by Ali Harper
Chapter Nine
We climbed back up the embankment hand in hand, taking it in turns to pull each other up through the undergrowth until we found the top path, which leads to the gate. ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ said Jo. ‘I’ve been ringing you for the last ten minutes. I didn’t know where you were.’
‘I think I left it at the office.’
‘Useful.’
The sarcasm wasn’t hard to miss. Jo knows I hate mobiles. I hate the idea of being permanently available, that anyone can just crash into your world, without warning. My hatred isn’t my fault, it’s genetic. According to Aunt Edie, my grandmother would never have a landline in the house because she thought the whole concept was plain rude. And we never had one at home because there was no one my mum wanted to speak to.
I tried to deflect the conversation onto another path. ‘How come you missed him climbing out of the window?’
Jo didn’t reply so I linked arms with her and we headed back towards Woodhouse. As we got to within a hundred yards of the gate I heard it click. A moment later an Asian guy in a dark jacket entered the woods. I felt Jo tense beside me, but we carried on walking, although our pace slowed. He hadn’t seen us, and we had the advantage, because he was nearer the gate and hence nearer the streetlights of Hartley Avenue. I don’t know what it was, but there was something about the way he was looking around that made me wary. Like he was checking out whether he could be seen by anyone in any of the houses that back onto The Ridge.
Then he saw us. I felt Jo straighten her posture, and I did the same, remembering to stare him straight in the eyes. He turned from my gaze, said nothing as we passed. I told myself I was paranoid, that I was seeing danger in everyone and everything.
My heart rate didn’t return to normal until we got back onto the pavements and the streetlights burned out their reassuring orange glow. We saw students threading their way through the streets on their way home from The Chemic and life felt safe and normal again.
‘Something’s not right,’ I said. ‘Why did Brownie take off like that?’
‘Guilty conscience?’
‘Why?’
‘Involved in the dealing?’
It wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been frightened when I’d told him who I was. Not just frightened, terrified. In fear of his life terrified.
‘What now?’
It had to be getting on for midnight, and after my sprint and subsequent excitement in the bushes I was exhausted. And sober.
‘Nothing we can do,’ said Jo. She stooped to retie the laces in her Docs and brush off some of The Ridge which had stuck to her clothing. ‘Let’s go home. Sleep on it.’
We linked arms again and the warmth of her body next to mine felt comforting, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I’d made some sense of the last few hours.
‘You can, if you want. I’m going to the office,’ I said. ‘I want to write everything up. We’re missing something. Something obvious.’
I knew as soon as we turned into the street. For starters, we hadn’t left any lights on, and yet pools of light fell onto the pavement outside the office windows, no sign of our discreet vertical blinds. We both started jogging, slowly at first, turning into a sprint the closer we got. By the time we were a couple of hundred feet away I could see that the door had been kicked in, boot marks still present on the wood. My heart pounded in my chest.
I’ve never had anything before, nothing that I’ve owned. I’d never bought a stick of furniture in my life before we started the business. To see it all trashed broke my heart. By the time Jo followed me into the main office, I’d realized everything we had had been destroyed. The computer lay on the top of a heap of broken furniture, its screen smashed, wires trailing. The hard drive was missing. All Jo’s neat files had been ripped up, jumped on and added to the pile of debris in the centre of the room. The coffee table, Jo’s pot plant, everything we had, destroyed.
The blinds lay on the floor, next to the slashed cushions with their foam insides spilling out. I picked up a pair of Jack’s trousers, and the pieces of cloth fell from my hands. They’d been shredded.
‘The safe,’ said Jo, sprinting through to the back room. I followed her but didn’t get far. As she ran out, a figure ran in, cannoning into us both, knocking Jo to the floor and pushing me into the wall. I banged the back of my head, and by the time I’d got my balance, the person was out the door.
‘You OK?’
‘Twat,’ said Jo, getting to her feet.
I turned and followed. By the time I got outside, the figure was halfway down the street, dark trousers, trainers. He ducked his head as he passed under a streetlight, but I caught a glimpse. Enough to see he was a white lad in a hooded top. He turned and lobbed something at me, but it missed, and I continued the chase. I was faster than him, even if this was my second track event of the evening. I caught up as he tried to dodge round the corner of Royal Park Road. I threw myself at his legs, grabbed him around his knees. He stumbled but I didn’t bring him down. He kicked out and caught me in the chest, which made me lose my grip. I scrambled back to my feet and rounded the corner, just in time to see him throw himself into the open rear door of a car parked at the kerbside. The car must have had its engine running, because it took off, tyres screeching to get traction with the road before he’d closed the door. I stopped running, knowing I had no chance. I’m shit at cars, no idea of make or model. All I saw was that it was dark coloured. Kind of square-looking.
Two chases and nothing to show for either of them. I kicked the wall and collapsed to the ground in pain. Thought I’d broken my toes. I sat on the pavement for a moment, trying to catch my breath, my lungs cracking with the sudden influx of cold night air. When the throbbing in my foot subsided, I stood up and retraced my steps, stopping to pick up the item he’d thrown at me. A tin of black spray paint.
Jo was waiting for me on the doorstep of the office. ‘Complete and utter twat.’
She led me into the back room. The table and chairs had been smashed against the wall, you could see the indentation of chair legs in the laminate. The padlock remained on the door to the broom cupboard, but a great big hole had been smashed through the bottom panel. Jo’s equipment store had been plundered, most of the contents smashed on the floor. ‘Didn’t get the safe though,’ Jo said. She’d already unlocked the padlock and she threw back the door. The poster was still on the wall, and the safe behind undiscovered. I felt a rush of pride in that little metal box. Something had survived.
‘What’s the landlord going to say?’ said Jo as we stepped back into the main office and stared at the spray painting on the wall.
‘“Be scarred”?’
‘Think it means “scared”,’ said Jo.
They could fuck off. I wasn’t going to be scared. Or scarred. Not of sneaky cowards like this. Anyone can break in when there’s no one home.
‘Well,’ said Jo. ‘We’ve obviously rattled someone’s cage.’ She said this like it might be a good thing.
‘Come on,’ I said, the pain in my toes helping to focus my thoughts. ‘See if the kettle still works. I’ll make a start. Better add burglar alarm to the list.’
We had an office toolkit, basic, but we’d bought a hammer and nails to hang pictures, and a screwdriver to put up a set of flat-pack furniture. I found the hammer by the back door and with a bit of effort I managed to get one of the desks back into a vaguely usable condition, although I had to prop it up with the remains of the coffee table. The other desk was a write-off. Luckily, we hadn’t splashed out on anything state of the art.
Jo came back into the main room to report that the tea bags had been nicked, which added insult to injury. She turned her attention to bagging up Jack’s clothes. The furniture that was beyond repair, the green felt table from the back room and the office chairs, I smashed up into smaller pieces before collecting up the sticks of wood and building a small bonfire in the b
ackyard. I swore as I worked that whoever had done this wasn’t going to get away with it.
The upstairs tenants returned from a night’s clubbing not long after two. They were wasted, but that made them so sympathetic I nearly cried. They kept hugging us, pupils wide as jammy dodgers, and one of them went up to their flat and returned with tea bags, milk and two new mugs. I swept the remains of our old crockery into the bin.
We all knew what it was like to be burgled, living in Leeds 6: LS6. No one even mentioned calling the police. We hadn’t got round to sorting out insurance, so there seemed little point in trying to get a crime reference number.
‘We should ring a locksmith,’ I said. ‘Oh, shit. They’ve nicked my phone.’
‘Lee.’ Jo put her hands on her hips.
‘It’s not my fault,’ I said. ‘I’m the victim of a crime.’
‘It’s twenty quid a month we pay for that phone. For the next two years.’
‘Lend me yours.’
‘No.’
‘Fine, I’ll use the landline.’
Jo held up the broken body of the telephone.
I was saved by one of the ravers. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got an old one my mam gave me,’ he said, and he scampered off, this time coming back with a white plastic phone with a built-in answer-machine.
‘Thanks,’ I said, fighting back the tears again. Any act of kindness was bringing me to my knees. I tried to get a grip by calling an emergency locksmith. He promised to be there within the hour.
After a while the upstairs lot left, promising to help us redecorate in the morning. I knew they’d be lucky to have come back to earth by then, but I said thanks anyway. They trotted off back to their upstairs flat, not seeming unduly concerned. Burglaries happen all the time in LS6.
But I knew better. This wasn’t a burglary. This was a warning.
Chapter Ten
We got the office as straight as we could and then went home. I didn’t sleep at all and by the time I heard Jo’s alarm clock go off on Saturday morning, I’d made a full set of notes, including a timeline that started with Jack’s Christmas visit to his parents, and ended with our burglary.
‘He must have started seeing Carly just before he stopped contacting his parents. And that’s another thing that doesn’t add up.’
‘Morning,’ said Jo, coming into the front room in her Snoopy pyjamas.
‘Mrs Wilkins said she hadn’t heard from him for three months, but he only disappeared a week ago.’
‘Tea?’
‘Why didn’t he contact his mother in all that time before?’
Jo yawned and stretched her arms. ‘We’re sticking with the theory she is his mother?’
‘Stepmother. If his real mum died when he was 5, it stands to reason his dad’s going to remarry. No man’s going to stay on his own all that time, not with a young kid to look after.’
Jo moved her head from side to side like she was trying to find the balance on a set of scales. ‘OK.’
‘So why didn’t he contact them in all that time?’
‘’Cause he had a new girlfriend? Too busy shagging to ring?’
‘I hate that word.’ I pulled on my Docs and tied the laces. ‘A new girlfriend doesn’t explain three months of not ringing. I’m thinking his drug-taking’s getting out of control.’
‘Did you get any sleep?’ asked Jo.
I knew there was a piece of the jigsaw we were missing. I couldn’t get the thought to properly form in my head. I had a list of questions – like why had Jack told Carly he loved her the night before he disappeared? Why had he left the cash behind? And why had he posted the smack to the squat and not the dealers it belonged to? If he owed them cash, why hadn’t he just paid them out of the money he’d left behind? And why hadn’t he taken his clothes? Or got in touch with Carly?
Next to each question I’d written as many possible answers as I could think of. They ranged from ‘because he didn’t know’ to ‘because he’s dead’. The money was the most puzzling thing of all, and I couldn’t help thinking that if I could find the answer to that, I’d be a whole heap closer to discovering what had happened. The only thing that made any sense was that either Jack had been taken away, against his will, or he didn’t know the cash was there. Perhaps the dealers had kidnapped him. But then who would pay up?
Jack’s letter, plus the fact that there hadn’t been a ransom demand, at least not one we knew about, suggested he hadn’t been kidnapped, so I was working on the second theory. Jack didn’t know the money was there. Which, of course, begged the questions: who would hide twenty-four grand in someone else’s socks? And why? One thing was certain, Brownie knew something.
‘Hello?’ said Jo. ‘Tea?’
We needed to go back to the beginning, and to me the beginning spells the nuclear. We’d met Jack’s mother, or at least someone who claimed to be his mother. Stood to reason we now needed to meet his dad. See what light he could shed. Was Jack’s mother dead? Was Mrs Wilkins really a stepmother? And if she was, what kind of stepmother? The kind her stepson confided in? I hoped so, for his sake. Because I know better than anyone, if you’ve lost your mother, and your dad’s an arse, you need someone on your side.
Mrs Wilkins said Jack’s dad had washed his hands of his son. I already knew what I thought of Mr Wilkins. ‘We’re going to speak to his dad,’ I said to Jo.
‘Thought you promised we wouldn’t?’
‘That was when Mrs Wilkins promised me she was his mother. And that she was staying at the Queens.’
‘Fair enough.’ I noticed Jo’s pyjama buttons were done up wrong. ‘How?’
‘She wrote down the address on the client contact form.’
‘Like that’s going to be right. Face it, Lee. Everything she’s told us has been a lie.’
‘I’ll google him.’
‘What? Mr Wilkins, Manchester?’
I pushed her in the direction of the door. ‘Get dressed. We need to get to the offices. She’s supposed to ring at nine. If she can’t get through on my mobile, she’ll ring the landline.’
Jo disappeared into the hall and came back a few moments later with a wooden rounders bat that she kept in the understairs cupboard. Not that she’d ever play rounders, but she’d read somewhere that if you beat up a burglar with something that you could reasonably be expected to have in the house, you wouldn’t get arrested. Fortunately, we’d never been called upon to test this theory. She swung it lightly, like she was warming up. ‘What about the dickheads that broke in last night?’
‘We’ll deal with them later.’
The offices were depressing but I didn’t intend to hang around too long. It was almost nine by the time I got there. Jo detoured via Bobats to buy padlocks and more bin liners. I didn’t want to miss Mrs Wilkins’s call. I was fairly certain Mrs Wilkins would ring; she’d been desperate the day before. That kind of desperation doesn’t go away.
Sure enough, at three minutes past nine, the phone the upstairs neighbours had given us trilled. I grabbed the receiver, but Jo got to the hands-free button before me.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi. It’s Susan. Susan Wilkins.’
I exhaled.
‘What news?’ she said. ‘Did you get into the squat?’
‘Where are you?’
‘My hotel.’
‘How is it at the Queens?’ asked Jo. ‘I hear the breakfasts are pretty good.’
‘Never mind that,’ said Mrs Wilkins. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘We’ve run into a couple of problems,’ Jo said, and I hated her for being so blunt, for not shying away from the truth.
‘Nothing serious,’ I lied, as I took a seat on the broken coffee table that was propping up the desk. ‘But there’s a few questions we need to ask.’
‘The main one being—’
I cut Jo off with one of my hard stares. I don’t do them much, so when I do, Jo takes notice. I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle.
‘What’s happened?�
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I guessed what she was thinking. It’s obvious, if you’ve ever lost someone. You think the worst. You think about dead bodies, and possible suicides, cold canals, horrific car smashes. You think about the pictures you thought you’d never have to imagine, the headlines that used to read like fiction, things that would never happen to you. I wanted to reassure her, but I wasn’t sure I had the words.
‘You see, the thing is, Mrs Wilkins, we spoke to his girlfriend and she says—’
‘Carly?’
‘You know her?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘You know her name,’ I said.
‘He mentioned her, the last time I saw him.’
‘At Christmas,’ Jo said, her voice rising like she was checking a fact.
‘I wasn’t sure whether it would develop into anything serious. I assumed they’d split up. Does she know where he is?’
‘No. She hasn’t seen him. He was supposed to meet her, and he didn’t show up.’
‘Meet her where?’
Jo opened her mouth to answer, but I didn’t give her chance. Something about the whole situation was giving me the heebie-jeebies. ‘We can’t give out that kind of information. Not at this stage in the investigation. We’re eliminating people from our enquiries.’
She paused, and I heard her light a cigarette. ‘What did they say at the squat?’
‘Same. He disappeared last Friday – no one’s seen him since. Well, no one we’ve spoken to.’
‘He was good friends with someone in the squat. Brownie, I think he said. Have you spoken to him?’
I didn’t like the way she seemed to know more than she’d let on the day before – yesterday she knew nothing, now it was like she was directing us around our own investigation. I decided to grasp the nettle. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you a couple more questions.’
‘Like?’
I inhaled. There was no polite way to put this. ‘His girlfriend, Carly, is under the impression that Jack’s mother, well, that Jack’s mother passed over.’ I know, don’t ask me why – I’ve never said ‘passed over’ in my whole life before. ‘When he was 5.’