The Disappeared

by Amy Lord

  She cried harder. ‘I only want to know he’s okay.’

  I rubbed her back gently.

  ‘It’s better if you try to forget him. I know how hard it must be.’

  She pulled back to glare at me. ‘You don’t know anything.’ She scrambled to get away, grabbing for her bag. ‘Why can’t you leave me alone?’

  With a sob, she fled, catching her feet on the uneven ground. I let her go, my insides hollow. I was still watching her when she stumbled over something and fell, landing awkwardly. She didn’t get up.

  I hurried towards her. ‘Are you hurt?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I… I don’t think I can get up.’

  I hauled her to her feet. She staggered against me, then quickly tried to step away, wincing as she moved. I reached out for her, but she pulled back.

  ‘I’m fine, I just twisted my ankle.’

  I sighed. ‘Lucia, it’s a long walk back to your flat. Let me help you. I can call my driver to come and get us.’

  She stared at the ground. ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’ll have to help you to the road. Here, lean against me.’

  She had no option; she had to allow my arm to slide around her waist as we shuffled slowly towards the street.

  I took a deep breath. ‘I never meant to upset you. But you must realise that, with his crimes, Matthew can’t be released. It would be too dangerous.’

  Her whole body stiffened. She didn’t reply.

  I started to get annoyed. ‘I wish you would see it from my point of view. What would happen if we let people carry on however they like?’

  She stopped walking, standing awkwardly to save her injured ankle. ‘Matthew’s not a criminal! He teaches poetry and reads fiction with his students. He helps them understand art and meaning. He loves books, and that’s all.’

  I grasped her upper arms, meeting her gaze intently.

  ‘In the right hands, a book can be a weapon. What has he done for any of those students, except fill their heads with pointless dreams? It’s fiction alright; he lectures them on a different world, one that doesn’t exist any more. And there’s no place for him here. Not if he can’t understand that.’

  ‘But he’s my husband,’ she wept. ‘He’s a father. You’ve ripped my family apart.’

  Gently, I cupped her chin in my fingers and made her look at me.

  ‘Matthew did that. Matthew tore your family apart. I’m trying to help you pick up the pieces.’

  She was beautiful. Her cheeks were flushed with colour. I kissed her angrily, my hand sliding to her neck. She resisted, her fists pushing against my shoulders. I wouldn’t let her twist her face away. She bit my lip, hard. I felt a rush of blood from the broken skin. Shocked, I jerked away.

  ‘What the hell…’

  Her palm cracked across my cheek. The noise reverberated across the river. A flock of birds took fright, bursting skywards in a frenzy of beating wings. We stared at each other, her eyes searching mine, trying to find some kind of answer. I wished I knew what the question was.

  I blinked and she was kissing me, her body pressed against mine. I staggered under the unexpected weight, my arms going around her waist, eyes still wide open in surprise. Her mouth was fierce, demanding something I desperately wanted to give. I found my footing, hands going back to her face, reaching up to pull at her hair. She moaned and every inch of my skin screamed at me. I lost myself in it.

  But in that moment, I thought of her husband. How the fire flickered in his eyes as he watched his books burn. How the light went out of him as the flames died.

  *

  I was buoyant the next morning, strutting into his cell, fit to burst with the knowledge that his wife had moved on. She had chosen me.

  It made him seem all the more pitiful, slumped in his chair, hands cuffed behind him, securing him to a ring bolted deep into the floor. He didn’t look up when I came in. My nose curled. He stank. His clothes were filthy. I could still smell the taint of the fire on him.

  ‘Good morning, Professor Winter.’ My voice was cheerful, too loud in the confines of the small room. He flinched at the sound, retreating further into himself.

  I wanted to scream in his face, tell him to forget about his wife. I knew he was clinging on to her, picturing her in his mind. It provoked something in the pit of my stomach, to think of the things he had shared with her, the things they’d done. I wanted to be closer to her than anyone had ever been. If that meant I had to obliterate him, slowly, systematically, then so be it. He was nothing beside me. I puffed my chest out as I sneered down at his scrawny arms, the flesh purple and weeping.

  He looked up at me and the sheer need in his face was unnerving.

  ‘I thought of something I wanted to tell you today.’ His voice was hoarse, little more than a whisper.

  I folded my arms and waited.

  ‘It’s about a man who used to print pamphlets of poetry.’ I looked bored. He hurried on, trying to win back my attention. ‘But they were propaganda. He would hide codes in them too, in layers. Clever, really.’

  I frowned and he tried to backpedal. ‘Not that I ever…’

  I held up a hand and he fell silent, lip trembling.

  ‘Give me this man’s name.’

  He told me. It was so easy now; almost not worth bothering. I glanced up at the camera. Somewhere, that name would be noted in a file. Another one for the bag squad.

  I nodded. ‘Thank you, Professor. That’s very useful. It’s good to see that you’re starting to come round to our way of thinking; to understand how important our work is.’

  He nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, yes. I’m sorry I didn’t see it before. I just want to help.’

  ‘Well, that certainly makes things easier for me.’ A thought popped into my head. I had to fight the urge to smile. To cover the twitching at the corners of my mouth, I pushed up my sleeve and checked my watch. ‘And as you’ve been so helpful, I think we can end today’s session there.’

  I could almost smell the relief coming off him in waves. His body relaxed visibly.

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ He closed his eyes.

  I couldn’t contain my smirk. ‘You know…’ I said, checking my watch again. ‘I might have time to… no, perhaps not.’ I pulled a sad face.

  But I could see that I’d hooked him. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ I made a show of pretending that I shouldn’t tell him. ‘I’ve met a rather charming woman. Now that we’ve cut our session short, I might be able to meet her for lunch. Take her somewhere nice.’

  He leaned forward a little. ‘What’s she like?’

  My lips curved into a smile. ‘Oh, she’s beautiful.’

  Sixteen

  Her name had been on my lips all day. I’d wanted so badly to tell the professor that his wife was mine, that I’d been seeing her for weeks. That she’d been in my bed, while he’d been rotting in his cell, whispering her name just to make it through the night.

  She’d been in my bed and I still couldn’t get enough of her. She was in my blood. I pushed Matthew Winter further than I’d ever pushed a prisoner before, driving him to the brink of his sanity and then pulling him back inch by inch, until he relied on me; as though I was the one who had saved his life.

  But it wasn’t enough. His wife was mine, but there was something she held deep inside herself that I couldn’t get close to. She would shutter it away, where my probing fingers couldn’t reach. It was her heart. It was my obsession. It wasn’t enough that I could possess her body; I wanted her to love me. I wanted to obliterate his memory so completely it would be as though he never existed.

  *

  When I went to visit her that night, I took a bouquet of delicate flowers that I had gathered from my own garden. It had taken me almost an hour of traipsing around the flowerbeds, through the long grass, trying to find enough. I cursed as I caught my hand on a thorn, a bubble of blood welling up from the skin. With a rush of an
noyance I wiped it away, smearing it dark red against the pale flesh of my hand. I pictured blood streaking the white walls as the bag squad beat the professor. I stood in the observation room in near darkness, pupils dilating as they smashed his face against the wall.

  The flowers were in my hand as I approached her front door, rubbing at my hair where it refused to lay flat. I knocked and the silence echoed around me.

  It was the girl who opened the door. Expecting Lucia, I thrust the wild flowers forward with my most charming smile. The child stared at me blankly. I froze, the smile fixed on my face. I could feel it cracking as the muscles tightened. There was something unnatural about the girl. She turned my stomach.

  I thought about pushing past her into the apartment, but that wouldn’t give the right impression. And something about the idea of touching her gave me chills. So I waited. When she moved aside I slipped past her, the rictus grin dissolving in relief.

  ‘Lucia!’

  She sat on the bed, her back to me. ‘Darius.’ Her voice was a whisper. It always made me shiver when she said my name, but this was different.

  I discarded the flowers that I had gathered so painstakingly; they fell to the floor somewhere with a rustle.

  When I saw the bruises I thought I might hurt someone. Her eye was swollen and several shades of black, some I had never even seen before. Her soft lips were split. Livid finger marks and welts climbed her arms; she saw me taking in each injury and tugged her sleeves down to hide the wounds. I glared at the girl. She stared back at me, her eyes burning with challenge.

  ‘Darius,’ her voice pulled at the edges of my consciousness and I swam back from the depths of my rage. ‘It’s fine, it was an accident. I wasn’t watching what I was doing at work and I fell down some stairs. It was my own stupid fault.’

  The image of the welts on her arms was seared into my brain. I knew exactly what a strap mark looked like.

  I felt wild. I grabbed her elbows and she gasped in pain. Her eyes widened as I dragged her closer and I could see my fury reflected there, burning through her fear.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

  It was the girl who spoke.

  ‘Clara, no,’ her mother tried to plead. I let go of her arms, my attention on the child.

  ‘He hurt you, mama. I heard him.’ Lucia began to cry, like an animal caught in a trap.

  ‘Tell me who.’ My voice was dangerously low. Clara met my eye and I could see it in her; she knew what her answer would mean. She wanted revenge.

  The silence in the room stretched out so far I thought it would break. My nerves were taut. My fists balled up so tightly that my nails scraped the skin from my palms.

  ‘It was the man from the theatre. Mama’s boss.’

  I couldn’t look at Lucia. My voice threatened to shatter as I asked, ‘Did he…?’

  With a stricken sob she said, ‘No.’

  I closed my eyes and took a long breath, before I sat down beside her on the bed and opened my arms. I let her fold her body against my chest, unsure what other injuries I might find beneath her clothes. We sat together as she cried, the tears scarring my lapel.

  Leaving us there alone, Clara slipped into her bedroom, her reprisal set in motion.

  *

  The street was quiet when we pulled up outside the theatre in a fleet of unmarked vans. The doors swung open as one, disgorging thirty members of the bag squad, their boots polished to a shine, hair cropped close. They melted into formation as they waited for me.

  Slowly, I pulled the earphones from my ears, silencing the strains of Mozart. I took a long, deep breath, closing my eyes. Lucia’s bruises were fresh in my mind. I pictured her flinching away from me as I touched her too hard, a pained noise caught in her throat.

  I got out of the van and slammed the door. It wasn’t a time for speeches or commands. I walked halfway up the theatre steps and turned to rake my eyes over my men.

  ‘With me.’

  They thundered up the stone stairs behind me as I blasted through reception, ignoring the girl behind the desk as she leapt to her feet. They followed me and she was swept away by the tide.

  I burst through the STAFF ONLY door and ran up the narrow stairs two at a time, the sound of my steps muffled by the faded carpet, the pile stained and thinning. Lucia’s office was at the back of the building. I’d visited her there once, when I took her out to lunch. That day the windows were wide open, light pouring in along with the stifling heat from the late summer streets. She stood up to greet me with a smile, the blue fabric of her skirt swirling around her legs.

  This time she didn’t stand. She was wearing thick black tights and a long-sleeved blouse, despite the lingering heat. She’d done her best to cover the marks on her face, but nothing could hide the broken look that haunted her eyes.

  As we exploded into that room, so much smaller now, she cast her gaze downwards, fingers hovering over the keyboard. I wondered what she had been about to type.

  He leapt up from his seat, mouth dropping wide.

  ‘What… what’s the meaning of this?’ His attempt at authority fell flat, somewhere in the air between us. I stared at him until he looked away, a slight cough marking his discomfort. The other women who shared the office were rigid in their seats.

  I didn’t speak. The bag squad were silent at my back, not so much as a squeak of leather from an errant boot or the rustle of clothes as their owner fidgeted impatiently.

  I stared at him, taking in the grey stains beneath his arms, the rings on his shirt emphasising another day’s sweat. There was a fat signet ring on his left hand, crushing the flesh of his finger, which swelled outwards around it. When I noticed a clump of shirt tail poking through his half-mast fly, I smirked.

  ‘You need to come with us.’

  His face paled. He glanced across at Lucia, still motionless at her machine. I could detect the urgency of a pulse at her throat. I had no idea if he knew about me, knew that she was mine. I knew all about him and his demands.

  His tongue darted across his lips as he tried to decide what to do. I gave him time; I was content for him to try and hang himself.

  ‘Surely you aren’t here for me?’ His voice was high. It pitched upwards as he spoke, disbelief and fear seeping from his pores. ‘I know that, technically, I’ve employed the wife of a… dissenter… but she was never accused. I… please; I was only trying to help her. There’s a child, you see, I felt sorry for them.’

  Lucia’s words cut across the room, so unexpected every head snapped in her direction. ‘Were you sorry for me when you tried to fuck me, Donald? Were you helping me when you took off your belt?’

  She rolled up her sleeves carefully, without another word. The other women stared at her arms, a sickness growing on their faces. One woman pressed a hand to her heart, as though she were the one in pain.

  I hadn’t noticed the door in the corner of the office. While we were distracted by Lucia’s injuries, the theatre manager made a break for it, lumbering across the room in his shiny dress shoes, a streak of sweat like an exclamation in the small of his back.

  He hit the fire door hard; it swung open and crashed into the wall as he staggered through, the alarm blaring.

  I turned to scowl at one of the women. ‘Shut that racket off.’ She scurried for a row of switches on the wall.

  The door had ricocheted back into the frame. I waved the bag squad forward. The first man shoved the door with the flat of his hand, but it didn’t open. He leaned in, putting his weight to it. The door remained shut. Three of them couldn’t get it open.

  A knot of rage sat heavily in my stomach. My hands trembled.

  ‘What the fuck are you waiting for? Get after him! Break the bloody door down if you have to.’

  They divided seamlessly: half doubling back to trail the manager through the winding corridors of the theatre, while the others got to work on the heavy door.

  Lucia had sunk back into her seat. Her colleagues hung back, afraid of us, but eager to of
fer some comfort.

  ‘You should all leave,’ I said quietly. ‘Go home. You don’t want to be here for this.’

  They exchanged glances, uncertain.

  ‘Go. Now.’

  The darkness in my voice was enough. They snatched up their bags and cardigans, abandoning half-drunk cups of tea and the remnants of a late lunch. Their computer screens slowly dulled, until only a winking orange light remained.

  Lucia was still at her desk.

  ‘You should go too.’

  She met my eyes with such fury that I was astonished. I’d never seen her so animated. ‘No. I want to see.’

  I studied her. I could feel the pain and shame and anger coming off her in waves. I recognised the smell.

  ‘Fine. But stay behind me.’

  With a shout, the bag squad had the door open. The hunt began. I trailed them, following the staccato rhythm of their boots, the sound echoing back at me from every direction. Lucia followed close behind me; her breath was hot on my neck.

  For a big man, the theatre manager was surprisingly light on his feet. They caught up to him in the theatre, its Victorian splendour faded but still impressive. He was cowering in one of the boxes that would once have been reserved for wealthy patrons, high up in the gods.

  I wouldn’t let Lucia come with me. I told her I’d take care of things. I left two young soldiers to guard the stairs leading up to the box so she couldn’t shadow me. I didn’t want her to see.

  I jogged up the steps, surprised at how high up we were.

  The theatre manager was backed into the corner of the box, a chair clutched in both hands. He waved it in front of him, thrusting it towards anyone who moved towards him. But with each jab, he retreated a step further, until he found himself up against the wall. His arms began to droop, the chair swaying.

  ‘Do you think that’s going to help?’

  He flinched at the harsh tone of my voice, his shoulders hunching up towards his ears. The distance between the chair and the floor lessened again.