The Start of Everything by Emily Winslow Page B

like he’s trying not to hyperventilate. “I really cared about her, right? I really knew her, and now she’s dead.”
    “I’m guessing she deserved it,” I say.
    “What the fuck?” Stephen explodes. “What do you know? No one deserves what happened to that poor girl. No one. What the fuck?” he finishes, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms over his chest.
    “It must have been an accident, then,” says Keene gently.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You just tell us what happened, and we’ll figure it out together,” Keene promises.
    Stephen shakes his head. “I didn’t do anything. She was fine last time I saw her. She was happy,” he insists.
    “Then what makes you think she’s the person we’re looking for?” I ask. “There are lots of red sweaters in the world. Lots of young women who wear them. Is it just that she didn’t give you her real name and number? A woman doesn’t chase you, and you think it must be because she’s dead? Is that a relief, better than rejection?”
    “I wanted more than anything to see her again!”
    “Yes, your letters make that quite clear. Do you make a habit of stalking women who don’t reply to you? We can check on that, you know.”
    “I’ve never stalked anyone,” he insists. “Letters aren’t stalking.”
    Keene interrupts, all good-cop: “Why were you trying to meet up with her?”
    “We were friends. Maybe more than friends. I don’t know.”
    I can’t let that by. “What do you mean you don’t know? Did she say no? Did she fight back?”
    “Jesus fucking Christ,” Stephen says. “No! No. We met, and then I had to go to Cornwall. I wrote her letters and she didn’t answer. I figured she had a boyfriend. But I didn’t know. I just wanted to see her again.”
    “You cared about this girl, right? So do we.” Ah, the pretence of intimacy. Well done, Keene . “We’re going to get the person who smashed her face in. We’re angry about it. And we have to know if we can trust you. We push you, because that’s how we find out what you don’t want us to know. If you did this to her, we need to know that. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want us to do what needs to be done?”
    “I do,” Stephen says to Keene, still narrow-eyed at me.
    “You passed, all right?” Keene says, but I’m not so sure. “We’re all on the side of the angels now, together. All right? Tell us about her .”
    Stephen tells Keene, “I thought she was called Katja. I know she was! The children called her Katja. Every day.”
    “Children?” I interject.
    “She nannied over the Christmas holiday. We lived in East Deeping in a converted manor house. Not together,” he clarifies. “We weren’t living together. It’s flats now. I was staying in my uncle’s flat while he was in Tenerife. I’m working on my next book, and the first one isn’t quite paying the rent yet. He said I could use his place while he was away. She and I overlapped by only a month.” Face in hands, he gets himself under control. “I was supposed to work, but the climbing frame was right outside my uncle’s window. I’d see her playing with the children.
    “The work wasn’t going well. I was stuck, and she was pretty. She was distracting. Finally, after a few days, I got up the nerve to write her a note, but she wasn’t interested.”
    I snort. I didn’t mean to; it just came out.
    “The last day I saw her, that day was a mess with the weather. It was a Saturday, with the snow, remember?” I know the one. Today’s had been just a flurry, but the one in January had been a proper snowfall, rare enough that it pinned a date precisely. “Everyone was stuck in together. The parents were with the kids, so she didn’t have to work. I invited her into my uncle’s flat for a cup of tea. I don’t know what had changed, but she … she took off her clothes.…”
    “Just like that?” I start laughing. Keene’s giving me a kick-under-the-table sort of look, but really? He’s