they’re upset about Emma disappearing, and all that. But if you ask me, it’s turned their minds completely. They’re absolutely unreasonable.’
    â€˜In what way, sir?’
    â€˜Well, Mrs Renshaw phones me every single week to ask if I’ve seen Emma. And every time I talk to her, it’s as if she can’t remember having phoned me last week with the same question. And the week before, and the week before that. Every call she makes, it’s as if she thinks she’s asking me for the first time.’
    Dearden leaned forward towards Fry. She could almost make out the designer logo on his T-shirt, but not quite.
    â€˜And I know she’s going to keep phoning and phoning me,’ he said, ‘until I give her the answer she wants, which I can’t do. There isn’t even any point in changing my number at home, because she would only start phoning me here. And that would be a nightmare.’
    â€˜It must be very difficult for her,’ said Fry.
    â€˜What about me? It’s difficult for me, too. Isn’t there anything you could do about it? Couldn’t you have a word with her? It’s getting to be a real nuisance.’
    â€˜OK, I’ll mention it, sir.’
    Dearden sighed. ‘Yeah. A fat lot of good it will do.’
    â€˜And Neil Granger?’
    â€˜Neil again ? What about him?’
    â€˜Are you still in contact with him?’
    â€˜Not really.’
    â€˜When did you speak to him last?’
    Dearden shrugged. ‘It’d be a few months ago. I was visiting my parents, and I called in the Quiet Shepherd in Withens for a quick drink on the way back. Neil was in there, with some of his relations. The Oxleys, you know. So we didn’t say much to each other. It was just “hi”. There was no conversation.’
    â€˜And neither of you mentioned Emma, I suppose?’
    â€˜No,’ said Dearden. ‘Neither of us mentioned Emma.’
    â€˜This software you’re developing …’ said Fry.
    â€˜It’s highly confidential at the moment.’
    â€˜Can you give me a clue?’
    â€˜Well, imagine this. The human brain can run routines and recurrent actions, just like a computer does. But occasionally, you get minor damage to the frontal lobes of the brain, which is the system governing attention. Then actions can still be triggered automatically, but out of sequence, or can’t be stopped. The psychologists say it’s the penalty we pay for being able to automatize our actions.’
    Fry looked at Murfin, warning him not to laugh. She hoped that Alex Dearden wasn’t actually a robot but could be stopped at the appropriate moment.
    â€˜It’s a bit like having a dodgy auto-pilot,’ he said. ‘For the psychologists,