If You Knew My Sister

by Michelle Adams

  I do eventually get a few responses to DC McGuire’s messages, but they amount to a collective disappointment. One is in another language, probably Russian. I have no idea what it says, but the text is followed by a winky emoticon, and so I dismiss it as bullshit without bothering to translate it. Another is from Facebook user ‘Randy Ronny’, based out of Bullhead City on the Nevada–Arizona border. He suggests Elle should come home soon, offering to spank her cute little ass red raw once she does. Everything is starting to feel a bit hopeless, and thanks to DC Forrester, the idea that I am responsible for her disappearance is growing. So by day three I decide that I need to at least try to do something to help.

  I begin with the humanitarian group the Guardians. They have a good website, a photograph of a child that actually makes you want to need them, not just help them. Lots of happy faces: kids, cripples like me, the disabled and drugaddled all living happily ever after in an institutional utopia. Play groups, dance groups, cooking groups. Groups for coming off drugs, groups for finding a home, centres for sleeping, eating. The only thing they need is a brothel and all basic human needs would be met.

  I call the number for the office in the Scottish borders. A woman answers, her voice soft and smooth, trained to make problems go away.

  ‘Good morning, you have reached the Guardians, Alice speaking. How can I help you?’

  ‘Good morning. My name is Dr Harringford.’ I start like this in the hope that she will make the basic assumption that I am not complete dirt. Which is a conclusion that, if she knows Elle, she could easily reach. ‘I am looking for my sister, who has been missing for several days. Eleanor Harringford.’

  ‘Has she stayed with us before? I can search on our database for her name.’ I can hear her tapping on a keyboard, slow, like she doesn’t really know what she is doing. At one point I hear her whisper something to a person nearby, as if she is asking for help.

  ‘Not that I know of.’ But in all honesty, how would I know?

  ‘Well, I’ve put the name in here and nothing comes up. It says no results found. That’s right, isn’t it, Bob?’ I realise she isn’t talking to me, so I wait for Bob to check what she has done. I hear more tapping, and Alice repeats the name to Bob. After a few seconds she says, ‘I’m sorry, there were no results found. She hasn’t registered with us. How long has she been missing?’

  ‘A few days,’ I repeat. ‘The police are looking into it.’

  ‘Oh yes, I recognise the name now. I heard it on the news last night. That poor girl from Horton, right? What a terrible shame.’ Helpful Alice turns serious. ‘They said she was the last surviving member of her family. What did you say your name was?’ Nothing like being cut off from a bunch of dead people by local news reports to make you feel good about yourself. I can’t even belong to my parents’ corpses or my missing sister. I hang up before I give her another chance to rub salt into old, open wounds.

  I call several other shelters. The first is for vulnerable women, so before I even dial the number I don’t expect to find her there. I can’t accept that Elle is vulnerable. Sad, maybe. In mourning, for sure. But vulnerable? There’s just no way. Ask Margot Wolfe or Robert Kneel if my sister is vulnerable, and they’ll tell you straight. I call anyway, becoming a concerned friend, and when they push me, I tell them my name is Sarah and I live in Hawick. I follow this script for several other shelters, but come up with nothing. One of them must have some kind of number tracker and a suspicious mind, because not long after I finish making the calls, DC Forrester calls me on my home phone, a number I didn’t give her.

  ‘Afternoon,’ she says as I hear her sipping at some kind of drink. I imagine her with a Styrofoam cup from the canteen, a cheapo alternative to Starbucks. The idea of it seems mildly depressing.

  ‘Good afternoon, DC Forrester. What can I do for you?’

  ‘There are a few things I would like to ask you about. Can you come to the station?’ I am standing in my tracksuit with no bra, letting my asymmetrical breasts hang loose. ‘There are a few details of your last days with Eleanor that I think are pertinent. You’re not at work, right?’

  ‘No, I’m not at work. Sure, why not?’ I say, fiddling with a piece of paper on my desk. My response is too casual, my actions those of somebody who has a choice to say no. I hear her sigh, take another sip, shuffle some papers. ‘Say in about an hour?’ I suggest, trying to sound more serious. I don’t ask her where she got my number.

  ‘Great. See you then,’ she says, before ending the call.

  I hang up the phone, and as I look down I notice that the paper I am fiddling with is my father’s will. I stare at it for a while, wondering what to do with it. Wondering why he would put it in my bag and then take my tablets and kill himself. The envelope with my name on it means that he wanted me to see it. And I can’t help but think Antonio is right about one thing: that the number on the back isn’t there by chance. It would have been helpful if he had written just a brief explanation, but I should be used to this kind of oversight by now.

  I sit for a while with the will in my hands, staring at the pages, waiting for the answer to come to me. There has to be something here that I am meant to understand. I remember telling Antonio that if I really wanted to know what the numbers on the back meant, I would call the lawyer who drew up the will. So I flick to the last page, scan with my finger until I find the name. Joseph Witherrington. I know it sounds familiar, but at first it takes me a while to remember where from. When I realise that it is the name that DC Forrester threw out casually when she was here at my house, and once I remind myself that the police don’t throw out anything casually, I start to be concerned. It means they have seen this document. They know about my inheritance of my father’s estate. And now the only person left alive who could contest the will is missing. The person I say I left at the scene of my father’s death. I’m not sure that I could look any guiltier.

  I grab the phone and call Joseph Witherrington. He picks up sounding flustered, and I imagine him all red-faced and puffed out. Probably with a cigar.

  ‘Yes.’ No secretary, no polite welcome.

  ‘Good morning, this is Dr Harringford. I am—’

  ‘Oh, Dr Harringford. At last. I thought you were never going to get back to me.’ I hear him pull out a chair, which squeaks as he sits down in it. ‘I suppose you have had rather a lot going on. No time to answer messages. Deepest condolences, by the way. Terrible to lose a father like that.’ His sincerity is about as deep as a saucer, but his tone is softer than it sounded when he picked up, and he is not altogether unlikeable.

  ‘What messages?’ I ask.

  ‘I left three messages on your answering machine. I was beginning to wonder if you had made off like that sister of yours.’ He breaks into a fit of stifled laughter before regaining his composure. ‘I say, did you know she’s gone off on a wander somewhere? It’s all over the news up here.’ I consider telling him that I’m about to go to the police station for that very reason, but I’m not sure that getting into the details is relevant or necessary. Regardless, he doesn’t really wait for an answer. I get the impression he is accustomed to giving them, not receiving them. ‘God only knows where she has got to now. Thank goodness you had the sense to take her car.’

  ‘You speak of Elle like you know her.’

  He chortles, a full belly laugh, wheezy from cigars. ‘I’ve known the family for years.’ I note how he doesn’t say your family, but I let it go. ‘She’s always been a bit of a troublemaker, generally wild, disappearing for weeks at a time. Quite the tearaway, that one. Don’t worry about her, though. She’ll turn up unharmed. Always does, more’s the pity. No offence intended.’

  ‘None taken.’ His inability to feel sorry for Elle endears him to me, and goes some way to making me feel better. ‘So it wasn’t you that reported her missing?’

  ‘Good God, woman, are you as crazy as she is? Not in a million years. It was that Mr Riley who owns the village pub. He called the housekeeper, said that E
leanor was acting weird in the graveyard. She in turn calls the police in a panic and they open an inquiry. Somebody else says they saw her with a man, and a few hours later you have yourself a kidnapping slash murder slash missing person case.’

  By housekeeper he must mean Joyce, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of trying to contact her earlier. If ever there was a person who could attest to my immediate disappearance following my father’s death, it is her. Plus, she seemed to like me, and so could perhaps even vouch for me that I had nothing to do with the inheritance and last-minute changing of the will. Should it come to that.

  ‘But with all due respect, Dr Harringford,’ he clears his throat, as if deciding whether to say it or not, ‘she was always with some strange man. She’ll turn up. Mark my words.’ I open the drawer under my desk, find a pack of cigarettes and light one. I waft the smoke away as if Antonio is here to complain. But he is not. He left the house before I woke up this morning, telling me last night that he had an early shift at work. ‘Now, about the transfer of the deeds for the house. How soon can you get up here to sort that out?’

  I like his directness. No bullshit. Straight to the point. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as that, Mr Witherrington.’

  ‘Why ever not, my dear?’

  ‘Well, as you mentioned, my sister is missing. There is an ongoing police investigation. I don’t think we can be seen to be transferring the deeds of a property that morally should belong to her.’

  ‘Perhaps. I suppose that is one way of looking at it. But your father was quite specific. What about the money, then? You’re due a pretty penny, my girl.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that.’ While I was looking at the will, I realised there was a sizeable monetary benefit too. Not that I want it. ‘But to be entirely honest with you, I really don’t want to do anything that might lead the police to think I am involved.’

  ‘Involved? You? Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, I am grateful for your confidence, Mr Witherrington. Perhaps the police will want to talk to you at some point. But before we even think about my father’s estate, I wanted to ask you something. On the copy of the will my father gave me there were some handwritten numbers. Do you know anything about them?’

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment. I drag on my cigarette, letting the smoke drift passively from my nostrils. ‘What numbers?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s a series. 0020-95-03-19-02-84. Do you have any idea what it could mean?’

  ‘Um, er, no. No, I don’t. It’s probably nothing. Call me when you’re ready to proceed with the house and I will be happy to help you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, but he has already hung up.

  I sit on the edge of my desk while I finish the cigarette and look over at the waste-paper bin. My old SIM card is still in the prepaid phone I purchased at the airport. I walk over and fish it out, pushing aside the red-wine-stained tissues and shards of glass from where Antonio cleared up the remains of our argument. Because it is one of those old brick things with a screen the size of a small matchbox, it still has charge. I navigate through the menus, finding ten missed calls and, according to the voicemail service, five new messages. Three are from Wittherington asking me to call him. The next is from DC Forrester asking the same. The last message is from the head teacher at the school in Horton.

  ‘Hello, this is Miss Endicott. We met at Foxling’s Nursery and Infant School. I have some information I think might interest you, and I would be most grateful if you could return this call.’

  She leaves a number, which I scribble down on the back of my father’s will, underneath the hand-scrawled sequence. I resolve that I will call her after I get back from seeing DC Forrester. I wonder if I should call Elle, and even begin to dial her number. But I decide against it this time. Better to let her find me. That’s how this game works; I know it of old. I put both the old and my new phone in my bag and head to the police station.

  28

  It’s humid in the reception of the police station, and the smell of sweat and coffee makes my eyes sting. Outside, buses and cars trundle past, the sound of people shopping chirruping in the background. There is a woman inside, overly made-up and wearing very little. She looks like she should be out working the track, looking for the next John to bend her over the back of a car seat. You must have to be surprisingly flexible to be a hooker. There is no way I could pull it off. I’d have to be set up in a brothel, the type where the lights glow red and the carpet smells like old spunk. But even so, they wouldn’t put me in a window. Nobody wants to see crooked bones and scarred hips grinding uncomfortably against an imaginary dick. Surest way to make your customers go limp. I wouldn’t be good for cash flow.

  ‘He’ll be back out soon,’ she says to me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, drumming my fingers against the desk. I linger there for a while, run my hands along the surface, slap it with the palm of my hand like a workman. Yep, strong and steady. There is only one other chair, and it is next to her.

  ‘He’ll be a while,’ she says. I nod again, smile halfheartedly. After another minute I sit down next to her. She smells of cheap perfume and cigarettes, my teenage years. She offers me a cigarette from her pack, and although I don’t want one, I take it anyway. She snatches one up with her teeth, fumbles in her pocket for a lighter. She finds one just as an officer arrives at the reception.

  ‘I don’t think so, Jules.’ He flicks up a section of the desk and marches over with his chest puffed out. He pulls the cigarette from her mouth, crumples it in his hand. I slip mine up my sleeve like, a teenager caught in the act. When the officer turns his back, she rolls her eyes at me. I roll mine too, nod like, yeah, what a ball-breaker he is, just to show willing. He heads on through the reception, leaving us alone. I feel as if we are outside the head teacher’s office.

  ‘Dick,’ spits Jules, pulling another cigarette from the pack. ‘Thinks I don’t got no more.’ She quickly sparks up and inhales deeply, sucking through a cat’s-ass mouth. She leaves a red lipstick mark on the butt of the cigarette and the backs of her fingers. In her hurried approach she has smudged her lipstick across her cheek, making her look like a little girl who hasn’t learnt how to do her make-up. She is jittery, and I spot a purple love bite on her neck. ‘Come on, smoke it quick, there’ll be another one along soon.’

  She reaches over and snaps a well-trained thumb across the wheel of the lighter, and I pull the cigarette from my sleeve, puff on it like a novice. I want it even less when I catch the whiff of old tobacco on her yellow-edged fingers. I look down so that she doesn’t see the discomfort on my face, and catch sight of her shoes. They are prettier than I imagined they would be, strappy, with a little butterfly on the side. One of the wings is squashed the wrong way, as if it tried to take flight and she swatted it back into place. But as pretty as her shoes are, nothing can make up for her feet. She has made an effort with a slick of red polish over nails as thick as walnut kernels. I guess for some it doesn’t matter how crappy life gets, they never stop trying.

  ‘So who you here for?’ she asks, like we have a camaraderie through criminal association. ‘Boyfriend?’ she pushes as she eyes up my bare ring finger.

  ‘Sister.’ She looks surprised. ‘She’s gone missing.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Jules asks, as if she might know her. ‘Lots of them go missing, but they turn up eventually.’ She sucks in another long drag of smoke. ‘Of course, not all of them turn up in the same state as they left.’ In her world, a missing girl equals a whore who picked up a bad punter. Might turn up alive, might turn up dead. A disposable life. I can see her going through her mental files. The blonde who disappeared last week and turned up beaten and drugged but otherwise OK. Back out later that same night. The brunette before that with the nose piercing and wings tattooed across her back. The redhead they pulled from the fishing pond on Hampstead Heath, her tits hacked off and the word slut carved in her stomach. I heard about that one too.

  ‘Elle,’ I
say, going along with the story, pretend-hopeful. I wait while the cogs go round until she comes back with a blank.

  ‘Nah. Don’t know her,’ she says, shaking her head. I take a drag on my cigarette.

  Just then a commotion breaks out on the other side of the doors, and Jules is up on her feet, prowling back and forth, head low, shoulders back, ready for a fight. She drops her cigarette and stubs it out with the butterfly shoe. The doors burst open and an angry dude flies out. Skinhead, tattoos of some kind of bird on the sides of his head, just above his ears. He mutters something under his breath, sounds like a threat.

  ‘Baby,’ Jules says, fluttering along at his side as he storms out, more pumped than if he was shooting steroids. I see another police officer at the doors, so I quickly drop my cigarette and stub it out, hoping that he hasn’t noticed. I watch as Jules fusses at her baby’s side, running her fingers over his muscles as they head towards a car. Just before they get there, he gives her a shove, then opens the door and slaps her inside.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the police officer says, breaking my concentration.

  After a round of questioning, I make it through the double doors, finding myself in a tiny ice-blue room without any windows. They fix me up with a bitter coffee, Styrofoam cup, and assure me that DC Forrester will be along soon.

  ‘Thanks for coming down here to assist us with our inquiries,’ says Forrester as she backs through the door. She is carrying a coffee, just as I imagined, a bunch of files tucked underneath the other arm. She sets the coffee down and dumps the files on the table between us, looking at me in a way that I find strange without knowing why. She sits down opposite me, crosses her arms. I wish now that I had called Elle. That way perhaps it would look less like I don’t care. ‘It’s important that you know you’re free to leave at any time. You’re here voluntarily, OK?’