Kitabı oku: «The Disappeared»
The Disappeared
ALI HARPER
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright
KillerReads
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Copyright © Ali Harper 2018
Cover design Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollins Publishers 2018
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Ali Harper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008292652
Version: 2019-06-13
Dedication
For Harvey and Maggie
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Had I known our first client would be dead less than twenty-six hours after signing the contract, I might not have been so thrilled when she pushed open our office door.
I once read that hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but I disagree. Hindsight distorts the picture, makes us believe we could have done something different, something better. Hindsight opens the door to ‘if only’ and the ‘if only’ is what kills you.
It had been five weeks, four days and six hours since we’d opened for business and in all that time no one had so much as glanced through the window. Despite adverts in every local listings magazine, the only phone calls we’d fielded were cold ones – did we want double-glazing, roof repairs, a conservatory? Jo had been getting increasingly aggressive with each caller. The strain was getting to both of us.
I was alone in the office that Friday afternoon. Jo had nipped out in the company’s battered Vauxhall Combo, ostensibly to buy printer ink – but really, I knew she’d be checking out the latest surveillance equipment at The Spy Shop, down on Kirkstall Road. Jo’s my best mate, business partner, and a gadget freak: not always in that order.
I’d been at my desk when I’d noticed the woman pacing the pavement opposite. I’d watched her through the gaps in our vertical strip blinds. She’d smoked two cigarettes, crushing out the stubs with the heel of her boot. Truth is, I’d been willing her to cross the street and come on in.
So when she did step through the door, my pulse quickened and my mouth went dry. I slid my packet of Golden Virginia into the top drawer.
She was nervous, obviously so. She had blonde hair, cut kind of choppy round her face and she kept touching it, scratching at the back of her neck.
‘Hi,’ I said. I almost fell over the desk in order to shake her hand. She allowed our palms to touch for less than a second, but long enough for me to register the coolness of her skin. ‘Welcome to No Stone Unturned.’
She glanced around. Our office used to be a corner shop, situated at the end of a red-brick terrace, so it has windows on two sides. The rent is cheap, and the interior walls are panelled in a wooden laminate that wobbles whenever we shut a door or slam a drawer too hard.
I watched her drink in the details – the cheap brown carpet tiles, the battered filing cabinet we’d bought from Royal Park Furniture Store – purveyor of cheap crap to low-class landlords. I noticed the pot plant Jo had supplied was looking thirsty.
‘Are you missing someone?’ I asked.
‘Sorry.’ Her voice was soft, well-spoken – the kind of voice that could have worked for The Samaritans.
‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘It must be diff—’
‘Could I speak to an investigator?’
I straightened my spine, remembered to ground myself through the soles of my feet. ‘You are. I’m the …’ I wanted to say proprietor but settled for ‘lead investigator.’ Jo would have punched me.
‘Oh.’ A crease appeared on the woman’s forehead. I cursed the fact we’d given up wearing suits on day four.
‘I’m Lee,’ I said, ‘Lee Winters.’ It still felt like a lie on my lips, even though three months before I’d made it official. I wasn’t born Lee Winters. The Buddhists believe you shed your skin every seven years, and changing my name was my way of forcing the process. I pointed at the two armchairs and coffee table in the corner of the room. ‘Take a seat.’
She didn’t move. I positioned myself between her and the exit and gestured at the seats again.
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said.
‘Give it a chance. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is, and we’ll see if we can help?’
‘I didn’t know where else to turn.’ Her right hand twisted the gold band on her wedding finger. She turned it round and round, over and over. The ring seemed loose, a little too big on her slender fingers. I examined my own bitten fingernails, the silver rings I wear like knuckledusters. As she opened her mouth to speak, I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see Jo pushing through the door, a box of paper in her arms and a Spy Shop carrier bag dangling from her wrist.
‘Hi, Jo.’ I raised my eyebrows and nodded, trying to telepathically answer her unspoken questions.
Jo dropped the reams of paper on the edge of my desk and beamed at the woman. ‘You’ve come to the right place,’ she said.
Jo sounded so certain I felt my shoulders relax. The woman stared at Jo. Most people do. Jo inherited her Afro-Caribbean curls from her Jamaican grandfather on her mother’s side. Her startling blue eyes came from her Liverpudlian dad. They make a stunning combination. It must have been windy out – her hair was wild even by Jo’s standards. The woman turned to me.
‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’ she said, pushing up the sleeve of her dark jacket.
‘Go through to the back room,’ said Jo, putting a casual arm across the woman’s lower back and propelling her forward. ‘I’ll make you a nice, strong cup of tea. Looks like you could use one.’
We’ve got three rooms out back. I use the word ‘room’ in its broadest sense – you have to step outside the kitchenette in order to open the fridge, and how anyone could ever use the gas cooker is a mystery. There’s a toilet next door, but when you sit on it, your knees graze the door. The windowless back room contains a punchbag, as well as a small wooden table covered with decaying green felt, and three chairs. The bag came from the boxing gym round the corner and dangles from the ceiling. I’d spent much of the previous six weeks in there, punching till my arms ached and beads of sweat flew, trying to fight the worry that I’d blown my inheritance on a business that wasn’t ever going to see a client.
The back room also has a broom cupboard – now converted to Jo’s spy equipment store – which has a safe cemented into the brick wall at the back of it. That small metal box had sealed the deal when we’d been looking for premises. We figured the previous tenants must have been dope dealers.
I cleared a space on the table by stashing the playing cards to one side and setting the ashtray on the floor.
‘You smoke in here?’ She didn’t miss much, I thought.
‘No. Well, only in emergencies. I mean, sometimes clients—’
‘Would you mind if I smoked?’ she asked.
‘Oh. No, not at all. I’ll open the kitchen window.’
When I got back, she’d lit a long, dark brown cigarette, and I noticed the tremor in her hands. Jo popped her head round the door and handed me a new client file.
‘Right, yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
I heard the click of the kettle from the kitchenette. I opened the file, spread it on the table in front of me and cleared my throat. ‘So, how can we help you?’
‘I don’t think you can.’ She blew a cloud of smoke into the air. ‘I was stupid to come.’
I bristled at that. It’s personal – the business; my chance to put right what I’ve done wrong. OK, this woman was our first potential proper client, but it wasn’t like we didn’t have previous experience. Besides trying to track down my own dysfunctional family, last year Jo and I travelled to the other side of the world to find a missing person – Bert’s wife. Bert lived next door to my mum, took care of her in what turned out to be her last years. Me and Jo managed to track down his missing mail-order bride, in Thailand, despite not knowing the language. We have a natural flair for finding people.
‘You had your reasons,’ I said.
‘I saw your ad. About reuniting families.’
I extracted Jo’s Initial Enquiry Form and read the tag line out loud. ‘Are you missing someone?’
‘Yes.’
I waited a moment, but she didn’t expand. I coughed again and wished I had a glass of water. ‘Who? Who are you missing?’
‘My son.’
Another silence. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know what to do.’
I tried to sound like a well-seasoned investigator, battle weary. ‘Start with his name.’
‘Jack.’
I made a note on the form as she exhaled. Instinct told me to stick to simple questions. ‘Age?’
‘He’s 22.’ She stubbed out the first cigarette, which was only a third of the way smoked, and lit another straightaway. ‘I was very young,’ she said, in answer to a question I hadn’t asked. But it did make me think. I stared at her, but she held her cigarette to her lips almost permanently, so that her hand obscured the bottom half of her face. It was hard to put an age to her. Older than me, but I’d be surprised if she’d hit forty. ‘He’s had problems.’
‘Problems?’
‘He’s driven us to our wits’ end. We’ve given him everything. Cash. Car. You name it.’
‘And now he’s missing?’
‘Not a word in three months.’
I wrote that down. ‘Tell me about the last time you saw him.’
‘Christmas. He came round for dinner, borrowed twenty pounds.’
‘This was to your house?’
‘Yes.’
‘In Leeds?’
‘Manchester. But he came back to Leeds. He’s a student here. Or he was.’
‘Where does he live?’
She sat a little straighter in the chair and leaned in. ‘That’s why I chose you. You being so close, I mean. The last address I had for him was a squat on Burchett Grove. It’s not very far from here.’
I got a shot in my veins; the feeling’s hard to describe, like I’m kind of coming alive. A trail, a scent of someone. I knew Burchett Grove. Locals called it Bird Shit Grove. It was ten minutes away, in Woodhouse, an area of Leeds favoured by the politically earnest. This was my neck of the woods.
‘Which one?’
She put her hand in her jacket pocket and took out a piece of paper, ripped from the pages of a spiral bound notebook. She handed it to me. ‘I hate going round there.’ Her whole body juddered as if to prove her point. ‘The last time I went, they said he’d moved. I don’t know if they were telling the truth.’
I probably grinned, reading the address. There are two squats on Burchett Grove, and I’ve known people living at both of them over the years. If he was there we could have the case cracked in minutes. I might even know the guy. ‘You got a photo?’
She picked her handbag up from the floor and flicked the clasp. After some rummaging she pulled out a photograph of a lanky teenager in school uniform.
I frowned at her. ‘A recent one?’
She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘He hates having his photo taken. That’s the sixth form. He dropped out a few months after that.’
‘When did he move to Leeds?’
She scratched at the back of her neck again. ‘Five years ago. Hired a van, insisted on doing it all on his own.’
‘What will you do if we find him and he doesn’t want to see you?’ This was a standard question we’d agreed to ask everyone. We weren’t naive. Families often split for good reasons.
She squared back her shoulders. ‘I can live with that,’ she said. I caught a glimpse of an inner steeliness and I believed her. ‘I just need to know where he is, that he’s OK.’
I told her what we charged, and she nodded. Jo had included a blank contract in the file. I passed it to her and read upside down as she printed her name. Mrs Susan Wilkins. As she filled in her address details, she glanced up at me.
‘There’s another thing. You have to promise you won’t contact my husband.’
She stared at me with piercing blue eyes. I shrugged. No skin off my nose. ‘You’re the boss,’ I said.
‘He’s washed his hands of Jack. He’ll go berserk if he knows what I’m doing.’ She pushed the contract back to me, the still-damp ink glistening in the fluorescent overheads.
‘You haven’t put your mobile.’
‘I dropped it,’ she said. She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Silly of me. They’re replacing the screen. I’m staying at the Queens. Could we perhaps agree a time each day where I call you and you give me a progress report?’
‘OK.’ I handed her a business card with my mobile number, and she tucked it into her jacket pocket. I cleared my throat. ‘So, there’s just the matter of the fees.’
‘Yes.’ She opened her bag again and paid the deposit – two hundred pounds – in cash, counting out ten-pound notes from a brown envelope. No Stone Unturned, Leeds’s brand new missing persons’ bureau, had its first client.
And it promised to be a straightforward case – middle-class kid, starts college, smokes dope, forgets to ring his mother. We’d have this in the bag by the weekend, I remember thinking. I had no sense of what was in store for us. Now, as I sit here, trying to write this report and pick through the pieces of the last few days, it’s easy to see that the signs were all there, I just didn’t read them. We fit the pictures to the story we want to hear. And what I wanted to see was a middle-aged, middle-class woman, desperately seeking her son.
Chapter Two
Mrs Wilkins didn’t stay for the cup of tea that Jo had made. She had to get going, she said. I fed Jo the details while our client nipped to the toilet and then we escorted her out of the offices and back onto the street, doling out promises like those lanky kids in town hand out club fliers.
‘This’ll be a piece of cake,’ I remember saying.
‘You’ll know as soon as we do.’
That last one from Jo as we made our way to the back street where we keep the van parked.
I turned to Mrs Wilkins. ‘Do you need a lift somewhere?’
‘I’m parked down there.’ She gestured towards the Royal Park pub, and I wondered what kind of car she drove. I hoped it hadn’t been nicked in the time she’d been in our office. She didn’t appear worried, but then she didn’t know these streets like I did. Royal Park is an area of Leeds that’s an uneasy mix of local scallies and the poorer students. It encourages a healthy, non-materialistic outlook among its residents. As Proudhon said, property is theft. Round here, anything worth nicking is nicked.
Mrs Wilkins’s parting comment was that she’d ring us first thing the next day. Saturday, 9 a.m., she said. The clock ticked, and my pulse raced alongside it. I couldn’t wait to crack our first case, Jo was desperate for a smoke, and Mrs Wilkins had less than twenty-five hours to live.
We jumped into the van. True, we could have walked. Burchett Grove is less than half a mile away; but getting Jo to do any kind of exercise is harder than getting a decent pint in the Hyde Park.
Burchett Grove sits at the top of a triangle of narrow streets that form Woodhouse – a mix of students and locals – mainly long-haired, cloth-capped hippies accompanied by dogs on pieces of string. There’s also the local pub, The Chemic, and, best of all, Nazams – the best curry house in Leeds.
We pulled up at the far end of the street, just before the scruffy rows of brick-built terraces meet The Ridge. The Ridge always scares the hell out of me – a long strip of woodland and ankle-deep mud that separates Woodhouse from Meanwood. Woodhouse is students and hippies, Meanwood is Leeds born and bred. The Ridge feels lawless, a no man’s land, a sea of used condoms, empty cans of Special Brew, and spent syringes – the Russian roulette of country walks. Most women I know have got at least one tale of being followed by some random pervert down there. I avoid it whenever I can, preferring to do four times the distance but stick to the roads and the streetlights.
The curtains weren’t drawn at number 16 but the house was in darkness. The last time I’d been here we’d smoked so much I’d got tunnel vision and had had to walk all the way home with one eye closed.
We marched up the small path, and Jo pounded on the door. A minute later a head appeared at one of the upper windows. I saw a flash of black hair.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ a voice called out.
We both stepped backwards. ‘Just calling,’ said Jo, her leather jacket and Afro more effective than a warrant. I held up a hand. It was obvious we belonged.
He opened the door a moment later. I had the idea we’d woken him up but I’m not sure why, because he was dressed, although his feet were bare, his toenails clean and square. I vaguely recognized him from around.
‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘thought you were the cops or something. What you hammering on the door like that for?’
‘Looking for Jack,’ I said. I tried to keep my tone steady. ‘Jack Wilkins.’
He shook his head. ‘Wrong house. Never heard of him.’ He moved to close the door, but Jo put the palm of her hand against it.
‘Don’t make this hard,’ she said, in a voice I didn’t recognize. ‘It really doesn’t need to be.’
‘Is he in?’ I asked.
The guy rested his arm on the doorframe, so that his T-shirt rose up and I caught a glimpse of black hair just beneath his belly button.
‘He doesn’t live here anymore.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘What’s it to you?’
I hesitated, uncertain whether answering his question would breach client confidentiality, but before I’d decided one way or the other, he sighed heavily and held the door open wider.
‘I get it.’
Got what? It struck me as an odd choice of sentence, but before I had chance to ask what he meant, Jo had stepped on to the doorstep.
‘We need to speak to him,’ she said. ‘Urgently.’
‘The gear,’ he said. He took a step backwards. ‘Wait there.’ He turned and walked towards the rear of the house.
‘Play nice.’ I rested my hand on Jo’s arm. ‘We want him on our side.’
‘What gear?’ she said, as she shrugged my hand off and trailed after him inside the house.
I waited on the doorstep for a minute or so, unsure what to do. A group of students were making their way up the hill. I felt weird just standing there, so I followed Jo, pausing in the hallway to close the front door. By the time I caught up, the two of them were in the kitchen, glaring at each other, Jo with her hands on her hips. I caught the end of her sentence.
‘A few details.’
There was a table in the middle of the room and washing-up stacked to the left of the sink. The room smelled of fresh paint and bleach. The guy said nothing.
‘Nice place,’ I said. ‘You lived here long?’
‘Could murder a brew,’ Jo said. ‘Stick the kettle on.’
‘Murder.’ He nodded his head. His dark fringe got in his eyes and he kept pushing it away with his hands. ‘Nice.’
‘It’s a figure of speech,’ I said. I had the feeling I wasn’t keeping up with the conversation.
‘’Course it is.’ He turned to fill the kettle with water. ‘A brew.’
There was something in his tone that made me doubt his hospitality, but Jo didn’t seem to notice. ‘Ace,’ she said, pulling out her tobacco pouch. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Knock yourself out,’ he said, retrieving three mugs from the draining rack. He wiped each one thoroughly with a clean white tea towel.
‘You said you’ve got his stuff?’ I said. ‘Could we take a look?’
‘You used to be in Socialist Students, didn’t you?’ he said to Jo.
I flinched inwardly. Jo hates being reminded of that time, especially since she’d been asked to stand down as branch secretary when they’d found out she was seeing a copper. Of course, Jo hadn’t exactly been thrilled about what Andy did for a living – but you can’t choose who you fall in love with. Anyway, since that time she’s been more of your freelance revolutionary.
‘Saw you at the Corbyn rally,’ he continued. ‘Pants.’
I wasn’t sure whether he was saying the rally wasn’t good, or Pants was his name. Jo didn’t seem bothered either way, shrugging his comments off, like she was engrossed in rolling her cigarette. Her tongue stuck out between her plump pink lips.
‘Class War,’ he said.
Still no comment from Jo.
‘So, Jack,’ I said, feeling a change of subject was called for. ‘When did he leave?’
He ran a hand through his floppy dark hair. ‘I have no idea where he is.’
‘But he lives here?’
‘Used to. He skipped. A week or so back.’
‘Oh.’ My thoughts of a quick and easy solution to our first case sloped off into the middle distance. ‘Know where he went?’
He shook his head. ‘I have no idea, I swear. Did a runner, proper moonlight flit. Took Brownie’s PS4 with him.’
I took a seat next to Jo as the kettle boiled. ‘Any clue where he might have gone?’
‘Uh uh.’
‘Did he leave a forwarding address?’ I knew as the words came out of my mouth that they were overly naive.
‘Ever heard of someone doing a moonlight flit and leaving a forwarding address?’
‘Pants, what’s your problem?’ said Jo, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back in the chair. ‘It’s not like we’re not asking nicely.’
Pants stared at her, like he wanted to say something, but he checked himself.
‘You said you had his stuff,’ I said. ‘Does that not mean he’s coming back?’
‘No idea. He didn’t tell me his plans.’
‘Can we see it? His stuff?’
‘You mean the stuff from his room?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ I still had the feeling we were speaking in riddles.
Pants thought about this for a moment, then he shrugged. ‘What do I care?’ He moved across to a door in the corner of the room and flicked back the bolt. ‘It’s in the cellar.’
I glanced at Jo. Was it wise to follow a man we’d only just met into a cellar? Possibly not, but six weeks of punching a leather bag had made my biceps swell and there’s a confidence that comes with that. Besides there were two of us, and he was barefoot.
‘After you,’ Jo said to him.
Pants went first, I followed, and Jo brought up the rear as we made our way down the narrow stone steps. When Pants got to the bottom he flicked a light switch. He nodded towards half a dozen bin liners in the corner of a small room that might have been where they once delivered coal. My first reaction was to grin.
‘That’s everything.’ Pants said. ‘I mean, apart—’
‘Can we look?’ asked Jo, already inspecting the bags.
Pants looked at me like he was daring me to say something. I shrugged as he squared back his shoulders. OK, we hadn’t got Jack, but we’d got his stuff: surely the next best thing. There had to be something in there that would tell us where he’d gone, who he was with. An old phone would be great. And we had something we could tell his mother. I practised the words in my head. Yes, that’s right, Mrs Wilkins, we’ve a few leads we’re working on.
‘Can we?’ I asked.
‘Bring them up. It’s freezing down here.’
I hadn’t noticed the temperature, but Pants’s bare toes were crunched up against the cold concrete.
Jo and I grabbed the necks of the nearest bin liners.
‘Pen’s supposed to be taking them to the charity shop.’
‘What’s in them?’ asked Jo, as we followed him back up the stairs, lugging the bags behind us.
‘Crap,’ said Pants. He returned to the kettle, poured the just boiled water into the mugs, while Jo and I went back for the last bags.
When we’d brought them back upstairs, Jo said: ‘They’re not very heavy.’
‘Clothes mainly.’
That wiped the grin from my face. I frowned, trying to make sense of what we knew. ‘He took Brownie’s PlayStation but left his own clothes?’ I tried to undo the knot at the top of the first bin liner, but it was tight.
‘Don’t open them in here,’ Pants said to me. ‘I’ve just hoovered.’
‘Has he got any mates?’ Jo asked. ‘Anyone who’ll know where he went?’
‘Only Brownie, and he doesn’t know.’
‘Where is Brownie?’
‘Out.’
‘Out where?’ said Jo, in a voice that said she was trying to be patient.
‘He’s gone to try The Warehouse again.’
We waited for him to expand.
‘Jack works there. Or he used to. Brownie’s gone down, looking for him.’ He opened the fridge and took out a carton of rice milk. ‘You’re not the only ones, you know. He owes his share of the gas bill.’
That surprised me. People living in squats pay gas bills? Struck me as a bit pedestrian. ‘Not the only ones what?’
‘How do you know he left?’ asked Jo, sitting back down at the table and returning to her roll-up.
‘What?’
She lit the end, her eyes screwed up against the smoke. ‘How do you know he’s not dead?’
Sometimes I hate Jo. She has this way of putting into words the things that lurk in the corner of your mind, the things you don’t want to think about. She just puts it right out there, like there’s nothing to be scared of. Pants kicked the fridge door shut with his foot.
‘He’s not dead.’
‘How do you know?’ Jo stared at Pants without blinking.
Pants didn’t say anything.
‘He might have fallen in the canal,’ Jo said.
‘What you trying to say?’
Wasn’t it obvious enough? I flinched as Jo continued to bat around the possibilities.
‘Been mugged, got run over?’
Jo listed the various tragedies as I tried not to think how plausible each of them sounded. More plausible than someone doing a runner in the buff with his housemate’s PlayStation.
‘Did you try the hospitals?’
Pants raised his eyebrows.
‘How do you know it was him that took the PS4?’ Jo paused and tapped the end of her cigarette into the ashtray on the table.
‘It’s obvious.’ He put two mugs on the table in front of us with a bit too much force, so that a splash of hot liquid leaped over the rim. ‘Who else? There was no break-in.’
I thought I saw him frown, his features darkened for an instant.
Jo didn’t let up with the questions. ‘Have you rung his family?’
He mopped at the spilt tea on the table with a dishcloth and then rinsed it in the sink. ‘He didn’t—’
‘Sounds like you didn’t give him much of a chance,’ said Jo.
I took my first sip of scalding tea. I love it so hot it burns the skin off the roof of your mouth. ‘She’s right,’ I said, after I’d thought about it for a moment. ‘If my flatmate went missing—’
Jo didn’t let me finish either. ‘Ever heard of the benefit of the doubt?’ she asked.
Pants folded his arms across his chest. The beginnings of a tattoo poked out under his T-shirt sleeve. ‘You didn’t live with him.’
‘He could be dead in a gutter for all you know,’ said Jo.
I got a sudden flash of my Aunt Edie, although she’d have said ‘dead in a ditch’. Guilt clawed my stomach lining. She’s my only living relative, and I hadn’t rung her in weeks.
‘Don’t you take the moral high ground with me,’ he said, his voice lower, quieter. He turned away.
I didn’t understand the sneer in his voice. My gaze followed his. I could see the tops of the trees on The Ridge through the kitchen window, still bare from winter and fading against the darkening sky.
‘His family’s not heard from him for three months,’ I said. ‘You can understand why they’re worried.’
He reached for a packet of Silk Cut that was on the high up mantelpiece above a gas fire. He lit one, inhaled in a way that made me think my initial hunch was right – he’d only just got up. As he exhaled he turned back to face us.
‘Oh, we heard from him.’
My patience snapped. ‘He’s rung?’
His gaze flicked to me like he’d forgotten I was in the room. ‘Would have been nice,’ he said. ‘But no.’
‘Then?’
‘Wait on,’ he said, disappearing through the kitchen door towards the hall.
Jo pulled a face, like she didn’t know what he was on about either.
He returned a moment later carrying a brown envelope. He held it upside down over the table and an Old Holborn tin fell out – the old-fashioned kind, orange and black with a row of what looked like Georgian houses on the lid. It clattered onto the table. Jo and I glanced at each other, a weird feeling blooming in my chest.
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Open it.’
Chapter Three
A feeling of dread crept over me. Don’t ask me why. I’m starting to believe in sixth senses and I’m learning to trust my gut. It’s taken years, but, after what happened, well, let’s just say I learned the hard way. I knew whatever it was in that tin it wasn’t good. It had its own aura, a bad vibe, or some kind of shit.
Jo picked up the tin. It didn’t rattle, and I knew by the way she held it in her hand it had weight to it. She glanced up at Pants, then me, and she prised off the lid. I held my breath.
Inside was a small plastic bag plump with brown powder. I kind of hoped it was demerara sugar but a voice inside me said I was clutching at straws.
‘Smack,’ said Jo, her voice rising like she was asking a question, but one to which she already knew the answer.
‘Really,’ said Pants, the sarcasm hard to miss.
‘So …’ My brain tried to make sense of the messages my eyes were feeding it. ‘What? He posted you heroin? In lieu of the bills?’
‘Read the note.’ He tugged it out of the brown envelope, a piece of scruffy A4 paper, folded into quarters, and handed it to me. He dropped the envelope on the table. Jo held the bag, still inside the tin, to her nose. Then she gave it to me, and I did the same, like we were seasoned sniffer dogs. Pants went to stand back by the sink.
I unfolded the note and read it out loud.
‘“Soz, guys. Leeds does my head in. When they come looking for me, give them this and tell them I’ll sort the rest when I can. Sorry bout …”’ There was a word crossed out and I couldn’t make out what it said. Instead he’d continued, ‘“everything, but the less you know the better. Keep the faith. J.”’
‘Did you know he was into smack?’ asked Jo.
Pants looked uncomfortable. ‘Dunno. I don’t want to know.’
‘Who’s “they”?’ I asked, as I read the note again.
‘Funny.’ He glared at me. ‘Just take it and don’t come back.’
‘What?’
‘I’m serious.’
‘No,’ I said, as the realization of what he was thinking crept over me.
‘This isn’t how it was supposed to be,’ he said. ‘Not when we set it up. I don’t want to get involved.’
‘No,’ I said again. I’ve been accused of a few things in my time, but heroin dealer was a new low. ‘We’re private investigators, working for his family.’
‘Yeah, right.’ From his tone it was clear he didn’t believe me. ‘His family.’
‘Did you call the police?’ Jo asked as she replaced the lid on the tin.
‘What, to come to our squat to talk about the heroin one of our housemates just sent us?’ Pants stood with his arms folded across his chest. ‘Take it and go.’
‘Can we take his stuff too?’ asked Jo. She stuffed the tin into her jacket pocket. I frowned at her. She took a slurp of tea as she got to her feet.
‘I guess. We’re not planning a car boot.’
My cheeks felt warm. I hate misunderstandings. But in my experience, these things are hard to unravel. The more you pull, the more you tangle. Still, I gave it a limp shot.
‘We’re not drug dealers, you know.’
He didn’t show any sign that he’d heard me. Instead he continued to speak to Jo. ‘I just want it out of here. We’re on dodgy enough ground as it is.’
Jo had already stubbed out her cigarette, readying herself for the task of moving the bin liners. I folded the note, picked up the envelope and shoved both in my pocket. Pants helped us lift the bags out to the pavement in silence.
There were seven bin liners in all, added to the Old Holborn tin full of smack, and we had quite a haul. We crammed the sacks into the back of the van.
‘If anything happens, will you let us know?’ I handed him a business card.
He frowned, like he’d seen everything now. Smack dealers with business cards. I couldn’t think what to say. The more I protested the lamer it sounded. I stuffed the last bin liner into the van, and when I turned round Pants was already back in the house. The front door banged closed.
‘Don’t think he likes us,’ I said to Jo. She was crouched in the road by the driver’s door.
‘Whatevs,’ she said.
‘He thinks we’re dealers.’
‘Who cares what he thinks? He’s a bloke.’
Jo’s never been what you’d call a man’s woman and you can’t really blame her. When she was twelve, her dad ran off with her Girl Guide leader. He’s just had twins with his latest girlfriend, Stacey, who’s only three years older than Jo. Jo says he’s trying to be the Paul Weller of gastroenterology.
But lately she’s got worse. Five months ago, she caught her last boyfriend – Andy, the copper – in bed with the station typist, and since then she’s declared herself a political lesbian. Whether a political lesbian is the same as an actual lesbian, I’ve yet to discover, but Jo ranks men only a point or two higher than amoeba on the evolutionary scale.
I watched her trying to prise open the plastic cover on the inside of the driver’s door with a screwdriver. ‘What you doing?’
‘Trying to find somewhere to stash this. Case we get pulled.’
My discomfort grew. I wasn’t in a hurry to have anyone else suspect us of drug dealing, and particularly not the police. We drove back to the office in silence, the sky turning a dusky pink.
The offices felt safe, familiar. As soon as we’d carried all the bags inside, I locked the door and flicked the lights on. I made us a cup of tea while Jo quickly devised an inventory form on our second-hand PC. We sat in the front office, and Jo printed off a copy as I opened the first bin liner. Pants, or someone from the squat, had tied big knots in the top of each one, and it took me a few moments to prise it undone, the black plastic straining against my stubby fingernails.
‘Right, one thing at a time,’ said Jo. ‘Remember, this could be evidence.’
I paused. ‘Should we wear gloves?’
‘Shit, yes,’ said Jo, and I could tell she was pissed off she hadn’t thought of it. ‘I’ll run to Bobats.’
Bobats is the local hardware store. It’s open more or less twenty-four hours a day, and it sells everything from firelighters to lock cutters. I wasn’t sure it would sell gloves though; but sure enough less than five minutes later Jo was back with a box of disposable ones. We grinned at each other as we both pulled on a pair.
‘Remind you of anything?’
I shook thoughts of plastic speculums and wooden spatulas from my mind. ‘Probably should have thought before we handled a tin of heroin,’ I said.
Jo held the tip of her pen against the paper she’d attached to a plastic clipboard. ‘OK, what’ve we got?’
‘First up. A black jumper. Men’s.’ I looked at the label. ‘Marks & Spencer. Anarchy in the UK.’ I grinned. Jo didn’t respond. ‘Size: Large.’
Jo scribbled down the information.
‘Yeuch.’ I pulled out a pair of blue-grey underpants, glad of my latex. ‘Undies.’
That was all the first bag contained – clothes, and not all of them washed. The second one was a bit more interesting – a handful of textbooks, a biography of Bowie. A couple of ring-binder files with notes and hand-outs from the university sports psychology department and what looked like an advert dated May 2013 cut from the pages of the Manchester Evening News. ‘“Three Unforgettable Years. You will always be in my heart. Ciao. Roberto Mancini.”’ I turned it over. It had traces of Blu-Tack in the four corners. ‘Who’s he?’
‘Philistine,’ said Jo. ‘Manager at Man City, till he got sacked. Used to play for Italy.’
I put the advert to one side and carried on searching. At the bottom of the second bag I found a wallet containing an array of plastic cards – one for the National Union of Students complete with his photograph. I put that up on the desk as the photo was newer than the one we had. Also in the wallet were a couple of credit cards, past their expiry dates, and one that confirmed him as an organ donor. I tried not to see that as a sign. There were a couple of cardboard cards tucked in a pocket behind the leather – a library card and an out-of-date membership card for Alderley Edge Cricket Club. I guessed the wallet hadn’t been used for years. There was no money.
Jo continued checking the pockets in the heap of clothing in front of us. I’m not known for my colourful wardrobe, but it seemed Jack didn’t wear anything but black. She held up another pair of trousers, and a pair of underpants fell out of the leg. I shuddered. They say clothes maketh the man. If that’s the case, the man we were dealing with was shapeless, full of holes and had a bit of an issue with personal hygiene.
It wasn’t until the third bag that we discovered there was a whole lot more to Jack Wilkins.
Chapter Four
Jo had taken off her gloves and given up writing everything down. Mainly, I think, because she couldn’t keep coming up with alternative ways to write, ‘shapeless black jumper’ or, ‘pair of black canvas trousers with ripped hole in the knee’. As I watched the mountain of jumble grow higher, I did wonder what Jack was doing for clothes. It was March, but still bitterly cold – hardly time to be dispensing with jumpers. Had he decided on a whole new wardrobe direction or had he gone somewhere that clothes didn’t matter?
Which, of course, begged the question, where don’t clothes matter? I sparked up a fag and mulled it over. Two answers came to mind: a nudist beach in the South of France and the bottom of a lake. For some reason I couldn’t get the second one out of my head. I glanced at the clock. Four hours we’d been on the case, and I’d been quietly confident we’d have something for Mrs Wilkins by now. If not her son himself, at least news of his current address. Instead, all I could tell her was that he was mixed up in the supply of Class As and was probably naked.
Jo stood and crossed the room to retrieve the third bin liner. She left behind her a space on the floor, the brown carpet tiles resembling an island in a sea of black clothing. I watched her wrestle the knot for a few seconds, before giving up and ripping a hole in the side of the bag. A volcano of balled-up pairs of socks erupted. Jo frowned.
‘How many?’
The contrast of the neatly paired socks, different colours – blue, grey, tan – next to the heap of the rest of Jack’s clothes struck me. ‘They’re all brand new,’ I said, picking up the pair that had rolled closest to me. They had that unwrinkled freshness of having never been worn or washed. ‘Why would you have a million pairs of brand new socks?’
Jo freed two socks from their conjoined ball. She held them up, like Christmas stockings, then cocked her head to one side, her eyebrows knotting. I thought I heard something, a scrunching sound. Jo let one sock drop to the floor, and I watched her wrinkle up the other, like she was about to put it on. She turned it inside out, and as she did a wad of tightly folded paper popped out. Jo’s blue eyes shone. She’s got the most amazing eyes has Jo and the make-up she wears accentuates them, so that sometimes I catch people transfixed as they’re talking to her. She grinned at me as she smoothed out the bundle, and I realized what it was we were looking at.
‘Wowzer.’
I did the same to the pair I was holding. An identical wad of cash fell out. I picked it up and smoothed out the clutch of twenty-pound notes. I counted them out, as Jo snapped on another pair of gloves. When I’d finished I stared at her.
‘Ten. Ten twenty-pound notes. Ten times twenty? That’s two hundred quid.’
Jo nodded, indicating she had what I had. We both checked our second socks. Same result.
Jo grabbed a third pair. I didn’t, I was too busy trying to do the maths. I assessed the piles of socks. At least fifty pairs. Two hundred quid in each sock, two socks in each pair. That’s like what? My brain refused to do the sums, so I reached for my phone off the edge of the desk, as Jo popped out another wedge of cash.
‘Twenty grand.’ I sat back on the floor, propped up against the wall. ‘Give or take …’
Neither of us spoke for a moment. I felt a shiver, like someone had breathed down the back of my neck. I ran to the window and tugged the string that pulled the vertical blinds closed, making sure every centimetre of the dark glass was covered.
‘Get me some envelopes,’ said Jo. ‘We need to get this straight.’
Jo un-balled sock after sock and counted out piles of cash, every so often stopping to tuck a wedge of notes into a brown envelope and write something on the front.
I sat back and tried to work out what was going on in Jack’s life. If he owed his dealers, why didn’t he just hand over the cash? Why leave it at his house, wrapped in pairs of black, brown and blue socks? Why leave his clothes behind? Had he been planning on coming back?
‘Sixty,’ said Jo, when she’d sealed the last pile of cash into an envelope.
‘Sixty grand?’ I felt light-headed.
‘Sixty pairs of socks. Twenty-four grand.’
I crossed my legs and reminded myself to breathe from my belly and let the weight sink into the floor through my sitting bones.
‘Well. Our first case has been good for business, even if we haven’t solved anything,’ said Jo.
‘We can’t keep it.’
‘You think we should give it to his mum?’ From the tone of her voice, I gathered Jo didn’t think much to this idea.
‘I’m thinking his dealers are bound to come looking for it sooner or later. His note.’ I pulled it from my pocket. ‘It says, “when they come looking for me”. They must know where he lives.’
Jo reached up to help herself to a handful of rubber bands from the desk tidy and bundled the envelopes together.
‘Why would he post smack but not mention the cash?’ I asked out loud. Another thought hit me. We’d just removed heroin with a street value of God knows what and twenty-four grand in cash. ‘Shit. They’re going to go to his house and—’
‘We left them our business card,’ Jo finished the sentence for me. She straightened up from her position and stretched out her back. ‘Might not be a bad thing. They can come round here; we can give them the money; they tell us where Jack is. Everyone’s a winner.’
‘Mmm.’ I wasn’t convinced. ‘If it’s that easy, why didn’t Jack give them the money?’
‘He got greedy?’
‘If he got greedy, why’d he leave it behind?’
‘Maybe he got scared.’
‘If he got scared, why’d he run without his clothes?’
‘I dunno.’ Jo was obviously bored playing twenty questions, which was a shame because I had a whole stack more. She got onto her knees, used the desk to pull herself to standing. ‘I’ll lock this in the safe for now.’
She went through to the back room with twenty-four neatly labelled envelopes, a thousand pounds in each.
‘Don’t forget this.’ I lobbed the tin of heroin at her, and she caught it one-handed. While she was gone, I stuffed Jack’s clothes back into what was left of the bin bags. There were two more bags still to open.
‘The safe’s full,’ said Jo, coming back into the room. ‘Find anything else?’
‘More clothes. Some copies of the Socialist Worker, an old bus pass. Not much to show for a life, is it?’
‘He’s not doing bad. Twenty-four grand in savings.’
‘Hardly think they’re savings.’
‘But still—’
‘What’s not here?’ I asked. ‘If these are all his worldly goods?’
‘No computer, no iPad, no phone,’ said Jo, sitting on the edge of the desk.
‘Good point. Pants said he’d nicked Brownie’s PlayStation. So he’s taken electrical goods.’
‘To sell.’
‘Doesn’t make sense. Why nick a PlayStation and leave behind twenty-four grand?’
‘No toothbrush. No toiletries.’
‘We should ask Pants about that. Maybe they’re in the bathroom. It would be useful to know if he took his toothbrush.’ I scrawled a note on the pad on the desk.
Jo yawned. ‘What now?’
It wasn’t like we had much to go on. ‘Let’s try The Warehouse. They might know something there. And we might bump into Brownie.’
It struck me that I should have taken a notebook to the squat. My memory’s not great at the best of times. I felt like a schoolgirl with an appointment to see the headmaster. How was I going to explain this to Mrs Wilkins?
When I first had the idea for this business, I’d had visions of the kind of experiences Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell preside over on Long Lost Family – the ecstasy on people’s faces as I reunited them with lost loves. Not that I’m in it for the gratitude, but I want to make a difference. I know what it’s like to live with the ghosts of the disappeared.
But I had this quiet but persistent voice inside me, saying that that kind of arm flinging, oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-it’s-you, tears, laughter, hugging experience wasn’t going to be happening. In fact, the monologue inside my head continued, I should keep my nose out. Dealers, large sums of money, smack. It was obvious nothing good was going to come of this.
But it’s like I’ve got this kind of death wish when it comes to family. I’m driven by something I can’t explain, something about belonging and the self-awareness, the understanding that comes with it. I need it to work out.
I need to find the family that works. Because Christ knows, mine didn’t.
Chapter Five
We took the bus into town. Perhaps not the obvious mode of transport for professional investigators, but it’s a habit that’s hard to break. Besides, the number 93 rattles down Woodhouse Lane at a rate of about one every minute, ferrying students into town and college. And there’s never anywhere to park in Leeds.
It was early enough that The Warehouse hadn’t opened for the night. The big black doors were closed and there wasn’t a doorbell, so we hung around outside till we saw a young blonde woman turn the corner and push through the side door. We jogged to catch up with her before the door banged shut. Jo asked her if we could speak to the manager, and she said to come in.
Once inside, she told us to wait by the main door. No one goes to The Warehouse for the décor, but even so I was taken aback at the state of it, empty of its clientele and with the lights on. Bare, damp walls, the floor littered with cigarette burns, the seating areas stained and ripped.
I watched the woman who’d let us in cross to the bar and speak to a bloke with a straggly beard. She returned and told us Bill wasn’t in yet, but wouldn’t be long. She invited us to wait, asked if we wanted a beer. Jo nodded at the same moment I held up a hand to say no. I sighed, but on the inside.
At first, me giving up drinking had been a bit of an issue to our friendship, but Jo’s adapted now. We’d both known if something didn’t give, well, if something didn’t give, something would have given. Probably me. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt watching Jo swig from a bottle of Tiger beer that had beads of condensation on the glass.
Jo sat while I opted to stand, rehearsing my lines for Jack’s mother: It’s not gone quite as well as we hoped, Mrs Wilkins, but …
A tall, gangly man made his way across the dance floor towards us. He must have been six foot seven, a long, lean streak of piss. ‘You’re looking for me,’ he said, and it didn’t sound like a question.
‘You the boss?’ asked Jo.
‘Bill,’ he said. I held out my hand but he either didn’t see or he ignored it.
‘Nothing going at the moment, but if you come back next week, I might have something.’
‘Sorry?’
Jo stood up. She has this trick of making herself look taller than she actually is, but they still looked like a comedy duo as they faced each other. She wasn’t much above his waist.
‘We’re not looking for a job.’ She made the word ‘job’ sound like something you might scrape off the sole of your boots.
We followed him as he made his way towards the bar. He turned his head and spoke to us as he walked. ‘What then?’
The dance floor stuck to my boots as we crossed the room. The seating areas looked manky under the harsh lights, and the heat of the bulbs was making me sweat. God knows what the temperature would get like when the place filled.
Bill ducked beneath the bar and lifted a crate of beers onto the black melamine. He pulled half a dozen bottles out by their necks and stacked them on the shelves behind him.
‘We’re looking for Jack,’ I said. ‘Jack Wilkins.’
He froze for a brief second, so brief I wondered whether I’d imagined it and then resumed his shelf-stacking. ‘Why?’
‘He’s a friend. We’re worried about him.’
‘You and the rest of the world.’
‘Pardon?’
‘No idea.’
‘What?’ Jo was on tiptoe at the bar, straining to hear him.
He turned round, wiped his hands down his trousers. ‘He was on the rota, last week, three shifts. Didn’t turn up for any of them.’
‘Has he rung in sick?’ I asked.
‘Still don’t see why this is your business.’
Jo leaned over the bar, and I saw Bill’s eyes drop to her cleavage. When he got back to her face, he flinched as Jo glowered at him.
‘We’re looking for a friend who appears to have disappeared. No need to be defensive.’
Bill’s gaze flicked to the outskirts of the room, and I knew he was looking for the door staff. No sign of them, which was fortunate, as Jo’d had an altercation with one, heavily tattooed, the last time we were here. The list of places we haven’t been escorted out of is getting shorter; although since I stopped drinking I’ve adopted the role of minder. As soon as Jo shows signs of wear and tear I steer us back up the hill. It’s not that she goes out looking for trouble, but she can’t keep her mouth shut when she’s had a few – insists on intervening in any situation, particularly if there’s a political or feminist perspective that needs raising. She’s obliged to rescue women from unwanted male attention, or to point out issues of gender inequality that may have been overlooked by pissed-up blokes who are out hunting, looking to get their rocks off.
Bill turned his attention back to Jo. ‘Don’t come in here—’
‘We’re private investigators,’ I said. ‘We’ve been hired by his family. No one’s seen him or heard from him and they’re worried. About to call the police.’ I shrugged my shoulders in what I hoped was a disarming manner. ‘We’re trying to find him before that happens.’
He scooped his hair back and tied it with a piece of elastic he had plucked from his wrist. ‘Still don’t know where he is.’
‘When did you last see him?’ I asked.
‘He came to collect his wages.’
‘When?’
‘Pay day’s Friday.’
‘So you saw him last week?’
‘Week before.’ He dumped another crate of beer bottles on the counter and unpacked it, turning his back to us in order to stack the shelves. We waited a few moments before he glanced over his shoulder at us and said: ‘In fact, when you do find him, you can tell him from me, he’s sacked.’
‘Are you worried for his well-being?’ asked Jo. ‘Have you alerted the relevant bodies?’
‘Come again?’
‘An employee doesn’t turn up for work, doesn’t ring. Don’t you have some kind of duty of care? To make sure he’s OK?’
Bill pulled himself up to standing and turned to face Jo. ‘Who do you suggest I ring?’
‘The guy’s disappeared and no one gives a fuck,’ said Jo. ‘Who said society is dead?’
I moved to stand on the left-hand side of Jo so that I was between the two of them. I tried to ease her down the bar, away from Bill, using slight pressure from my right hip. Jo stood firm.
‘Do you know anyone who might know where he is?’ I asked.
Bill continued to stare at Jo. ‘You want me to ring his mother every time he don’t turn up for work?’
I felt genuinely sorry for Bill. He’d ended up on the wrong side of Jo, and when that happens you’ve got no chance.
‘Did you ring him even?’
‘Dint need to. His housemate came here. Said he’d done a runner and took his Xbox.’
‘Pants or Brownie?’ I asked.
‘Come again?’
‘The housemate?’
‘The guy with the piercings. Dint catch a name. Carly’ll know.’
‘Who’s Carly?’ I asked, but Bill clearly considered the conversation over.
He lifted up the part of the bar that snapped to the wall, allowing him an exit route, and picked up the two empty crates. He strode off back across the dance floor without saying goodbye.
I put my hand on Jo’s arm. ‘Steady tiger,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t help to get people’s backs up.’
‘It was a PlayStation last time we got told that story.’ She turned round and leaned against the bar.
The blonde girl returned, the one who’d let us in originally, and took over the space behind the bar that Bill had left. Jo persuaded her to sell two bottles of Tiger beer and asked her to point Carly out to us. She glanced around the cavernous space then gestured towards a young woman coming out of the women’s toilets. She carried industrial-sized toilet rolls, wearing them like bracelets. I led the way across to her, Jo still swigging her ice-cold beer. Leastways, I assumed it was ice-cold. Ice-cold and smooth as honey.
‘Hi,’ I said to Carly.
She frowned, an I-don’t-think-I-know-you kind of a frown. She had green eyes, and freckles splattered across the top of her nose like paint drops.
‘Bill says you might be able to help us?’ I waved in the direction of the bar even though Bill was long gone. ‘We’re looking for Jack.’
A burst of noise splintered through the sound system, bringing the place to life. Sound echoed off the walls as the lights dimmed. The DJ had obviously arrived.
‘What you want?’ Carly shouted to be heard.
Jo raised her voice to compete with the music. ‘We’re looking for someone and Bill says—’
‘You found him?’ Even in the dim light I could see her face grow pink.
Jo was still shouting out the remainder of her sentence: ‘know where his mate is?’
‘You know Brownie?’ I asked, my throat feeling the strain. Was the music always this loud in clubs? I haven’t been in one since I gave up the booze. I’ve somehow always managed to persuade Jo to get out of town before last orders. I realized as we stood there that I’d never come clubbing again because nightclubs are not intended for sober people. Being out of it is part of the deal.
‘How?’ Carly shouted.
‘What?’ yelled Jo.
We all frowned at our separate conversations. My eardrums pounded. Carly beckoned us into the toilets she’d just stepped out of. A hundred memories assaulted me. I always end up in the toilets, no matter what club I go to. In fact, most of my happiest memories of nightclubs are in the toilets. There’s something safe about the confined, women-only space. The volume decreased by a decibel or three as the door closed behind us.
‘You know Jack?’ I asked.
At the same time as she said: ‘Who are you?’
‘We’re looking for him. Know where he is?’ said Jo, offering her one of the bottles of beer she’d just bought.
‘Oh.’ Carly’s face fell. ‘No. Wish I did.’ She stacked the toilet rolls on top of the counter next to the sink, and I caught sight of the watch on her wrist. Almost nine.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘What’s it to you?’ she said, taking the bottle of beer Jo held out and putting it down on the side, next to the sinks. ‘I’ll get sacked.’
‘We need to find him.’
‘Why? Who are you?’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘No.’
I didn’t trust her. There was something about the way she refused to make eye contact.
‘We need to find him,’ said Jo. ‘We believe his life is in danger.’
Carly turned away from us and sank her face into her hands. Silence. I watched her run her fingers over her skin like she was washing her face. Finally, she peeled her fingers from her eyes and said: ‘He’s disappeared off the face of the earth.’
I stared at her. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who. She looked like she might cry as she picked the beer back up. ‘I shouldn’t really.’
‘Do you good. You’re upset. Not heard from him then?’ said Jo.
‘No, not a word,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Friend of a friend,’ said Jo, as I wondered where she was going with this.
‘What friend?’
‘One of his mates. From college. She’s worried about him. What about you?’
‘I work with him, is all,’ she said. ‘“Friend of a friend”? Who?’
‘She doesn’t want people to know,’ I said.
Carly turned to stare at me. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t have to believe us,’ said Jo.
‘Is it Liz?’
I glanced at Jo and we made a face at each other, like maybe we were nervous that Carly was on the right track.
‘You can tell her to get lost. He’s not interested.’
‘Because he’s interested in you?’ Jo asked, her voice sceptical.
A silence followed; well, as silent as you can be when there’s drum and bass throbbing in the background. Don’t be afraid of the silences, someone once told me, they tell you more than the bits in between. Sure enough, she cracked.
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