Page 20 of Just Another Missing Person

“Well...” Julia takes the sheet from him. “It’s a small network, really, isn’t it? And most people message their friends on Facebook occasionally, even if only when they’ve forgotten their phone, or whatever. Seems pretty scant to me—how few contacts she actually has on there.”

“She calls herself a neo-Luddite.”

“Right,” Julia says, blowing out a small laugh. “Well, sure.”

After he leaves, she closes the door to her office and gets out the forensic scrapings she took.

She can’t ask Erin. She’d have to fake a crime, say she was grabbed in the street. It would throw up more and more questions than she can handle. She needs to be able to control the process.

After staring at the white scrapings for a few seconds, thinking, she applies online, to a private lab. She uses a fake name, pays with a debit card still registered to her maiden name, gives them an old hotmail email address. She writes her fraudulent details in the letter, pays and packages them up to go.

She takes them down the street, to a post box on the corner, wind in her hair, gaze frantically checking behind her, hoping nobody sees her. Especially not him.

On her way back, she calls Price, her informant. It’s the first time she’s ever asked him directly for information, rather than him coming to her.

Their relationship never felt slippery, though it started out the usual way: he was caught dealing, but he had a knife on him. Julia asked for his suppliers in return for droppingthe knife crime charge. He complied but, in time, seemed to undergo a kind of criminal metamorphosis where he actively enjoyed not belonging to either side. He liked the pursuit of danger, continued to snitch long after his charge was dropped, lived a kind of amoral code where he would talk about some criminals and not others: Julia was never clear on the criteria.

The only person who disapproved of Julia’s relationship with Price was Art. He had a wide possessive streak and always thought Price had an ulterior motive.

“Zac Harper,” Julia says, when he answers. “Thief, mugger. Got into difficulty last year and died.”

“Yep,” Price says, and Julia isn’t surprised he knew of him: he’s one of the most connected men in crime, and has an excellent memory. He’s the best informer she’s ever had.

“Were you in touch a lot?”

“Más o menos,” Price says.

“In English, please,” she says. Price has a habit of picking up and using foreign phrases, mostly designed to confuse whoever it is he’s speaking to.

“Who else did he associate with?”

“He was a petty thief, at best,” Price says disparagingly, like it would be better to be a serial killer. Julia doesn’t dignify this remark with a response. All she needs to know is who Zac is likely to have told in the days before his death. Surely that will lead her to the man in her car.

“Who were his mates—not just the close ones, but the other ones, too?”

“Think he had a brother. No real mates. Don’t know the name, though. Brother’s elusive.”

She sighs. “Hmm.”

“S’on your mind, DCI Day?” he asks tenderly, Juliathinks. That’s the thing about Price: Julia may not be able to work out why he is loyal to some people and not others, but she knows that he is devoted to her. He could easily stop supplying information, defect, but he hasn’t. Nor has he ever—to her knowledge—used anything she’s told him to pursue his own criminal interests, and he only ever informs to Julia. Price respects the delicate ecosystem of their relationship. He once sent her a bunch of daffodils early on in her career, when she alluded to having a hard time. He didn’t leave a note. She watched him place them on her car windscreen, then leave, presumably not wanting to frighten her.

“Nothing—tough case,” she says.

True to all this, Price doesn’t push her. “Let me know,” he says: shorthand for whether he can help.

“Sure will.”

“And, Day?”

“Mm?”

“Take care of yourself, yeah?”

The exact same phrase her brother used, two days after Zac’s death, when she met up with him.

It had been an unseasonable twenty-five degrees. The very tip of Bill’s nose was sunburned. Bill looks nothing like Julia. Where she is blond, he is dark, thick-set, usually with a full beard, though not that day. He, the size of a bear, had given her a demure wave. He had bought two takeaway coffees, which were sitting on a wall.

“All right?” he said.

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