Page 43 of Just Another Missing Person

Julia

Julia is in her living room, staring at the emailed private DNA report, thinking about Olivia’s use of the American phrasedrug store. Strange.

The report came—fast-tracked, at a cost of £900—but here it is. She reads it, and then dials Erin, holding her mobile between shoulder and chin. All it says is that her blackmailer is a man, then supplies his DNA profile. Outside, beyond her living-room windows, the relentlessly blustery spring winds carry litter on the air, right above the houses. Bags, fish and chip wrappers, the lot. “Can you run a DNA sample for me?” she asks, desperation lacing her voice. She has problem upon problem. Last night, she recklessly tried ten times to delete the bodycam footage, but it’s on a backend server. Each time she deleted it, it reappeared again when she logged back in, like a magic birthday candle that simply wouldn’t blow out.

Nobody can help her. The Super? No. Jonathan? No. She could never put a friend in that position. Art? What would he do, anyway? Her brother? Well, he could defend her, maybe, but he can’t help now.

She needs it gone. It’s an obstacle that has arisen among a whole course of them, but it’s still a hurdle she needs to clear.She stands helplessly in the living room. A framed photo of her and Art’s wedding is still on the mantelpiece. Neither of them has been so loaded as to take it down yet. She wonders if, when he broke those vows that he insisted on writing himself, he’d thought about her. But then—had she thought about him? When she chose work, time and again?

She turns her mind back to her other problems as Erin speaks. “No preamble necessary. How am I, etc.?” Erin says. Julia can hear her kids in the background, Erin shushing them. “God, sorry,” she says. “Evening fucking chaos,” she adds. “I’m looking forward to the quiet cup of tea that I’m going to have in a decade.”

“Sorry. How are you?”

“Great,” Erin says darkly. “House move is go, you know, I just don’t have the—”

“It’s a cold case. Er—from last year,” Julia lies, ignoring Erin’s chatter. “I have a male DNA report.”

“Yeah? Okay,” Erin says, but her voice is confused. Rightly so: no normal DCI would be working on cold cases during the golden hours of a missing person’s investigation. Julia hopes her dogged, multitasking reputation might precede her on this one. “Any word on Olivia?” Erin says, perhaps passive-aggressively.

“Nothing...” Julia says.

“Jesus. I was looking at her Little O Insta last night. I think, if someone else hasn’t killed her, I might. So annoying. She’s like—I don’t know. A parody.”

Julia’s mouth twists into a grim smile. Gallows humor: necessary for survival in the job. When you’ve attended as many post-mortems as they have, you’ll say anything dark for a laugh. “I quite like her,” she says. “Can you run it?” she asks Erin. “The DNA. If I send the details.” One thingticked off her list. She’ll just have to screenshot it so it obscures the fake name she gave.

“No problem,” Erin says crisply. As Julia hangs up, she hears her bark an order at one of her children. Julia closes her eyes in relief that Erin was distracted, her attention immediately turned elsewhere. That Julia, surrounded by police, didn’t hear that beat of Erin doing the worst thing possible: thinking. A damning, judgmental beat of silence: suspicious quiet.

***

“Not on the system,” Erin says, walking into Julia’s office and sitting down in The Interrogation Chair. She sets a new DNA report down: a single piece of paper, curled at one edge. “Sorry. You got any idea who it is, at all?”

“Nowhere?” Julia says, she thinks desperately. She can’t do this. She is used to being outspoken, straight up. This subterfuge is the worst thing in the world to her.

Erin turns her mouth down. Her gaze is on the paper she’s just set down on Julia’s desk.

“No, sorry—never arrested, never cautioned.” A beat. “Which cold case?” Julia’s head snaps up. Erin’s tone is interested, but in a studied way. Julia’s detective brain is just as chilled by Erin’s suspicion as she is by the notion that this unnamed, anonymous man has never once been arrested. He’s either an amateur, or a consummate fucking professional.

“Oh, an ancient one,” she says quickly, not wanting to associate her assailant’s DNA with anybody. She waves a hand casually. “DNA came in on it, something got retested.”

“What got retested?”

“Just the—A coat, at the scene.”

“One of our lot tested it originally, then?” Erin says, and Julia knows she shouldn’t have asked her. Forensic in occupation and in nature, Erin won’t think anything of interrogating Julia.

“Yeah,” Julia says. Never complain, never explain. Whose mantra is that? Somebody famous. Erin hesitates, for just a second. Her gaze meets Julia’s and something is communicated between them. A question from Erin’s eyes, avoided, unanswered by Julia’s. It’s silent. It’s invisible. But it’s real. Both could attest to it. And, for a second, Julia is sure she knows, too. “Look—I’m going to go to Olivia’s. Interested in these housemates,” Julia says. She’s read the reports but, as she learned last year from the Sadie case, there is no substitute for the real thing.

“Sure,” Erin says easily, but as they walk out together Julia can feel her eyes remaining on her; she’s biding her time, the way those in the police sometimes do. They walk past the bodycam docking station, and Julia feels as though each camera slowly turns, too, to stare at her back as she leaves. Mr. Jackson will ask for the footage again soon. She’s running out of time.

***

Only one of the housemates is in: Annie. Nineteen, a trainee in media communications, whatever that means. She is surprised to see Julia, and knowledgeable enough to comprehend her rank.

“The DCI, okay, Jesus,” she says, stepping aside and letting Julia pass. She’s tall, with dark blond hair, a narrow face and a friendly smile.

It’s strange to be back here. The house isn’t exactly as Julia remembers, which is often the way when you’ve visited onlyonce. It’s nice to see it in the daytime, when clear-sighted and not frightened. They walk through the hallway together, Julia ambitious and focused. She can’t find the man in the balaclava. She’s got to find Olivia. She has to. She glances at the stairs, and something about them bothers her. Her gaze lingers, but she can’t work it out.

They go through to the long Victorian kitchen, bathroom at the end. One bedroom at the front, downstairs. Back door ajar, letting the spring air in. Hallmarks of the house-share life are dotted around—a chore timetable, flyers for a local club, coupons. Julia casts her eyes over them. So far so normal.

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