The Disappeared

by Ali Harper

  ‘The police think you’ve killed her.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘We’ve made extensive enquiries.’

  ‘You’ve been talking to Peter bloody Partingdon.’

  Jo glanced past Wilkins to make eye contact with me. Neither of us liked the fact he got it in one.

  ‘Old queen,’ Wilkins continued, and I know he liked the fact he’d got a bit of an edge on us. ‘Came onto me, pissed as a coot. I told him where he could put it. He tells anyone that’ll listen that I’m responsible for killing Jayne. Bullshit.’

  ‘You were willing to pay twenty-four grand to stop people asking questions,’ Jo reminded him.

  The pendulum on the balance of power swung back towards us. I watched Wilkins struggle to work out how we’d found out that bit of information.

  ‘You’re playing with fire.’

  ‘Why would someone with nothing to hide pay twenty-four grand to keep someone quiet? You’ve got to admit, that looks bad.’

  I let Jo do the talking, wanted to keep myself focused on his reactions, his body language. I knew he was looking for the opportunity to bring us down, and I wasn’t going to let him find it.

  ‘I paid because I figured Jack was behind it, and I figured he must need the cash. If he needs cash that bad, he can have it.’

  ‘You’d let your own son blackmail you?’

  ‘Always knew he blamed me. Who else is going to come round here with that kind of a bullshit story?’

  ‘Your son thinks you killed his mother.’ Jo crossed her legs and adjusted her position in the chair. ‘What does that say about you?’

  ‘He never would talk about it.’

  ‘How did you kill her?’ Jo asked. ‘Jack thinks it was a car crash. But it can’t have been, because they never found the body.’

  Nick’s shoulders slumped, and he shook his head. He put an arm out, steadied himself against the back of the other armchair. He looked old, suddenly. Weak. ‘Christ, I’ve let so much …’ He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he picked up his glass and necked the contents.

  Jo hadn’t had a fag for over four hours and the lack of nicotine was making her cranky. ‘Why don’t you just do us all a favour and come clean?’

  ‘I can’t believe he can remember that. He can’t have been more than three.’

  ‘So there was a car crash? You fixed the brakes?’ I raised my voice, remembering the wire taped inside Jo’s bra. I wanted the confession, loud and clear and unequivocal.

  Wilkins took a step towards Jo. ‘By the time I realized he blamed me, it was too late.’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ I said. ‘Don’t go any closer. In fact, take a seat.’ I gestured to the armchair opposite Jo.

  Wilkins didn’t appear to hear me. In fact, he seemed lost, trapped in a world we didn’t inhabit. ‘And he’s right,’ he said, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear him. ‘What the hell, he’s going to get it sooner than he thinks. No one else to leave it to.’

  ‘So you did kill her?’ said Jo.

  My arms were tiring of holding the gun, and I realized I hadn’t considered how long I could stand in this position with my arms outstretched. I needed to rest my arms on something. I glanced around the room.

  ‘I figured if I turned up with the cash, it would be a good chance for us to have a chat, clear the air.’ Wilkins stood still. ‘You know, the last seventeen years, that’s all anyone’s ever thought about me – there’s the guy who got away with murdering his wife.’

  ‘How did you kill her?’ I asked. ‘With this?’

  He turned and looked at me like he’d forgotten I was in the room. ‘What?’

  I pulled a face and raised the point of the Glock so that it was aiming directly at his head. Power surged through my veins as my finger clenched against the trigger. I spoke slowly, made sure he knew that I was losing patience. ‘Why have you got a gun?’

  He showed me the palms of his hands. ‘OK. I’m not Mother Theresa. In my line of business there are a lot of dodgy characters. I got robbed, four times in three months. Bought it for protection. Never used it.’

  ‘You admit you have a gun?’ I said for the benefit of the wire.

  He frowned at me. His body language had changed, like some of the air had been let out of him. He looked like an old man, a tired, old man. When he spoke, his tone was more conciliatory, like he wanted us to start over. ‘What’s all this got to do with you two?’

  I think Jo must have caught the change in atmosphere because she flipped him a business card. ‘We’re private investigators.’

  He took it off her, read it and frowned at me. ‘Investigating what?’

  ‘Jack’s disappearance.’

  ‘He’s really disappeared?’

  ‘We were hired to find him.’

  ‘By who?’

  The muscles in my forearms burned. ‘Sit,’ I said. ‘And that’s the last time I’m going to ask nicely.’

  He thought about it for a moment then lowered himself down into the armchair opposite Jo. ‘If Jack’s missing, how do you know he thinks his mother died in a car crash?’

  ‘His girlfriend told us.’

  ‘He has a girlfriend?’ He sounded surprised, like the possibility had never occurred to him. ‘The one who came for the cash?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not her. Did you see her?’

  ‘I didn’t, but I got someone to watch the drop and then follow whoever picked up the money. Got as far as Leeds then lost her. I figured that proved it was Jack. Last I heard he was in Leeds.’

  If Wilkins had had someone follow Megan to Leeds, it added weight to the theory that he had killed her.

  ‘What’s she like? This girlfriend?’ he asked, like that was more important than the money. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said he sounded pleased.

  ‘Feisty, curly-haired, freckles.’

  He paused to consider this for a moment. I took my chance to sneak a glance at Jo. She raised a questioning eyebrow and plucked her tobacco tin from the top pocket of her jacket.

  ‘He’s not gay.’ Wilkins smiled for the first time, and when he did I caught a glimpse of the younger man, the ladies’ man he’d once been. ‘Think she’d meet me?’

  ‘I’d advise against that,’ I said, keeping the gun trained on him. ‘Women have a habit of disappearing when they’re with you.’

  He smiled again, this time a tired smile. ‘Steady, Eddie. One woman.’ He held up his forefinger. ‘One woman disappeared. But Jack’s right. I’m to blame.’

  I almost squealed. I pictured the smile on Col’s face, back at his house, listening to this.

  ‘What about Karen?’ Jo asked as she sealed her cigarette. She tossed it across the room to me and I caught it with my left hand.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Karen Carpenter.’

  ‘What the hell has she got to do with this?’

  Jo added another pinch of tobacco to a cigarette paper. ‘You killed your wife and then you killed Karen.’

  ‘I didn’t kill my wife.’

  ‘You just admitted it.’

  ‘I said I was to blame, I didn’t say I killed her.’

  I frowned at Jo. She shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t know what he was on about either.

  ‘Come again?’

  Wilkins sighed. ‘Want a proper one?’ He flicked a packet of Embassy Number 1s from his shirt pocket and patted a couple out. Jo shook her head and continued to roll her own. Wilkins lit one and drew heavily. ‘Here’s the truth,’ he said. He paused, and we waited. He exhaled a cloud of smoke and then took another drag. ‘My wife, may she rest in peace, killed herself.’

  I didn’t believe him.

  ‘I came back from work and found her. She hanged herself, in the garage, left a note on the kitchen table.’

  ‘Suicide?’ Megan’s body in the bath floated before my eyes. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Because of your affairs?’ asked Jo.

  ‘She’d either be the happiest w
oman alive or the darkest. Never knew which one you’d get.’

  Jo lit her own cigarette, and I prayed for her to toss the lighter over to me. She didn’t, instead placing it on the coffee table in front of her. Wilkins continued, his words flat and monotone. I reminded myself to focus, to concentrate only on Wilkins. He was scrabbling for an exit.

  ‘There was a car crash,’ he said.

  I must have made a sound because he looked over at me.

  ‘Before Jayne died. A year or more before. She hit a motorbike, down on Princess Parkway. She didn’t stop.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t know. Panicked, I guess. Jack was with her, in the car. She could never deal with the bad stuff. Would go nuts if she trod on a snail.’ He ran a hand through his hair, and I had the idea he wasn’t talking to us anymore, was hardly aware we were in the room. ‘I went to the police. Said I’d been driving, that I’d had a drink and that’s why I hadn’t stopped. Luckily the guy she hit wasn’t seriously hurt. I got disqualified – six months.’

  ‘Very big of you,’ said Jo. ‘But why should we believe you?’

  ‘No reason to lie.’

  ‘Everyone has a reason to lie.’

  ‘I want to show you something,’ he said. ‘In my study.’

  ‘No chance,’ I said. ‘You’re staying right there.’

  ‘OK. Well, you go,’ he said to Jo. ‘On the right-hand side of the desk is a green folder, bring it here.’

  Jo glanced at me. I shrugged.

  Jo pulled herself out of the armchair and made her way to the door. As soon as she’d vacated her chair, I lowered myself into it. I crossed one leg over the other and used them to balance the gun. My forearms weakened with relief. Jo returned less than thirty seconds later holding the file. She offered it to Wilkins, but he shook his head.

  ‘You read it.’

  Jo frowned at me in her chair and went to sit on the sofa. She held the file like an unexploded bomb in front of her. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Read it.’

  Jo opened the file, scanned the first few pages. Impatience sandpapered me.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  Jo didn’t say anything. Wilkins was the one to speak. ‘I’ve got cancer, not the good kind, diagnosed just before Christmas. It’s all in there.’

  I stared at Jo, but she had her head bent as she read, so she didn’t see the questions I was trying to get her to answer. Where was he going with this? I felt sweat trickle down the gap between my shoulder blades.

  ‘Nothing they can do,’ Wilkins continued. ‘All the money in the world don’t help you if there’s nothing to buy.’

  Jo stopped reading and nodded across to me.

  I turned to Wilkins, unsure of what to say. There’s times when I’ve thought knowing you were going to die must be the most liberating feeling in the world. I didn’t feel like that as Wilkins stared at me.

  ‘I’ve nothing left to play for.’

  ‘Does Jack know?’ asked Jo.

  ‘He’s hardly likely to want to make up with the person who killed his mother,’ I said.

  ‘For the last bleeding time, I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘She committed suicide,’ I said. I paused then shook my head. ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘If you didn’t kill her, why didn’t you tell Jack the truth?’ asked Jo, her voice softer. ‘Why didn’t you tell everyone the truth?’

  ‘He was 5 years old. You can’t tell a 5-year-old kid their mother committed suicide.’

  ‘Better than thinking—’

  ‘She wanted to be the best. The best mother. Jack adored her. She lit up rooms, like sunshine had just walked in. I loved her, Christ knows I did, but I never knew her.’

  ‘You contributed to the myth,’ said Jo. ‘Taking the blame in the car crash, not telling Jack the truth about her death.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said.

  ‘After she died, there’s whole years I can’t remember. Numbed the pain.’ He gestured towards the bottle of whisky. ‘Sent Jack away. Couldn’t face him, couldn’t face the lost, fucking haunted look in his eyes. It was like looking at her. I hated her for years after. If she could do that, take herself from me, from Jack, from the family …’

  No one spoke. Wilkins poured himself another measure of whisky. The light above swirled through it, making it look like honey.

  ‘You’re three times more likely to commit suicide if your mother did. You know that?’

  I flinched but didn’t answer. I’ve fought really hard not to believe in destiny, can’t bear the thought we’re all hapless hamsters on some monstrous wheel of life, pre-programmed to repeat the sins of our parents. I shook the words from my head and reached for the lighter that Jo had dropped on the coffee table.

  ‘And now you want him to know the truth?’ There was more venom behind the words than I’d intended, but once I’d started I couldn’t stop. ‘So you can die with a clean conscience and he can spend the rest of his life trying to work out whether you’re telling him a pack of complete lies in order to make yourself feel better?’

  I don’t know whether it was the smoke, but my eyes stung. Wilkins rubbed his face. When he spoke, his voice was quieter.

  ‘I want to say goodbye.’

  ‘I get that,’ said Jo.

  I glowered at her. She pulled a face at me, like what did I expect, and I knew she was falling for his bullshit.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘You can’t—’

  Wilkins continued like I hadn’t spoken. ‘I always thought there’d be time to clear the air. One day. In the future. I tell you one thing, being told you’re going to die brings the whole damned thing into focus.’

  ‘You can prove she committed suicide?’ I said.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, hauling himself up on the arms of his chair, ‘I can.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The room went quiet, and I became aware of the clock ticking on the mantelpiece. It was pitch-dark outside, and I knew we should pull the curtains, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off Wilkins. Standing up he loomed over me in my armchair, but a gun in your hands makes you feel big, whatever the perspective. I comforted myself with the thought that the house was set so far back from the road that even if someone did walk past they wouldn’t be able to see in.

  ‘I kept the note,’ he said. ‘Insurance policy. Knew that if push ever came to shove, I wasn’t going to prison. They were screwed, without a body – couldn’t even say for certain she was dead.’

  ‘Where is her body?’ As I said the words, I realized we’d overlooked the garage. As soon as the thought hit me, I checked myself. Seventeen years, for God’s sake. She couldn’t still be there.

  ‘I knew if they ever did find her, forensics would probably be able to establish how she died. If they didn’t, I had her note.’

  Jo stood up, Wilkins’s medical file discarded on the settee. ‘Let’s see,’ she said.

  ‘This way.’

  He led the way through to his study, Jo followed him, I brought up the rear. This time in his study I noticed the bookshelves that lined one long wall. As he took a key from a pot on the mantelpiece and opened a cabinet on the left-hand side of his desk, I saw Jo checking out the spines of some of his books. I kept my gaze on Wilkins, watched as he opened the cabinet. Over his shoulder I could see that it was stuffed, I mean completely stuffed, with files. He put armloads onto his desk and shuffled through them. It took him a few minutes to find what he was looking for, but when he did, he passed it to me without reading it, his hands trembling.

  It was a sheet of paper, writing paper, the posh kind – thick with a watermark running through. I swallowed and forced myself to read the delicate, loopy writing.

  My dear, darling Nick

  I’m so sorry but I can’t do this anymore. I’ve had a headache for what feels like forever, I can’t sit still and I can’t turn off the noise. I’m exhausted and I can’t sleep. I’m doing what seems the best thing to do, for me, for
you, for Jack, for everyone.

  I can’t hang around spoiling your life any longer. Please understand that I have to do this now, while he’s still young enough to forget.

  Darling, darling man, please, please make sure he always knows that I love him – more than life. Don’t let him know about the end. I want him to remember me on my best days, not my worst.

  All my love, always, all days

  Jayne

  I licked my lips and swallowed but there was no saliva in my mouth. I passed the note to Jo, but she’d already read it over my shoulder. Wilkins perched against his desk, his arms folded across his chest. Jo took a seat on the high-backed, black leather office chair.

  ‘She’d planned it all,’ said Wilkins. ‘Arranged for Jack to go to a friend’s house for the night. Took him to school then rang me. I drove home, hell for leather, found the note on the table. She hanged herself with a length of washing line.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Jo.

  ‘Had scratch marks all round her neck. Like she’d been clawed by a tiger. If I’d found her … if I’d got there quicker, if I hadn’t wasted time searching the house … It was pissing with rain. I remember sitting in the drive, soaked to the skin, bawling like a kid.’

  I saw the glisten of tears in his eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I hadn’t spoken to my mother for weeks before she died, and she didn’t leave a note. At that moment, seeing the look on Wilkins’s face, I didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful.

  ‘I had a boat, a little spot in North Wales,’ said Wilkins. ‘We’d go there for weekends, mostly before Jack was born. I cut her down with the garden shears, wrapped her in bed sheets, laid her down on the back seat of the car. Sailed out for the last time. I weighted her down and dropped her over the side.’

  ‘And her body never washed up?’ Jo asked.

  ‘No.’

  I hate people who commit suicide. In my eyes, it’s the ultimate shirk of responsibility. Jo gives me hell for it, says it’s an illness, not a choice, but I can’t bring myself to see it that way.