by P. R. Black
‘Currently, we are focusing our efforts on the River Dalton and the countryside surrounding the A928 where Stephanie was last seen.
‘Weather conditions at the time were wet and windy, and anyone driving along the A928 is almost certain to have seen Stephanie if they passed her.’
Anyone with any information regarding Stephanie’s disappearance is urged to contact Ferngate Police, or the Crimestoppers charity.
Lectures. I’ve gone to every single one. Swotty, Neb called me. Something sour in him. Maybe he can see it; maybe he knows. I don’t really care. Yes, lectures. I’ve been to them all. I pay particular attention to one lecturer. And I don’t hear a word. That’s the thing about a Kingfisher. Hard to look away. Beautiful, even with a wide-eyed little fish in its gob.
From the diary of Stephanie Healey
After Georgia had another coffee, she put on fresh make-up, anchored her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose, and stalked the lecturer.
His office, where he held tutorials and occasional meetings of the New Barbarians poetry society, was in a very handsome part of town. It was away from the squat, functional arts block and in a leafy sandstone area. In the early spring sunshine, with that vibrant virginal green tending towards yellow, it looked wonderful.
Despite the warmer weather, Tony Sillars was still wearing a long astrakhan coat that suited being a little shabby, its hemline flailing at his shins like a needy child. He had what Georgia would have recognised as a record bag slung across his shoulder, a brown leather holdall with an incongruously fearsome buckle gleaming in the middle.
He was handsome, which Georgia had been prepared for, but also laughably young, for which she was not. He had a long Roman nose, which suited the hollows of his face underneath high cheekbones, and a strong jawline that was chiselled rather than craggy. Curly black hair he must have worked hard to control each morning shone in the sunlight, straggling this way and that, a glorious mess. Thin-framed round glasses softened an otherwise heroic countenance. She couldn’t help but think: Clark Kent.
He nodded and smiled at just about everyone he passed – men as well as women, Georgia thought, to be scrupulously fair.
She grew tense as he came into the café, and although he had a good look round the seats to see if there was anyone he knew, he did not recognise Georgia. And why would he? she thought.
After a long conversation with a plump, beaming barista, he took a large Americano to a seat in the opposite corner and pulled out clumps of printed paper from his bag. Essays, she supposed. He read with his nose very close to the text, darting forward now and again with an unholstered red pen to make notes.
Georgia had thought through several approach scenarios, each one equally lame. She laid her takeaway cup on the table in front of him and went with the simplest option: ‘Dr Sillars?’
His reactions were the opposite of what most people would have displayed. At first there was warmth, and an easy smile. And then surprise – and not pleasant surprise, either. He recognises me.
‘Dr Healey?’
‘That’s right. I see you’re busy – I can come back another time?’
He laid the pen down and straightened in his seat. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Just a few moments of your time.’
‘I’m extremely busy.’
‘As I say – I just want a few minutes to talk.’
‘I’m not supposed to speak to you.’
Georgia smiled. ‘Who told you that? A lawyer?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Well, this isn’t sworn testimony or anything. I just want to update you on one or two things.’
Sillars looked around; took in the other faces in the café, ones he knew and ones he didn’t. They were all turned towards Georgia and the lecturer.
He smiled at last. ‘Of course you can sit down. If you want to come back to the office, we can have a chat there. I was taking a few minutes to get some marking done.’
‘What’s the theme?’
‘Consumerism in Martin Amis’ Money.’
‘I think I’ve read that one. Is that one of the funny ones?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Does the 1980s still count as contemporary literature, though? I’m, eh, asking for a friend.’
Sillars huffed like a child asked to explain the plot of his favourite movie. He holstered the pen in his inside pocket, closed over the stapled printouts, and fed the papers back inside the bag. ‘Let’s take a walk, shall we?’
*
He was certainly the more awkward of the two as they made their way from the coffee shop to his office building. Georgia felt the late afternoon sun on her face and felt a treacherous burst of peace and contentment. The walk up the boulevard, the world beginning rise, stretch and yawn after the winter, the blue in the sky, all served to cast a spell over her, if only for a moment.
‘I need to invest in a coat for the spring,’ Sillars said, squinting into the sun as it drained through the leaves above. ‘Gorgeous, all the same, isn’t it?’
‘Going to be hot, so they say. For the next couple of weeks.’
You would have sworn his office was a residential flat with a communal entrance; he unlocked a sober police-box-blue door, and sorted through some mail in his cubby hole. ‘Late entries,’ he said, almost apologetically, brandishing plastic wallets filled with more printouts. ‘This is where I have to make a decision; do I go in tough, or take pity?’
‘Take pity, of course,’ Georgia said. ‘Always.’
He smiled at this. ‘I’ll sleep on it.’
She followed him up the spiral staircase. Each door had a brass nameplate, with sometimes florid titles. Behind the door of Dr Rubens, Department of Philosophy, Georgia was delighted to hear raised voices, laughter and derision.
Sillars’ office was at the very top, beneath a skylight. He unlocked the door and took her into a cave crammed with books.
‘You know, this place… this would have been an Aladdin’s cave to Stephanie.’
‘It was. She really caught light in here.’
‘Loved books. From the very first. I mean I always read, always enjoyed reading, always encouraged it, but she’s something else. Story time was treasured when she was a little girl. And it wasn’t long before she was making up her own.’
‘Let me take your coat.’ Sillars took his own off his shoulders with a comical flourish, like he was a courtier, or perhaps a matador, and hung it on a hook beside a standing shelf crammed to the front and back with books. Georgia ignored his outstretched hand and hung her coat on a spare peg.
Despite the riot of spines and titles all around him, his desk was tidy. He bade her sit in front of him and offered her tea, which she refused.
He took a relaxed pose, and asked: ‘What can I do for you, Dr Healey?’
‘First of all, I wanted to thank you for all your efforts in trying to find Stephanie.’
‘It was the least I could do, honestly.’
‘You and the Hephaestians were wonderful in setting up the search teams. I remember that. I remember your face in among them.’
‘As I say… it shocked us all. But I was glad to help. Still am glad to help. I believe she may still be out there.’ He stared right into her eyes. ‘I believe it.’
His sudden sincerity shocked her. She swallowed and said: ‘I feel the same way. It feels the same way some people must feel about an afterlife, or a god. I have to believe it. It’s kept me going.’
He looked for a moment as if he might reach out across the desk and touch her. Then he said: ‘I want to help in any way I can. I was warned by a solicitor not to speak to anyone. She meant “don’t speak to the press”, specifically, but she did warn me to be careful when speaking to anyone.’
‘I understand perfectly.’
‘Great.’
‘I don’t understand why there’s any need to be guarded. Just tell the truth and you’ll be fine.’
A nerve jumped on the side of his neck. ‘The reason I�
��m guarded is because, for a long time, I was suspected of having something to do with your daughter’s disappearance. As I’m sure you’re aware. People think she was murdered. People think I had something to do with it.’
‘That’s one scenario. It’s possible I am talking to my daughter’s killer, right now.’
Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked.
‘It’s not the truth, though,’ he said, in a calmer tone. ‘I had nothing to do with what happened to your daughter. I want her found. Wherever she is, whatever the truth might be.’
‘That’s why I’m here. I think there’s a detail or two that was left out. I want to go over things, carefully. There’s something that might have been missed. There’s a chain of events out there that don’t make sense. That goes from the Friday afternoon she went home from the pub, early, without drinking anything. Then – when the thunderstorm began – she puts on her heavy walking boots, she leaves her phone behind, and goes out for a walk along that damned road. Somewhere along the way, she vanishes. There are lots of elements there that don’t make sense.’
Sillars released a long, low sigh. ‘I cannot imagine how frustrating and awful it is. Sure, if I can help, I’ll help.’
‘I want to know about the Hephaestians.’
‘It’s my dedicated writing group. We meet twice a semester. Everyone’s welcome – undergrads, postgrads, staff… We had a physics professor in here. She’s on the telly now, in fact. BBC4 every other night it seems, explaining how the universe works.’
‘Dorothy Pettifer. Yes, I know.’
‘Anyway… that’s the size of it. I lectured the first years on the modern American short story, and that’s where I met Stephanie for the first time. She was assigned to my tutorial group. She was quiet at first, but you could tell she had a passion for it. You don’t often get that, especially in freshers. I get loads of time-wasters… songwriters, people who come to university without any idea of where they’re going. People who think being a poet will make you a lot of money; people who want to write thrillers you can buy at an airport.’
‘Nothing wrong with any of these things,’ Georgia said, mildly.
‘The point is – Stephanie had a passion for writing. I guess you know that, from what you’ve told me.’
‘Oh yes. Everything had a story attached. When she was a little girl, there was playtime with her toys. It always fascinated me that she worked out every little relationship between them – who liked who, who didn’t like this person or other… Who was in love. Who was jealous. I was never sure where all that came from. She might have seen it on the soaps or in the movies, except we didn’t let her watch a lot of television, so it didn’t come from there.’
‘Maybe just from life,’ he said. ‘Children sometimes see more than we do. And take in a hell of a lot more than we realise.’
‘She was fascinated by stories. It was almost as if there were no minor characters in anything. My husband’s a hoarder – he kept a lot of his childhood toys, soldiers, action figures and the like. We dug them out of the loft one day and let Stephanie have a look. You’d be lucky if she’d started school by this point. She got into the idea of fighting and setting up the soldiers, she played along with that. All the guns, the noises they made. But once the battle was over, she went back to check on every single soldier who got killed. She made them “better”. She brought over her little Sylvanian Families – they were the nurses. All the soldiers were asked about their mummies and daddies, brothers and sisters, their friends… Some were told they could go home. Some had to stay in hospital forever.’
‘Nobody died?’ He smiled as he said this. ‘That’s a sunny nature. I remember that. Do you know, she wrote a poem about all the dandelions who lose their seeds in the wind? The tragedy of being plucked. The delight in seeing the seeds sail off into the wind. It was beautiful because it was like something a child would write. Enchanting, that was the word I wrote in the margins. We published it in our Christmas Review.’
‘I saw it. She was so proud. So was I.’
‘It was the first thing she submitted to the group. She had the touch. Quiet, maybe a bit too much so, to start with… That’s how I found her, anyway. But once she starting talking about her subject, she really came alive. Everyone could see it. There was talent there, lots of it. She’d hardly be the first writer to have a quiet nature. On the outside.’
‘I’m intrigued by the writing. This is mostly what I’m here to talk about.’
‘Well… I look at a lot of writing.’ Sillars gestured towards his record bag, dangling from one of the hooks on the wall. ‘The dandelion poem sticks out, of course. I remember some bits, but not in terrific detail. I’ll help where I can.’
‘I’d like to take a look at some of the writing, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t let you take away essays or manuscripts. They’re university property, really. It would be improper. The police might even have them.’
‘The Hephaestians isn’t an official club affiliated with the university. So you wouldn’t be breaking any rules, there. I’ve checked.’
‘Of course you have,’ he said, a little sharply. ‘Look… if you’d given me some advance notice, I could see if I could dig something out from the files.’
‘You’ve got a filing cabinet there, I see.’
‘That’s right, but… I don’t really have the time to pick my way through it.’
‘I can wait… When is your next lecture?’
‘Four o’clock.’
‘So, you can go through a filing cabinet, can’t you? How long does it take? Unless your filing cabinet is actually a secret passage into Narnia or something.’
‘Mrs Healey, the answer is no. To all of your questions.’
‘Dr Healey,’ she corrected him. ‘It’s all right – the things I’m most interested in won’t be here. They aren’t part of the Hephaestians, either.’
‘No?’
‘No. The things I’m most into are the pieces of writing she submitted to you, off the record.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Her big project. The writing project she was putting together. She worked on it all the way through her first year. I know about it… but I don’t know what it is. She refers to it a lot. In her diary.’
‘Her diary?’
‘That’s right. Her private and personal diary. She wrote one during the Easter holidays, right before she vanished.’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘Well, no, you wouldn’t. It’s a diary.’ She laughed, but he didn’t join in. ‘She talks about the Project – and she gave it a capital P – but she didn’t actually refer to it too much. I know it was non-fiction – something to do with the New Journalism. The kind of thing Tom Wolfe or Ken Kesey might have written. It had a subject – the underbelly of Ferngate. The freaks, the outcasts. Sex workers. And I can’t find any sign of it around our house, and the police don’t know anything either. It’s something she says quite a lot. “I was working on the Project today. Got another two hundred words into the Project…” but she doesn’t talk about what she wrote on the day, and bar one or two little details, I don’t know a great deal about it. It’s very frustrating. I’d like to find out what that is. Do you know what the Project is?’
‘I don’t know, Dr Healey.’
‘Thing is… she mentions having shown it to you, in some form. Are you saying this isn’t the case?’
‘I don’t… I recall plenty of writing from your daughter. There was a short story about a girl who communicates telepathically with a dog. There’s one about a dominatrix who wants to travel back in time to shit on Hitler…’
‘Oh – that’s a cracker. I really liked that one. She somehow managed to be quite tender about it. That’s a difficult sell for a love scene involving Hitler… and shit. And then there’s the story about the tinker who sells bottled dreams to people at a country market. I’ve read all these. I’ve read the n
otes she made on the stories. They were all carefully based on real people, did you know that?’
‘I don’t think it’s uncommon for people in fiction to have real-life antecedents.’
‘She wrote detailed true-life character studies on these people. She said she wanted to fuse fiction and non-fiction… It didn’t strike her that this was something new. It was like she’d invented pointillism, or expressionism, or the wheel. But she was always careful to keep a note of character, in real people. Did you know, for example, that the bottled dream-seller is based on you?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘The dream-seller turns out to be selling shoddy dreams, you might recall. Good for a little while, but the effect quickly fades. After a while people figure him out, and he gets left behind in favour of someone with better products. Someone younger. Someone better at bottling dreams. She called you Kingfisher. In her diaries. And in her notes for the story.’
‘Dr Healey, I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on.’
‘I know. I won’t take up too much more of your time. What I want to know is, how long did it take for you to start sleeping with her?’
‘I’d like you to leave.’
‘It’s good you haven’t denied it. That tells me you might be open to an actual conversation about things, instead of playing footsie.’
‘I can’t say any more about your daughter. I’m sorry.’
‘I mean she was what… eighteen? When you first got together.’
‘I did nothing wrong.’
‘Oh, but you did. It’s right there in the code of conduct. You were given a disciplinary, weren’t you?’
‘I did nothing wrong, and there was no finding of impropriety.’
Georgia’s shoulders slumped. Here it was again; the moment her façade crumbled. It had happened too many times, the past few days, and she didn’t want it to happen now. Her eyes misted over, but this made Sillars more anxious. He got to his feet.
‘Please…’ he said.
‘Look. I don’t care what happened between you. You were what, twenty-four at the time? Not a huge age difference. I met my husband when I was nineteen, and he was twenty-seven. A junior doctor and a student. So, I’m not judging you on that. I know people who slept with their teachers, for God’s sake. I’m not saying it’s right. I know it happens. And I don’t think you had anything to do with what happened to Stephanie.’