by Kate Simants
EP: No. It isn’t real.
CC: It’s scary to even think about.
EP: No, because—
CC: If you let yourself believe that the trauma is real, how can you trust anything?
[pause: 21 sec]
CC: How does that make you feel, thinking about that?
[pause: 33 sec]
EP: I can’t do that. I can’t. It would be better just to stay the way I am.
39.
Ellie
On the boat, sleep came fitfully. The dreams were a bloody, rolling blur, jumbled in chronology. I saw Matt, his neck crushed by a rope, and I was standing, uncaring, doing nothing. Then later again, but with his head twisted off but not yet dead, lying gasping for air beside his lifeless body. Then sprawled face down in a pit, a grave, water seeping upwards through the cold earth, getting in to him, somehow, through his pores, drowning him. He was still alive, and begging me to help him.
But in all of it, I didn’t see Siggy, or anything of hers. Not the building, not the bleeding little boy, the uniform, the fire. Not once.
When I finally woke with the resolve to get up, I swung my legs out of the bed and went in search of something I could use to free myself from the cable ties. Having jettisoned everything sharp, I tried initially to cut through the bind with the teeth of my key, but I couldn’t get the right purchase on it. I settled on the corner of the galley work surface and rubbed one of the cable ties against a section of metal edging that had come away from the chipboard. Eventually the strip around my right wrist was worn thin enough to pull open with my teeth. It gave a snap and broke. The others were much easier with my hands free, and before long I was gathering my things, not forgetting the diary, and readying to leave.
A pinkish dawn was just lifting into day when I slid the hatch back and emerged. I jogged some of the way home, but I was hungry and felt weak and had to slow to a stroll.
At the corner of our road, I paused, remembering the night before. Someone wanted to tell me something. I was going to find out what it was.
I knocked at my neighbours’ door, but it wasn’t Mr Symanski who answered.
‘They’re watching you.’ It was his son, Piotr, his skin grey and the shadows under his eyes as dark as thunderclouds. ‘I tried to tell you but—’ he started, taking a step out towards me, but then his dad was there, moving in front of him, pushing him back.
‘You go home now,’ Mr Symanski said to me, and he pushed the door between us. But the door didn’t close. He looked down. I was almost as surprised to see my foot, wedging the door open, as he was.
I stood firm. ‘Piotr had something to tell me last night. I need to know what it was.’
‘No,’ he said categorically, and he tried to shift my foot with his own.
Obscured behind him, Piotr shouted out, ‘The van!’
‘What van?’ I asked. ‘Mr Symanski, what does he mean?’
‘He means nothing. Piotr is a very troubled boy.’
I called back to Piotr, shouted it. ‘Which one?’
I just caught the answer, shouted from the hall, ‘The van! That van in the street!’ before Mr Symanski won the battle, and the door slammed in my face.
Breathless and baffled from the struggle, I turned to look at the street. There were only cars.
I couldn’t go home, of course. I’d left without my key, and Mum wasn’t in. I sat on the steps for a moment deciding what to do. I wanted to see Lucy, but that would mean a trip to Brighton. I could call Mae, tell him about the diary, but not without my phone, which was also inside the flat. The only thing to do was swallow my pride and go to the hospital to get the keys from my mum.
The walk to the hospital took an hour, and when I got there I headed straight downstairs to where Mum’s base was. I’d been down there only once before but managed to find my way: all the way to the back and then down until you got to the floor with bare breeze-block walls and the entire arterial plumbing system running overhead.
I found the door and went in. Mum’s manager was a Haitian with a voice as huge as his stature was diminutive. I knocked and went in, expecting to have to introduce myself. But the moment he looked up he scraped back his chair, got up from behind his metal desk and came straight over, hand outstretched.
‘Ah, what a nice surprise. Ellie Scott!’
I opened my mouth to correct him but then realized he wouldn’t even have known Mum’s real name.
‘I’m just looking for my mum,’ I said, shaking the hand. ‘Do you know where I can find her?’
‘No idea!’ he said cheerfully.
‘She’s-she’s not here?’ I felt my spine turn to ice. She was gone. She’d found me missing from my room, and she’d finally decided enough was enough.
‘Well, yes, she is here, somewhere,’ he said, not noticing me almost collapse with relief, ‘but it’s the usual thing.’ He ducked back behind his desk and opened a drawer. ‘She picks up her task sheet and her gear and off she goes; I don’t know where they are most of the time but the work gets done, so …’ He closed the drawer and opened another one. ‘But she said you would be coming.’
I frowned. ‘Did she?’
‘Mm-hm. Ah! Here,’ he said, pulling something out and bringing it over. It was my phone, and strapped across the screen with an elastic band, a brass key. ‘Said you must have forgotten it when you left. I charged it up for you, should be fine now.’
I took it, thanked him. Back on the ground floor, I turned the phone on. The first thing to beep: a message from Mum.
I don’t know what you’re doing Ellie but you’ve got to go home.
I let my thumb hover over the screen for a moment. Another message, then another:
Baby where are you?
Please. I’m worried sick. Tell me you’re OK, and then go home.
I deleted them all, without replying, then I went straight to Matt’s office.
The door was a white slab in a white wall, the whole corridor strip-lit and sterile as a spaceship. I lifted my hand to knock but before it connected, a man, Matt’s age but shorter, plump and bearded, opened the door and came out, almost knocking me over.
‘Shit … sorry,’ he said, putting out a hand to steady me. Under the other arm he held a package, a padded envelope containing something the size of a heavy book. ‘Help you?’
‘My boyfriend Matt works – worked – here,’ I said. ‘I think he might have left some things behind and I was just passing so—’
‘Ellie?’ he said. ‘I’m Leon. The guy he worked with? We spoke, yeah?’
‘Leon. Right.’ I wondered what he knew about me.
‘So has he turned up now?’ he asked, smiling. He leaned on the doorframe but didn’t invite me in. I’d never been inside Matt’s workplace but looking past him, I found that I hadn’t missed much. With the scanners and expensive machinery elsewhere, it was little more than a crisper-than-usual office, with white vinyl walls and a few racks of screens.
I shook my head, and his face fell.
‘Oh, really? I just assumed as he brought his computer back—’ he said, lifting the package under his arm slightly and pulling out a sheet of paper from inside it.
‘That’s his?’
‘Brought it back. Last night.’ He unfolded the paper, scanned it, frowning.
‘You saw him?’
‘No. I just got a call a minute ago from the front desk saying they had a delivery. But actually yeah,’ he said, waving the paper. ‘Delivery note says it was someone else – Hamsworth? Harnsworth? – who delivered it. Courier, I guess.’
I couldn’t take my eyes from that package. ‘Listen, do you mind if I have a quick look at that?’
‘Ah, not really,’ he said with an apologetic smile. ‘I was just taking it up to HR. Our manager up there wanted it pretty urgently when I told her it had arrived.’
I reached out a hand. ‘Just for a minute. Honestly, it won’t take long.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, tucking it tighter under his arm and
sidestepping me. The door to the lab was closing very slowly. ‘She said she needed it right away – she’ll be down looking for it any minute.’
‘Please.’ I looked him in the eye, knowing I had one shot. ‘He’s still missing, Leon. I’ve got no idea what’s going on, or where he is, or anything. I just need to know he’s safe. I just need … something. Anything. And that,’ I said, indicating the package, ‘is pretty much all I’ve got at the moment.’
He sighed, suspicion softening into sympathy on his face. ‘OK. But literally two minutes, yeah?’
I smiled. ‘Thank you, Leon. That would be wonderful.’
40.
Mae
As soon as they pulled up outside the boatyard, Mae got a call.
‘You get started, I’ll catch you up,’ he told Kit, who was already halfway out of the car. Bringing his phone out, he recognized the number of Bear’s school on the screen. He took a few steps away before answering it.
‘I’m returning your call about the school trip in Dominica’s class,’ the secretary said.
‘Right. I just need to clear it with work but should be fine. What time do you need me?’
There was a pause. ‘That’s the thing, Mr Kwon Mae, I’m afraid. We don’t appear to have a Disclosure and Barring Service check for you on our system.’
‘No. You won’t, but I’m a serving police officer, you know that, right? I don’t really need a criminal background check,’ he said, rolling his eyes.
‘Yes, I know. But we have a policy that we don’t have volunteers who aren’t DBS cleared.’
She did in fact appear to be serious. ‘OK, fine. I’ll come and fill in the forms so you can get one done, if you seriously need me to.’
‘That would be great. Just remember to come to the office for the paperwork and hopefully we’ll have you cleared for next time.’
‘Next – no. I need to come this time. Dominica asked me.’
‘I don’t think that’s going to be possible. The checks take weeks. You need data from your former employers, all kinds of things. There’s no chance it’ll be cleared in time, I’m sorry.’
Pissed off but knowing how to choose his battles, he hung up. He caught Kit up just as she got to where Jupp was braced against a rope on the pontoon, swearing at an emaciated underling on the aft deck of Matt’s boat.
‘I said a bloody bowline!’ Jupp growled. The boat was swinging out precariously into the river, at a right-angle to the bank.
‘Is it supposed to be doing that?’ Kit called out cheerfully, prompting a bright string of profanity from Jupp. They waited on the pontoon while the two men got the boat under control. Kit made a grab for a stray rope and lashed it expertly to a mooring cleat.
Wiping the sweat from his ample face, Jupp nodded his approval. ‘At least someone knows what they’re doing. Must have told this twat,’ indicating the boat to infer Matt, Mae guessed, ‘a hundred times that she’s got to be portside in.’
‘Because of the wash,’ Kit said absentmindedly. Then, clocking Mae’s surprise, ‘The wash from passing boats. Your grey-water outlets in a narrowboat are close to the waterline, doesn’t usually matter because they’re mostly on the canal where you’re limited to four knots. No wash. Different on the Thames. One big wave and you’re an accidental submarine.’
Mae raised his eyebrows.
‘Sea cadets,’ she said, stooping to make an adjustment to one of Jupp’s bowlines. Then, brushing her hands on her thighs, ‘Have a word, Mr Jupp?’
He made them tea in his office. Kit got out the tablet and Mae led the questions.
‘So, you said he paid his rent.’
‘I did.’ Jupp’s attention was on the bulky screen in front of him. He stabbed a fat finger at the escape button on his keyboard a few times, folds deepening on his forehead.
‘Could you be more specific?’
‘If you like. His rent was owing, and now it’s not.’
Mae folded his arms. ‘Mr Jupp, this is important.’
Sighing, Jupp said, ‘I got here this morning and there’s an envelope through the door.’
‘Do you have it?’ Kit wanted to know.
Jupp lifted a few slabs of paperwork before finding it, then held it out for him. Kit whipped a fresh pack of nitrile gloves from her pocket and handed them to Mae, who put them on before taking the envelope. It had already been torn open, and inside was a thin stack of twenties and tens.
‘Just this? No note?’
Jupp rummaged in a pile, withdrew a folded piece of A4 and held it out to him. ‘Just Matt’s name and the name of the boat, the date and amount.’
There was nothing else inside, Matt’s name at the bottom. Typed and printed, no signature.
Kit said, ‘Does he usually pay in cash?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘But you didn’t see him? Didn’t cross paths at all?’
‘I would have said, wouldn’t I? Haven’t seen him since he left for the pump-out.’
Kit narrowed her eyes. ‘You didn’t see him go, though, or come back, after he’d emptied his tanks?’
‘Like I already told you. I didn’t.’
Mae clicked the end of his pen, noticing Kit digging in her jacket. She rounded Jupp’s table with her phone in her hand.
‘Mr Jupp, do you know this man? Seen him around?’
From his leaning spot by the door Mae could see Cox’s face on her screen.
‘Yep. Mate of Matt’s.’
Mae blinked. Exchanged a look with Kit. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Do I seriously have to repeat everything for you people? Yes, I’m sure. He came down here a handful of times and don’t ask me for dates,’ he said, holding up a hand, ‘because I won’t know.’
‘Are we talking recently, though? This week?’ Kit asked.
‘Probably. Yes.’ He smacked the screen. ‘Fucking thing.’ Then, slightly dolefully, ‘Chose his bloody moment to go on his jollies though. Said he was going to help me with this.’
‘Matt did?’ Mae asked. ‘Good with computers, is he?’
‘He’s all right,’ Jupp said reluctantly. ‘Not that you’d guess it, with the massive slab of a laptop he carries around with him. Even I’d be embarrassed by it. Size of a printer.’
‘We haven’t been able to find his laptop, actually,’ Kit told him.
‘No? Lent it to the guy in the picture, I think.’
‘That guy?’ Kit said, indicating Mae’s phone.
‘Yeah. Saw him leave with it under his arm. Came in a big padded bag thing with NHS on the side.’
Mae said, pad out. ‘And that didn’t look suspicious to you?’
Jupp shrugged. ‘It wasn’t like he was running off with it. Kind of waved when he saw me, you know?’ he said, lifting a hand to demonstrate the casualness of it.
‘When was this?’
Jupp glanced at the A3 calendar he kept taped to the wall. ‘Few days before I saw Matt last. But actually, now you ask, there was a bit of confusion about it. Matt came in the next day, asking if he’d left it behind in here.’
Kit frowned hard. ‘Surely the definition of lending someone something is that you do it by choice? I mean,’ she said, glancing at Mae, ‘I’m no lawyer, but I’m fairly sure that without that element to it, it’s just theft.’
Mae nodded. ‘Fairly sure that’s how it works, yeah.’
Jupp shrugged. ‘Matt would’ve said if it had been nicked. I told him his mate had it, described him, and he just said okay or something and went away.’
And that was all he was going to say. Kit thanked him for the both of them and headed back to the car.
‘Well, fuck me rigid,’ she said as Mae fired up the Focus and pulled away. ‘And we know Matt changed the lock at some point too, right? Did he do that because he’d already been robbed? Or because he thought he might be?’
But Mae hardly heard. The questions were stacking up in his head like planes in a holding pattern. Did Cox really have the missing computer? Just how
well did Cox and Matthew Corsham know each other? What did Ellie think about that?
Did Ellie even know?
‘We’ve got to find that laptop,’ Kit said, bringing out her phone. Once she’d dialled a number, she wedged the phone between her ear and her shoulder, then flipped open the glovebox. She dug around for a moment, pulled out someone’s discarded half-eaten pack of Jammie Dodgers, and crammed one into her mouth.
‘You’re an animal,’ Mae said, waving away her offer of a biscuit. ‘Who’re you ringing?’
‘Hospital,’ she said through a mouthful. ‘Worth a check in, see if the laptop turned up. Yeah, Helen Williams, please,’ she said, turning her attention to the call and wiping crumbs from her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘In HR, yeah. It’s Detective Constable Ziegler.’
It took almost the entire trip back to the nick to get through to Helen Williams, but when she did, Kit sat bolt upright, listening with eyes wide.
‘It came in last night?’
Mae had slowed for the turning to the nick, but slammed his foot down on the middle pedal, reversed, and accelerated off towards the hospital.
‘Why the hell didn’t you ring?’ Kit said urgently. There was a pause, in which she gripped the bridge of her nose. Then: ‘No! Don’t let anyone touch it!’
41.
Ellie
‘Seriously, we have to be quick,’ Leon said, letting the door close behind us. ‘I’ll get such a bollocking if she finds out.’
‘I promise.’
He set the laptop down on the worktop and turned it on. The screen lit up and my heart leapt into my throat: he’d changed his screensaver since I’d last seen it to a picture of us. Matt’s cheek squeezed hard against mine – I could almost feel the stubble, the press of his ear against mine. I found myself smiling, reliving that happiness for one fickle moment before it was tarnished by the reality of why I was here.
I rested my fingers on the keys and took a mental step back. What was I looking for?
Secrets.
I was looking for anything that Matt wanted to hide. But where? Apart from the default icons that you’d find on every desktop across the globe – My Computer, Explorer, Recycle Bin – there were only a dozen or so folders and none of them looked particularly personal.