Page 19 of Just Another Missing Person

Jonathan grins. “Straight up, as ever.”

“Likewise. Anyway—you do.” Julia smiles.

“Baby doesn’t sleep,” he says. His glasses catch the lights as he looks at her, turning his lenses white for just a second.

“Oh, but they’re so worth it...” Julia says, thinking of those honeyed newborn days, just her, Art and Genevieve. Terry-toweling babygros, milk-drunk sleeps. Fidelity.

“You know, everyone says that, but being up all night is still being up all night,” Jonathan says.

Their eyes meet. “I know.”

“Sorry, just—tired,” he says, running a hand through his hair. He swings his messenger bag down onto the floor, then flops into The Interrogation Chair next to Julia. She remembers him before he fell in love with his wife, before he had a child. When he had no lines around his eyes and spent every weekend out. Now, suddenly, he looks forty, just like her. Funny how it happens.

He opens the bag and pulls out a mind map of people—called an i2 association chart—already populated with names and faces. “My social network,” he explains.

“Good.” Julia is filled, suddenly, with the irrational kind ofhope that sometimes punctuates periods of anxiety. Maybe Jonathan will help her to find Olivia. And, if she finds Olivia alive... the problem is solved. It must be. Then Matthew cannot be convicted. Nobody could demand a conviction for a victimless crime. Could they?

“I’ve messaged every single person here,” Jonathan says, spreading it out across Julia’s desk. A DC’s job, really, not a DS’s, but Jonathan is just like Julia in this respect: a control freak. “No answers yet. I’ve also populated it with people she’s emailed and texted... I can’t always find overlap. For example, she emails Amy De Shaun a lot, but I can’t find her on Facebook... It might be this Amz woman here, but I’m not assuming.”

“ABC,” Julia says.

“Exactly.”

ABC: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, Challenge everything. One of the most important rules of being a detective.

“The boyfriend,” Jonathan says, “the one she watched in the HIIT workout, and sent the email about.”

“Yep,” Julia says, thinking—full of shame—that the boyfriend might be her biggest issue. She will be expected to go after him. But Julia is also incapable of not looking into him: it’s not always the boyfriend, but it’s very often the boyfriend—however, this time, to save Genevieve, it’s got to be somebody else, somebody called Matthew James. And it has to be murder. The hardest charge to get through. Julia knows she doesn’t have quite enough. DNA at the scene is helpful, but there is no body. It’s not unheard of to charge murder without a body, but it is difficult.

“Right, okay—I’ll get the boyfriend in,” Jonathan says.

“Okay,” she says quietly.

“No? Thought you’d be after him.”

“I am, I am,” Julia says defensively. “Get him in. See wherehe was that night, okay?” She then adds, to distract him, “I’m reading the pack at night. All her social media. She’s very... I don’t know, she somehow manages to get her personality across in every single post.”

“Right?” Jonathan says. “I really like her.”

Julia sighs, thinking about that boyfriend. What if it really was him? “Do you have a contact? For the boyfriend?” she says, unable to resist a lead.

“Leave it with me,” Jonathan says, and she feels momentarily, irrationally, better.

“Know if Forensics found anything?” she asks.

“They’ve got some items. No idea whose, or if any DNA has come up yet. Look—anyway.” He hands her the sheet. He has ticked in green and crossed in red everyone on there. “I got failure deliveries for these,” he says, indicating the crosses. “And these have delivered”—he indicates the green—“and this one”—he ticks Doug Adams’s box—“just called me up.”

“Who is he?” Julia asks.

“He hasn’t seen her for years, just casual Facebook friends, though only added her fairly recently, so he says. Her Facebook account is quite new—a year or so. Weird for Gen Z to set one up now—Facebook is so past it. Anyway, they worked a temp job together one summer while she was at university. He can’t remember the company, said maybe it had Boston in the title, though it’s London based.”

“What doing?”

“Data entry. It’s helped to piece together a time line, though. She went to Nottingham University before moving back here. Studied psychology. Then she did a few shitty temp jobs, one with Doug, before she moved into marketing.”

“Okay, well, all information is good information,” Julia says. “Keep going. Weird, though.”

“What?”

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