Page 13 of Just Another Missing Person

Erin gestures to the bedroom at the opposite end of the hall to Olivia’s. It has a tiny balcony, unusual for a house of this size. It’s wrought iron, empty save for a small table, a single chair and a dying M&S outdoor plant. A clean breeze rushes in.

They head out, and Erin lights up. This is a ritual of theirs. Erin smokes while Julia thinks. And, anyway, Julia has always enjoyed the juxtaposition of a clean forensics suit and a cigarette.

“Also, she hadn’t locked the door to her room. She’d taken the keys, but not locked it.” Erin drags on the cigarette. “Strange, given she’s so new to the house.” She angles her head back and blows two plumes out of her nostrils, a dragon’s breath.

Julia begins to shiver. From the cold or the deception, she doesn’t know. “Any theory in particular?” she asks. SOCOs are excellent vehicles for intel. People let their guard down around them in a way they won’t around police. And Erin trusts Julia. Is happy to chat off-record, before her searches are complete. In fact, doesn’t really believe inthe recordat all.

The lit cigarette draws a vertical line of smoke in the night. “No blood spatter, no obvious signs of a struggle, nothing upended, nothing taken. Nothing significant left behind. No signs of a rush. I think she left here, intending to go somewhere, probably.” She blows another gray cone out. “Who knows the fuck where.”

“Indeed,” Julia says grimly.

“Anyway, we’ll get our lives back in two to four months.”

Julia says nothing, watching the fumes dance and disperse, and hating herself. She would usually quip back, but she doesn’t tonight.

“Everything all right?” Erin asks lightly.

“Huh?” Julia says in surprise.

“Seem tense,” Erin says.

Julia stands at the crossroads this question creates, then steps over it seamlessly.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m going to take a look, if you don’t mind,” she says, “before you get all set up in there.” She pulls the box further into her body. Erin could reach for it, discover it, if only she knew to.

Erin stubs the cigarette out on the brickwork, then tosses it off the balcony, away from the crime scene, so it isn’t collected by the fingertip searchers. Julia watches it freefall, thinking of what she’s about to do.

“Sure,” Erin says easily, lighting a second cigarette.

“You taken photos yet?” Julia asks, wondering how well to conceal her items.

“Nope.”

Julia nods. The world swims. It’s the perfect opportunity. Did the man know?

“Won’t be long,” she says over her shoulder to Erin. Her voice sounds completely normal.

Down the hall and into the room. She closes the pale, stripped-pine door. Olivia’s room is chaotic. A double bed pushed up against the wall to the left. Julia clocks it immediately: not a bed that is intended to be shared. Yellow bedspread with the starched, ironed quality of a new, out-of-the-box duvet cover. Julia palms her hand over it. Cheap. Low cotton count. Folds from the box still down the center.

A poster of Che Guevara on the wall. A leftie, then, just like Jonathan said. She inspects the Blu Tack—recent, put up by Olivia herself, no doubt. She looks at the sash window—wiped clean, nothing on the windowsill—and in the old wooden wardrobe. One of the doors is hanging open. A mirror catches the light, winking like the surface of water.

She clutches the box the man gave her. The second she does this, she will have committed another imprisonable offense. And, worse, violated some law against—what? Nature? Morals? She doesn’t know. If she doesn’t do it, though... Genevieve would get custody, time. Ten years, fifteen. It would depend on whether the jury believed itwas manslaughter or murder. Too big a risk to take, in other words, which Julia had known immediately that night. And Julia herself—she would get a few years inside, but, really, she would get life, because she would get beaten to death in prison for being a copper. She can’t deny that self-preservation plays a role here, too.

Once straight as a rail, Julia, with no choices before her, now metamorphoses, right there in front of the looking glass. Already, she thinks she looks different. Blond hair wild in the protective forensic clothing, jaw quivering with tension.

She begins to fumble with the metal box. She looks at the glass and the cigarette inside, and wonders if her search for Olivia is naive, whether it’s simply the case that the man who gave them to her has murdered her.

Unless he’s kidnapped her. Julia swallows. Olivia could be alive somewhere, and here Julia is, planting red herrings.

She feels her mind close off to what she is about to do. She is revulsed. Like somebody forced to make a cruel decision in the name of kindness, snapping the neck of something suffering.

Her eyes fill with tears. She brings her phone out and texts Genevieve, the forensic gloves not making contact properly with the screen. Her message comes out jumbled, but she sends it anyway. “Just hel up with 1 thiNg,” she says. And even though she’s not with Genevieve, even though she’s left yet another meal with her, abandoned her, Genevieve texts back glibly:I’ll wait up to see you! x

She’s got to do it. She’ll do it for Genevieve.

And, afterward, and tomorrow, she will do everything in her power to find Olivia, and end this for everybody.

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