Page 10 of Just Another Missing Person

“Okay,” she says, thinking that at least she now has something useful: concrete evidence, his DNA, underneath her fingernail. Whatever he’s pulled out of his pocket, whatever happens now. If she dies, there are officially signs of a struggle that will lead the police to him. And if she lives, she can follow them herself.

She indicates, then slows to a stop on an empty part of the street, way past the house and the police presence. She kills the engine and the silence throbs, the air humming with fear. Julia’s body is sour-smelling, the burned-off adrenaline of terror.

A handful of people are coming home from bars, getting late-night food shopping out of their trunks, making calls, locking cars. Everyone is still in hats, scarves, gloves. It looks like a winter postcard. The citrus colors of the streetlamps, the lit-up windows in the houses. Normal life orbits around them, and nobody has any idea.

“This is for you,” the man says.

The way he swings fromfortoyou. That West Countryr. So he’s local.

He offers her a small metal box, but he only uses one hand to pass it to her. The other—in his pocket—could easily still be concealing a weapon.

“Your instructions are inside.”

He sits back as though his job is done. Julia’s hands tremble as she fiddles with the catch. It’s flipped shut like a lunchbox. She moves the metal clasp, cold against her fingertips, and opens it.

Inside is a piece of paper. A glass, double-bagged in a sandwich bag. A cigarette, also double-bagged.

She looks over her shoulder at him. His eyes are expressionless. She opens the letter.

Julia Day. It is now your job to convict Matthew James for the murder of Olivia Johnson. Enclosed are your forensics to plant. They contain his DNA. He resides at 1 Glasgow Place, Portishead.

Julia stares down at the paper, blinking fast. Her mind is in overdrive. Convict someone of murder. They’ve had trainingabout this. Bribery. Corruption. Inside jobs. The first thing you do is tell someone. Phone it in at the earliest possible moment to the Professional Standards Unit. The helpful part of Julia’s mind is thinking things of this nature: how to get out of it, the fact that the note is handwritten and can be analyzed. The other, unhelpful, part, the part obsessed only with finding missing people, is thinking that Glasgow Place is very near to the alleyway where Olivia disappeared. Only one street back.

But, finally, she lands on the most important, most obvious fact of all: this man must know where Olivia is, dead or alive, and needs somebody framed. The clearest explanation is most often true.

It’s all irrelevant, she thinks vehemently. She is not bribable. She isn’t. She hasn’t ever got into debt. She doesn’t want money or power or drugs. She’s off social media. All these things make you a target in the police, and she’s never once been corrupted.

“You’ve got the wrong person for this,” she says to him. “I won’t do it,” she adds, her voice shaking.

“This isn’t the way it’s going to go, Julia,” he says. He sounds almost mournful.Wheredoes she know that voice from? She closes her eyes, trying to play it again in her mind, but she can’t. The calm has disappeared, the hurricane has arrived.

She opens her eyes. “I cannot be blackmailed. I am not corrupt. Besides: I’m going to find Olivia, whatever’s happened to her.” It’s a bluff, but, bizarrely, one she almost believes. Her eyes keep straying to his left hand. Still concealed. At any moment, he could strike, and she’d be gone. But she can’t bow down to him, wave a white flag, submit. “You will see,” she adds.

The man pauses, looking at Julia square on in the mirror.She knows it’s coming. His trump card. The reason he is here. Her instinct spots it before she really can.

And now he speaks a single sentence which changes everything. “I know what Genevieve did.” After this, he adds another, so softly she has to strain to hear: “And you.”

4

Julia

“What.” She says it with a full stop, intending to give absolutely nothing away in tone. He cannot know. This man cannot know. Two people in the whole world know what Julia did for Genevieve, and those people are Genevieve and Julia. Not even Art knows.

“I know you covered up what Genevieve did. The CCTV. Zac.”

Julia’s mind stays as calm and frozen as the ground outside, but her body has a full reaction to this statement, specifically, to that name. Her stomach seems to set itself on fire. She actually glances down at it, expecting it to be hot, charred, smoking. It’s the same shock she felt that night, the night Genevieve did it. Sometimes, when she’s falling asleep, she still hears the particular slam of that particular door in the car park. It had a tone to it, as rich and nuanced as a human voice. A panicked, high jolt. When they moved house, she was relieved she’d never have to pass there again. The stories we tell ourselves: it turns out, she could never leave it behind her. Here it is, that door swinging from the past into the present, and bringing this man through it.

“How do you know?” she asks him directly.

He gestures wordlessly to the door, ignoring her question. Julia memorizes the movement his arm makes. There is something almost theatrical about it.

“You have evidence?” she says.

“Your daughter, on CCTV.”

“I’ll need to see that,” Julia says. He can’t have it. He can’t. She destroyed it. She checked meticulously for other cameras at the scene. Didn’t she?

“I’m very happy to schedule a viewing,” he says, and his tone chills Julia.

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