The Day She Disappeared

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The Day She Disappeared Page 17

by Christobel Kent


  “It’s why she never stuck with one. Brandon? Dunno. Old, young, fat, skinny—she’ll take ’em for a ride but she makes sure to kick ’em off at the end of the line. And she’s not the girl to take advice, is she? Not the girl who takes to being looked after.”

  The speech took her aback. Steve still had his eyes on the road, chin up and defiant.

  “You take Janine,” he said. “She acts tough as old boots, but one cuddle and she’s helpless. It’s why you got to look after her.” Nat opened her mouth, closed it again—because he was right. It was just that she hadn’t ever credited him with trying to work any of it out, what was inside people. “Beth—well. No one tells her what to do. Free spirit, isn’t it? That’s her theory, anyway.”

  His chin went down again and he sighed. “I don’t know that it did her any good, though. I don’t know if she had the right … radar, if you know what I mean. I think she thought she had all the power, and she … she might not have seen something coming.”

  “What do you mean?” She felt breathless, constricted.

  “I think she might not have known. What some blokes are like. She’s worked pubs, sure—but that place, the Bird, well, it’s bloody Disneyland compared with some I’ve seen, on the road. I’m talking…” He hesitated. “Blokes turning nasty, if they don’t get what they want. You can’t always see them on the outside, they might be the one sitting quiet in the corner all night.”

  His face was pale and she could see a sheen of sweat on it. He hadn’t talked like this with Janine around, and she could see why. Nat stayed silent, thinking. They were driving alongside the canal now: it was just visible through some drifts of town weeds, buddleia waving purple spikes. The water was a lazy dark green, the surface dusted with pollen. The foliage gave way to an iron fence. Steve swung the wheel and suddenly they were in the police station’s car park.

  “You talked to her mum,” he said, pulling up at the canal end of the car park, where it was overhung with trees. “Didn’t she know anything?” His face set, uneasy. “Not a single name, like friends from the old days or whatever, somewhere she could go if it all went tits up? Someone to … talk to?”

  “She…” Nat hesitated. “I don’t think she cares.” The light shone low and shifting through the spindly trees. Motes of something, pollen or dust, hung in the green light, and she could see detritus caught in the undergrowth, an old chip bag.

  Steve grunted. “What,” he said, “no one? No friends from school? No relatives?”

  “I got the impression she didn’t give a shit if Beth was dead or alive,” said Nat, and with that she shoved the door open with her shoulder.

  He drove past her as she approached the building and she heard him rev behind her, a small screech of tires as he pulled back onto the road. Not keen to stick around any longer then he had to, but who would? Not Nat.

  She paused outside the door watching him disappear and when she put her hand in her pocket there it was, Beth’s mobile. She took it out and scrolled through the numbers, nothing jumped out at her—they could check through the names, anyway, couldn’t they? The police could. But then there it was, the taxi firm. She dialed.

  “Hello, stranger.” The voice on the switchboard was cheerful. Yes. “Long time no hear, eh? He’ll be wondering where you’ve got to.”

  She didn’t say, I’m not her. I’m not Beth. “Pick us up at the … at the Canal Street police station, in an hour, will you?” she said, trying to sound a bit like her. Trying to sound tough and sweet together.

  There was an intercom crackle, voices in the background. “Been up to no good again, have you, love?” A woman’s chesty chuckle. “No worries, sweetheart. Glad to have you back.”

  A fat bloke was reclining in the waiting area, his belly proud and his legs stretched out so she had to walk around them. She could see a bit of tattoo and three chins; he looked at her from under heavy lids with steady unsmiling hostility. “Donna Garfield,” she said, and the desk sergeant shoved a signing-in book at her. She sat two rows away from the fat bloke, but she could smell him.

  Donna Garfield, when she came, had a different energy about her. She jerked her head for Nat to follow her, without a word, and Nat had to hurry to keep up with her. They ducked down a corridor and into a small bare room, no comfy chairs like last time, a chipped table and hard chairs and a stale smell. “It’s all there is at the moment, sorry,” said Donna briskly, “and I’ve not got a lot of time, to be honest. We’re pushed, but there was something about … well. Try telling the lads, this barmaid’s got a funny feeling about her mate, you know?” Nat wasn’t sure whether this was about female solidarity, or a game was being played, so she kept quiet. “So tell me.”

  “Has something happened?” Nat said.

  “We’ve talked to the lad,” said Donna curtly. “The one works with you. I’m sure you know that.”

  “Craig,” said Nat. “You’d talked to him when I last saw you.” Garfield’s mouth tightened and Nat went on. “I know his mum hasn’t heard from him since you released him.” Keeping her voice level. She felt in her pocket and laid the mobile on the table. She didn’t want to let it go. She pushed it toward Donna Garfield. “I brought this.” She hesitated. “Was it his blood, then?” she said, and she saw the policewoman’s eyes narrow. “On the rag? Blood on the rag, Ollie’s hands were tied up in.”

  Slowly Donna Garfield shook her head and she almost knew, Nat almost knew before she said it. “The blood doesn’t match anything on the DNA database,” said Donna, “but we knew from the off it wasn’t his, we didn’t need to take a sample, not unless Craig Jackson started out as Christine.”

  “You mean…” Something felt numb, her lips, her jaw solid. She couldn’t say it.

  “I mean,” said Donna Garfield softly, “we’re thinking perhaps we would like a look around your mate’s flat, after all.” Putting out a hand, she drew the mobile toward her across the ugly little table. “The blood on the rags used to tie Oliver’s hands came from a woman.”

  * * *

  The taxi pulled alongside Nat as she came out through the car park.

  Down in the basement room she’d told Garfield about Victor.

  “He saw someone, he’s not clear when, a couple of weeks ago, maybe more, maybe less.”

  Garfield was saying nothing, so she elaborated. “It could have been around the time Beth went. A young man, he said, although he’s ninety-odd so maybe they all look young to him.” Swallowing. “A man, with blood on him, coming up from the river.”

  Donna Garfield had leaned across the table to her then, listening at last. “Go and see him,” said Nat, urgent. “Send someone. He’s old, he’s … he might not…” Then the thought of the danger Victor was in overcame her, and she put both hands up to her face, squeezing, hurting herself. Donna Garfield pulling back, fastidious, and Nat pulled herself together. “He needs looking after. He’s got all his marbles.”

  But the policewoman’s face under the bleak lighting had been elsewhere, following a scent. Nat had to actually touch her. “Go carefully with him, will you?” And then the policewoman had nodded.

  Now as the the taxi came to a halt beside her, Nat leaned down to look through the windscreen and nodded to him, yes. It was Don again, frowning up at her, quizzical bewilderment on his face.

  “Hang on,” he said, “they said it was—”

  “I want to go to Brandon,” she said, cutting him short. “Is that all right?”

  He shrugged, smiling, and leaned to open the door for her. “You’re the boss.”

  They were on the edge of the town where the fields began when she saw him—or saw his trail bike, half hidden in undergrowth. “Stop,” she said urgently, and Don swerved, making a noise under his breath, to pull in a little way ahead. A car behind them blared its horn and roared past. “Wait,” she said, flinging open the door, and she ran back. Please, please, please pattered her heart, panic rising. What if he’s what if—

  She saw his head, bowed. And
then she was on her knees in the long grass beside him.

  * * *

  Victor had certainly been interviewed by the police before, but not since 1958, in London, when he had lied to them. A small matter of covering for a friend, accused of an immoral act in a park. Victor had been surprised then by how simple it had been to lie, you only needed to be consistent. And the immoral act in question had not seemed to him anything terrible, not with the war still sharp and clear in his mind, and men sobbing in each other’s arms.

  You also needed not to be afraid, because fear was the thing that would give you away. It had occurred to him then that a man could get away with anything, if he felt no fear, or shame, or guilt. Victor was not that man: remorse tagged him, it wouldn’t let him go.

  He was back in bed: the slow journey to the canteen had worn him out. Softly, softly. Back to bed, take it slowly.

  Police procedure was probably not what it had been then, Victor read the newspapers—but there was something about the heavy-footed approach of the two uniformed men that was familiar. Could it be all that time ago? Half a life. More.

  Perhaps it took so long to understand what immorality was, perhaps that was why one was shocked at how young policemen looked. Richard: his mind settled on Richard. Richard was a bad man. Sophie and Rufus had gone to find something to eat: Victor tracked them in his head, two little soft blips on his radar.

  One of the policemen was what he called too young, the other had some gray at his temples. Victor smiled at the younger one who was holding his peaked cap awkwardly across his groin. The patient in the bed next to Victor, a younger man, with diabetes, turned and gawped as they approached, and Victor began the laborious process of raising himself in the bed.

  Lisa was bringing up the rear. She came alongside the bed to help him upright, and sharply tugged the curtain between Victor and the gawper.

  “These gentlemen—” she began but Victor raised his hand.

  “I know what they’re here for, Lisa,” he said, taking care over his words, speaking gently, and the two men came around her. They drew the other curtain themselves.

  They showed him pictures on a computer device Victor knew to be a tablet: you could see children huddled over them on the caravan site, oblivious to the estuary and the sun until a parent would come and snatch it away and they would disperse, wheeling and shrieking like birds among the tents.

  The pictures were mug shots, some just blurred street photographs, the young policeman holding the tablet upright on his lap facing outward. One was of a young man he knew from the pub—he put out a hand when he saw it and the older policeman made a quick movement forward, saying sharply, “It was him?”

  And Victor sank back on the pillows, overcome suddenly, feeling weakness rise from his trembling hands. “No—no. I don’t … I don’t…” He waited, instructing the fog to disperse, the weakness to halt its progress. He began again. “I couldn’t be sure, you know, unless I saw the person walk up that path again. It was so much to do with the way he walked and how the light is there. How it falls.” The two men watched him, waiting, frowning: he could hear his voice failing, slurring. They didn’t understand him. Be patient, he told himself. Try again. “Might that be possible?”

  It’s someone, he rehearsed in his head, it’s someone I’ve seen, I just don’t know when, I don’t know where. It could be him. It could be that young man. He knew, though, that once he opened his mouth to say this, they would seize on his words. They might misconstrue.

  The policemen looked at each other, the older one shrugged. “A reconstruction?” And he looked around the room dubiously. “Well, it’s more to do, sir, with whether you would be fit enough to attend one yourself.”

  Gently Victor smiled, let the smile flutter there. “Well, why don’t you let me deal with that aspect,” he said carefully, trying to subdue his misgivings.

  A clatter and a squeal came from behind the curtain and Sophie’s face peered in, small, round, paling visibly at the sight of the policemen. She pushed in. “Da— I’m sorry, who … it isn’t about social services, is it?” Looking from one policeman to the other, bewildered at the tablet with its screen now dark on the younger man’s lap. “He will be in safe hands, you know, I—I—I can stay as long as he needs me.” He saw them take in her dishevelment, the wince as she leaned down to restrain Rufus, and the cast on her wrist.

  “Soph,” he said, then, steadying himself, “it’s all right. Dearest girl. Can we have a minute more?”

  When he was sure she was gone, out of the ward, he asked them. Again, they looked at each other, passing questions silently between them. What’s all this? Is this a waste of time, is he gaga?

  “I am worried about my daughter. I thought perhaps you might—at least—advise me? She has a broken wrist and her account of how it happened is really very … vague. Her husband is not … not the man she thought him to be. It isn’t my imagination. Her wrist is broken.”

  He reminded himself, he was not gaga. He waited for them to respond. Although it was, he had to admit only to himself, about a feeling. An instinct.

  “We can get some leaflets together for you,” said the older policeman. “There are helplines. There’s a website.” He listed some names, then, “You don’t have a”—nodding at the tablet—“a laptop? There’s the library in town.” Looking around the ward vaguely as if the limits to Victor’s web-browsing or helpline-calling were only just dawning on him.

  Victor sank back on the pillow again, nodding. “That … leaflets, perhaps. That would be helpful.” The important thing, he understood, was that they should believe in him. He should be credible, because if he was not, if he didn’t manage to impart his information before he … well.

  The urgent thing was Sophie. He must find a way of communicating that to the police. He may hurt the child; the little redheaded boy whose hair felt as soft as silk under Victor’s hand. He didn’t want to think of that man in the shadows down the lane again. Mightn’t he after all have been a hallucination, generated by his misfiring brain; had Victor in fact been very wrong to mention him at all?

  As the policemen shifted, impatient, on their plastic seats, Victor gazed at them. He had to believe that Sophie and Rufus were safe here, no men waiting under trees with blood on their skin. And Natalie must be safe too, and there was Beth, of course, she was safe elsewhere, wasn’t she? He gazed at the policemen. Please let it be so.

  Only the insistent, awful voice that said, You must make sure. The voice that said, A boy, not much more than a child, a boy who has sat at your table and smiled at you—that boy is dead.

  But they were on their feet and going, exchanging glances. “We’ll be in touch,” said the younger man hopefully, but as they left all he saw was their discomfort, here among the sick and old and failing, the unreliable witnesses. Victor thought of his books, his photographs, his small pile of napkins and linen, the counterpane, worn thin, that had covered his marriage bed—he reached for them, he told them, I haven’t gone yet.

  Then a nurse, not Lisa, was there wheeling something alongside the bed, another machine. But Victor wasn’t looking at whatever it was she was reaching toward him to do, because over her shoulder, where she had drawn back the curtain, he glimpsed a flash of Sophie, her face quite white and turning away to look where someone had walked into the ward.

  And then there he was, smiling steadily.

  It was his son-in-law. It was Richard.

  * * *

  Sun on his closed eyelids, he breathed steady, in and out.

  The boy had not been the same. He turned the feeling over, the one act set against the other. Putting his hands to her throat, hearing the clotted sound of the life squeezing out of her—that had been the purest feeling, sap rising inside him, joyful. The leisure to examine her afterward without her eyes following him. And then keeping her, what was left of her, for himself.

  The other one—the boy—had been a necessity, which made it different. Stopping him in the street and sa
ying, I know you. I know you. I’ve seen you with her.

  What have you done with her?

  Not even knowing how close he was to the truth, not then. Where has she gone?

  There’d been entertainment to be made out of it, of stringing the boy along with the messages. He had pleased himself, learned the pleasure, in fact, that was in it, it had pointed him in the direction of the next game.

  Sitting perfectly still, anticipating the moment when he would lift his hands and the boy would stare just like she had, not knowing, not believing. Yes. Days could pass like this, in perfect calm as far as the world was concerned, carrying out the tasks expected of him, smiling, being agreeable. No one ever knew what went on inside. He did. He did.

  Women thought they knew, didn’t they? There was a look on a woman’s face, as if they had the measure. Oh, he’s one of those, they thought. He’s one of those that likes her kneeling, pleading up at him, or legs behind the ears, a doll bent in half, yes. One who wants her to talk or be quiet. He wanted her to be quiet.

  Thinks you’re a child, or her father—and either way, thinks she can handle you.

  She thought she had the measure of him, did she? Natalie. She was the one afraid to climb the stairs at night. Had she found it yet? The little surprise he’d left in the understairs cupboard, more than a week ago now, back when he could walk right in unnoticed with his little trophy, her dirty underwear hanging in black fur, his little joke. Before Natalie realized that she should be afraid, that her doors needed locking.

  You can’t handle me, however short you cut your hair, however hard you frown, nails bitten down. You’re all the same inside. Red inside, because he has seen it, he has seen.

 

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