The Disappeared

by Ali Harper

  ‘What about Jack?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Who gives a shit? He’s a junkie. No one cares.’

  ‘Karen?’

  ‘Sorry.’ He paused to take a drag on his cigarette. ‘I told a lie.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘Thought you’d like it, given your history.’

  I glared at him.

  ‘I checked you out, Lee. Know all about your shitty family. You can run, Lee, but you’ll never hide.’

  ‘You utter bastard.’

  ‘Not me, him.’ He gestured at Nick’s corpse. ‘Brute of a man. Getting away with murder all this time. I’m the hero. Tragically a bit too late to actually save anyone, but still a hero for trying.’

  ‘Why’d you kill her?’

  ‘Why d’you think? Come on, you’re the fucking investigator.’

  ‘She was on to you. Knew you’d got involved in something.’

  ‘There you go. Not just a pretty face.’

  ‘She was going to turn you in.’

  ‘And you are, Lee. You know, not pretty, a stunning face. Was looking forward to watching you suck my dick. Bet you’re a fighter in the sack.’

  ‘Now you’ll never know.’

  ‘That’s the worst of it.’ He half-laughed.

  I felt my lips with my forefinger. ‘Always had lousy taste when it comes to men. Can I have a fag?’

  He sat down in the armchair and crossed his right leg over his left. The gun pointed at me, resting on his knee. ‘Get up off the floor.’

  I did as he said. Hauled myself up, unsure whether my knees would obey the messages my brain was sending them.

  ‘She found out you’re bent. You’re dealing.’ I dropped myself into the second armchair, thought of Brownie and what he’d told me at Bernie and Duck’s house. And the truth smacked into me. ‘You’re T.’

  ‘You see, you go into the police force believing that crime doesn’t pay, that the good guys always win. You start hanging out with the bad guys, and you realize they aren’t so bad after all. They like the same things you like, football, having a laugh, a beer after work. Then you see the cash – more cash than I could earn in ten years as a cop. Ten years of putting my life on the line. No one gives a fuck. OK, they give you a decent funeral, but who really cares? After you’re gone? They leave your wife with a pension and some vague notion that her husband was a hero. How does that help a 6-year-old kid?’

  ‘“Six-year-old kid”?’ I wasn’t following the story. My eyes alighted on the whisky bottle Nick had brought with him when he first came through the living room door. Still holding its own on the coffee table. ‘Fancy a drink?’ I pointed. ‘Bet it’s the good stuff.’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘Come on, live a little. I need to numb the pain. You need Dutch courage.’

  I reached across for the bottle and retrieved Nick’s glass from the floor. I crawled back to my armchair and filled the glass. ‘So you are married.’

  I held the glass out to him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not me.’

  ‘You said a 6-year-old kid?’

  ‘Not mine.’ He took the glass from my hand.

  I didn’t react, didn’t move a single muscle, just kept staring at his green-brown eyes, the ones that reminded me of something, someone, some part of me.

  ‘Who you talking about then?’

  He drank the whisky down in one gulp and put the glass down on the coffee table. I hadn’t had a drink for four months and twelve days. I sniffed the bottle that I still held in my right hand. My taste buds dampened. I swallowed the surplus saliva, put my lips to its neck. Stopped, made myself pause, inhaled first, drank second. The liquid burned the back of my throat, making my oesophagus come to life. I could feel every cell stir as the liquid seeped down my throat, telling me not to worry, reassuring me that everything would be OK, that the pain wouldn’t last. I might have closed my eyes for a brief moment.

  ‘A woman who appreciates her alcohol,’ Col said.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘That’s the best ever.’

  ‘See? Crime does pay,’ said Col. ‘He’s living proof … Well, when I say living.’ He trailed off for a moment as he glanced across at Nick’s inert body on the carpet. I couldn’t let myself look in Jo’s direction. ‘But you know, he lives in a mansion and drinks whisky that probably costs more for one bottle than I make in a month. How is that fair?’

  ‘Maybe he worked hard.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t.’

  I shrugged. I learned a long time ago to let karma take care of what’s fair and what isn’t. ‘He’s got cancer.’

  ‘We all die, Lee. Sooner or later.’

  ‘Maybe it’s about dying with a clear conscience.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Depends whether you believe in an afterlife.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Col.

  I helped myself to another swig from the bottle. The alcohol didn’t burn as much this time, leaving my taste buds to dance in the dusky taste. I leaned across and refilled his glass, despite him holding out his hand to say no.

  ‘I believe in 6-year-old kids that don’t deserve to have their dad taken from them before they’re old enough to really know who their father was.’

  ‘Whose kid?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Matters to me.’

  ‘My mate. Lewis.’

  ‘A copper?’

  He nodded and picked up the second glass.

  ‘He died?’

  ‘Car chase.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ And I was.

  ‘Stupid kids high on glue, nicked a car, and Lewis is the one that pays.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

  ‘I’ve got to crack on,’ he said. ‘Time of death – they’re shit-hot on that kind of thing.’

  ‘You’re forgetting something,’ I said.

  ‘I know, the wire. Don’t worry. It’s bust. Something wrong with the transmitter.’

  Fucker. I kept my face neutral. ‘Something else.’

  ‘The suicide note. I’m going to go through this place—’

  I shook my head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That.’ I nodded towards the piece he held pointed at me. ‘It’s not Wilkins’s gun.’

  He grinned. ‘You could have been good.’ He stood up, moved a step closer to my armchair, the one that Nick’s gun was underneath.

  I got to my feet and placed myself between him and the armchair.

  ‘You can’t kill me with that. Would really fuck-up the forensics, wouldn’t it? Let me guess, you’re going to say we came here looking for Jack. And because we’re young and stupid, we brought a gun with us, the Glock, that you planted here and told me where to find. So we tried to force Nick to confess to killing his wife—’

  ‘Or his son.’ Col shrugged.

  ‘But because we’re female and stupid, Nick overpowered us, grabbed his own gun,’ – I waved towards the armchair Nick’s gun lay under – ‘which you stole at the same time as you planted the Glock.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘And then you burst through the doors to rescue everyone, kill Nick, but too late to save my life. Or Jo’s.’

  ‘I found out about your plan, drove here hell for leather, heard the first gunshot … I broke the window but by the time I got in he was standing over your body just about to fire a second shot. Jo was already dead. I fired, hoping the first shot hadn’t killed you, but alas…’

  ‘I’m truly moved,’ I said. The whisky made me brave. ‘But none of that stacks up if you kill me with your gun.’

  I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet. Shook out my hands so that the alcohol bled to the ends of my fingers. I swear I could feel the heat radiate behind my fingernails.

  ‘Don’t be a dickhead,’ he said.

  I went to kick him, but he pulled his gun back and hit me across the face with it. Stars burst across my vision. He hit me again. I crashed to the floor. My vision blurr
ed. I could just make out him ducking to his knees and putting an arm under the chair, feeling for Nick’s gun. I closed my eyes. Earlier Nick had said there was nothing like knowing you were going to die to bring clarity and focus. And I had clarity.

  I knew, in that moment, I’d been kidding myself.

  I hadn’t ever stopped drinking, I’d just been holding off, waiting. I love alcohol more than I love anything or anyone. Even as I waited for the shot that was going to kill me, the thing that fucked me off the most was that I couldn’t finish the bottle.

  The shot came. There was a warm wetness. My eardrums burst. Still the monster inside me demanded another drink. Just one more. More. The curse of the addict. There’s never enough.

  Time went funny. My vision went. I thought my eyes were open but all I could see was black. I don’t know how long I lay there. I knew Col wouldn’t be calling an ambulance and that I was destined to bleed to death, however long it took. Col was probably out the window by now.

  Death. Funny how scared we all are to die and yet, in that moment, I didn’t feel fear. I felt nothing but rage. Pure, white, blind rage.

  ‘Lee?’ I heard a voice that sounded like Jo’s screech through my burst eardrums.

  ‘More,’ I said, but no words came out. ‘More.’

  I waited for the bright lights I’d read about but instead Jo appeared on my screen of vision. The once-white bits on her T-shirt were now blood red. She held the half-empty bottle of whisky to my lips. I felt it drip down the sides of my neck. The best anaesthetic in the world. No pain. They talk of my drinking but never my thirst.

  Tears plopped down Jo’s pale cheeks.

  ‘I love you,’ I said. At least I thought I said it, but I couldn’t hear my own words.

  ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ I felt peaceful. Like everything made sense and it was all OK. None of it mattered, not really, not at the end of the day.

  ‘Help, Lee. Please. Shit. Shit.’

  The pain in my leg lessened, which wasn’t how I thought dying would go. Maybe it was the whisky. You see it’s not all bad. People only tell you the bad stuff. But there’s positives in everything. I kept closing my eyes thinking that this was my last moment, but the lights never went out. I replayed Jo’s last words in my mind.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Jo. Her face was whiter than I’ve ever seen it, and that’s saying something. I knew her during her Goth phase.

  ‘I need another drink,’ I said, but she wasn’t listening to me. Her attention was elsewhere in the room. I pulled myself up by the arm of the chair and slouched against it. Jo was on her knees. I could see her flesh torn at the top of her left arm. It looked like raw liver: dark, blood red, almost black. I forced myself to look somewhere else. And it was then I saw the Glock hanging from her fingers.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  We had no time to think, no time to move, no time to plan a response. By the time I pieced together the noise of the police sirens from the road outside with the scene in front of me, the door was already being kicked down. After that all hell broke loose. I think Jo dropped the gun, but I don’t know because someone yelled, ‘Get down’, and I did. Nose to the floor. We were ordered not to move until I felt my arms being fastened in handcuffs behind my back.

  I was still trying to make sense of what had happened. I hadn’t been shot. The warm wetness that spread down my leg when I heard the gun fire, that wasn’t blood. That’s all I’m going to say. Two policemen dragged me across the room, and I was stuffed into the back of a police car. A female officer sat in the front and ignored me. I saw an ambulance arrive, and then another one.

  ‘I’m a private investigator,’ I told anyone who would listen.

  ‘We’ll get to you in a minute,’ the policewoman said.

  One ambulance left with its lights flashing. The other stayed put on the drive.

  ‘I want to speak to my partner.’

  No one cared.

  I was taken to the police station and locked in an interview room for over three hours. I hadn’t seen Jo since the police had burst into Wilkins’s front room. I told the story, over and over, just as it happened, except I didn’t say I’d seen the gun in Jo’s hand. They told me Nick and Col were both dead. I told them Col had given me whisky, too much whisky, and after that I didn’t remember anything. I don’t think they believed me but after three hours of my saying the same thing they let me call my lawyer. I didn’t have a lawyer, so I called the next best person I could think of, the ex-journalist, Martin Blink. Despite the fact I must have woken him, he didn’t need a single detail repeating. He told me not to say a word to anyone until he got there. He was at the station twenty minutes later, complete with a bleary-eyed criminal defence guy.

  ‘It’s not me that needs the lawyer,’ I said. ‘It’s Jo.’

  Simon, the lawyer, insisted on running over everything with me first before we had to repeat the whole process again with the detective, but an hour and a half later, after giving a full written statement, I was free to leave.

  Martin Blink sat in the reception area, waiting for me, as I made my way out of the warren of interview rooms. He stood up as he saw me approach.

  ‘I’m waiting for Jo,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll be waiting a long time,’ the desk sergeant cut in. ‘She’s not back from the hospital yet. They’re waiting till she’s discharged before they charge her.’

  I glared at him. ‘“Charge her”? With what?’

  He didn’t say any more, but, what felt like a few minutes later, Simon appeared out of another room down the corridor. I could tell by the slope of his shoulders that the news wasn’t great.

  ‘They’re not buying it,’ he said.

  ‘Morons,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Martin asked Simon.

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘“Murder”? Where’s the intention?’

  ‘They say she went equipped. And that she had the gun in her hand when the undercover entered the room. They think she panicked – thought it was a mate of Nick’s, shot first, asked questions later.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said.

  ‘They’re saying there was no immediate threat.’

  ‘“No immediate threat”? Are they serious?’ I said. ‘What about her arm? He shot her. He was about to shoot me.’

  ‘Let’s hope forensics back you up.’

  ‘He shot her with Nick’s gun. He nicked it. He set us up, right from the start.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Martin. He put an arm around the small of my back and pushed me towards the door, his limp causing us to bump into each other as we moved. ‘We’re no use here. Let’s go grab a coffee and see what we can do for your mate. Simon will stay – he’s the best there is.’

  ‘I can’t leave.’

  ‘You can’t help Jo while you’re still in the lion’s den,’ said Martin, nodding his head in the direction of the desk sergeant. ‘We need to talk where the walls don’t have ears.’

  There was a cheap transport café two streets away that was either a twenty-four-hour number or had opened before dawn. I checked my mug of orange tea to make sure the waitress’s missing false fingernail wasn’t floating in it. We sat in the far corner even though we were the only people in the place. Martin patted my arm, and said: ‘Take it from the beginning, kiddo.’

  The whisky hangover pounded my skull. ‘I fucked up.’

  ‘How?’

  I thought back over the last twenty-four hours, which felt more like 124 hours. So much had happened, so much to process. I didn’t know where to start.

  ‘My dad showed up.’

  From the look on Martin’s face I know that was about the last thing he expected me to say. He frowned. ‘At Wilkins’s house?’

  ‘No, before. The day before.’ I wondered for a moment whether I was going to totally embarrass myself and cry my eyes out, sat there in the flickering neon gloom of the most dismal café in the world, while my best mate got ch
arged with the murder of a policeman. ‘It’s all my fault.’

  ‘From the beginning.’

  I told Martin Blink everything I knew, from the moment Mrs Wilkins stepped into our office. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The words gushed out of me as the story took shape. I told him about Brownie, about Duck and Bernie, about Col telling us our first client had actually been an undercover policewoman. ‘He was behind the break-in. I should have thought – why would anyone steal a client form?’

  ‘He recognized Megan’s handwriting?’

  I let this statement sink in. ‘Which means we’re responsible for blowing her cover.’ Another death on my hands.

  ‘Could be he already suspected. Maybe he followed her to your offices. You’ll never know.’

  ‘I blew it. Really blew it.’

  ‘Tell me about your dad.’

  ‘He’s not my dad. Well, technically, I suppose, he is.’

  Martin frowned, and I knew I wasn’t making sense. I breathed. Three times. ‘He’s my biological father. I never met him. Not till a few years back. He left home the day I was born, and I never saw him. Not when I was growing up.’ Not when I really needed a dad, I wanted to say, but didn’t, because it was hard enough not to cry as it was. ‘Not one single time. My mum hated him, would never have his name mentioned. Then she died and that’s when I decided. I went looking for him.’

  The theory of chaos. That one small, single, unremarkable event sets off a chain of events that leads to total fucking global melt down. Those moments when life fractures and goes off in a different direction to the one you thought you were heading. That one single moment in time, when life becomes two separate parts, the time before the fracture, the time after. There’s no going back. I chose to find my father, and if I could go back and cross out one thing in my life, erase one decision, one moment, one second of my existence, that’s the one. Because that’s the moment when life went from being shit but manageable, to being completely out of control.

  ‘Go on,’ said Martin.

  I decided on the potted version. ‘I found him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’d remarried, had another daughter – she is, was, only a couple of years younger than me. Fiona.’ The name hurt my mouth. I hadn’t said it for a long time.