The Disappeared

by Ali Harper

  I found the narrow, unlit back alleyway and ticked the houses off, sensing that the occupants of none of them would be on my side. Communities like this stuck together. No one would help a stranger, especially not one they’d found ducking through the undergrowth outside their back doors.

  I found the rear of the house. Again, no light in any of the windows. I paused for a moment, hunched low, and thought what to do. No choice. I slipped through the back gate. Even in the half dark I could see the paint peeling from the window frames. I pulled out my torch, kept the beam low and looked around. A handkerchief-sized back lawn, with grass that was almost waist high, empty carrier bags and crisp packets littered around. It was obvious no one made use of the broom that lay across the back path.

  I switched the torch off, shoved it back down my waistband and made my way down the path. As I got closer I noticed the back door had deep grooves scratched into the bottom half. Lots of them. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s dogs.

  But I needed to find Jo. I swallowed my fear and crept up to the ground-floor window. The curtains were closed, no light peering through the gaps. There was a wheelie bin to the right of the back door, rubbish overflowing. I flipped the lid closed as best I could and climbed on top of it. It wasn’t the most stable of platforms, but it got me high enough to haul myself up the drainpipe. My heart pounded at the increased activity as well as the threat. I knew if I got caught here there’d be no chance of talking my way out of it. The kitchen window jutted out about six inches from the house and I pulled myself up on top of it. From there I could see into the bottom inch of the first-floor window. Pitch-black.

  The first-floor window was divided into two panes, and the right hand one had a smaller window within it, at the top. The smaller window was open a crack – one of those that opens horizontally and is small enough to push a child through.

  One of the few positives to my ironing board physique is I’m not much bigger than a child. Longer, sure, but not much wider. I tip the scales at eight stone on a good day, seven and a half when I haven’t been taking care of myself. I heaved myself up, managed to get my fingers under the open frame and yank it upwards. Then I slipped through the gap like an eel, closed my eyes and hoped for the best.

  Crawling through an open window is easy, it’s the dismount that’s difficult. There’s no quiet way to do it, especially when you don’t know what’s on the other side. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be landing on a bed, a bookcase or a bathtub. This time, though, someone was on my side and I dropped headfirst onto a mattress on the floor.

  I lay there for a moment, steady, listening. You’ve got to get used to what the normal noises are before you can get any sense of whether they’ve changed – whether anyone has noticed your arrival. Thudding footsteps on the stairs, for example, could be a washing machine. There weren’t either in this case. Just quiet. Dead quiet.

  I crouched onto all fours, letting the house settle around me. I like the dark. Was never scared of it as a kid. Basically, so long as I’m awake my troubles are small. Reality always feels safer than my nightmares.

  I gave it a minute, maybe a minute and a half. And then I worried. I’d never been in a house with Jo for more than a minute and a half without hearing her dulcet Liverpudlian tones, unless she was comatose. I’d have bet money that Jo wasn’t in this house. Or, if she was, she’d been muted somehow.

  I pulled at the curtain to see if I could let in some moonlight. As I tugged at it the whole thing fell down in my hands, and I realized it wasn’t a curtain but a blanket that had been tucked up over the curtain rail rather than hung. As it dropped to the mattress I was standing on, the room lightened so I could make out that it was small, obviously someone’s bedroom, although not a well-loved one, and there was a door that was open a fraction.

  I crept across to the doorway, pushed against it and peered out. I couldn’t see a thing. Dare I risk the torch? I didn’t really have a choice. I tugged it out and flicked it on, directing the beam at the floor. A small landing, three doors off it in total, including the one I’d just stepped out of. None of the doors were locked, all the rooms were empty.

  I crept down the stairs, feeling the prickle of fear run down the back of my neck. I was unarmed. I mean not even a nail file to my name. That made me think and, halfway down, I paused and tiptoed back up. The bathroom. Had to be something there I could use. Just to make me feel a bit safer.

  I fumbled around the edge of the bath and found a mouldy wet cloth and an empty bottle that could maybe once have contained shampoo. There were the cardboard tubes of a few spent bog rolls scattered around. Next to the bath was a built-in cupboard. I pulled it open and swung the torch beam inside. Its walls were lined with silver foil. I felt around the bottom of the cupboard and found a jug, a packet of fertilizer and a small pair of nail scissors. I tucked the scissors up my sleeve, switched off the torch and made my way back to the staircase.

  Walking into blackness is a strange feeling. No idea what’s coming next, your body’s poised for anything and your mind starts playing tricks. Like being on the ghost train – your imagination is far worse than anything a fairground can throw at you. The next to bottom stair creaked, and I heard a sound that made me feel sick. A sound that told me I wasn’t alone.

  It was the low growl of a dog, coming from the front room.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Growing up, the only people I knew who had pets were the batty old grannies whose houses smelled of cat piss or budgie droppings, or the puffed-up lads with their pit bull terriers. Let’s just say I’m not what you would call an animal person. Dogs are the worst because they’re unpredictable.

  But I do know that dogs have got small heads and hence small brains, so I had to think of how I could use my larger, human one to score the advantage. I heard the growl again, low and insistent. I reached the bottom step. In the gloom of the hallway I could make out two doors, the nearest one obviously contained the dog, I could hear it sniffing along the bottom edge of the door. Where did the other door lead? Probably to a kitchen. Were the kitchen and the nearest room, the room with the dog, linked to each other? The million-dollar question.

  I crossed the hallway to the front door. If anyone else was in the house, they’d be alerted by the growling, so the least I could do was pretend I’d just stepped in from outside. I could play dumb – have you seen my mate, she said she was coming here, blah blah. I tried the handle, but the front door was locked, which added weight to my growing belief that I was alone. Alone, apart from Growler.

  I felt around the doorframe for a key, and found one, balanced on the top left-hand side. I slid it down, slipped it into the keyhole and felt relief flood my body as the key turned and unlocked the door.

  I could have left the house at that point. The growl had developed to a bark and, believe me, the idea was tempting. I opened the door to see the small front garden and the path to the gate. I could be out of here in less than ten seconds. But freedom wasn’t an option. Not for me, right at that moment. I had to get the dog out of the front room. I had to find Jo.

  I know dogs can smell fear, and I was excreting buckets of the stuff through every pore in my body. What I really needed was a kamikaze cat to stroll past. I think I actually stuck my head out into the garden looking for one, like I might be able to persuade it to commit suicide in order to save my sorry ass.

  I knew I had to out-think the dog. Mind over teeth. I needed it out of the house. I needed to get it to chase me into the garden and then I had to run back in and close the door, so I could search the rest of the house. Simple. Just how?

  It made sense for me to be in the garden to start with, but then how to open the living room door? I remembered the broom I’d seen in the back and scurried round to get it. As I passed the front room window, the dog went wild, hurling itself at the glass, its claws clattering and scraping. It was black, the size of a small bear.

  I came back with the broom and stood on the front step. I held the front
door handle in my left hand, the pole in my right and used it to lever down the door handle on the inner door, the door that contained the dog. It took me a few seconds to get the right angle, my legs shaking, the dog going mental, but I managed to prise the door handle downwards, so that the door popped open, unleashing the dog like a cannonball. It went straight for me. I managed to hit it on its head with the broom – hard enough to get its attention. It grabbed for the stick and we played this kind of tug-of-war game, its white fangs gleaming as I manoeuvred it out of the house and into the front garden. I swung it around 180 degrees, so I was between it and the house and I inched backwards, still pushing and pulling the dog with the wooden pole. Once I’d got on the step, I dropped my end of the broom, jumped inside and slammed the front door shut. Our roles reversed. The dog on the outside, me trapped in the house. There was quiet for about three seconds, while the dog came to terms with its new reality. Once the penny dropped, the barking started. I nearly laughed. I had no idea how I’d ever get out, but that wasn’t the here and the now. That was the future. I’d deal with that when I got there.

  Jo wasn’t in the room that the dog had vacated. No one was. I took a chance and switched on the light. I jumped as the dog hurled itself against the front windows then took a breath to calm myself. I pulled a face at it – some guard dog – having to sit outside while a girl ransacked his house.

  The front room contained a massive TV, with surround sound speakers, and various black boxes joined together with miles of cables and headphones. There were two black, fake leather settees and a packing crate that had been turned on its side and was doubling up as a coffee table, with an overflowing ashtray. A filthy duvet lay in the far corner – presumably Growler’s grotto.

  ‘Jo?’ I shouted, desperate now and not caring who heard me.

  No answer.

  I left the room and opened the other door off the hallway. Certain there was no one home, I switched on the light. A small kitchen, grotty, a set of scales on the worktops, and not the kind you use to weigh flour. Empty dog bowl on the floor. I shouted again. ‘Jo.’

  The house remained quiet. I stood in the kitchen with no idea what to do next. Fear threatened to overwhelm me. What had they done to Jo? If they’d hurt her, if they’d so much as touched her, I’d spend the rest of my life making them suffer. I opened a kitchen drawer and took out a knife. I don’t know what I was thinking at that moment.

  I stood in the kitchen with the knife in my hand, and I heard a noise. A thumping kind of sound. I paused, held my breath. The dog had gone quiet. I strained to listen but there was nothing. I stepped towards the hallway, and the noise returned. I couldn’t work out where it was coming from. I kept hold of the knife as I checked round the house, turning on every single light, scared of the bogeyman.

  ‘Hello?’

  I went back downstairs. The noise was loudest in the kitchen. I moved to the far end of the room and noticed a small passage out to the back door. And off the passageway was a small room, I mean tiny – probably meant for a washing machine, although there wasn’t one. I stepped into it and only then noticed that there was another door leading off the small space. I stood outside the door.

  ‘Jo?’

  More thumping, some of which was the pounding of my heart against my ribcage. I tried the handle with my left hand.

  The handle moved but the door didn’t. Which was odd, because there wasn’t any sign of a lock on the outside of the door. The thumping grew more insistent. The possibilities ran through my mind. Another dog? But then why wasn’t it barking? Were non-barking dogs a thing? Jo? Gagged? I barged the door with my shoulder. Pain shot through me. The door didn’t give a fraction of a centimetre. I went back into the kitchen and returned the knife to the drawer. I needed a sledgehammer. I threw open cupboards and found nothing useful until my eyes hit on a tin of dog food and, all of a sudden, I had a plan.

  I opened the tin with a can opener I fished out of the sink. I scraped the contents into the dog bowl on the floor and made my way through to the front door. I opened it and called for the dog, my voice breaking. ‘Here, Growler, here, puppy.’

  Nothing, no sound of pattering feet. I tried a bit louder. Still nothing. Maybe it had run off. I put the bowl down on the ground, just to the left-hand side of the front door, and crept round to the back of the house. The kitchen window was on the left side of the back door – now the lights were on it was easy to make out. On the right-hand side of the back door was a small window, just above my head height, frosted glass, the room behind it in darkness. I jumped up and knocked on the glass. Another sound, muffled.

  I retrieved the wheelie bin, dragged it across so that it was under the small window and climbed up. I knocked on the glass again. The thumping replied. Mad dog with no vocal chords or Jo? Only one way to find out. I jumped down, scoured the garden until I found a loose brick in the back wall. I inched it out, only half a brick but good enough. I took off my jacket, wrapped it around my right fist and made my way back to the wheelie bin. I heard a sound that turned my walk to a run.

  Growler.

  I vaulted on to the dustbin. The dog crashed round the side of the house, licking its chops, having obviously already feasted on the dog food. It didn’t appear appeased. But it made my next step easier. I raised the brick. Shouted, ‘duck.’ Smashed the brick against the window with all my force. The glass shattered. The dog went quiet. For about three seconds. Then it leaped at the bin, nipped my left ankle. I held my arms out in front of my head. Dived through the broken pane.

  I crashed into the dark void, glass splintering around me. Landed on something hard. I ended up at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground. My hands touched the floor, my feet caught by something on the windowsill. Whatever I landed on was alive. It squirmed underneath me.

  I managed to manoeuvre myself in the tiny cramped space, enough to reach up the wall and flick on the light. The tiny space immediately illuminated to reveal a toilet the size of a broom cupboard. The person I’d hit was face down on the floor. The first thing I noticed was the person was naked.

  The second thing I noticed – it wasn’t Jo.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I pushed up with my hands and managed to get to my feet, shaking the broken shards of glass from my jacket, still wrapped around my wrist. The person under me tried to climb to his, but he was hindered by the fact that his feet were bound together with masking tape. As were his hands. There was also a piece over his mouth. He wasn’t completely naked, I noticed as I helped manoeuvre him backwards so that he could sit on the lowered toilet seat. Whoever had done this to him, they’d allowed him the dignity of retaining his underpants. Small mercies.

  I put my left hand to the corner of his mouth and ripped off the masking tape, figuring short sharp shock was the way to go. He yelped in pain, as the spikes in his upper lip pulled free from the tape.

  ‘We meet again,’ I said.

  His voice was croaky. ‘Did you have to rip it so hard?’

  ‘How long’ve you been here?’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Saturday,’ I said. I frowned at him. He couldn’t have been there that long – it was less than twenty-four hours since I’d chased him from The Chemic and onto The Ridge. I unwound my jacket from my right arm and shrugged back into it. Not easy in the confined space.

  Brownie licked his lower lip. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Did you hear my mate, Jo? She was in the house just now?’

  He blinked again, and I knew he wasn’t going to be able to provide me with any answers. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind for one thing, but also what was he going to have heard sitting out here, locked in the toilet? Jo couldn’t have been in the house more than five minutes.

  ‘Where are your clothes?’ I heard the dog barking outside the bathroom window and prayed it didn’t try to come in. The walls were already closing in. There wasn’t room for anything else. ‘We need to get out of here.’

  The toilet door had a big
metal bolt on it that was pulled across the frame. ‘How come the door’s locked?’

  ‘They locked it.’

  ‘Eh? How did they get out?’

  ‘Same way you got in.’

  ‘They put you in here, locked the door and then climbed out the window?’ I tried to peel the masking tape off his hands, but it was stuck so fast I couldn’t. The ends of his fingers were blue. I remembered the nail scissors, fished them out of my sleeve and cut the tape free.

  He didn’t say thank you. ‘Where’s my kegs?’

  ‘I’m not your mother,’ I said. ‘Where did you leave them?’

  ‘Funny.’ He rubbed his wrists. ‘You’re the bird from The Chemic.’

  ‘I prefer Lee.’

  ‘What you doing here?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator.’

  ‘Yeah and I’m David Bowie.’ The guy was sat on the toilet, in his underpants, with his feet still bound.

  I bent down to cut the tape from his ankles. ‘Loved you in Labyrinth.’

  ‘This is all your fault.’

  ‘Mine?’ I stopped and stood up. ‘I just rescued you. Thank you wouldn’t go amiss. Why’s it my fault?’

  ‘You chased me, right into them.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  I remembered the good-looking Asian man we’d seen at the entrance to The Ridge the previous night and it fell into place. ‘I didn’t know he was after you.’

  ‘Wanker.’

  ‘How much do you owe?’

  He managed to rip the rest of the masking tape from his ankles without my help. He stood up and the airspace condensed. He squinted at me. ‘How do I know you’re not working for them?’