Page 50 of Just Another Missing Person

Eventually, he speaks. “Right,” he says. “Okay. First and obvious question.”

“Right?”

“What’s in it for me?”

She had expected this, too. And, of course, she has an answer for it.

“Well,” she says lightly. “History.” She turns away from him and leaves the words there, hanging daintily in the sun-lit air along with the motes. Price is excellent at subtext: he will be in no doubt as to what she means.

To her surprise he bursts out laughing. “Oh, DCI, DCI, DCI,” he says. “I see now. Why didn’t you just say?” His auburn hair catches the light.

“Say what?”

He shifts the mugs around on the draining board like a magician, then looks directly at her. “Why didn’t you say I don’t have a choice?”

She shrugs, choosing not to answer.

“The long arm of the law, right?” he says.

“Exactly.”

He got to her trump card before she needed to play it: if he won’t help, she will get him convicted of all the many crimes he’s committed along the way. Supply, dealing, and the rest.

“Snitches don’t do well in prison, Price. Especially if it’s disclosed in open court.”

Price holds his expression where it is, open, curious, but she sees him gulp, just once, his Adam’s apple moving very slowly, a funicular up and down a track. “Okay,” he says cordially. “Snitches get stitches, right? Well bargained,” he adds, like a teacher issuing praise. “Let me find you a techy.”

“Let me know,” she says, trying not to sound too urgent, wondering if this is it, if criminals accept disloyalty more readily than police. She has the uneasy feeling of getting away with something she hadn’t expected to.

“Report it into the station if I can’t get hold of you, right?” he says, a test.

“Best to just come direct to me,” she says without missing a beat. She doesn’t attempt to disguise it. And now, just like the tide that pulls in at one bay and pushes out at another, he holds the cards: he knows this isn’t at all legitimate. He gives her a slow, knowing half-smile.

Whether he chooses to do something with that information now, or later, Julia can’t tell. She walks to the window. She’s never felt unsafe in his company, but she begins to this morning. Nobody knows she’s here. The bright kitchen, the quiet surrounds, the towering view, tiny people on patchwork pavements below—they all become sinister.

Julia turns to leave, walking down his wooden-floored hallway to his door that doesn’t lead to the outside world but to a maze of Escher corridors instead.

“Disappearing CCTV... people going missing a lot lately,” Price says casually from behind her.

Julia turns around, balancing her fingers on his hall table. It contains only an empty ashtray, the surface gleaming. Suddenly, she no longer sees Price, the boy who she started working with all those years ago, but a grown man, pushing forty.

“Always are,” she says. This is Price’s way of telling her he knows exactly what she is working on, that he is capable of putting the pieces together.

He flicks his eyes to her. He’s grown a beard, also auburn, more orange than the hair on his head. It obscures his expression, which Julia used to be able to read so easily. She wonders, suddenly, if she could ask him to find the man in the balaclava. He surely could: he could hack into Ring doorbells, intimidate people, follow people. He has all the avenues available to people happy to act illegally.

“DCI?” he says, wanting to ask something, perhaps.

Julia doesn’t say anything. That one is a step too far.

“This is to do with the missing women, then?” he presses.

Julia notices the plural immediately.

“Women? Do you mean Olivia?”

“Someone went missing. Someone I work with worked with her.” Work: this is how Price discusses criminal enterprises.

“Who?”

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