The Disappeared

by Ali Harper

  ‘More than interesting,’ said Jo.

  Col leaned across towards me and stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. His fingers brushed mine, and I shrank my hand away.

  ‘I had a look at Wilkins.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Couple of minor things, but not for years. All traffic related. A drunk driving conviction, failure to report an accident. Likes his fast cars. But nothing in the last ten years. I even looked at his tax returns. All filed. Not worth as much on paper as you might think, but not declaring the odd car sale isn’t the crime of the century.’

  ‘It’s him,’ said Jo. ‘I know it is.’

  ‘We’ve got no proof,’ I said.

  ‘There was one thing that caught my eye,’ Col said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I got a mate of mine to have a look at his bank account. Strictly off the record. Ten days ago, Nick Wilkins withdrew £25K, in cash.’

  I couldn’t help it. I caught my breath and the sound carried in the room.

  ‘What?’ asked Col, looking at Jo then turning his gaze to me. ‘What?’

  ‘That means it’s true,’ said Jo. ‘It’s him.’

  I glanced at Jo. We couldn’t help ourselves. The words spilled out the both of us, fast as anything. I think Jo started the sentence, but I finished it. ‘That’s the exact amount Jack and his mate owe their dealers.’

  Col pulled a face like he didn’t believe us. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And you think Wilkins paid Jack’s debts for him? Thought they weren’t speaking to each other?’

  I looked at Jo. ‘I don’t think he paid it willingly.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘We think they blackmailed him.’ Jo sat on the floor, her legs outstretched in front of her.

  ‘Blackmail? What have they got to blackmail him about?’

  I glanced at Jo. ‘Jack thinks his dad killed his mum.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘We weren’t sure it was relevant.’

  ‘Listen.’ He jumped up and his keys fell out of his pocket. I picked them up and handed them to him. He took them from my hand and again I felt my skin tingle. ‘You’ve got to be straight with me. If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I can’t protect you. This isn’t a game.’

  My cheeks burned. ‘I’m—’

  ‘Look what happened to Megan. You have to trust me. We have to trust each other. If you don’t, I can’t help you.’

  My thoughts came at me in random bursts. ‘We think they blackmailed Jack’s dad to get the money to pay the dealers.’

  ‘Where’s the money now?’

  Despite his plea for truth, I daren’t admit we had it in the safe. We’d have to hand it over. I didn’t want to hand it over. It was our trump card, the one thing we had that no one else did. I stood up. ‘That’s the question everyone’s asking.’

  ‘But,’ said Jo, her eyes shining, ‘if Wilkins paid the blackmail demand, that means he’s guilty.’

  I made my way to the kitchenette. I could still hear them both speaking, and I’d just remembered the tea. I guess, if I’m honest, I didn’t like the fact Col was dressing us down like we were school kids. My head was too hot. I splashed cold water on my face.

  ‘You can’t jump to those kinds of conclusions,’ I heard him say to Jo. ‘Maybe he paid because he wanted to help his son out of trouble.’

  ‘They’re estranged,’ Jo said. ‘He told Lee he hadn’t heard from Jack for years.’

  ‘That’s not proof,’ said Col. ‘I can’t go to my boss with that.’

  I took a deep breath and carried the mugs into the back room. Tea sploshed over the sides as I walked across the room, scalding my knuckles. ‘Megan might have been involved in the blackmail.’

  He turned to me and the room fell silent. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I just know,’ I said.

  Col didn’t stop staring. His oversized woollen jumper had holes in the sleeves. ‘That would be a serious breach of judgement. A criminal offence.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I handed him a mug of tea. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why would she do that? Doesn’t make sense.’

  I gave the other mug to Jo and then turned back round to Col. ‘She’d fallen in love,’ I said. ‘With one of the guys she was supposed to be watching.’

  I left the room to fetch my own mug and the chocolate Hobnobs Jo had bought.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Col when I stepped back into the room. ‘The one who owes the money?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Jesus.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘You’re accusing a senior police officer of … Do you know what that would do to her reputation? To her son? Don’t throw accusations around, especially ones you can’t prove.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘Even if I can’t prove it.’

  ‘Fallen in love?’ He looked at me and I knew he was willing me to say I’d made a mistake. I couldn’t. He hit the panelled walls with the palms of his hand. ‘I knew there was something wrong.’

  ‘Don’t judge,’ I said. ‘You said yourself there’s no such thing as black and white.’

  ‘It’s my fault. She wasn’t ready. They put her in too soon. I knew there was something wrong. Knew I should have pushed it.’

  ‘Easy with hindsight,’ I said.

  ‘Chuck us a Hobnob,’ said Jo.

  I threw her the packet, and she took one and dunked it into her tea. When she’d bitten the melted segment, she licked her lips and said: ‘You’re both missing the point.’

  ‘What?’ Col had put his tea on the floor and was pacing the room.

  ‘What’s the likelihood of us having more than one murderer on our hands?’ said Jo.

  I still couldn’t get my head straight, but even in the fog I knew where Jo was headed. I tried to put it into words, to get the order straight in my mind. ‘Wilkins kills his wife but gets away with it because he’s hidden the body somewhere no one can find it.’

  Jo finished her biscuit and took over the narrative for me. ‘Karen, his bit on the side, gets suspicious, so he kills her.’

  ‘Or…’ I reached for another Hobnob, ‘… maybe he kills her because she’s pregnant with his child, and he knows it looks bad.’

  Col added the final act, his voice flat and monotone. ‘Then, seventeen years later, Megan shows up, saying she knows the truth.’

  I think we collectively caught our breath, because the air seemed to get sucked from the room.

  ‘Which means,’ said Jo, ‘Wilkins killed Megan too.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  We talked on into the night. I didn’t feel tired – the opposite. I felt wired, like I could run up a mountain. I knew we were close and I had a sense of my role in what was coming. I had a purpose, a way of atoning. The anticipation of it was like a drug.

  ‘We have to prove Wilkins killed Megan, without anyone finding out about the blackmail,’ said Col, as we drank our mugs of tea and Jo and I munched our way through the rest of the Hobnobs. ‘It’s just a question of how.’

  ‘He’s got away with murder three times.’ That made him an impressive adversary. We couldn’t underestimate him. ‘We’ll have to get him to confess,’ I said at last. ‘We need another set of wires.’

  ‘He doesn’t strike me as the confessional type,’ said Jo.

  ‘Slow down. I need to think about this,’ said Col. ‘I should pass it up the chain. Jesus, they’re going to go ape.’

  I punched the bag in the corner of the room a couple of times. ‘You can’t. If you tell your boss about Wilkins, you drop Megan in it. They’ll want to know why she blackmailed him.’

  ‘And what about Jack? What if his dad’s killed him too?’ Jo added.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ asked Col. ‘Turn up and say we know you killed Megan?’ He put a hand on my arm, and I stopped punching. ‘He’s never going to play ball.’

  I could see the concern in his
eyes. ‘This is our case. We owe it to Megan.’ We owed it to her son.

  ‘You should go,’ I said to Col as Jo took the mugs through to the kitchenette. ‘The less you know the better. Give us forty-eight hours. If we haven’t come back to you with proof, you can go to your boss with what we’ve told you.’

  ‘I can’t. I—’

  ‘All right, twenty-four hours. One more night – if we don’t come back with something …’

  He touched my arm, and my skin goose-bumped. ‘If anyone ever told me the job would get this complicated I’d never have signed up.’

  ‘Why did you?’ asked Jo, as she came back into the room.

  Col turned to her. ‘Failed my A levels. Needed to get out of Luton. Poxy place. Basically, it was the police force or the Army, and I knew I’d never be able to kill anyone.’

  It didn’t take long for the plan to form. If I’m honest it wrote itself. There was only one way forward, one clear path ahead, and the prospect of walking it thrilled me.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ Col said.

  He lifted his shirt, the flesh on his stomach white and taut. I caught a glimpse of a scar on the left-hand side of his ribcage. I wanted to press my fingers against it. I hadn’t had sex for months. Desire flashed through me, muscle memory. The body holds on to things the brain tries to forget. I heard the sound of plasters peeling off skin.

  ‘Here,’ he said. He handed Jo a wire, so small and neat it made the one we’d got from The Spy Shop look like a child’s toy.

  ‘You’ve been recording us?’ I mentally flicked back through all the things we’d discussed, trying to assess how much trouble we could get into if the recording fell into the wrong hands.

  ‘I wear it all the time, force of habit. It’s not switched on, see.’

  He showed Jo how to use it. ‘It records to a remote machine, back at mine.’

  At ten o’clock, Col ran us through the plan one last time, tested us on every part of it and declared himself satisfied. ‘Want me to walk you home?’

  ‘No.’ I knew the word came out too loud because Col frowned at me. ‘I’m not going home,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll kip here tonight,’ said Jo. ‘Give us more time to prepare.’

  Col glanced around the bare room. ‘Where?’

  ‘On the floor.’ Jo stood up, stretched her arms above her head and yawned. ‘I’ll go get duvets and stuff.’

  We wrote a quick list, and Jo left to collect the things we needed from the flat. Col and I went through to the front office, watched her leave. The door closed behind her and silence descended. The central heating was on too high. I was still hungry.

  ‘Why don’t you want to go home?’

  ‘Nothing to do with this,’ I said.

  ‘OK.’ He paused, and he was so close to me I could feel his breath on my face. ‘This whole thing turns on trust,’ he said.

  I have issues with trust in intimate relationships: I don’t need a psychology degree to know that. He followed me through to the back room. I picked up the mugs from the floor, took them to the sink. Came back and he hadn’t moved. He stood there, with his arms folded, and I knew he was waiting for me to say something. To answer a question I didn’t remember him asking. He stared at me until I couldn’t bear it any longer.

  ‘Someone showed up at my house earlier, someone from my past.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No one you know.’

  ‘A bloke?’

  ‘An old story.’

  ‘Giving you trouble?’

  I knew Col had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but I let it slide. Couldn’t face the idea of telling him the truth, giving him a glimpse of my family. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t trustworthy. I didn’t want him to think I was fucked up.

  ‘If you need someone to have a word …’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ I lied. I glanced around the room, unsure where to put myself. Having no furniture didn’t help. I didn’t know what to do with my arms. ‘I just don’t want to deal with it now. That’s all.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame him for persistence,’ Col said. I didn’t know what he meant. My radar was still off, my nervous system in overdrive.

  I twisted my neck from side to side, my body felt like one of those metal cages they used to hang criminals in, back in the Middle Ages. The cold of the park had got into my bones, and even though the room was too hot I couldn’t get warm. I could feel the frayed ends of my nerves, like a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  ‘If he becomes a problem, let me know.’ He put his hand on my arm, just gently on the side of my bicep. ‘Some men need another man to tell them where to get off.’

  It was a tempting thought. I screwed up my eyes and imagined Col frog-marching David out of my life, Col with a truncheon, and a policeman’s hat, like a scene from a Punch and Judy show, pulling David along by the collar. If only it were that simple. I wondered whether Col had a uniform somewhere. He didn’t look anything like a copper, in his faded Levi’s and orange Caterpillar boots.

  ‘Do you have a real life?’ I asked. ‘Like a wife and two-point-four kids?’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘Couldn’t do this job if I did. You’ve got to live it, otherwise it would do your head in.’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  He held my gaze. ‘Luckily, I come from a really fucked-up family. I don’t feel the need to visit them too often.’

  That made me smile. I’d never heard anyone express it that way before. I tried the words out in my head. Luckily, I come from a really fucked-up family. I’d have to practise.

  ‘When I go in, I go all in. Then I go to the next place. No ties.’

  ‘Where is the next place?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t know. Wherever they send me.’

  ‘Oh.’ I jabbed at the punchbag, just gently with my right fist. The rhythm soothed me.

  Col crossed the room and held the punchbag steady, so I could hit it with a bit more force. ‘I’m getting too old,’ he said. ‘It’s all right when you’re young, but now …’

  ‘You’re not old.’ I jabbed harder, the tension in my shoulders easing a fraction. I breathed deeper and threw more force behind the punches. My sleeve rode up, and I saw him catch sight of the scars on my arms. I’m used to that look, when people catch a glimpse. There’s nothing I can do, nothing I can say. The past is another country; one I don’t visit anymore.

  ‘Keep thinking about finding a place I can settle.’ His body swayed to absorb the swing of the bag.

  When the connection is right, energy expands. I hit the bag square in the middle at just the right moment in time. Its momentum met the force of my punch, creating its own synergy. I hit it again. Harder.

  ‘Used to dream about owning a ranch, somewhere like Montana or Colorado. These days I’d settle for a smallholding, somewhere I could keep chickens. The odd goat.’

  ‘Odd goats are great company, I’ve heard.’

  He grinned. ‘Got to beat humans. One thing I’ve learned in this job is mankind ain’t kind.’

  ‘You probably see the worst of it.’

  He made no comment.

  I continued hitting harder each time, my knuckles warming against the hessian. He stepped backwards to allow the bag more room to swing. Every punch knocked him off balance, and there was something about that that I liked.

  ‘I’ve been here nearly nine months, longest I’ve been anywhere since I was about 6.’

  A bead of sweat flew from my head and splattered on the bag.

  ‘I like Leeds.’ I could see from his face that I was making him work hard now. ‘It’s true what they say about northerners.’

  Did I want to know what they said about northerners? Probably not, but I was about to ask when the phone rang, and I jumped out of my skin.

  I stopped punching and stood still. ‘Who the fuck is that?’ I asked Col, like he might have some idea.

  He looked at me funny and said: ‘Want me to answer it?’ />
  ‘No, no, it’s OK.’ I hurried through to the outer office, rubbing my knuckles. It was too late for calls about water coolers. I swallowed, my hand poised in mid-air over the receiver. It rang another time. Col was in the doorway, watching me. I picked it up.

  ‘No Stone Unturned,’ I said into the receiver, steeling myself for his voice. Poised to slam the phone straight back down.

  ‘Morning and evening, you said. That was the deal.’

  It took me a moment to place the voice, but it wasn’t David. I couldn’t think who it was, but it wasn’t David. I slumped over the desk.

  ‘In this business all you have is your word.’

  Sweat ran in rivulets down the side of my face. I wiped my forehead on my sleeve. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Martin Blink harrumphed down the phone.

  ‘I was just about to ring,’ I said. ‘Sorry, it’s been a mental day.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me about it.’

  I glanced across at Col. He had that puzzled look on his face, wanting to know who I was speaking to, whether it was connected. The sight of him helped me form sentences.

  ‘I can’t right now, I’m afraid. I’ve got a client with me.’

  ‘At this time of night? Pull the other one.’

  ‘No, I swear.’

  ‘What client?’

  The front door burst open, which gave me another shot of adrenaline. A hillock of duvets pushed their way into the room.

  ‘I’ll ring you back,’ I said to Martin. ‘Jo’s just here. Give me half an hour.’

  Jo and I tried to have a conversation through facial expression, me still holding the phone to my ear. Had she encountered anything, anything that wasn’t supposed to be there? She shook her head at my unspoken question. I put my hand over the receiver and mouthed, ‘Aunt Edie.’

  ‘That’s a promise?’ said the voice on the phone.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  I allowed myself to breathe. Maybe David had got the message and that was the last I’d ever see of him. I forced my brain to embrace the possibility.

  ‘Thirty minutes,’ said Martin.

  ‘Absolutely. Jo says hi.’

  ‘Hi, Aunt Edie,’ Jo shouted into the receiver as she put her armful of duvets on the desk. Col stepped forward to catch the penholder she knocked over.