Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

  ‘There was blood in it,’ she said.

  ‘What? Blood? What do you mean, blood?’

  ‘There was blood in the cracks in the glass. I saw it when I first arrived, before you and Maggie showed up, and it scared the hell out of me.’ She turned to Douggie. ‘You said Mads had had an accident with it, remember? When you came to the house to measure it and Jack was here with her.’

  ‘Oh – oh aye. But she never said it was anything sinister. She told me it was her fault. She offered to pay for it.’

  Fiona’s mind was suddenly racing. ‘Blood can be tested for DNA.’

  Douggie merely stared at her, then at the wood.

  ‘I – I suppose it could be tested, aye, if you say it like that. But now, think, your friend said it was her blood. And I remember her knuckles were cut.’ He was shaking his head. ‘Why would she say that, if it wasn’t true?’

  Because Madison was lying to you. She does that. She lies, when she has to.

  ‘Could it have been the boyfriend’s blood?’ asked Douggie, pondering.

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Yeah, big blond fellow with the shaved head. He was with her. Mind, I didn’t see any cuts on him.’

  ‘Jack?’ Fiona shrugged this off. ‘Oh, he told me all about that. He said that it was a misunderstanding. They were just friends.’

  Douggie’s lips compressed. ‘Does he say that, now?’ he said tightly.

  An unpleasant, crawling feeling had started between Fiona’s shoulder blades. ‘Yeah.’

  Douggie’s brows lowered, grew bushy and dangerous.

  ‘Um, he said he was going to call you, explain that nothing was going on between them …’

  ‘Is that so?’ Douggie had grown gruff. ‘If those two were friends, they were very, very good friends, let’s put it like that.’ He folded his arms pugnaciously. ‘And he certainly did not call here to deny it at any point.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’ He’s mistaken Dominic for Jack, she thought. Oh, dear God, I hope he has. ‘Well, you know, about this mirror, I hate to suggest this, but, I think, well, we need to …’

  ‘Call the police.’ Douggie pronounced it po-liss as he glowered at the walls, as though they had personally betrayed him.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Fiona.

  She gazed into the wood where the mirror had been.

  It had been a clue all along, and yet she had not realised it.

  I need to show you something, Madison had said.

  And yet Fiona kept failing to see.

  Someone had been in here, had been in this space, and now whatever secret the mirror had kept was gone for good, wiped away.

  But who had done this? Dominic Tate? Jack? Perhaps even Douggie – he’d had the key, after all.

  It could only be someone who knew what had happened to Madison.

  She was sure of it.

  30

  Grangeholm, Orkney, January 2020

  Fiona emerged from Langmire with Douggie, who looked saggy and lost, the ragged wind worrying at his blue woollen hat as he locked the door behind him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she found herself asking, and he responded with a surprised glance, as though, like herself, he was amazed at this reversal of their situations, where she was comforting him.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine, hen. It’s just – it’s a lot more than we’re used to around here. It’s a lot to take in.’

  Fiona nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘There’s never any trouble here.’ He shrugged himself deeper into his jacket. ‘Not serious trouble.’

  The sea had grown lively while they had been indoors, the waves now topped with white horses, and he paused for a moment, assessing it. ‘If your pals are out on Helly Holm I wouldnae hang about if I were them.’

  Fiona frowned. If anything, the weather looked more pleasant than it had in a while, though the wind had picked up. The sun was out, and the sea a brighter blue.

  ‘It seems nice to me. An improvement.’

  ‘Nah, this sun will be gone in an hour or two. And that sea … nah.’ Douggie was shaking his head, peering suspiciously at the blue swells as though they were a gang of antisocial youths hanging around the front of his house. ‘I would be safe indoors and have nothing to do with any of it, if I was you. Where will you stay tonight?’

  ‘Nordskaill House,’ she said. She did not add that Madison’s ‘boyfriend’ would also be there, but Douggie gave her a shrewd look.

  ‘I see. Well,’ he said, offering his big hand in farewell. ‘Watch yerself.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Fiona threw open the boot of her little car. The wind tugged at its contents – her maps, her travel blanket – like a mischievous kitten, and before she could stop it, a plastic Waitrose bag was snatched up out of one of the side pockets and floating away towards the sea.

  ‘Shit,’ she said, confronted with sudden images of it sailing away into the water and going on to choke a whale. ‘Oh no, no, no.’

  She pursued it across the short, wind-blasted grass, grabbing it just before it could take flight from the tiny escarpment above Langmire’s pebbly little stretch of beach.

  ‘Gotcha!’

  ‘Hello there. Not disturbing you, am I?’

  She stumbled, nearly fell off the escarpment on to the beach below, in her surprise.

  A man was approaching her, clad in a heavy jacket and black trousers, wearing a navy jumper over a shirt and tie. His silver Audi S3 had pulled in next to her own car and she had not even heard it.

  ‘No,’ she said, attempting to pull her flying hair to order under Madison’s hat. ‘Sorry. Are you the new guest for the cottage?’ He didn’t look like someone on holiday.

  ‘No, I’m not a guest,’ he said. His face was red and rough. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Gillespie. I’m up from Inverness to look into the disappearance of Madison Kowalczyk from this address. Are you Fiona Grey?’

  Of course. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘I think you called the station this morning, wanting to speak to me.’

  ‘Yes. I did. You see, I don’t know what to believe …’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I came up to see Madison about … I dunno, it was three days ago and she’d vanished. And then …’

  She could hear the desperation in her voice, her desire to tell this story, to be believed, but instead he held up his hands as though to calm her down.

  ‘All right – I was hoping to ask you some questions this afternoon. At the station – about three-thirty, if you can get over? Something I want to show you.’

  She nodded furiously. Yes, that would be all right.

  ‘I just … I wanted someone to tell me … You see, her team, her co-workers at the house, said you’d told them you’d found her car.’ Fiona was aware of herself as huge-eyed, stammering, desperate. ‘Is it definitely true? Is she in it?’

  ‘Now, I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about the investigation that …’

  ‘Can’t you? I mean, I heard it was in the papers, so you must know something.’

  He paused then, the wind blowing his short salt-and-pepper hair into tiny animated flickers.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘There’s very little to say at this point that you haven’t already read, then. A car has been found at the bottom of the cliffs on the west of the island, that’s certainly true.’

  ‘What kind of car?’

  ‘A gold Peugeot.’

  ‘Oh my God, that’s what she was driving!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said patiently. ‘It resembles a car that was reported missing three days ago. But beyond that, I can tell you very little. We don’t know if anyone’s in the car, and we won’t be able to find out until sometime next week. It’s too dangerous for divers to go down there, or even for us to send an ROV.’ He shrugged at her. ‘For the moment, at least.’

  ‘I see.’ She swallowed. ‘But, I mean, I know it looks bad, but it doesn’t necessarily follow, does it, that Mads is in it? I mean, she could be anywhere, couldn’t she?�
� Her hands were shaking. ‘She could have left the island, right?’

  His gaze was very cool. ‘What I can tell you, because we are about to tell the media this, is that we are fairly confident that Madison never left Orkney.’

  ‘You are?’ She felt cold, suddenly. ‘How?’

  ‘We’ve reviewed all of the CCTV footage for the ports and airports – there’s no sign of her getting on a plane, or a boat. We even checked the cruise ships in case she’d stowed away for some reason – but nothing.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fiona, with a violent exhale, as though he had just punched her in the face. ‘Oh. But … she could still be here but alive, couldn’t she?’ She could hear the ratcheting desperation in her voice. ‘She could sail a boat. She piloted the archaeologists’ boat. She had lessons. She was in the Sea Scouts when she was a teenager …’

  Because it was one thing to suspect that the worst had happened, and quite another to hear all of those other doors swinging shut behind you, until the worst that could happen was the only thing left in the room with you.

  ‘Possibly,’ he conceded, but there was a reluctant edge to it.

  ‘I mean,’ Fiona continued, ‘I know it doesn’t look good, I mean, I know that,’ she was jabbering, ‘but she may have been kidnapped and held hostage somewhere … She had this stalker, you know, Dominic Tate …’

  ‘Possibly,’ he said, with a touch of astringent gentleness.

  Fiona did not know what to say, so she said nothing, biting her lip, looking out towards the sea, because she could not bear to see that chilly compassion in his face any more.

  ‘Did Dominic Tate hand himself in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh God … I should have, I don’t know …’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself. You were potentially in danger. You did what you could to defuse the situation.’

  Her mind was racing. She had a thousand questions.

  ‘And what about Caspar? Have you heard from him?’

  ‘Caspar Schmidt? Yes, he never left Sierra Leone. We did talk a little more with him, but he couldn’t tell us much more than you did. Have you been in touch with Miss Kowalczyk’s brother?’

  ‘Hugo? Recently?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She wondered if he could see her flinch.

  ‘No. Wait, yes,’ she corrected herself. ‘Briefly. It was him that told me about Judy’s heart attack.’

  ‘Well, she must be feeling better, as he’s flying in this afternoon.’ He put his hands in his jacket pockets, and Fiona tried to school her expression into neutrality, but already a racing panic had gripped her guts. ‘We’re picking him up from the airport. How well do you know each other?’

  ‘A little.’ Fiona glanced sharply at him. Did the police know about the money? The fighting? The power of attorney?

  Would they know, if Judy didn’t tell them? She couldn’t see Hugo volunteering that information.

  ‘I saw more of him when we were all kids,’ she said. ‘I think he and Mads … they grew apart.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘What about you? Do you have any family coming up here to join you?’

  Her mouth snapped shut. The implication of this was unmistakable, in the implacable way he had told her about the ports, the hotels. Fiona would need support, because he thought she was shortly going to hear some very bad news.

  ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t. My boyfriend is in Zurich at the moment. On business. I don’t – I don’t have any …’

  Her eyes were burning. She was realising, now, the truth of it all. ‘Madison was my family.’

  31

  The Strand, London, September 2019

  ‘All right,’ said Madison. ‘What’s the big deal? What are we celebrating?’

  She was leaning back in the booth in their favourite bar, clad in a vivid red dress, her fake fur coat lying over her very real Burberry bag, a gift from Caspar.

  Fiona grinned down at her, shaking the rain off her coat.

  ‘Hello, Mads, let’s get some drinks first. What are you having?’

  Madison gestured negligently with her painted nails. ‘Oh, I’m not bothered.’ Her face was slightly strained, her jaw set. Fiona had the first sense then that this might not go well. ‘What are you having?’

  ‘I was thinking of getting some champagne in,’ Fiona said, but already she could feel her enthusiasm draining away.

  No, she thought with a sudden flash of insight, being drained away.

  ‘Oh, champagne’s so boring. Do you know what I fancy?’ said Madison, gazing out of the window as huddled Londoners hurried past in the rain. ‘Just a plain Chardonnay.’

  ‘You’re sure that’s all you want?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I can’t drink too much tonight. Caspar is taking me to Prague for the weekend.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Fiona.

  Madison shrugged.

  ‘So, just a Chardonnay, yeah?’ asked Fiona. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yeah. But you can get champagne if you want.’

  The bar was empty, the barman a little bearded hipster in a waistcoat whose smile seemed almost sympathetic, as though he guessed at the turn her evening was taking.

  It would be impossible to drink champagne alone, as Madison must have known, so she ordered a large gin and tonic. Something told her she would need it. Almost pre-emptively, the bite of disappointment had shut its jaws in her heart.

  No, she told herself. Stop this. You’re being selfish. Madison doesn’t have to drink champagne if she doesn’t want. And she doesn’t know your news yet. People don’t necessarily have to follow your script, you know.

  She carried the drinks over. Madison was buried in her mobile phone but put it down the minute Fiona reappeared and offered her a tight little smile.

  ‘So how are you?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘Well, Hugo came round to mine last night. “Oh, Madison, I was just in town, let’s go to dinner. I have reservations at Hawksmoor …” Like I’m going to go sit in a restaurant with him.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Fiona made a sympathetic face. ‘What was it about?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Madison growled. ‘Same as always. He wants my mum to give him power of attorney and “retire”. I said, “She is retired, Hugo. She lives in a big house in Majorca and spends all day on the beach.” Then it was, “Yes, but what if something happens to her? You know her heart …” And he has these big tragic eyes while he says it. “Aren’t you worried about what will happen to her if she gets sick?”’

  ‘I just said, “I’m very worried about what will happen to all her money and her house if you get your greedy fists on it and don’t even have to ask permission to spend it any more. So no, I won’t be hassling her to do whatever you want. Don’t ask.”’

  Fiona shook her head. ‘And?’

  ‘He was despicable, Fee. Actually trying to bribe me at one point. “You know, it has been so unfair that you’ve not felt the benefit of Dad’s money. I could help you get a deposit for your own place, if I had access to the funds.”’

  Fiona did a double-take. ‘He must be desperate if he’s offering to give any money to you.’

  ‘So, what do you think is happening?’ Madison asked, taking a sip.

  ‘He’s in trouble. Big trouble this time, and he needs a lot of money in a hurry, and if your mum finds out she’s going to go crazy.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly, my dear Watson.’ She smacked her lips. ‘Anyway, he got no joy. Would like to think it’s the end of the matter, but something tells me not.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Fiona agreed.

  ‘So, are you going to keep me in suspense?’ Madison asked. ‘What did you invite me out for?’

  ‘They’ve offered me the senior lecturer position.’ Fiona was flushed, breathless. It felt faintly unreal, and now she was here, she could hardly believe she was saying it out loud. ‘Senior lecturer. I’m only twenty-nine!’

  ‘Fee, that’s amazing news!’ Madison grinned broadly, but her smile didn
’t touch her eyes. ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘This is that new university out in the north-east, right?’ asked Madison.

  ‘No, no. It’s Cambridge. That’s the great thing. I’d stay where I am, I’m just being promoted.’

  Madison went very still. ‘You’ll be a senior lecturer at Cambridge?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You never said there was a job there.’ There was a flat tone to her voice, as though Fiona had been concealing something important from her.

  ‘No, Maude approached me … six weeks ago. Asked me why I hadn’t applied.’

  ‘You told me,’ said Madison evenly, ‘that if you wanted to get a promotion you would have to leave Cambridge.’

  ‘I know, that’s the amazing thing. Barbara is going to Harvard and I didn’t even think of applying for her job. But Maude suggested it and …’ Fiona shrugged, smiled. ‘I got it. Starting in January.’

  Madison frowned. ‘That’s all very quick. Didn’t they advertise it?’ She sipped at her wine, not meeting Fiona’s eyes. ‘I don’t remember seeing an ad for it.’

  ‘Yes, they advertised it.’ Fiona could feel herself bridling. She was being subtly accused of something, she saw, some kind of underhand dealing. ‘And then they suggested I apply for it and I got it.’ Her cheeks were burning. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No, no. God, you’re so fucking sensitive.’ Madison picked up her glass, and she wasn’t sipping any more, but taking a big gulp.

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ Fiona said, biting back a retort. Maybe Madison was right. Even though Fiona had never thought of applying for the job initially, once it had been suggested that she should, she had spent the last couple of weeks on tenterhooks. ‘Waiting to hear has completely fried me.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Madison, still not meeting her eyes. ‘It’s great how you managed to get lucky with that one research paper,’ she said, taking another big gulp of her wine. ‘You’ve spun a whole career out of it. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.’

  ‘What do you mean? I’ve written lots of papers.’ Fiona was colouring again. ‘I’ve worked really hard.’