What did Dorothy have except confused ten-year-old memories and a history of payments? She walked past Rebecca, feeling the anger radiate from her. She pictured bad juju seeping through her own skin and into her soul.
She stopped at the doorway to the living room, saw Natalie watching something with talking animals and ghosts.
‘Nice to meet you, Natalie,’ she said.
Natalie turned. ‘Bye.’
Dorothy felt Rebecca’s touch on her shoulder and walked to the front door. Rebecca showed her out, a firm hand on her back.
‘Don’t come back,’ she said as the door closed.
12
JENNY
King’s Buildings was a rabbit warren. Hannah had warned her, but Jenny presumed her sense of direction would win out. But the campus seemed designed to confound, full of cubbyholes, nooks and crannies, hedges and foliage hiding the pipes, concrete and chipped paint of the science buildings.
It was weird being surrounded by students, like they were an alien species. There was an energy here, though, a recklessness to their goofing around that suggested they had no idea of the shitshow life had in store. Jenny pictured herself at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, waiting for them all to point and scream then lunge after her. She felt out of place with her slouchy, middle-aged body, her cloud of cynicism, her slack skin. And she felt short too, how were young people all so bloody tall?
She walked past a group soaking up the sun on a grassy slope. There were more women here than she’d anticipated, putting her prejudices in place. She had been surprised by Hannah’s love of maths and science, her curiosity about the universe and how it worked. She’d encouraged it like any parent would, but she never understood it. Maybe STEM subjects were the way forward. When society collapses and we end up in a bleak apocalypse, the scientists and engineers who can build stuff, purify water and make fire will be in charge. She saw a notice for the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions and wondered about that. The science of having a breakdown or getting a divorce? She spotted the entrance to the James Clerk Maxwell Building and headed towards it.
She entered and looked at the signposts, Condensed Matter to the left, Stellar Evolution to the right, Atmospheric Dynamics through the back, Complex Systems upstairs. Each phrase seemed like a code for something unknowable. Hannah would understand what they meant. Jenny had a flash of dislocation, the fact that a person she’d created all those years ago had such a different life, different mind, to her own. When Hannah was five, they used to play a simple colour-combination guessing game, and Jenny could always win if she wanted to because she knew her daughter so well she could predict what she would choose every time. No hidden thoughts, no secrets, no independent ideas. Of course that changed, it was natural, but it still left a hole in Jenny that couldn’t be filled.
She followed the signs upstairs, fourth floor, room 4.16 at the end of a corridor. There was a poster for the Quantum Club taped to the door, a picture of a tardis on it. They were meeting in two days at The Old Bell up the road. Underneath was another piece of A4 with four names on it, including Bradley Barker.
She took a picture of the door with her phone, then knocked.
‘Come in.’
The voice sounded surprised, as if no one ever came here. She pushed the door. Squeezed into a tiny office were four desks with laptops, piles of textbooks and papers, notices for physics conferences on the walls alongside a poster for Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. There were two guys and a girl here, the air thick with the smell of cheap noodles. The three of them stared at Jenny like she’d grown a second head.
‘I’m looking for Bradley Barker.’
The kid nearest her nodded. ‘That’s me.’ Soft Aussie accent and curly dark hair in a mess. He was wearing small-rimmed glasses and an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. T-shirt.
‘I want to talk to you.’ Jenny felt in control here, but had no idea where that came from. Maybe just the age difference, life experience.
‘And you are?’
Bradley’s hands hovered over his keyboard, and she could see he was playing a game on screen with coloured balloons floating through hoops. The balloons gradually fell to the ground and popped.
‘I’m a private investigator. I need to talk to you about Melanie Cheng.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Has something happened to Mel?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
The other two in the room squirmed with embarrassment.
‘Sorry,’ Bradley said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘It’s Jenny, Jenny Skelf.’
‘Skelf, like Hannah?’
‘Is there somewhere we can talk alone?’
Bradley looked at the other two, eyebrows raised, looking for help. They both shrugged, not getting involved.
Bradley pushed his seat away from the desk and closed the laptop. He got up and towered over Jenny, another giant from the super-tall next generation. She caught a whiff of a scent on him, surprisingly expensive and non-toxic. He was trying to assert some authority as he pushed past her into the corridor.
‘Come on,’ he said, walking off.
She closed the door and followed him, up two flights of stairs to a doorway onto the roof. Out in the fresh air they scuffed over a concrete floor, a weather station to their left and beautiful views to the right. They were next to a golf course and fields, then the Pentlands hunkering in the distance like watchful gods.
Bradley turned at the ledge with the sun behind him, and Jenny put her hand up to shade her eyes. With him looming over her, she suddenly felt less in control.
‘What’s this about?’ he said.
‘When was the last time you saw Melanie?’
‘Is she missing?’
‘Give the boy a gold star.’
‘Jesus, poor Mel.’
‘So what can you tell me?’
He shifted from one foot to the other, lots of nervous energy. ‘This is terrible but I don’t know anything about it.’
‘How well do you know her?’ Jenny moved to the side so that she could see Bradley’s face better. She heard the thwack of a golf ball out on the course, the sound of a van driving by the building.
‘She’s in one of my tutorial groups,’ Bradley said. ‘Solid state.’
Jenny didn’t know if that was the class or some other weird code.
‘Do you ever see her outside of class?’
‘Sure, at the Quantum Club. Hannah goes there too.’
Jenny hadn’t confirmed she was related to Hannah, and she wasn’t about to.
‘What is this club all about?’
Bradley shook his head and shrugged, his shoulders jiggling.
‘Just philosophy of physics, really. Knockabout stuff. Did you know that until recently physics was still called natural philosophy at Edinburgh Uni?’
‘And do you like Mel?’
He frowned. ‘Yeah, she’s lovely.’
‘I mean “like” like.’
‘I don’t know…’ He tailed off, rubbed his chin, pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. ‘I mean, she’s pretty, for sure.’
‘You fancy her.’
‘She has a boyfriend.’
‘So?’
‘Shouldn’t you be talking to him? I don’t understand what you’re doing here.’
‘No one has seen or heard from Mel in thirty-six hours, including her boyfriend, flatmates and family.’
‘I haven’t seen her.’
Behind him, an anemometer spun lazily, the cups pushing warm air around.
‘So if I check Mel’s phone messages and emails, I won’t find you in there.’
He stuck his bottom lip out. ‘Just about tutorials and the club, I think.’
‘You never sent her anything more personal?’
He swallowed and pulled at his earlobe.
Jenny folded her arms. ‘I have her phone and laptop, they’re not locked. You might
as well save me the time.’
‘Maybe I sent a couple of texts.’ He looked as if he was about to vault over the ledge. ‘Asking her out.’
‘Even though she had a boyfriend?’
He shrugged.
Jenny had been through Mel’s phone and there was nothing in there from Bradley except emails about the club. That meant Mel had deleted the texts asking her out. Maybe she deleted other things too.
‘Is that it?’ Jenny said.
She wondered about digital forensics, getting back deleted data, whether she knew anyone who could do that stuff. But she was the wrong generation, if anyone could do it, it would be kids like Bradley or Hannah.
‘That’s all, I promise.’
Jenny decided to push it. ‘That’s not what her phone tells me.’
‘Really?’
Jenny stared. It was amazing the force of a hard stare from an angry middle-aged woman. He was wilting. He was used to being in control, the usual white, male privilege, maybe a dollop of Aussie bravado in there too.
He looked at the Pentlands in the distance, shrouded in advancing clouds.
‘Maybe I sent her a picture.’
Jenny managed to stop herself from sighing. ‘What kind of picture?’
He rubbed at the small of his back, arched his shoulders.
Jenny shook her head. ‘A dick pic?’
He looked at the ground. Jenny heard golfers swapping banter over the hedge below.
‘What the hell is it with guys and dick pics?’
His face flushed and he avoided her stare.
She leaned in. ‘Would you like it if I sent you a photo of my vagina? Would that get you excited?’
He recoiled at the word vagina, like he’d never heard a woman say it before.
‘Well?’
She felt like a schoolteacher reprimanding a little kid. A mum putting him on the naughty step.
‘It was nothing,’ he said eventually.
He backed away as Jenny advanced towards him. She could see a tractor chugging through a field in the distance, a flotilla of gulls and crows in its wake.
‘Really?’
She was close to him now, caught his scent again in her nostrils.
‘Show me your cock then, if it’s nothing.’
His back was against the ledge and he was sweating. He had no experience of this, hadn’t ever had to fend off a sexual advance, an unwanted hand, an accidental squeeze of your breast that wasn’t accidental at all.
‘Come on,’ Jenny said under her breath. ‘Get your cock out.’
He tried to puff out his chest. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
She grabbed his crotch, felt his bollocks in her grip, squeezed.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You’re crazy.’
He went to pull away but she squeezed tighter and he winced.
He was so tall that she had to go on tiptoes to whisper.
‘No woman on the planet is interested in seeing your scabby junk,’ she said. ‘Got that?’
He nodded, eyes wide.
‘Now,’ Jenny said, calming her voice. ‘Do you know anything about Mel’s disappearance?’
She put more pressure on his crotch.
He shook his head, tears in his eyes. ‘I don’t know anything, I swear.’
She stood deciding whether to believe him or not. Still gripping his balls, still angry. She heard a golf club hit a ball, then a man swear.
‘Please,’ Bradley said. ‘Let me go.’
13
HANNAH
She wandered round the exhibition waiting for Vic. She liked The Fruitmarket, the natural light here on the first floor, and the art was always nuts. Next to her were thousands of cigarette papers stuck to the wall in precise order, while in the far corner were some oversized foam sculptures that looked like the bones of a giant extinct species. She wanted to touch everything but the staff were watching.
‘Hannah.’
Mel’s brother was in a tight black T-shirt showing off his tattooed arms, Celtic and Canton swirls from the wrist to the bicep. She hugged him. He smelt zingy and felt very solid indeed. He had every right to be showing off that body. His hair was precisely side-parted and gelled, rectangular glasses that might’ve been for show.
‘Shall we grab a drink?’ he said, ushering her downstairs to the café.
They took a table far from the baristas and the noise of the espresso machine. Hannah wasn’t sure what Vic did here, something to do with community engagement, but he always looked at home amongst the design books, weird art and warehouse décor. The café was busy with young arty types and the older gentry of Edinburgh, red trousers and pashminas. This was one of the spots in the city where elderly bohemians would gather as if responding to a call only they could hear.
A tall waitress with bright-green hair and matching eyes took their order and slunk behind the counter.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Vic said. A brief smile, replaced by a worried look.
‘I was glad you called,’ Hannah said. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘I spoke to Mum and Dad,’ Vic said. His hand went to his hair, a nervous move, checking his parting, sliding his fingers along the scalp.
‘How are they?’
‘Worried sick but pretending not to be.’
Hannah nodded as the drinks arrived. Green tea for her, a herbal infusion for him that smelt of berries and hay.
Vic smiled at the girl with a look of complicity, colleagues together, then turned to Hannah.
‘So tell me what you know.’ His accent had a Dundee twang that Mel’s didn’t. It was strange how people could grow up in the same family and sound so different from each other.
She told him the timeline since Mel went missing. The conversation with the police, the chat with Xander. She hadn’t heard from Mum yet about Bradley Barker.
Vic’s frown deepened and his hand went to his hair again. She watched the muscle in his arm flex.
‘What do you make of this Xander kid,’ he said.
He was only three years older than Mel but seemed mature enough to think of students as kids.
Hannah shrugged. ‘Not sure. He was flirting with a girl when I walked in, but if every guy who flirted was guilty, well.’
Vic nodded. He’d never flirted with Hannah but he knew she was gay from the start, which made a difference. Maybe he was gay himself, though Hannah didn’t think so. The way he looked at the waitress a minute ago.
Vic leaned forwards like he was part of a conspiracy. ‘Did she ever mention anyone else?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Another guy.’
Hannah chewed at her lip then sipped her tea, not bitter enough. ‘I would’ve known if she was seeing someone else.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Did she say something to you about another boyfriend?’
‘She didn’t, but I had a feeling.’
‘Why?’
‘We had lunch last week and she mentioned being out the night before in a hotel bar. I thought that was strange, students can’t afford to drink in hotels. I asked but she was vague, said she was on a date then changed the subject.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Mel.’
Vic shrugged. ‘How well do we know anyone? Mum and Dad don’t know Mel at all, they don’t like the idea of her being with any guy, let alone more than one. There’s a whole bunch of stuff they don’t know about.’
‘What do you mean?’
Vic sighed, leaned back. ‘She was pretty wild at school.’
Hannah laughed at the idea. ‘Come on.’
The look on Vic’s face stopped her laugh.
‘She didn’t want her uni friends to find out,’ he said. ‘She changed a lot when she came here. Straightened out.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘She just had no off switch. Lots of booze, coke and ketamine. Boys. And men, older men. She had a reputation in some of the Dundee clubs.’
‘Where did that come from?’<
br />
Vic shook his head, as if everyone’s motivations in life were a mystery. ‘Maybe that’s why she wasn’t shouting about this other guy.’
‘But she would tell you, wouldn’t she?’
‘Unless she had a reason not to.’
Hannah rattled the teaspoon in her saucer. ‘Married.’
Vic opened his hands. ‘Maybe it’s nothing.’
Someone dropped a plate in the kitchen, the clatter of ceramic on tile, a muttered swearword. At the table next to them, a family of Mediterranean tourists were looking at pictures on the daughter’s phone. Hannah could smell poached eggs and it made her hungry.
‘But she got a few texts while we were eating,’ Vic said. ‘The first one made her smile. I teased her about it but she didn’t rise to it. Then she got another one and didn’t look so happy. Then one more a few minutes later that made her switch the ringer off. I asked but she refused to talk.’
‘When was this?’
Vic sipped his tea, thought for a second. ‘Last Tuesday lunchtime.’
Hannah pulled Mel’s phone out of her pocket and went into the messages, flicked through with her thumb.
Vic narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Checking her phone to see who the messages were from.’
Vic shook his head. ‘That’s not her phone.’
Hannah held it up. ‘Yes it is.’
‘Well it’s not the phone she was using last week.’
Hannah stared at Vic, then at the queue for the taxi rank outside the window.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘She has a secret phone.’
14
DOROTHY
Dorothy watched Abi pound the drums to Sleater-Kinney. The girl had raw talent but didn’t have control yet. So what? Which thirteen-year-old girl has control of any aspect of her life? What Dorothy did with girls this age was show them ways of drumming that didn’t involve having a dick. Janet Weiss was a good role model, powerful when she needed to be, primal even, but never showy like male drummers, never wanking all over the song.
Abi hit the middle eight and tried a fancy fill round the toms, didn’t quite make it back in time. Sleater-Kinney was good for practising tom work too, got Abi away from her hi-hat obsession. The girl’s ponytail was swinging as she focused, eyes closed, slight nod of the head as she powered through the final verse into the chorus. She was in the zone, Dorothy knew the feeling well, when you lose yourself to something bigger, become part of the music and the music becomes part of you. Rhythm was so elemental, taking us back to early humanity on the African plain, tapping into something unspeakable.
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