Page 51 of Just Another Missing Person

“I didn’t know her. She was blond. They called her Marilyn. It won’t be her name—just... the hair,” he says.

“When?” Julia says quickly, thinking of both Sadie and Olivia.

“Six months—ish? She was working for someone. Some ring or other,” he says casually. “Then stopped.”

“Right,” she says, thinking how this is too long ago to be Olivia, too short a time to be Sadie.

“She stopped the work for them.”

“So not missing. Just no longer a criminal,” Julia says.

“No one saw her again. To be honest, I thought they’d killed her.”

“Why?”

“I just think that’s what happens usually when someone leaves a gang...”

“Right.”

“Yeah—you know,” he says, and Julia can feel it. It distracts her entirely from her own thoughts, wondering who this woman could be, the arrival of his own trump card. “I’m not sure I’m up for this errand. Thanks for thinking of me, though.”

“Why not?” Julia says sharply, perhaps desperately, though she tries not to show her hand.

“I want to know what I’m getting involved in here,” he says. Julia feels her body sag. It’s fair enough. It’s totally fair enough he would want to know that. She doesn’t want to say what she says next, but she has no choice.

“I can’t tell you anything,” she says.

“Maybe I can’t do it, then. Send me down—I don’t care.”

She reminds him of her own trump card: “Sure you wouldn’t want any of your contacts to know you’ve been informing on them?” she asks lightly. There are plenty of criminals she could go to. Both those on the inside, whose releases are imminent, and out. The threat to criminals isn’t the law: it’s their contemporaries. She winces as she says it. The first time she has ever, ever abused his trust, threatened him. Their symbiosis, ended in a single sentence.

“Fuck you, Julia,” he says. The Glaswegian consonants turn unpredictably like hairpin bends. He pauses, then adds, mostly reluctantly, “I’ll send someone.” Julia isn’t surprised: most criminals don’t fear prison, but they do fear death.

“That’s all,” she says. “Nothing else.” Sadness sweeps over her like a hangover.

Julia walks out without saying another word, thinking of a time in the future, and what her trial might look like. Whatthe bundle of papers from the prosecution will say, and how this will all be portrayed. A single action by Genevieve, a year ago. And every slow-falling domino afterward. It will look sordid, corrupt, but it doesn’t feel it. All Julia feels is desperation, and love. God, Julia wishes Genevieve hadn’t done it. She can rarely even admit this to herself, but she does. She knows it was an error of judgment, a rash decision that Genevieve has paid the price for. And yet—Julia simply wishes she hadn’t done it. As plain as that.

“A mate will log in tonight.”

“Good.”

“Unlike you,” Price says conversationally, “straight as an arrow.”

“Usually,” she says, then corrects herself. “Still am. It’s complicated.”

“Sounds pretty simple to me.”

She blinks back tears. She’s good, isn’t she? Despite doing unforgivable things? She’s suddenly gripped by both terror and hope that the person blackmailing her is good, like she is. Despairing, but good. The kind of quality that can be worked with.

“Don’t suppose I have a choice,” Price says. Her longest-serving ally. The blackmailed becoming the blackmailer. The oldest story. She hears Price’s door close behind her after she leaves.

***

Olivia’s dad has already spoken in depth to Julia’s colleagues, and perhaps that’s why he takes Julia’s call today with an awful connection and an even worse attitude.

It’s late, and she’s spent much of the evening sending IP addresses to a hacker who calls himself B2.

“Sorry,” Olivia’s dad keeps saying. The wind cuts through the line like a hand being repeatedly closed over the microphone, scratchy and rough. “Sorry—terrible signal, as I said. I’m out looking for her. But—look. Let’s keep it brief.”

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