Find Me

by J. S. Monroe

  Jar gets out of Morvah’s car, walks across the car park and pushes open the office door. There’s only one person on duty: mid-thirties, weather-beaten skin hardened by sun and surf. Feisty.

  ‘Is the Mini for hire?’ Jar asks, gesturing out the window.

  ‘It will be,’ the woman says, in a strong Cornish accent. ‘When I’ve cleaned it.’

  ‘Mind if I take a look?’ Jar says. No need to apologise, he thinks. Not cleaned yet? The woman turns and takes a set of keys from a board behind her, next to a map of west Penwith.

  ‘Shall I take the hoover out with me?’ Jar says. He’ll be asking her if she wants a pint of the black stuff next. Her face, high cheekbones, hard round the edges, melts into a smile. Jar makes a point of returning it with interest, and then notices her glancing at his forehead.

  ‘Nothing serious,’ he says. ‘Low ceiling in the pub last night.’

  As he walks across to the Mini, he’s aware of Morvah stepping out of her car.

  ‘It’s not been cleaned yet,’ he whispers, opening the driver’s door as Morvah joins him.

  ‘What exactly are you looking for?’ she says.

  He leans in and glances around the passenger seat and at the seats behind, trying not to act suspiciously. Slow down, he tells himself. He’s a regular punter just off the train and in need of a car for a holiday, but he feels his every gesture must look suspicious to the woman in the office, who is watching them through the Portakabin window.

  ‘And?’ Morvah asks.

  ‘If it hasn’t been cleaned since it was last used, we’re looking at a crime scene.’

  ‘You’re scaring me now, Jar. You really should just call the police.’

  Jar doesn’t reply as he walks around to the back of the car and opens the boot. He’s scaring himself. The boot is empty apart from an emergency triangle folded up into a red plastic sheaf. He leans in, all his senses trying to detect a trace of Rosa. Was she sedated, unaware of her cramped surroundings, or alert, terrified, desperately trying to claw her way out of here? He looks again, inhales the stuffy air, runs his hands slowly over the floor. And then he sees it, at the back, where the passenger seats meet the floor of the boot: a bent tent peg that has fallen down a gap, almost completely hidden, glinting at him. Attached to it is a tiny shred of floral tent material.

  Jar reaches in and removes it, his heart thumping so hard he thinks his chest is about to collapse.

  ‘He put her in here,’ he says, one hand clasped tight around the tent peg as he snaps the boot door shut with the other.

  Without waiting for Morvah to react, he walks back to the passenger door and opens it, slipping the tent peg into his pocket. He looks around the interior of the car again, but this time it’s to disguise another glance across at the office. The woman is no longer watching them. Without hesitating, he slides off his watch, the one that his da gave him on his eighteenth birthday. A few seconds later he is standing in the office again.

  ‘I found this, down the back of the driver’s seat,’ he says, putting his watch on the counter.

  The woman pushes at it, can’t quite bring herself to pick it up. This is a complication in her working day that she could do without, Jar hopes.

  ‘Do you have the contact details of the person who hired the car?’ he asks. Easy, he tells himself.

  The woman looks at Jar for a second and then turns to her computer, typing idly at the keys. Her heart’s not in this job, Jar thinks, which could work to his advantage.

  ‘I booked it out myself, yesterday morning,’ she says, sighing.

  Jar leans across the counter and looks at the computer screen, smiling. She glances up at him and then angles the screen away before continuing to type. But it’s a half-hearted gesture, almost coquettish.

  ‘I once worked in a car-rental company,’ Jar says, his arms folded on the counter now, as if he’s chatting at the bar. ‘Avis, in Dublin.’

  ‘Shabby, isn’t it?’ she says, still looking at the screen.

  ‘Is this a franchise?’

  ‘You are joking.’

  ‘Not exactly jumping, is it?’

  ‘I’ve got an address, it’s in Leeds.’

  ‘Seriously now?’

  ‘Got a problem with Leeds?’

  ‘It’s where I’m heading. End of the week. I could drop the watch off.’

  She eyes him for a moment, making a calculation, Jar assumes. The hassle of having to go to the post office when the customer calls, package up the watch, send it off – it will fall to her to do it, he guesses, the only member of staff apart from a lazy boss, who never works Sundays, like she is today. Or she could give the watch to him and be done with it.

  ‘I did just hand it in,’ Jar says, sensing her hesitation. ‘If I was going to steal it, I wouldn’t have brought it in here, would I now? I would have—’

  He checks himself as she reads out a name, ‘John Bingham’, and an address in Leeds, both of which Jar assumes are fake. Whoever wanted to cover their tracks by renting a car would have used a false driving licence. ‘Shall I write it down for you?’ she asks.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ Jar says. And not bad-looking either, but he checks himself. Job done, no need to keep playing the libidinous eejit. ‘How will I know I’ve got the right man?’ He pauses. ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’

  ‘Tall.’ She glances around the empty office in an unnecessary gesture of confidentiality. ‘And a little bit creepy?’ she adds, her voice rising at the end of the sentence.

  ‘I hope you’re not suggesting a link there,’ Jar says, smiling again, leaning back, rising to his full height.

  The woman finishes copying down the details on a sheet of paper, unimpressed by Jar’s attempt at flirting.

  ‘His eyes were also way too small,’ she adds, pushing the paper over to him. They both pause for a moment, looking at the watch that lies between them like seized contraband.

  ‘Let me give you my number,’ Jar says, taking the watch, keen to end the awkward silence. ‘In case there’s a problem.’

  ‘I’m sure there won’t be,’ she says. She just wants to be shot of this whole thing, Jar thinks, and the weird tall fella with a plaster on his head who keeps smiling at her. ‘And if you don’t manage to find him, you can always keep it yourself,’ she adds. ‘Looks like you could do with a watch.’

  She glances at his left wrist, where there is a neat band of lighter skin, and then up at his face. Does she know?

  ‘We won’t be taking the Mini,’ Jar says, as he walks out to Morvah’s car.

  53

  Cromer, 2012

  A’s worried about Rosa, says she reminds her of her own darkest days. Rosa’s unhappy, mourning her father, but she’s not suicidal. Not yet. I wish I could muster more sympathy, but I can’t. A’s been filling her head with the joys of cognitive behavioural therapy and the girl is less keen than ever on the idea of medication.

  Rosa’s presence in the house has stirred up something in A. She hasn’t said anything, but I can see what’s happening, how maternal she’s being towards her: the child we never had.

  I’m beginning to sound like Kirsten, A’s old college friend who she’s suddenly got in touch with after all these years. Last night, when I was loitering downstairs, waiting for A to fall asleep, she was FaceTiming Kirsten in the States. She was still talking to her when I came to bed, chatting on her new iPad.

  Kirsten’s a counsellor specialising in ‘bereavement therapy’. Enough said. A and Kirsten were at Cambridge together, but we never met. I know she’s been talking to A about coming off her medication – as if therapy can replace benzos.

  I tried to focus on Tinker Tailor, which I’ve been rereading, but Kirsten kept catching my eye. A was telling her all about Rosa, how she lost her father, how low she seems, asking whether Kirsten might be coming over to the UK any time soon and if she might meet up with Rosa for a few counselling sessions, how it’s easier to accept advice from someone who’s not family.


  Since I’ve started the writing course, I’ve found myself constantly running the rule over anyone I see or meet, sizing them up to use as the basis for a character. My tutor tells me to look out for defining traits, tics, mannerisms – a line here or there that will capture the person, like the single flick of a caricaturist’s pen. It’s addictive once you get into the right mindset and I’m filling my notebook with observations. I haven’t felt this alive since I tried – and failed – to write a novel when I was younger. The observations were sharp enough, my problem was that I could never come up with a decent story with a beginning, a middle and an end. I’m hoping this online course will help with that.

  Kirsten’s blonde and good-looking: too clichéd, even for a male writer like me. There’s an intensity, an immediacy about her that I like. Not every time, but occasionally, she takes a short sharp intake of breath, just before she speaks, as if she’s forgotten to breathe.

  I put Le Carré down and reached across for my Moleskine.

  54

  Let the mind games begin.

  We check in early, to avoid the queues, but there’s a big delay up at Passport Control. I stand in a long line for thirty minutes – 1,800 seconds – and when I finally reach the security scanner, beside the fetid sink, the woman doesn’t even smile as she frisks me (it must be my orange jumpsuit).

  It’s not easy going on holiday with your dead father when you’re imprisoned in a cell, but I have to try. It’s all I’ve got, the only way to pass the time, to try and hang on to a trace of sanity.

  I hold my arms out as wide as I can, but the chains stop me from extending them fully. She scowls and then waves me on into the main room, where I wait for Dad beside my bed. We’ve got plenty of time, which was always the plan. Dad loves airports as much as I do. He’s not one for Duty Free. Instead, we head for the bookshop in the corner of the room and browse for forty-five minutes (2,700 seconds), comparing books, working out our shared 3-for-2 offer.

  The flight attendant at the door to the aeroplane is friendlier, particularly when I show her our tickets. ‘This way,’ she says, pointing to the left. Left! We always dreamed of turning left.

  Dad lets me sit by the window, and we settle down with our books before the movies start. Once we’re airborne, we watch one of Dad’s all-time favourite films. And I shout out his favourite lines, forgetting for a moment that I’m in first class.

  ‘It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses.’

  ‘Hit it!’

  Silence. Then a distant scream that I’ve heard too many times before.

  55

  Jar spots the two men as soon as they board his train at Exeter. They walk into his carriage together, not talking to each other, but there is an unusual synchronicity to their movements: one takes a seat by the exit nearest to Jar, the other walks down to the far end and sits near the door, past a lot of empty seats, the two of them effectively bookending the carriage. Neither looks familiar, but they both blend in well with the mix of holidaymakers and locals: one’s wearing a fleece and jeans, the other a leather jacket and chinos. Anonymous, faceless.

  Jar sinks down into his seat. Cato will have told these two men to keep an eye on him in case he makes trouble, maybe bring him in for a final chat, some closure. Did they help the other man on the cliffs with Rosa? Transfer her, hog-tied, from the hired Mini to another car? Cato will continue to deny that he has any interest in Rosa, or that he oversaw her recapture in Cornwall. No doubt he’ll urge Jar to get help for his hallucinations, too – until he shows him the selfie of him and Rosa together. Carl must have received the text by now.

  Why is his best friend always so sceptical? Even Morvah, who barely knew him, had showed more faith, believed that he had been with Rosa on the cliffs. He said goodbye to her at the train station, after he’d finished at the car-hire company in Penzance and had bought a cheap phone on Market Jew Street. They swapped numbers and he found it strange – disloyal, even – to own a phone with only her number in it, as if she was some sort of fleeting holiday romance that had blossomed out of a shared love of literature. She had been kind to him in the past twenty-four hours, which made him feel guilty that he didn’t want to linger in her presence.

  ‘I’m not going to see you again, am I?’ she asked on the concourse.

  There seemed little point in lying. ‘Thank you. For believing.’

  ‘I’ll read your book,’ she offered, and walked away.

  Now, as his train pushes through the countryside to London, he glances over to the man at the far end of the carriage, who is staring out the window, and then at the man nearer to him, talking into one end of his mobile. More pipe smoker than pizza eater, Jar thinks, the handset to one side and angled up at forty-five degrees. Not normal. Carl would find it funny.

  Jar begins to relax, increasingly reassured by the two men’s presence. Yesterday’s meeting on Gurnard’s Head has left him feeling stronger, vindicated. Even Rosa’s distant manner (she didn’t know his name, he’s trying not to linger on that) and her disappearance again, so soon after they were reunited, somehow seems tolerable. The woman everyone thinks died five years ago in Cromer was walking the Cornish coast yesterday in the sunshine. For a moment he wants to go over and confront both men, ask them now to try denying that she is alive. He curls his fingers around the bent tent peg in his pocket, rehearsing in his head what he’ll say to Cato.

  It’s as his train pulls into Paddington that he begins to think he’s mistaken about the two men. Both are queuing at the front end of the carriage, waiting to disembark, neither acknowledging the other, or Jar. He waits his turn to join the queue in the aisle and then walks down the carriage. As he steps off the train, he notices that it has arrived at Platform 1, where there is no barrier – and where he first saw Rosa. If Cato doesn’t want to meet him, what then? He hasn’t considered that no one might be interested in him any more. Rosa has been recaptured, the diary has been shut down before anything too compromising was revealed. Who is going to believe him, someone with a track record of bereavement hallucinations and paranoid behaviour?

  The two men are moving off into the distance now. They couldn’t be less interested in him if they tried. Jar focuses on the back of one of them, tracing the lattice of ageing creases in his leather jacket. He hopes to God that Carl has received the image.

  ‘Could we check your ticket please, sir?’

  Jar hasn’t noticed the two ticket inspectors, standing in the flow of passengers like boulders in a stream.

  ‘Sure now,’ he says, distracted, still looking after the two men. Where are they going? Why haven’t they made themselves known to him?

  He shows the inspectors his return ticket and tries to keep an eye on the men. Turn around, he thinks. Jaysus, you’ve played it cool enough. You can drop your cover now.

  But the two men keep on walking until they’ve vanished, lost in the crush of evening travellers.

  56

  Cromer, 2012

  Jar came up to Cromer yesterday. I’m always interested to meet a published author, but, sadly, he’s not my kind of writer. Not my kind of person, to be honest. (No wonder Rosa’s feeling suicidal.) There’s a smug blarney tone to all that he says, a smoothness of speech that gives him a confidence that borders on arrogance. He’s not loud, or overtly cocky, just a bit too laid back and pleased with his southern Irish self, a soft ‘t’ knocking ‘Thursday’ into ‘Tursday’, ‘three’ into ‘tree’, and he quotes W. B. Yeats as if he knew the man. He’s well dressed, though, which is unusual for a student: polished brogues, dapper corduroy jacket. Looks like a writer ought to look. I will try to see beyond his faults, do my best to befriend him. He could be useful.

  I pulled him into the sitting room for a Scotch before the Sunday roast, which has never been the same since A decided to become vegetarian. Jar prefers Irish whiskey, but we all have our crosses to bear. I asked him a few encouraging
questions about his book, pretending I’d read it (I failed to get past the first two stories).

  ‘Character first, or plot, then?’ I began, pouring him a large Talisker. He seemed a little nervous.

  ‘You probably noticed my stories don’t have a lot of plot now,’ he said. Understatement of the year, but I kept quiet. ‘I’m more interested in getting someone’s voice right and seeing where it goes from there. If a story emerges, so be it, but I don’t rely on a strong narrative drive.’

  ‘What about research?’ It was central to my previous career and I want it to play a key part of my new one.

  ‘The procrastinator’s friend.’

  ‘So authors should just write about what they know?’

  ‘Not at all. That’s usually boring, unless you’ve lived an exceptional life.’

  ‘I’m a scientist.’ In my experience, that’s on a par with telling someone you’re an accountant: their eyes glaze over, they’re not sure what to say, particularly if you add that you’re employed by a Big Pharma contract research organisation, working to ensure that new drugs are as safe as possible for mankind, animals and the environment. Only I don’t work for them any more.

  ‘There you go, now,’ Jar said. ‘Imagination is the key.’

  I wasn’t going to rise to his bait, defend the life scientific. Besides, his words were oddly comforting. I’ve never had a problem imagining things, fantasising. ‘Do you have a notebook?’ I asked, moving on. ‘To write things down?’

  ‘I scribble things on scraps of paper, then put them on a computer, if I remember. I have a special file. What kind of book are you writing?’ Jar was beginning to relax. He stopped glancing over towards the kitchen, where Rosa was talking to A.

  ‘To get my hand in, I’m writing a journal, semifictionalised – I’m intrigued by Karl Ove Knausgaard.’

  I was showing off, of course. I’ve only just begun to read the Norwegian writer, but Jar seemed impressed.

  ‘Now there’s a fella who only writes about what he knows,’ he said. ‘Much to his ex-wife’s dismay.’