Find Me

by J. S. Monroe

  He glances at his computer. It’s 3 a.m. and he might not have much time. If the police can arrest him once, they can do it again. Miles Cato will want another chat when his people run up against Anton’s encryption skills.

  Max Eadie, Jar thinks, turning the name over in his head. Could it be the same journalist? In the first few months after Rosa died, a reporter had asked questions around Cambridge about her, but Jar has never been able to trace him.

  It was Rosa’s college who let it slip. One uncharacteristically indiscreet porter. Jar had travelled up to Cambridge in August, a month after Rosa died, determined to speak to Dr Lance. The dean hadn’t been replying to emails, or taking his calls, so Jar thought he’d try to doorstep him. He wasn’t successful.

  ‘Who shall I say wants to see him?’ the black-suited man in the porter’s lodge asked. He was what his mother would call a right-looking queer-hawk, Jar thought.

  ‘Jarlath Costello.’

  The porter watched him as he picked up a phone and dialled an extension. ‘Not another journalist, are you?’

  ‘I’m not a journalist. I’m a student. King’s.’ It was technically a lie. Jar wouldn’t be returning to Cambridge in October for his PhD as planned, couldn’t face it after what had happened. And he had just landed his first job on an arts website. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Some reporter from London was poking around earlier. Asking questions.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Dr Lance’s not answering his phone.’ The porter redialled.

  ‘What was he asking about?’ Jar continued, surprised by his own persistence. ‘The journalist.’

  ‘The death that dare not speak its name. Student suicides. No answer from Dr Lance.’

  ‘Can you remember what he was called?’

  ‘Best if you make an appointment, sir.’

  That was all. One London journalist ‘poking around’. His interest might have been in Phoebe, of course, whose ghastly May Ball suicide had made all the papers in the summer. Rosa’s own death had followed a few weeks later. It was covered by the local press as just another sad student suicide. Nothing was made of her father, who was simply reported as working for the Foreign Office.

  Jar knows Rosa and her father were close. He wishes he could have met Jim Sandhoe, having heard so many happy stories about him from Rosa. In the early days, using the basic journalism skills he picked up while working on the arts website, Jar tried to discover more, but he drew a complete blank. There was almost nothing about Rosa’s father online, except for some open-source reports he’d co-written on the economy of south-east Asia. There was no evidence to suggest he’d worked for anyone other than the Foreign Office’s Political Unit, although Jar soon realised that this was a department regularly used for official cover by the intelligence agencies. But now, it seems, his job was ‘more important’ than a spy’s. He’s never come across anything about a posthumous KCMG.

  Jar searches for Max Eadie, grateful that his name is a relatively good one to google. There are no journalists, just a Max Eadie who runs his own corporate public relations company in London. He opens the website, clicks ‘About Us’ and looks at a photo of a jowly man in his fifties. His biography refers to an earlier career as an investigative journalist, a job that led him to ‘understand the complexities of crisis PR management from both sides of the fence’. Clients include a number of unpopular banks. There’s a ‘crisis’ contact number beneath each member of staff’s biography, including a mobile number for Max Eadie.

  Jar checks the street before he leaves the lock-up and walks back to his flat, keeping out of the pools of orange streetlight. There’s a van parked at the end of the road that wasn’t there earlier. And one of the cars opposite his block has gone. Relax, he tells himself. He will call Max Eadie first thing in the morning.

  26

  Silent Retreat, Herefordshire, Spring Term, 2012

  The view from my room is beautiful: there’s sunshine on the high ridge above us, a spring stillness in the valley below. I’m here to ‘settle my mind’, get in touch with an ‘inner calm’. At least that’s what Maggs, the nice man downstairs, said when we all gathered for our welcome chat. He was wearing jeans and a collarless white cotton shirt (no flowing robes). There was an enviable serenity about him and his talk was all about concentration and focus, living in the moment and letting go of the things that worry us: thoughts, emotions. Apparently he was a ski bum before he ‘found himself’ in Bali.

  There’s been no mystical mumbo-jumbo, although it wouldn’t bother me if there was. I’m pretty open to this sort of thing, having hung out in the Himalayas. Dad used to meditate every morning when we were in Pakistan and we were just beginning to discuss the bigger issues in life when he died. I feel oddly close to him here.

  The one catch is that it’s a silent retreat, which might prove a challenge for me. We could ask questions during the welcome talk, but from now on we have to stay zipped. We handed in our phones when we arrived, and no reading or talking is allowed.

  I’m hoping this diary will get me through. It’s strange how much we rely on talking in life. When I met people downstairs, I wanted to say hi, ask where everyone was from. One girl had a streaming cold, looked terrible, but I couldn’t check that she was OK.

  I’m sharing a room with another girl. After we came upstairs to dump our bags, we greeted each other with a nod and a smile. I had to bite my lip. I wanted to know all about her, compare notes about Maggs (OK, cards on the table, he’s fit, which could prove distracting when we’re trying to meditate – must keep eyes closed), ask her where she bought her gorgeous bangles, which look Indian.

  It was Karen’s idea to come here. After my meeting with her in Dr Lance’s rooms, she arranged my first ‘session’ in her study, off Second Court. She let me do most of the talking: about Dad, how I’ve tried – and failed – to immerse myself in university life rather than wallow in grief, the very real prospect that I will drop out in the summer, maybe travel to India, visit the place where Dad died. I told her about the darker times, too, the nights I’ve been unable to sleep, my thoughts about ending it all.

  ‘I don’t think you should underestimate the effect of losing a parent,’ she said. ‘Both parents, in your case. If you need to take a break from university life, travel for a year, I’m sure Dr Lance would understand.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘We’ve talked about it already. And we all think it would be a good idea if you did take some time out. The first year at university is stressful enough without the added complication of grieving for a parent.’

  ‘What about my studies?’

  ‘They can wait.’

  ‘The college would take me back?’

  ‘Of course. I think visiting India could be very healing.’

  She paused at this point and it was the first time I sensed that there was another agenda to our meeting. There was something about her manner that made me feel she was biding her time, waiting to take the conversation in another direction. I was not entirely surprised by what she said next.

  ‘Or…’ She got up from behind her desk and came to sit next to me on the sofa. Her eyes were an extraordinary blue and she was wearing a faint scent: lemons. Summery. ‘You could decide that university is not for you, leave at the end of next term and do something completely different with the rest of your life.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘There are certain people who are just not suited to university, particularly in a place like Cambridge, where expectations can be so high. In my experience, working here and at Oxford, the unhappiest students are often the most gifted – in languages, the sciences, philosophy. From what Dr Lance has told me, you are an extraordinary student: double-first material.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ I said, feeling myself blushing. It was strange, but the mere hint that I might not be spending another two years in that place had raised my spirits already.

  ‘However, the pr
ospect of dropping out of university can itself be very stressful. There may be a sense of personal failure and it doesn’t look so good on a CV. Dr Lance is all too aware of this. He wants everyone who leaves here to go on and achieve their very best in life. We’ve talked a lot about you, how brave you’ve been, coming up here so soon after your father’s death.’

  ‘I’m not sure if it wasn’t too soon,’ I said. Tears were coming.

  ‘We’ll never know. Personally, I think you were right to give it a shot. And you’re right to acknowledge now that it might not have worked out for the best. Dr Lance wants to help you. That’s why he’s brought me in. He was very fond of your father and it upsets him to see you so unhappy. I want you to go away from here for a few days, take time out to think about your life, where you want it to go. Calm things down a bit in that busy, brilliant brain of yours. When you come back, we can talk more about the options available, consider what’s best for you, your long-term wellbeing.’

  That’s how she left it. And here I am now, sitting in a remote country house in Herefordshire, about to go downstairs for our first proper meditation session. Tomorrow we’ll be woken at six for a six-thirty start, followed by more meditation after lunch (all the food is vegetarian). T’ai chi or yoga at the end of every session, two hours off in the middle of the day for walking. Bed by nine.

  The college paid for my transport – a train down to London, then another one, a three-hour journey out to Hereford – and there is only one condition of my visit: I am not to mention it to anyone. I’m not sure why. Perhaps Dr Lance doesn’t want a stampede of students rushing off for a few days’ chilling in Herefordshire.

  My roommate has come upstairs while I’ve been writing this and she’s been sitting on her bed, writing too. A letter, I think. I couldn’t help myself and scribbled my name on a slip of paper and handed it to her, along with a piece of dark chocolate. We’re not supposed to have brought any food with us, but I smuggled in some 85 per cent cacao, figuring it was a health product, nourishment for the soul.

  She wrote her name on the paper – she’s called Sejal – and handed it back, adding a thank you for the chocolate. It was as she passed me the paper that I saw what the bangles are hiding: deep laceration scars on her wrist, healing now but quite recent. I’m amazed she survived.

  She saw me notice them and we paused for a moment, acknowledging each other properly for the first time. Then I grabbed my pen and wrote on the paper: ‘Which university are you at?’ She hesitated before writing back: ‘Oxford’. I took the paper and wrote again: ‘Did Karen send you here?’

  She looked at me with surprise and nodded.

  27

  ‘Thanks for making time to see me,’ Jar says.

  ‘I was intrigued by your message.’

  Jar takes in Max Eadie’s airy office, the views across Docklands towards Greenwich. He’s spent many hours on the balcony of his own flat staring out at this building, watching the light on its apex wink through the night, brightening low clouds like lazy lightning.

  It’s the first time he’s actually been inside One Canada Square and for a few tense moments downstairs he thought he would never make it.

  ‘ID?’ the guard on the turnstiles had asked. Jar took out his driver’s licence, wondering if his details would flag up an alert of some kind. Was he about to be arrested again? Bundled away in a police van to be interrogated by Miles Cato? But he was waved through, observed by the guards as he walked over to the bank of lifts and waited for a lift to the twentieth floor.

  Half an hour earlier, he’d felt watched when he left his block of flats, that same sense of unease he’d had in Cromer. The feeling had persisted on the Docklands Light Railway, when a man had stepped into his carriage at the last moment. He knows he is being paranoid, but the journey here has left him tense.

  ‘Coffee? Tea?’ Max offers.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Jar says. He likes to give himself thirty seconds when he meets someone new, enough to soak up first impressions, assess his own visceral response to another human being. Max is overweight – Jar adjusts his own shirt – and his cheeks are redder than they should be, suggesting joie de vivre or stress-induced drinking. A bit of both, perhaps.

  A pair of reading glasses hangs around his neck and there is a set of golf clubs propped up in the corner. Old set, nothing flashy. Above them, on a bookshelf, a row of business directories and a battered copy of An Indian Summer by James Cameron. The linen suit is crumpled and baggy, and there is a food stain in the middle of his floral tie.

  ‘I’m not here to hire your services, you do know that now?’ Jar begins.

  ‘I figured,’ Max replies, cleaning his glasses on his tie. ‘Crap,’ he says, noticing the stain. He spits on his tie and rubs it with his fingers. ‘Got any kids yourself?’

  ‘None that I know of.’

  ‘Don’t let them hug you in a suit when ketchup’s on the menu. Which it always is in our house.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. Old fart like me, young kids.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘It’s not a second wife. Nothing like that.’

  Jar holds his hands up in mock protest, in a far-be-it-from-me-to-judge way.

  ‘It’s actually my third.’ Max smiles. ‘Did I offer you a drink?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Jar wonders how Max ever got to be a crisis PR manager, given his own seemingly shambolic life. ‘I think you might have once written an article about Jim Sandhoe,’ he says, keen to focus on what he’s come here for.

  ‘Never published, sadly. Not in print, anyway.’

  ‘Is it still available to read?’

  ‘It was a long time ago. Another life.’ He glances around the expensive office, as if to remind Jar of his changed circumstances.

  ‘I went out with Rosa Sandhoe, Jim’s daughter, at university. The summer term, before she died.’

  Max’s face changes at the mention of Rosa’s name, his lower lip pursing like the spout of a milk jug.

  ‘I think you met her once,’ Jar continues. ‘At her father’s funeral.’

  Max winces. ‘I remember her face: pretty girl.’

  ‘What was the article about?’

  Max sits back, picking at a molar. It’s several seconds before he speaks. ‘I’ve got a vivid imagination, Jar. These days I use it to dream up worst-case scenarios, try to predict where things might spiral, how bad a story could get. My clients buy into me because they think I’m authentic: I look how they imagine Fleet Street hacks should look.’

  He waves one leg in the air, pulling up his trousers. ‘Soles worn down from all those knock jobs, that kind of thing. Déshabillé. I don’t tell them journalism’s all iPads and twenty-something digital natives these days. When I was a journalist, my news editor dealt in facts. I once stumbled on a story about Rosa’s father, but I couldn’t stand it up. No proof.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Max pauses. ‘I’m sorry about Rosa. Truly. I never wanted to doorstep her father’s funeral, but… How well did you know him?’

  ‘We never met. He died a month before Rosa started at Cambridge. But I think he worked in the Foreign Office, the Political Unit.’

  Jar manages a knowing smile, journalist to journalist now. Max doesn’t reciprocate, but his eyes have narrowed, as if he’s taking Jar seriously for the first time.

  ‘Was her father a spy?’ Jar asks. ‘Or more important than that?’

  He watches Max absorb his words, looks for a flicker of recognition. Was the same thing ever said to him? If it was, he’s not letting on.

  ‘I’ll give you the short answer. The long version might still be on the dark web, but I doubt it. The site that published my story has probably been closed down.’

  ‘By whom?’

  Max raises his eyebrows, as if it’s too obvious a question to answer.

  ‘I went to a redbrick, Warwick. Oxbridge wasn’t for me. It wasn’t for a lot
of people who went there, as far as I can tell. Have you ever looked at suicide statistics at Oxbridge?’

  ‘Can’t say I have.’

  Max wiggles a finger in his ear, vigorously. ‘My point is that a lot of the country’s brightest students are also the unhappiest.’ Rosa used exactly those words in her diary, Jar thinks, when she was quoting Karen. ‘Several individual cases caught my eye – the ones whose bodies were never found.’

  Jar wishes he had tracked down Max earlier, but he never had a name. And he never came across his article. The dark web was always a no-go zone during his research, a place of moral turpitude and depravity. He should have been braver.

  ‘There were certain coincidences – connections between the suicides and Rosa’s father. Not big ones, but enough to work on. Evidence that those unhappy students might have met him in the months before they “died”. I was convinced they were being given another chance in life. I just couldn’t prove it. Rosa’s body’s never been found, has it?’

  ‘It hasn’t.’

  ‘I can’t offer you closure here, Jar, if that’s what you’ve come for. My conspiracy theories are only going to make matters worse. Stir things up that perhaps should be left to rest.’

  ‘That’s a risk I’m prepared to take. Will you help me find Rosa?’ Jar pauses, looking up at Max. ‘I may have the proof you were looking for.’

  28

  Silent Retreat, Herefordshire, Spring Term, 2012

  Day two of our silent retreat and I’ve listened to Maggs talk about mindfulness for most of the morning, practised an hour of t’ai chi, meditated (woken by a Tibetan gong at the end), taken a two-hour walk along Hatterall Ridge on my own and, er, signed the Official Secrets Act…