by Clare Kauter
“Thanks,” she said, without much emotion. “I’m not really hungry, though.”
The social worker took the bags of food from me. “I’ll heat it up,” he said. He leaned closer to me and whispered, “Thanks for coming around. She hasn’t had any visitors all day with her brother being in hospital and everything. She could do with some company other than police.”
I returned his smile (as much as I could) and he headed for the kitchen after giving Arnold a little scratch under the chin. I took a seat in the armchair perpendicular to the couch, grateful that James was here to handle the conversation. I had no idea what I was meant to say, whereas he was the kind of person who instantly put others at ease. I just sat there cradling Arnold while James spoke to Ellie.
“I’m so sorry for all of this, Ellie. It must be so hard with Tim in hospital.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
I don’t think Ellie was really with us at that moment.
“Have you kept in touch with him much?”
She shook her head. “Not really. He’s helping Adam, so he’s a bit busy. I wish I had something to do. I just feel so useless, sitting here, waiting…”
James placed his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you have anyone else you can call to come around here? What about Grace’s father?”
Ellie shook her head. “No, he – he’s back in America. He hasn’t been involved with Gracie.”
It took me a second to realise that James was questioning Ellie. Oh my goodness, he was questioning her under the guise of befriending her – and he was good at it. Like he had plenty of experience. Like he’d rehearsed it.
My god. Had he been doing this to me for the past few months without me realising?
I suddenly felt very ill.
The social worker returned with bowls of soup for us all. Ellie was reluctant to eat at first, but once she took a bite of a bread roll she began shovelling the food in. I guess all the worrying had made her work up an appetite. James continued his subtle questioning, but clearly didn’t want to take it too far in front of the social worker. Once we were done with lunch, we left. I hadn’t eaten a lot. I’d stopped feeling hungry when I’d realised how easily James could slip into Snake Mode.
Two could play that game, though. I could be just as snaky as James if it meant finding out more about my brother’s disappearance. I could be snakier than the Chamber of Secrets.
“Nothing super insightful there,” said James. “Let’s hope that Tim can tell us something more useful or we’ll be out of people to question with no more information than we had when we started.”
“It didn’t seem like Ellie had any clue who would want to take Grace. Maybe The Prince was wrong.”
James shrugged. “Could be. It didn’t feel like she was holding out on us.”
Of course she wasn’t holding out on us. She hadn’t even known she was being interrogated.
“So maybe this is just a random abduction.”
“I don’t know,” said James. “I’d agree with you, but the fact that there’s no ransom note is weird. If someone had taken her for money, you’d expect them to have asked for the money by now. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
James grimaced. “Unless… something went wrong.”
I frowned. “I’m not following you.”
“When they were taking her, you know. If something happened…”
My eyes widened as it finally clicked. Oh god. She could already be dead.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No way. Nope. Not even an option.”
James nodded. “OK. Let’s not consider that for the moment. Let’s just go talk to Tim and see where we want to go from there.”
James parked in the hospital car park. The plan was that he would go ahead and distract Adam, sending me a text when it was safe for me to go into Tim’s room. (I already knew where he was, thanks to my visit the day before.) Of course, it would have been easier to just get James to do the questioning, but since I was Tim’s closer friend we decided I should do it. James stepped out of the car and jogged across the car park to the hospital’s entrance. I shook my head in disbelief. Who was this guy, jogging voluntarily?
As soon as James was out of sight, I decided to search his car. Kind of an odd choice, you might think. Trouble was, I was on an all-time mistrust high. OK, so I didn’t have anything solid, but his interrogation of Ellie – without her having a clue – had freaked me out. Completely. He was amazing at getting information covertly.
Sitting Arnold on the driver’s seat, I began rifling through the glove box. I didn’t really know what I was hoping to find in McKenzie’s car, but I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to snoop through his stuff. Maybe I’d find a case file with my brother’s name on it or letters from Harcourt or a handily labelled briefcase containing evidence that would incriminate him. Alas, no such luck. The only thing I found was an old (empty) Smiths original chips packet, which meant James was guilty of eating carbs and not littering.
My phone buzzed.
Go time. Be fast.
After slipping Arnold into my handbag to hide her (while whispering an apology and promising her lots of treats later), I stepped out of the car and powerwalked into the hospital, smiling and saying hi to all the nurses I passed along the way. All of them knew me by name thanks to my incurable clumsiness, which had landed me here more times than I could count – not that my counting skills were all that great given the number of times I’d been knocked on the head. Eventually I made it to Tim’s room. I peeked inside to double check that Adam wasn’t there before entering.
“Hey,” I said, alone with Tim.
“What…” Tim said as Arnold’s head poked up out of my handbag. I took her out and cradled her in my arms.
“This is Arnold. I found her by the side of the road and now I’ve adopted her and we’re going to grow old together.”
Tim nodded. “Right. Of course.”
Now that I was here, I wasn’t really sure how to begin my interrogation. I didn’t think Tim would be as easy to question as his sister had been, not that we’d found out much from her. I decided to just make conversation and hope that clues would present themselves.
“Went to see The Prince,” I said.
Tim’s eyes shot towards me, filled with hope. “You did? What did he say?”
I frowned. “Didn’t Adam tell you?”
“No one tells me anything,” Tim said.
“Yeah, because they’re too afraid you’ll go after whoever it is if they tell you anything.”
Tim shrugged. “I guess that’s fair.”
“He didn’t really know anything,” I said.
Tim’s face fell. The mood in here was so glum that I couldn’t imagine staying with him for more than a couple of minutes. How Adam had lasted all day I did not know.
Arnold shifted in my arms, whining a little.
“Naw, cutie, it’s OK. We’ll be home soon and you can run around.”
I gave her a little kiss on the forehead and noticed Tim giving me a strange look.
“What?”
“I’ve never seen you be that affectionate before. Ever. With anyone.”
“People suck. Pigs are perfect.” I paused. “Real pigs, I mean. Not cops. They aren’t worthy of the name.”
“Not even McKenzie?”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What? I thought you guys were friends again, seeing as you clearly used James to get Adam out of here so you could visit me without him knowing you’d left work.”
“Well, ‘friends’ is a strong word.”
“What happened this time? Didn’t Adam say that you two were, um, hanging out the other night?”
“He fell asleep on my couch,” I said, “and a lot’s changed since then.”
I sat Arnold on the ground as I searched through my handbag to find her a snack. I came up empty.
“Man, you guys are so hot and cold. Katy Perry
should write a song about you.”
I rolled my eyes. “There’s nothing going on between us and there never has been.”
I took some grapes from Tim’s abandoned lunch tray and offered them to Arnold. She gobbled them out of my hand and then squealed for more.
“Sure,” said Tim, not sounding at all convinced. “What happened this time?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I picked over the other food on the tray wondering if Arnold would eat the limp looking green salad which appeared to be wilting away before our eyes.
“Come on. Distract me. I love hearing about all your drama.” He paused. “If he’s upset you again, I can beat him up for you.”
I gave him a look of disbelief. “Really?”
“Well, like, when I get better.”
“I appreciate the offer, but if anyone is going to be bashed up on my account, I’m going to be dishing out the beating myself.”
I sat the bowl of leaves in front of Arnold. She sniffed them and then looked back up at me. Of course. I wouldn’t eat hospital salad either. Or regular salad, to be perfectly honest.
Tim nodded. “If you need someone to help you bury the body, then.”
I snorted.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“It’s not really a fun story.” I poured half of the mini-box of cereal onto Arnold’s salad and she sniffed it again. She took a tentative nibble and appeared to decide that it was acceptable, because she munched it down in about two seconds. She squealed for more.
“I don’t care,” Tim said. “I live for the dramz.”
“Did you actually just use the term ‘dramz’?”
He nodded, smiling. “I did. Now spill.”
And I did – I spilled the box of cereal all over the ground while trying to pour more into the bowl for my overenthusiastic piglet, who had been weaving between my legs the entire time. I sighed as Arnold snarfed up the cereal straight off the floor.
“I’m sorry, Tim. I know how worried you are about Gracie and so am I, but, well, this whole thing started before she disappeared and –”
“Honey, just tell me.”
I bit my lip. “Well, the night before last something happened and…”
“Charlie. Just spit it out.”
I sighed. “It’s to do with my brother.”
Like Adam, Tim knew everything about me. I assumed that even if he hadn’t checked up on my background, Adam would have mentioned it to him.
Tim was quiet for a moment. “That’s not where I thought this conversation was going.”
“Well, you brought it up.”
Tim listened in silence as I explained the whole McKenzie story, from Toph’s disappearance to James making up with me and Will to seeing him with Harcourt at the Racists Anonymous meeting.
“Wow,” said Tim when I finished. “I leave you alone for two months…”
“To be fair, most of that happened before I even met you. It’s only the weird befriending thing that’s happened recently.”
“Are you sure you’re not just being overly paranoid? What if – gasp – he actually just likes hanging out with you and there’s no ulterior motive?” He paused. “Well, not that kind of ulterior motive at least. I’m 99 per cent sure he’s motivated by his –”
“No,” I said, cutting him off. I didn’t need to hear the end of that sentence. “I’m not sure at all. I hope I’m just being paranoid, but the thing with my brother was all so weird that I just don’t know, you know?”
Tim nodded. “Yeah.” He paused. “You should try to get him to show you his note.”
“How?”
“Show him the end of your note. It doesn’t really say anything important, right? No details. So you could show him that in exchange for seeing his.”
“What’s that going to achieve?”
“If there’s anything in his note that you didn’t already know, you’ll find out. You should try and get a look at Will’s as well.”
I nodded. That made sense. It wasn’t likely to give me any definitive answers, but it would be another piece of the puzzle. And if James refused to show me his after I’d shown him mine – well, then I’d know we weren’t on the same side.
By this time Arnold had finished the cereal and was beginning to squeal. I needed to get out of here soon, before I got caught with a pig in the hospital, so I cut to the chase.
“Does Ellie have any enemies?”
Not exactly subtle, but we didn’t really have the time.
Tim frowned at me. “Why?”
That was an odd response. Not ‘no’, but ‘why’. Surely he knew why.
“Just curious.”
“You think they took Gracie to get at my sister and not me?”
I shrugged. “It’s a possibility, right? You couldn’t find anyone who you thought would be after you. No one who would do this, anyway.”
Tim was quiet.
“Tim?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s up?”
He shook his head and looked back at me. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You just thought of something. What is it?”
He sighed. “There is someone else who could have done it, but – no, it’s not him.”
“Who?”
“It’s not him, honey. Doesn’t matter.”
“It does so! You need to tell Adam. We have to look into it just in case, even if you think it’s unlikely.”
He shook his head. “There’s no point. It’s not –”
“Charlie, you need to go now,” James hissed from the doorway. “You’ve got about ten seconds before Adam gets back. Jump out the window and I’ll pass Arnold down to you.”
Fantastic fucking timing. I was never going to get the story out of Tim now.
With exactly as much elegance as you’d expect – that is, none – I climbed out of the window and dropped to the garden bed below. And I do mean dropped. I landed kind of funny and given the twinge in my ankle briefly wondered if I’d broken something, but I could walk OK on it so after I’d collected Arnold I just limped my way back to the car and waited for James.
“Now what?” I said once James and I were back on the road.
He shrugged. “You find out anything from Tim?”
“Nope.”
“Did you ask him about the people who attacked him?”
“He already said it wasn’t them. I thought it would be suspicious if I asked again.”
James nodded. “OK. I’m going to go to the police station and see what I can dig up on Ellie and Tim.”
“And me?”
He eyed me sideways, clearly not wanting to voice what he was thinking.
“What? You might as well say it.”
“Do you have access to all the case files at work?”
“Most,” I said, knowing where James was going but hoping I was wrong.
“How about Tim’s most recent case?”
Sigh. “No. I tried looking it up when he first left but I couldn’t get into it.”
“Right, OK.”
Sigh. Again. “But I know how I could get it.”
Chapter Fifteen
Breaking into Harry’s office for a second time in one day was definitely not a smart career move, although I tried to tell myself I didn’t have a choice. That wasn’t true, of course – I could have chosen to trust Adam and Tim. The only reason I didn’t trust them was because James had put doubt in my mind. As if I wasn’t just as suspicious of James. Never mind. Today I just needed to ignore everyone else and form my own opinions. Trust is one thing, but blind faith when all evidence seems to point to the contrary is just dumb.
I’d left Arnold with James who was on his way to the police station, having decided that taking your piglet to a break in was probably a bad idea. I loved Arnold, but she wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. It had been hard to hand her over, but one thing I did know about James is that he would take care of her. Liar or not, he wasn’t a total monster.
I sat at Harry’s desk and logged in to the company intranet, where all the company information was stored. Thanks to my search of the drawers earlier in the day, I happened to know that Harry kept his passwords in the second drawer of the desk. I used his details to get in and had Tim’s file up in no time.
“Bingo,” I whispered to myself as I skimmed the file, taking in as much as I could. “Shit…”
This file made for compelling reading. Apparently Baxter & Co. was assisting the police in the investigation of a suspected crime family. From the looks of it Tim had been undercover, trying to bust the family for meth dealing. And it looked like they’d found out he wasn’t who he said he was.
I was so preoccupied with my reading that I didn’t notice the office door open.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t get a call the second you disappeared from your desk?”
My head shot up and I found Adam Baxter standing in the doorway watching me. Fuck. What now?
“I didn’t know the people watching the monitors were such tattle-tales.”
“They were worried about you, actually. I would have been worried too, considering who you disappeared with, but you kept calling me with fun little updates about what ‘James’ was doing.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Adam was clearly pissed, and I was pretty sure my job was on the line. That was not a good situation to be in as I wasn’t much of a smooth talker.
“I thought it was dumb of you to not look into the guys who beat up Tim.”
Good. Way to go, Charlie. That definitely wouldn’t antagonise him.
“Dumb? Really?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“If you want to talk dumb, do you really think that wasn’t the first place I looked? The people who did this are under surveillance. There’s no chance they could have done it.”
“If you have them under surveillance then how come you haven’t had them arrested for what they did to Tim?”
“We’re playing the long game. Trying to find out their connections, you know. Once we’ve done that, we’ll get them for what they did to Tim.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because Tim’s life is at stake here. I don’t want to put him in danger just to satisfy your curiosity.”