Dead Time

by Anne Cassidy

  Rose was quiet. She’d been right and yet it didn’t make her feel good.

  ‘I just thought if they’d been here it would lead somewhere else. You know, like a stepping stone?’

  Joshua was leaning forward, his hands between his thighs. Rose struggled to find something to say.

  ‘Looks like you were right,’ he said, staring at the ground.

  She looked sadly at him. She put her hand out and pulled at his arm. Using both her hands she clasped his. To anyone else they would have seemed like a couple of young lovers making up after a quarrel.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said.

  Something was nagging at her. Some fact in her brain was pushing its way out. Her mum, Kathy, had changed her name from Christie to Smith. To start a new life away from her own mother. She’d shrugged off her identity by changing just one word.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if they signed in under new names?’

  ‘Not possible. Remember they check the passports, Amanda said.’

  ‘But what if they got new passports? They were police officers. They were working on difficult and unresolved cases. Maybe they went undercover! Maybe that is what they are still doing.’

  Joshua’s face lit up for a moment. Then he groaned.

  ‘Undercover for five years?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe …’

  ‘Wouldn’t the police have said something?’

  ‘Unless it was something else. Not undercover but something to do with the state?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The government? The cold cases they were working on might have been to do with terrorism?’

  ‘Like, spies?’ he said, standing up.

  Rose didn’t answer. It had only been a suggestion to cheer Joshua up but it had mushroomed into a theory and she didn’t know where to go with it. Joshua was moving about. He was agitated, his face deep in thought.

  ‘But wait,’ she said. ‘Possibly they were not meant to go undercover for five years. Maybe something bad happened.’

  ‘They were discovered?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘It would explain a lot. Maybe they went undercover for a short while. Days perhaps and something went wrong …’ Joshua said.

  ‘Let’s just check the records. Look at the names. They might have chosen something that was familiar to them.’

  Joshua walked off towards the B and B. Rose felt a moment’s trepidation. She went quickly after him.

  ‘Wait …’ she said, holding him back, making him stop.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if it just adds up to the same thing? They’re undercover, they’re spies, whatever. If they’re dead anyway? What’s the point if at the end of all this we’re still in the same position? Still on our own …’

  ‘But we would know the truth. Even if that truth is really hard we should know it. That’s the point. Come on, let’s look at the names again.’

  She let him go on ahead and walked behind him feeling cross with herself. Why hadn’t she just kept her mouth shut? They’d be on the tube by now, on their way back to Camden.

  Amanda was standing at the hallway table as if she’d been waiting for Joshua to come back. She had false eyelashes on that weighed down her lids. She looked as if she was about to drop off to sleep. She had a vivid pink top on that showed the shape of her bra. The previous week Amanda had been dressed for work, today she was dressed to kill.

  ‘Hi, Rose. How are you?’ she said, a lilt in her words as if Rose was Joshua’s seven-year-old sister.

  Rose made an um noise.

  ‘Can we see the actual records?’ Joshua said, ‘Just to confirm something? Is that OK?’

  ‘Mrs Harrison might be back soon.’

  ‘We’ll be five minutes, no more.’

  Amanda looked at her watch in an exaggerated way.

  ‘Please. I wouldn’t ask but you’ve been so great …’

  ‘Come on. This way. You might as well see them in the office.’

  They followed her into a small room at the back of the house. There was a desk and a new laptop in the middle, its lid up. To the side was an old computer, its monitor taking up most of the space. Beside it was an ancient printer. Amanda pulled a drawer open and took out a box of floppy discs. Rose wondered what Skeggsie would make of such equipment. It took a few minutes to load one of them into the old computer. Then Amanda opened up a file and there it was. November 2007. It was a spreadsheet with dates running down the side and room numbers at the top. Josh pointed to 4 November.

  ‘Here are the names, look.’

  Rose’s eyes moved along the page. Three couples, a family of five and three singles. Her eye focused on the three couples; Robinson, Brewster, Spicer. Amanda kept walking towards the window and back. She seemed ill at ease.

  ‘Look at this one,’ Rose said, pointing to the forenames.

  She read them out; Kate Brewster, Dan Brewster.

  ‘So?’ Joshua said.

  ‘Brewster. We lived in Brewster Road. My mum’s name was Kathy. And Brendan. Dan.’

  ‘What do you mean your mum?’ Amanda said suddenly, ‘I thought you were brother and sister?’

  ‘Stepbrother and sister,’ Joshua said.

  Amanda’s face broke into a smile. ‘Right.’

  ‘Have you got the book? The one the guests sign?’ Joshua said.

  Amanda nodded and went to another drawer. She pulled out a black leather Visitors’ Book and opened it flat on the desk.

  ‘You’ll have to be quick,’ she said. ‘Mrs Harrison said she’d be back at lunchtime and it’s ten to twelve.’

  ‘A couple more minutes and we’ll be done,’ Joshua said flicking through the pages until he got to 4 November. ‘Here, this is it. Look.’

  Rose looked at the signatures on the page. Dan Brewster was in a slanting backhand that she didn’t know. Kathy Brewster’s was all too familiar. The K was elaborate with a curlicue at the bottom and each letter was carefully enunciated right down to the final ‘r’ of Brewster. She looked at it for a long time, her eyes eating in the signature.

  ‘It’s my mum’s,’ she said. ‘It’s my mum’s Ks and Rs. It’s her. She signed this!’

  Joshua had a look of wonder on his face. Amanda looked at him and then at Rose. She had her hands together and looked like she might do a little dance. Rose, in spite of her gloomy predictions, was affected by the sight of her mother’s handwriting.

  ‘What are these?’ Joshua said, pointing to some symbols after the names. ‘What does TH stand for?’

  ‘Let me see,’ Amanda said, sticking her chest out, pointing one long tangerine nail down at the page. ‘These are old symbols. We don’t use them any more but I do know … Let me think …’

  The bell went from out in the hall.

  ‘Customers, I’ll have to go. Will you take out the disc and put this stuff away.’

  Rose picked up the Visitors’ Book. She held it across her chest, cradling it.

  ‘But the symbol, Amanda. What does it mean?’

  The bell went again, more insistent this time.

  ‘I’ll think about it. No! Wait. I know. T is for taxi. That’s it. They ordered a morning taxi.’

  ‘What about H?’

  ‘Heathrow,’ Amanda said. ‘Sorry, didn’t I make that clear? They were going to Heathrow airport. They ordered a taxi the night before. That’s what that symbol means.’

  The bell went again. It shrilled out and Amanda made a tsking sound and went out of the room.

  Joshua looked at Rose. Neither of them spoke. He turned away from her and pressed the print button so that an old printer made whirring sounds and produced a copy of the spreadsheet. He pulled the floppy disc out of the computer and replaced it in the drawer. He turned round and stared at her, his expression strange. She was aware that she was holding the book with a kind of bear hug.

  ‘Look, on top of the filing cabinet.’

  There was a photocopier. It was flat and small and looked bas
ic.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Joshua said, taking the book from her.

  He lay the book face down on the photocopier and pulled the lid over.

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ he said.

  He pressed a button and the machine lit up. Moments later a sheet of A4 paper appeared. A copy of the page where the signatures were. Rose looked at it with a smile.

  ‘Put these away.’

  He handed her the copies and she folded them up and put them in the front pocket of her rucksack. The sight of Emma Burke’s pink mobile phone startled her but she slid the photocopies in alongside it. Joshua held the door open and the two of them went out into the hall, where Amanda was standing in the middle of a family and their suitcases.

  ‘Thanks, Amanda. I’ll give you a call?’

  ‘All right,’ she said, smiling widely.

  ‘Thanks,’ Rose said under her breath.

  They stepped outside on to the street and Josh looked at her with pure delight. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it and he ruffled her hair.

  After five years they’d found something.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The euphoria lasted the length of the tube journey. They sat alongside each other, Rose’s rucksack on the seat next to her. Josh was leaning forward, his hands moving when he spoke. The carriage was mostly empty, just a woman with a pushchair down the far end.

  ‘Where were Dad and Kathy going? Which country?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why were they going? On a work assignment? Undercover?’

  ‘And they changed their names? Why?’

  ‘They needed a new identity. For whatever job they were on.’

  ‘Or were they running away?’ Josh said, his forehead tensing.

  ‘The main thing is that we know that they just didn’t vanish,’ Rose said.

  ‘They weren’t abducted. That’s really good news.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It’s great news. It’s the first new clue that we’ve had,’ Joshua said.

  ‘And it was your website that did it.’

  ‘Skeggsie helped.’

  ‘But you had the idea.’

  ‘Right! I’m going to send an email to Valeriya. Let her know how important her information has been.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘We’ve found out where they went. We have evidence. We know they went on to Heathrow.’

  ‘And then on to somewhere else.’

  ‘You know what’s really exciting? We have the names that were in their passports so if we give them to the police they could go to the authorities at Heathrow and find out exactly where they flew off to.’

  ‘The police?’ Rose wasn’t sure.

  ‘I’m not saying we will give them to the police, I’m not saying that. Not yet. There may be some other way we could find out which carrier they went with and where they went to.’

  ‘Maybe the police already know. If this is something undercover. If we go to them they might just hush it all up again,’ Rose said.

  They were at a stop. The doors opened and a young couple got in. They sat on the seats opposite, a little way along. The boy had circles of metal in his ear lobes. It was disconcerting and Rose tried not to look. Her eyes dropped down to the floor. The girl had leopard-skin boots with high stiletto heels and pointed toes; they positively growled at her. A picture came into her head of Bee Bee’s silver boots with their kitten heels. She looked down at her own feet, black DMs; flat, sturdy, needing a polish, the laces only partially threaded through. Anna hated these boots. Maybe that was why Rose wore them.

  ‘It could have been some sort of national security thing,’ Joshua said. ‘Like you said, terrorism or maybe anarchists.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rose said, a little distracted.

  ‘Since 9/11 there’s been loads of that kind of work.’

  ‘I know.’

  But where are they now? The words went through Rose’s head as if someone had just whispered them into her ear.

  ‘Or they were running away from something. Some organised crime case they were involved in.’

  ‘And using the street name. Brewster Road,’ Rose said, making herself concentrate on what they’d found out.

  ‘And your mum’s signature! She didn’t change it. You know what? It’s almost as though they were leaving clues for us. The glasses case. The card for the B and B. The new surname, the forenames and then the signature. It’s like a paperchase. They were dropping paper so that we could follow.’

  Rose smiled. It was just like that.

  After a while they stopped talking. Rose was lost in her thoughts and Joshua was staring down at his lap. When they got to their station they got up and Rose gave Joshua an encouraging smile. She stepped across the leopard-print boots and avoided looking at the perforated ear lobes.

  ‘I might put an update on the website,’ Joshua said. ‘I won’t give all the details away but I could mention Heathrow and the date and the new names. Something might come up.’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘Maybe there’s another piece of the paperchase there, at Heathrow.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  But where are they now? Rose thought, stepping on to the escalator.

  They bought sandwiches and took them back to the flat in Camden. Skeggsie was at university so they had the place to themselves. Joshua was quiet. He went into the kitchen and put the sandwiches on plates. In silence he made hot drinks and together they carried them through to the room with the television. They sat on the sofa, the sandwiches in front of them, mugs of tea and coffee on the floor. Joshua had put the twenty-four-hour news station on. The sound was low and Rose stared at the screen, feeling disgruntled.

  The mood had changed.

  Where had her mum and Brendan gone? Why? Why hadn’t they tried to contact them? To let Rose and Joshua know that they were all right?

  These were the questions that needed answering five years before and now, even after finding out about the B and B and the taxi to Heathrow, they still didn’t know.

  The news reports went on and Rose watched in a detached way. Half of Joshua’s sandwich sat uneaten. She had left her crusts and some of the filling that she hadn’t liked.

  ‘You know what I don’t get?’ Joshua said suddenly.

  Rose took a gulp of her tea. It had cooled too much and she put it back down again. She noticed then that Joshua was sitting apart from her. There was room for at least one other person to sit between them. It made her feel cold.

  ‘How it was all planned in advance! They had new passports. That must have taken a long time to arrange. They must have known they were going for days or even weeks.’

  Rose sank back into the seat. She felt weary and stretched her arms out straight, trying to shake herself up.

  ‘Let’s say they only knew for sure for a few days. So, during those last days, when I was going to school or talking to dad about football or handing him a packet of Hobnobs, he knew what they were planning. He answered me. He chatted. He gave me some pocket money and all the time he knew, they knew that they were leaving us.’

  Rose stared ahead. There was the tiniest of lumps forming in her throat.

  ‘How could they do that?’

  Joshua folded his arms. His coffee was on the floor, half drunk as usual. No doubt there would be a skin on it later. Maybe Skeggsie would pick it up and wash it for him.

  ‘When they went missing it was bad. It was really bad. You remember those days?’

  She bit her lip. He went on.

  ‘But it was always as if it had been out of their control. Something had happened to them. But now it looks as though they organised this.’

  He stood up suddenly, the seat creaking as he left it.

  ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. At first I thought it was good news but now …’

  ‘But we needed to know the truth. You said …’

  ‘Not this truth.’

  She took his hand and pulled him down so that he was sittin
g on the seat again. He kept talking, his words speeding up.

  ‘So say there was this plan, maybe instigated by the police or maybe they did it themselves. They sat in our kitchen one day, while we were out at school, and they planned to leave us behind. They worked out new names and a place to go to. They meant to leave us.’

  She looked at him. He was rigid, his neck and shoulders stiff. He seemed taller, bigger, puffed up with anger.

  ‘We don’t know that they chose to do this …’ Rose said.

  ‘Yes, we do! Yes, we know now that they went for a meal and then left the car there. They got a taxi to Twickenham and showed their new passports! Maybe they were having a laugh as they did it …’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t …’

  ‘They planned a taxi the next morning to Heathrow. To fly off somewhere even though they must have known that we would be demented, worried, on our own. Two kids knocking round the house in Brewster Road, wondering if there’d been a car accident …’

  ‘They wouldn’t have gone without a good reason …’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Joshua said, looking round at her. His eyes were shining. ‘They dumped us.’

  ‘No, no. This is something they had to do …’ Rose was desperate.

  ‘Everyone said they were dead. The police said it, my uncle said it, my teachers said it. Even you said it. Well, now I hope they are dead. That’s what I hope,’ Joshua said, standing up, walking out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Rose looked at the half-eaten sandwiches and the news programme and felt her neck tightening. She had told him not to do this but how could she say that? How could she say I told you so? The hot hurt of the disappearance had cooled and they had moved on with their lives. Of course, it had never been the same for either of them. They’d lost each other in the process but now they’d found each other again. Why couldn’t Joshua have been happy with that? Why drag this all up again?

  There was a noise from the other room. It was a moaning sound and she stood up quickly and went towards it. She opened Joshua’s door lightly and saw him lying on his side on the bed, his face buried in his pillow.