by Jack Jordan
‘Can we come inside? We’ll need to take a statement.’
‘Will you document that you were two hours late?’
‘We’re sorry for the delay,’ Croft said. Her colleague seemed aloof, almost as though I was taking up his time. ‘But we’d like to make a statement to document what’s happened here today.’
I headed back towards the flat and held the door open for them, waiting for them to file in before shutting it behind them.
They stood awkwardly in the living room, perhaps waiting for an invitation to sit down or to have a cup of tea. I would offer them neither. I crossed my arms across my chest, and PS Croft cleared her throat.
‘First things first,’ she said. ‘I’ve spoken to the officers who took your initial statement, and I can confirm they have spoken with Michael King.’
‘Well, clearly it didn’t work. He was stood outside my house for hours.’
She continued, undeterred by my tone. ‘When questioned, Michael King not only denied harassing you, but stated he had never even met you.’
‘That’s. . . that’s bull.’
‘Do you have any witnesses who will be able to confirm your story?’ Spelling asked.
‘It’s not a story, it’s fact. Michael King is harassing me.’
‘Do you have any witnesses?’ she repeated.
‘And you won’t believe me if I don’t?’
‘It would make it easier for us to prove he’s lying.’
Or me, I thought. I focused on the memory of each time I had encountered him, and whether anyone could possibly prove it had occurred. But I was new in town, I didn’t have any family or friends to tell. I was on my own. Perhaps that’s why he pursued me, because I was alone with no one to turn to.
‘There could be CCTV footage,’ I said finally. ‘Outside the café, or perhaps the route to my house, or outside my office building.’
‘We can look into it,’ she said, and wrote something down on a small pad.
Spelling took the statement while Croft asked the questions. As I answered, I watched the clock tick off all the seconds I was away from my desk. I still needed to shower and dress, walk to work quickly if I wanted to get there by noon. I should have asked to work from home that morning, but I couldn’t have taken my eyes off him for a second.
By the time the questioning ended, my anger had dropped to a simmer, but I still couldn’t bring myself to act with kindness towards either of the officers.
My stalker had pretended not to know me, and without proof, without further harassment confirmed by a witness or CCTV, the police would believe him.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Finn smiled up at her from the back of the newspaper and followed her eyes as she adjusted the pages in her grasp. It was the same photo she had discovered in the library, but blown up ten times the size. So many people in the town would be looking into his eyes, admiring his smile, reading the headline that would be impossible to miss. She read the ad over, her heart beating quickly in her chest.
WHAT HAPPENED TO FINN?
Finn Matthews disappeared on 19th April 2018. The police have done nothing because he is attracted to men. If you have seen him, or have any information about his whereabouts, or know anything that might help, please come forward. You can do so anonymously. Help us find Finn.
The ad was hard to miss. The words practically screamed off the page. Finn had eyes that caught one’s attention, a smile that demanded a second look. Not only would people in the town learn of his disappearance, but she was sure the person responsible would be looking at it too.
Rose shoved the paper back in her bag and paced on the street corner, lighting her third cigarette in a row.
She stared her own guilt in the face every single day, but to encounter that of others, of the families of the victims, would be something else entirely. She was out of her depth. Somehow, she had stumbled into something that was far too big for one person to deal with alone. But there was no one who she could turn to for help. No one, she thought, except her father.
Letting him back into her life after everything he had done felt like a betrayal to Jay and their mother. But she had thought on it all night, and knew she would have to enlist his help. Not for herself, but for Finn. For all of them.
She took her last drag on the cigarette and dropped it down the drain. The street was peaceful. Detached homes lined each side of the road with mature, manicured gardens, cars sparkling clean in the driveways. She walked up the street and stopped outside house number twenty-two.
This was the home of Lucy Nightingale, the mother of a murdered man. Before the call, Rose had wanted to believe there was a chance that Finn was alive, that he was hiding away somewhere, too frightened to show his face in case he was found. But the moment she heard the word ‘murder’, she couldn’t help but consider the worst: she wasn’t searching for Finn’s whereabouts, she was trying to find a dead man.
Multiple cars were parked in the drive, different models, ages and price tags; different lives brought together by the same pain.
The house looked neat – too neat. Every shrub had been symmetrically clipped, the grass was so short that it was barely an inch from the mud. There wasn’t a single weed or blemish. Rose imagined Lucy there, day after day, snipping and pruning and mowing to keep herself from stopping, from allowing thoughts of her son to trickle in. Even though she had never met the woman, just seeing her home made her feel akin to her.
She took a deep breath and walked to the door, knocked twice. She hid her shaking hand in her pocket and looked down at herself. After being mistaken for a homeless woman, she was set on making a good impression: a silk blouse, dark blue jeans that hugged her legs, heels she hadn’t worn in years. The make-up on her face felt too thick, as though she had aged herself by ten years. She was considering wiping off the lipstick when a figure emerged in the hall, swimming behind the frosted glass in the front door. When the door opened, a sweet, floral scent filled her nostrils.
‘Rose?’ the woman said.
She was tall and slim, almost too slim. Her chestnut-brown hair was long but thin, and her face was pretty, though there was a hollowness to her eyes.
‘Yes. Lucy?’
She nodded and stepped aside. ‘Please, come in.’
Rose stepped inside. The carpet was a spotless cream, almost white. She immediately slipped out of her shoes.
‘Thank you for coming to see us,’ Lucy said. It was only then, when Rose heard the shake in her voice, that she realised Lucy was as nervous as she was. ‘This way.’
Rose followed her down the hall, eyeing the family portraits on the wall, how they went from a family of four to a family of three. A tall, handsome man vanished from the photos. He had warm brown hair and his mother’s eyes. He was tall, towering over the rest of the family, with a smile that would have made Rose weak in the knees when she was his age.
‘My son,’ Lucy said with a pained smile. ‘Phillip.’
‘Handsome man,’ Rose said.
‘Yes, he was.’
Lucy gave her another forced smile and stepped through a doorway off the hall. Rose followed and stopped on the threshold.
A roomful of people stared back at her. Three men and five women with sullen faces and bags beneath their eyes, lips downturned even when they attempted to smile.
The room was a good size, but seemed small with all of the visitors crammed inside. Two armchairs were placed beside the brick chimneybreast; a sofa in the bay window, another against the wall, each space taken by a grieving soul.
A woman stood from one of the armchairs beside the fireplace. She wore dark green trousers and flat pumps, a white blouse and floral cardigan. She looked to be in her sixties, with hair left to whiten and cut above the neck, but her skin seemed to glow, and her eyes were alive; she looked the healthiest there. Just the sight of her gave Rose hope: it was possible to survive grief, at least on the surface.
‘Rose,’ the woman said with a kind, closed smile. ‘I’m An
nette.’
‘Hi, Annette.’
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Lucy asked. She signalled to the tray on the coffee table with an open palm: a pot of tea and cafetière of coffee; sugar cubes, milk and cream, a plate of biscuits left untouched.
‘Black coffee would be lovely,’ she said.
‘Take a seat,’ Lucy said and tapped a man on the shoulder where he sat in one of the armchairs. He stood nervously and signalled for Rose to sit.
‘Thank you.’
Rose sat down in the chair and wiped her moist palms on her jeans. Everyone was looking at her, taking in her grief just as she had theirs. Lucy took her time to prepare the coffee, as if to put off the subject that awaited them. Silence rang behind her movements, the occasional clearing of someone’s throat, shuffling in chairs.
‘Thank you,’ Rose said as she took the coffee cup. It shook against the saucer.
‘There’s no easy way to get into this,’ Annette said as Lucy sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘So I guess we’ll jump right to it. All of us have had someone we love either go missing or die. We believe the same person is responsible.’
A woman from the sofa in the bay window snatched a tissue from the coffee table, dabbed the corners of her eyes. No matter how many years passed, the grief was always there, so close to the surface.
‘And we believe the person responsible for the deaths and disappearances of our sons, our nephews and grandchildren, is the same man who is behind Finn’s disappearance.’
‘What makes you think that?’ Rose asked.
Annette took out an envelope from her bag and handed it to her.
‘Here.’
Rose took the envelope, opened the flap with shaking fingers. They watched her every movement. The air was alive with tension, itching at her skin and eyes.
She pulled out a collection of photos. A young man stared up at her.
‘These are our loved ones,’ Annette said, as Rose looked through them, eyeing each man.
They were a unique mixture of men: they varied in age and height; dark hair, blonde hair, red hair, eyes of emerald, blue, to the darkest brown. There would only be one factor that could possibly connect them all.
‘Were they all attracted to men?’
‘Yes.’
‘I. . .’ Rose looked at each of them and slipped the photos back in the envelope. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure what I can do to help.’
‘You’re looking into the disappearance of Finn Matthews, and we want to help in any way we can. If you find something, it could help us too.’
‘We aren’t expecting you to solve this,’ a man said, the one whose seat she had claimed. ‘But if there’s a chance you might, any chance at all, we want to help.’
‘Perhaps we should introduce ourselves,’ Annette said. ‘And those we lost.’
She stood up and took the envelope from Rose, and passed out the photos. Some shared a picture, others sat alone. Rose wondered how many families had broken from the grief.
‘I’m Annette,’ she said. ‘And this is my grandson, Zach.’ She held the photo so the young man’s eyes were another pair searing into Rose. Fair hair, blue eyes, young, plump skin. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. ‘The police decided he killed himself by throwing himself from the Rearwood bridge. I believe he was killed before he hit the water.’
‘We’re Edward and Meredith,’ the man said from the sofa in the bay window, beside the woman who was back dabbing away tears. ‘This is our son, Jamie. He has been missing for ten years.’
Jamie had dark brown hair, hazel eyes, a boyish body not yet filled out.
‘Phillip,’ Lucy said, the photo trembling in her grasp. The woman beside her patted Lucy’s thigh. She was older, perhaps her mother, an aunt. ‘Found dead in the woods, not far from the riverbank. The police said it was suicide.’
‘It wasn’t,’ the woman beside her said.
A man cleared his throat from the other end of the sofa; a younger woman who had his eyes sat on the arm. ‘I’m Andrew. My son Johnny has been missing for fourteen years.’
Johnny had fair hair. He was young, but his eyes were old; she wondered what he had seen.
Rose looked at each of the four men, staring out at her from their loved ones’ grasps. Zach, Jamie, Phillip, Johnny. With Finn and Adam, she was dealing with six potential victims now. Two dead, three missing, one driven mad and locked away. And she’d only signed up for one.
Lucy crossed the room and took a pile of folders from the top of the sideboard.
‘These are the police reports,’ she said, handing them to her. ‘We made copies, so these are yours to keep.’
Rose took the files, felt the weight of them in her lap, the crushing responsibility.
‘What we’d really like to know is,’ Annette said, ‘why are you doing this? Did you know Finn?’
‘I lost my brother when I was young. He was harassed and abused for being. . . who he was. I couldn’t help him, but I can help Finn. I found out about him when I found a journal. Finn’s journal. He wrote of a stalker. The police wouldn’t help, so I’m looking into it alone.’
‘The police are useless,’ Andrew said. He was dangerously thin. Days’ worth of stubble coated his cheeks and neck. ‘Couldn’t give a toss about us.’
Rose thought to tell them that there was a lot more to the police than just ignorance, but held back. They needed all the hope they could get.
‘So. . .’ Annette said, demanding the attention of the room again. Everyone seemed to revolve around her word. ‘Will you help us?’
Rose looked at each of them, witnessing their hope, their pain. She looked down at the files, the men in her lap. She scanned the room and saw their faith, a way she hadn’t been looked at in a long time.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. I will help you.’
TWENTY-NINE
Rose stopped outside Finn’s old apartment building in the same spot she imagined his stalker standing, watching for him at the windows, hour after hour.
The road itself was quaint for this part of town. The old street was lined with trees shedding gold and copper leaves, cars parked along either side of the pavement with permits stuck to the windscreens. The building was made up of bricks chipped from years of British winters, sash windows that looked old enough to let in a draught when the wind blew. Finn’s apartment was on the first floor, comprised of two windows facing the street. From his writings in the journal, she felt she knew the place already; she could imagine the worn sofa he sat on as he bit his nails to the quick; the kitchen used less and less as fear ate away at his hunger; the bedroom where he tossed and turned in bed, his mind filled with nightmares, spawned by a man who stood exactly where she was.
Finn had made it so easy for her. He had described his walk to work; all she had to do was retrace his steps from his office. The police were wrong; he was clearly a man who wanted to be found.
When she had left Lucy’s home that morning, she had waited until the turn in the road before bursting into tears. There were finally others who believed there was more to Finn’s disappearance. There had been moments when she had doubted herself, wondered if she was going mad, but to look into their eyes and have their support gave her the confidence to continue. The purpose of the ad had been to enlist help, and now she had it.
On the corner of Lucy Nightingale’s street, Rose had skimmed through the journal for the name of Finn’s landlord. When she had searched for his contact details online, she discovered that Finn’s old apartment was up for rent and available to view. The landlord had answered on the third ring, believed her when she enquired after the flat in the hope of viewing it, and agreed to meet her there at one.
She crossed the street and stood before the steps. This was where they had stopped, the night the stalker walked Finn home and forced a kiss on his lips. She looked up at the door and imagined Finn fighting his key into the lock, feeling the heat of the man’s glare on his back. She took to the steps.
The pace of her heart quickened, beating in her ears. She licked her drying lips and pressed the buzzer for Finn’s apartment.
‘Hi, it’s Rose Shaw, enquiring after the apartment,’ she said when the landlord answered.
‘I’ll be right down.’
She took a step back, smoothing down her hair and clothes.
The door opened with a creak. A man stood in the doorway; his skin was too tanned, weathered like leather. She forced a smile.
‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. ‘I’m Lee.’
His teeth looked as though they were rotting in his mouth, stained from nicotine. She shook his hand and almost flinched at the roughness of his palms. His finger had grown too big for his wedding ring.
‘Come in,’ he said.
The hall was almost exactly how she had pictured it. Pigeonholes on the left wall filled with post, off-white walls scuffed with dark scratches and chips in the paint. Her shoes stuck to the floor with each step. She scanned the pigeon holes for Finn’s name and found it had been replaced with another, presumably the name of the tenant who had rented the apartment after him. Finn had lived and breathed in this space, stood in the same spot, yet his existence had been covered up as though he had never been there at all.
‘The apartment is on the first floor,’ he said, heading up the stairs. ‘Great natural light.’
She took to the stairs behind him, followed close to his heels until they stopped before the door to the apartment. She imagined all of the nights Finn had spent behind the door that refused to lock when he needed it to most; the fear seemed to have bled into the wood of it, as though if she were to touch its surface, she would feel his pulse, his pain, beating beneath.
Lee took a ring of keys from his pocket and opened the door.
The flat was brighter than she had imagined, but as she stepped into the room, she smelt the fresh paint, felt the newly laid carpet beneath her feet. The landlord had tried to make the place like new, forgetting the past, forgetting Finn, but he was still there, claiming the air of the place.