The Disappeared

by Ali Harper

  I closed the voices down. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘To see you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We have to … to make sense of what’s happened.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘I’ve lost one daughter.’ He leaned over the table, put his hand under my chin and tilted my head so that I was forced to look at him. ‘You’re all I’ve got left.’

  ‘You didn’t lose a daughter.’ I couldn’t keep the venom from my voice. I pushed his arm away.

  ‘Please, Lily.’

  ‘That’s not my name.’

  ‘I understand, you need a new start. Christ, I know.’

  ‘You don’t know. You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘I know more than you thi—’

  ‘You killed her.’ I shouted the words, spit flecked his face, and everything stopped.

  Silence.

  He stared at me and for the first time I stared back.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘You killed her,’ I said, my voice quieter, ‘and her baby, and now you want us to play happy families?’

  ‘I didn’t mean … You must know. I would never have wanted that to happen. I loved her, I still do, always will. You can’t begin to imagine how it feels to live with what I’ve done.’

  The most awful part of this was that I could imagine. ‘You want sympathy?’

  ‘We’re all each other has.’

  ‘Not true.’

  ‘We have to forgive each other, before we can forgive ourselves.’

  ‘Forgive each other?’ My voice came out high-pitched, like a shriek. Even the students stopped talking.

  He kept his voice low. ‘You know what I mean.’

  I didn’t care who heard. ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘You don’t have to feel guilty.’

  I jumped up from the table, knocking over both cups of tea. The crockery spilled, clattered to the floor. One smashed. Two men appeared from the rear of the café.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I said. ‘Don’t come anywhere near me, ever. If you do, I’ll call the police.’

  He got to his feet. I turned and barged past the table of students on my way to the door.

  ‘You know as well as I do, you can’t run,’ he said.

  By the time I hit the outside he had raised his voice so he was shouting after me.

  ‘Whatever happens, Lily, I’m still your dad.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I sprinted back round to our house, my body moving faster than my legs so that I stumbled forward, tripping over my feet. Jo was sitting in the van, still parked outside our flat. I flung myself through the passenger door and screamed: ‘Drive, drive.’

  To give Jo her due, she didn’t hesitate. She flicked her reefer out of the window, turned the keys in the ignition and lurched the van forward. A car sounded its horn as she pulled onto the road. She threw the gearstick to second and we gathered momentum. I scanned the pavements.

  ‘What?’ asked Jo.

  ‘Drive.’ Sweat ran down my forehead, dripped into my eyes. I wiped my face on the bottom of my T-shirt. ‘Down the hill.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Oh my God.’ It came out as a moan.

  The van hit thirty. Jo pushed it on. We cleared the park. I kept my gaze fixed on the wing mirror.

  ‘Thought you’d been abducted by aliens.’

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘Where we going?’

  ‘Anywhere. Anywhere that’s not here.’

  She threw me a glance. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve seen a ghost?’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘David.’

  Jo crunched the gears into fourth. ‘David who?’

  I didn’t answer, waited for her to catch up. Knew she’d get there.

  I felt her stare on me.

  ‘Shit, David David?’

  ‘Watch out!’

  She threw the steering wheel to the right and narrowly avoided the parked car outside the newsagents.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said a minute or so later, when we’d got to the bottom of the hill and pulled out left onto the main road into town. ‘How the fuck?’

  ‘Released, he said.’

  ‘Released? He got seven years.’

  ‘It’s been three.’ I stared out of the passenger window. ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to know.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘Me,’ I said, the dull realization flooding my system, making my arms ache. ‘He wants me to take her place, to fill the void.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Where’s he living? What’s he—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Just drive.’

  She didn’t say a word, and the buildings blurred past the window. We got to the edge of the city, then looped round and joined Kirkstall Road heading us back out to the west again. The road widened, and the traffic thinned. Jo picked up speed, and I thought about the places we could go. I didn’t have my passport. I couldn’t go home. We got as far as Horsforth, to the outer ring road, before Jo spoke. ‘Was he in a car?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’

  ‘Does—’

  ‘What bit of “I don’t want to talk about it” don’t you understand?’

  ‘Jesus, Lee. I’m just trying—’

  ‘Well, don’t. Stop here.’

  I pointed to a corner shop a couple of hundred yards ahead. She pulled up outside it.

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘To get fags.’ I slammed the van door behind me.

  I was carrying a white plastic bag when I got back to the van.

  Jo said: ‘Don’t, Lee. He’s not worth it.’

  ‘Chill the fuck out, would you?’ I said. I flung the carrier bag into the footwell. ‘It’s Red Bull.’

  We found a park, with a fish and chip shop opposite. Jo ordered for the both of us and we sat on a low stone wall bordering a rose bed. I had chips and mushy peas, in a polystyrene tray, the vinegar forming puddles. Maybe I ate some, I don’t think I did. Mainly I just dipped my fingers in the vinegar. We found a deserted playground within the park and sat in the sandpit. Jo had brought the hash tin and we smoked until conscious, rational thought was off the menu.

  It got cold.

  And dark.

  I know Aunt Edie would say I should have talked it over with Jo, but I don’t like talking until I know what I’m going to say. I couldn’t sort out the overload. Everything I’d hidden from for the past three years had caught up with me. He’d reopened a book I thought I’d closed, a storage container I’d thought I could keep the lid on. I didn’t want to talk about him, because talking about him would make me remember her. And I didn’t want to remember her, because whenever she flashed onto the screen of my brain she brought only pain and its harder, less forgiving cousin, guilt.

  ‘Wonder how Brownie’s getting on with Aunt Edie?’ said Jo. She lay on her back in the sand, staring up at the stars. She propped herself up on one elbow and passed me the spliff.

  I wiped my palms on the front of my jacket, decided to give up on my sand lion, which looked more like a sand hillock. It was getting hard to see in the dark. ‘This sand isn’t sticky enough.’

  ‘Should be. It’s full of melted ice cream and kid pee.’

  ‘Nice.’

  Jo shivered. I crouched next to her, trying to share what little body warmth I had.

  ‘We can’t stay here all night,’ she said.

  ‘OK.’ I was frozen, my shoulders trying to act like a scarf, hunched up around my neck.

  ‘You want to go home?’

  I couldn’t miss the hopefulness of Jo’s tone. I stubbed it out. ‘No.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘The office. There isn’t anywhere else.’

  It was getting on for half past eight. Monday night, not exactly quiet, b
ut quiet by LS6 standards. I made Jo park the van a few streets away, and we looped back round to the office on foot. There was no way David could know about the business; I repeated the thought over and over like a mantra. We’d rented it in the name of the agency, and the agency was set up in my new name. I cursed myself for telling him I’d changed my name, but I didn’t think I’d told him my new one. The whole conversation felt like a scene from a movie I’d watched years ago. I couldn’t separate fact from fiction. The things he said, the things I wish I’d said, the things we didn’t say.

  We’d have to move. I’d have to tell Jo, we couldn’t stay at the flat. Shame, because we’d lived there for four years and it had started to feel more like home than any other place I’d ever lived. We rented it from a landlady who was about ninety and never bothered us. But I couldn’t live there now, not knowing he could turn up at any second. It took me a few minutes to get the key into the padlock of the office door, which made me realize how battered I was.

  ‘Hurry up,’ said Jo. ‘I need a wazz.’

  That made us both laugh. Tension release. Jo cross-legged, jigging about, clutching her bits.

  I finally managed to turn the key, the clasp released and a voice behind me said: ‘Hi.’

  I whipped round ready to kick out, but stumbled and found myself face to face with Col. He had his hands up, ready to parry any punch I might throw at him.

  He was lucky. I doubt I’d have been able to slap my own thigh. Thank God it was dark because I knew blood was rushing to my cheeks. It crossed my mind to confess, hand him the dope tin, get it over with, but I didn’t get the chance, because Jo gave him a punch on the shoulder, which nearly sent him into the poor excuse for a privet hedge that divides our office from the house next door.

  ‘Anyone ever tell you not to sneak up on women?’ she said.

  ‘Sorry. Everyone’s jittery. Trying to maintain a low profile.’

  ‘Next time,’ said Jo, rubbing her knuckles, ‘it’ll be a stiletto, right through the eyes.’

  He glanced at me. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Come in, I’ll get the kettle on,’ I said, standing aside to let him in. I smelled Paco Rabanne as he passed.

  Despite our best efforts the place still was trashed.

  ‘Christ, you really got done over. You got insurance?’

  ‘Don’t be funny,’ said Jo, taking off her jacket and switching the heating on. ‘Cheaper to buy new stuff than it is to pay the insurance premiums round here.’

  ‘What did they take?’

  I pictured our small safe, dented but proud. ‘Nothing much,’ I said. ‘Not really. What you doing here?’

  ‘There’s been an arrest.’

  ‘For Megan’s murder?’

  ‘Two people connected to the investigation. That’s all I can say. Anonymous tip-off. Caught getting off a train in Huddersfield yesterday. The person who called it in thought they were armed.’ He picked up a penholder that had rolled under the low window at the front of the office and stood it on the one desk we’d managed to salvage.

  ‘You think it’s them?’

  ‘Don’t know. Not my case, so I’ve not had a chance to talk to them. Apparently, they say they’ve got an alibi but it’s a weird one.’

  ‘Weird?’

  ‘They reckon they kidnapped a junkie, Friday night. They said they were with him all day. Said he was tied up in their house, but when uniform went round to have a look there was no one there.’

  ‘Oh.’ I pretended to be tidying up my desk. ‘You believe them?’ I glanced at Jo.

  Col shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? Powers that be aren’t convinced. But they’ve been charged with possession and intent to supply. Least that gives the lads time to see if they can get a confession.’

  Jo flinched and put her hands over her ears. ‘Spare me the details.’

  I pulled a face at Jo, but Col didn’t seem to mind. To be honest I’m not sure at that moment in time Jo was that concerned about how Bernie and Duck were being treated by the boys in blue. Made me realize it’s easier to be righteous when you haven’t been wronged.

  ‘Coroner’s put the time of death between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. She was strangled. Then put in the bath.’

  We’d waved Megan off at 6.15 p.m. and I’d assumed she’d been walking. I guessed it would take twenty, thirty minutes to walk to the flats on Cardigan Road, which meant she must have been murdered almost as soon as she got home. Was someone waiting for her? Bushes and shrubs – ample hiding places – surrounded the car park to her flats. Perhaps someone was hiding there, biding time. Perhaps they watched her go in, gave her time to get settled, have a glass of wine, put some music on, undress, climb into the bath. I moved to stand by the radiator, but the heat hadn’t seeped into it yet.

  ‘Who found her?’

  ‘Downstairs neighbour called the police. Tap was dripping, the bath overflowed.’

  Col took a seat and put his feet up on the desk. I went through to the kitchenette and took some deep breaths while the kettle boiled. Col shouted through from the front office.

  ‘I checked out the Wilkins case you gave me.’

  I re-joined them in the outer office.

  ‘And?’ said Jo.

  ‘You’re right. There were rumours of an affair. More than one by all accounts.’

  It hit me that I hadn’t thought about David for the past three minutes and my spirits rose at the realization. Maybe I wasn’t condemned to drown in dysfunctionality. Maybe work would save me.

  ‘Let’s go through to the back,’ I said. I picked up my notebook. ‘No one can see us in there.’

  Col frowned but got up and followed me through. Our clear up efforts had had more of an impact here, we’d managed to get all the broken furniture out of the room, and the punchbag still hung in the corner.

  ‘So I checked them out. And guess what?’ said Col as he glanced around the room for a chair then took a seat on the floor.

  ‘You found them?’ I said.

  ‘We get first dibs,’ Jo said. ‘We gave you the tip.’

  Col held up a hand. ‘No one’s going to speak to them.’

  He didn’t need to say the rest of the sentence. From the heaviness of his tone, we knew what was coming. He paused, allowed us to reach our own conclusions.

  ‘They’re dead?’ I said.

  He paused. ‘I don’t know they’re all dead. One emigrated, never to be seen again. The other …’ He pursed his lip and nodded.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned his back against the wall. ‘Car crash.’

  ‘When?’ said Jo.

  ‘Another car crash?’ I said, before I remembered Jayne Wilkins didn’t die in a car accident. At least not one that anyone could prove. My brain ached, and I cursed the number of spliffs we’d smoked. It was like trying to do the hurdles after a drinking session.

  ‘December 2000,’ Col said. ‘Three months after Jayne disappeared.’

  ‘Balls,’ said Jo.

  ‘She was 23.’

  ‘There goes our witness,’ said Jo. ‘What happened, brake failure?’

  ‘DUI.’

  ‘Who was?’

  I marvelled at Jo’s ability to keep up. My brain scrambled to get a hold of the conversation. ‘What’s DUI?’

  ‘Drunk driving,’ said Jo.

  ‘She was called Karen,’ Col said.

  ‘Karen Carpenter?’ I thought back to Martin’s notes.

  ‘That’s the one. They found her behind the wheel, at the bottom of a lake, out east. The coroner reckoned she took the bend too quickly. Water would have been freezing. Drowned before anyone could get to her.’

  ‘There goes our witness,’ said Jo again. ‘Conveniently.’

  ‘I pulled the file,’ said Col.

  ‘Bleeding typical,’ Jo muttered. She jumped up from the floor and left the room. We heard the sounds of her relieving herself from the toilet next door. I told you, the walls are plaster
board thin.

  I turned back to Col. ‘How does that help us?’

  ‘It doesn’t. Not really. Apart from …’

  ‘“Apart from” what?’ I sat cross-legged on the floor, a distance away from him. I didn’t want him to smell the smoke in my hair, on my clothes.

  ‘I don’t know. Might be nothing.’ He lit a cigarette, and I pushed the ashtray across the floor to him.

  ‘Go on.’

  He held the cigarette between his thumb and his first two fingers, his hand curled, like he was used to smoking outside in strong winds. ‘She was pregnant.’

  ‘Pregnant?’ The word was like a slap across the face.

  ‘The autopsy put it at seven weeks.’

  ‘The baby died?’ Stupid question. A seven-week old foetus inside a dead mother. I had to look away. I could feel his stare on me, but I kept my gaze on the floor until I’d got control.

  ‘You think she didn’t want to be pregnant? Killed herself?’ asked Jo, coming back into the room, fastening her belt.

  ‘Impossible to know. But,’ he held up one finger, ‘according to her mother, Karen had been told it was highly unlikely she would ever be able to have children. She’d got some condition. Getting pregnant was a miracle for her.’

  ‘So, not suicide.’

  ‘Her mother swore Karen wouldn’t have done anything to harm the baby. Refused point blank to believe she’d have had a drink if she’d been pregnant. And even if she hadn’t been pregnant, her mother was adamant she’d never drink and drive.’

  ‘Bet he fixed the brakes,’ said Jo. ‘And spiked her drinks.’

  ‘There’s a question mark over whether she was driving. When they got to her she was in the back seat. Whether she climbed there trying to escape, or whether she was there when the car entered the water, we’ll never know.’

  Not for the first time I thought about how it must feel to die with a baby growing inside you. To die when you’re responsible for creating, nurturing life. You must die with the belief that you’ve failed on a fundamental, catastrophic level.

  ‘He’s got away with murder,’ said Jo. ‘Twice.’

  ‘No proof,’ I said. ‘They never arrested him.’

  ‘Lee’s right,’ said Col. ‘It’s just interesting in light of the fact she’s connected.’