Page 37 of Just Another Missing Person

But you do smoke. And socially, too. I’m saying nothing. It occurs to me, for just a second, that maybe I shouldn’t be defending you. That maybe I, too, will end up on the news one day, complicit. Delusional.His mother, thirty-nine, refuses to believe his guilt, even to this day.Should I tell them? Should I tell them about last year? Do they already know?

Poole blinks, saying nothing, then shows you something on his phone. As you look at it, I stare at Day. Her eyes are on you, and they’re... what, exactly? Mournful? Concerned? Not the expression you would expect to see from a police officer. Some sort of... I don’t know. Longing, maybe? She catches me looking, and blinks down at her lap.

“That’s the report. The chance this isn’t your DNA is onein one billion. So, maybe you saw her right before she disappeared, and panicked...” Poole says, letting his sentence drift. Eventually, he adds: “If so, now would be a good time to tell us that. Given, too, that you were near the alley on that night, at Portishead One.”

“But he didn’t go in that alley,” I say: I was with you.

“I haven’t ever met her. Never even spoken to her,” you say.

“All right, then, Matthew. Nobody wants to do it this way...”

“What?” you say, gaping.

Poole springs to his feet. “Matthew James, I am arresting you on suspicion of the kidnap of Olivia Johnson. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand what I have just said?”

“I... I didn’t... kidnap?” you say, aghast. “I was with—” You gesture to me, your arm flailing.

“The reason your arrest is necessary is to allow us to conduct a prompt and effective investigation into this matter.”

“How can I have killed someone when I’ve got an alibi?” you say. The sound of your voice. Anguish. But the word,alibi, is all tactics: it’s a defense.

I stare at you as you say it. Suspicion starts to creep up my body like a stealthy tide coming in.

DS Poole begins straightening papers, like they have just concluded a banal business meeting. Like it isn’t nighttime. Like this isn’t life and death. “Search?” he says to DCI Day, and she nods. He holds a palm out, and you hand your phone over.

“Kidnap. She’s hardly in my basement, is she?” you say, bewildered, gesturing all around us. I send my hand out tothe side to stop you speaking with a force that feels like telekinesis. It doesn’t matter what I think.

The neck of your T-shirt looks tight around your throat. You pull at it uselessly. You begin to make gagging noises, losing all dignity there in our house. And then you turn to me, your mum, for help. Only I am helpless. As disoriented as you.

“I can’t do this,” you say, gasping for air.

“You need,” I say, “you need a warrant, don’t you? He needs a lawyer?”

“Not when there’s an arrest for an indictable offense,” Poole says crisply. “Right, DCI Day.”

“I’ll get upstairs done by the searchers,” she says. “You do downstairs. Get one of the PCSOs to stay with him.”

Poole shepherds us into the kitchen, just you and me. He blusters off; understaffed, I guess. “Touch nothing,” he says, and we stand there, like prisoners, but by our lovely marble kitchen island, displaced.

“Look,” I say to you.

“I have not kidnapped her,” you say. “I don’t know her. I haven’t...” Your voice trails off, confused.

I hold your gaze for five seconds, ten. More and more police are coming through the front door. They must have been waiting for the nod, just outside, unseen.

You are looking back at me. Those soulful eyes. You blink, once, but say nothing. As ever. Until you do. A whispered confession to me. “I have spoken to her. Online,” you say, sotto voce, so softly I have to strain to hear you. “I deleted the messages just now.”

13

Julia

Julia has tears running down her cheeks. She has her hands cupped around the sides of her face, her elbows on a bar, heartbreak in her throat. She’s just left Matthew’s house. He’s just a kid. Barely older than Genevieve. Julia shouldn’t even have attended, but she wanted to see. Some voyeuristic, base urge had compelled her to observe the effect of her own corrupt actions.

The DNA matched Matthew earlier. Julia had tried to discuss upgrading the charge to murder, but the team had looked at her like she was an alien. She’d never ordinarily suggest that, especially in the absence of a body. She’d tried to justify it and couldn’t. Then she’d arrested him. Then she’d left.

And now she’s in a bar opposite the police station, alone, where she’s wanted to be ever since his arrest. As she sat in that beautiful living room of theirs—hardwood floors, framed photos of Matthew everywhere, the scent of a bunch of lilies somewhere on the air—she had suddenly thought so viscerally about being here, this run-down bar she hardly ever frequents, that as soon as Matthew was checked in, she left, and came here.

And so now the natural order is this: Matthew is in the station, locked up, and she is here: free. That’s the trade she’s made. Julia’s only child has been saved, and Matthew sacrificed. She shivers with it. She’s done a deal with the devil. And, someday soon, she will pay.

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