Page 59 of Just Another Missing Person

I stand there on the cold street, alone, without a plan, a woman now missing who I have invented, based on some poor woman who needed a new passport. God, maybe she will come out of the woodwork. I put my hands on my head, totally and utterly lost.

Before I can really think about the implications of it, I get my phone out and text him: David, Zac’s brother.Long time no speak, I write.Do you think you can help me with something?

***

David instructed, I drive to the bar Andrew said he was going to, the one next to the hairdresser’s. Portishead One. He’s drinking outside, standing next to his mother, smiling at her in that awkward way that he always did. I park up and watch them for several minutes. It’s late. David will be doing it right this second. He says he can take a blond woman off a CCTV network available on the dark web and superimpose her onto CCTV of the high street, walking down the alley toward Portishead One, and threaten the hairdresser’s to let him have the footage to do it and not to tell anyone. We talked for twenty minutes, me and him. He was all strategy, ready to fire into action on a minute’s notice. Didn’t seem to judge what I had done at all. The only thing that would bolster this even more, he told me, was something physical that placed Andrew at Olivia’s.

Andrew stubs a cigarette out on an overstuffed metal grate attached to the wall, the butt falling onto the floor, still lit, a little ember, leading the way just for me. He sets the empty pint down on the pavement, right next to the wall of the barwhere he drinks and works, checks his watch and gestures to his mother.

Something physical. DNA. A pint glass and a cigarette. Right there. Tomorrow, I’ll wait until the housemates are out, and plant them at Olivia’s.

***

The next morning, early. I barely slept. Yolanda is at work, and I dreamt all night of what I had done. Hidden phones, forged identities, subterfuge. At four o’clock in the morning she asked me—fairly acidly—if I was planning on writhing about any more, or sleeping, instead?

I make a strong black coffee now in our monstrous kitchen and turn on BBC News, which flickers to life on the television up ahead. I put that television up, and every single time I look at it, I think that it’s wonky. The left side dips just slightly. Ever since I did it, Yolanda has maintained it’s completely straight, even though I got out a spirit level to prove her wrong. “Well, it looks straight to me,” she always says.

Nothing on the news yet, so I turn my laptop on at the kitchen island and go local, and there it is: Olivia’s missing, phoned in by the housemates, just like I envisaged. But I can tell from the statement given by the police that my plan hasn’t worked yet. They haven’t arrested anybody. Julia’s face looms on the local news website, the video playing even as I scroll down: “Last seen heading into an alleyway,” she is saying, true to David’s word: he worked fast and got it done, an alleyway by Portishead One. God, maybe we’ll do it. Maybe it’ll all be worth it, this mixing of my life and Zac’s: a victim’s and a criminal’s, all bound up like two paint colors that eventually merge and become the same.

I go to another news story, headline: DEAD-END GIRL? and scroll down in surprise, shock like white lightning across my chest. Dead-end Girl.

The alleyway where David deep-faked his video. I stand up, then sit back down again and type it into Google Maps, which tells me it is blocked up. I told David it was the shortcut to Portishead One. But it isn’t—not any more. It was blocked up several years ago. David didn’t know enough to argue.

So she doesn’t go to the bar. She disappears, like a fucking apparition. What have I created?

I slide my laptop across the kitchen island, wanting to punch something. I pull on the sleeves of my jumper. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I was almost there.

Experiencing regret about something I did in my past.

The pursuit of justice burns bright across my chest.

He’s guilty. I know it. I think about the cigarette and the glass, carefully double-bagged when I got home.

I just need to make it happen.

***

I’m so naive, and no amount of criminal activity can solve that. The place is crawling with police. It’s night, when I thought it would be quieter, but they’re here in droves. Searchers walking out with evidence bags of the clothes I bought only the other day, talking on phones about forensics, two coppers standing like sentries by the doors, the tops of their heads bright white from streetlights. And me. In my car, afraid to get out.

It’s incredible. I thought they would believe she existed for long enough to arrest Andrew. In fact, the opposite hashappened: they believe in her existence so much they have launched a full-scale investigation, and they do not suspect Andrew at all.

There’s no way I can get in there. None at all. Andrew’s DNA sits on the passenger seat next to me, the final clue to the puzzle of your disappearance, and I can’t use it. Can’t do a thing with it. I drive in a useless loop around the estate, park up, then get out, the items held close to my body, inside my coat.

“Can I help you?” one of the PCSOs says as I walk past.

“No, sorry?” I say, trying to look clueless.

“Right—well, this area is going to be cordoned, now, please,” he says to me, though he doesn’t meanplease. He meansfuck off. As I turn around, heading back to my car, I catch him get a good look at my face, the way the police do sometimes. It sends my body hot, panic flashing up and down my torso. I need to act. I need to get this evidence into that house, and I need to not do it myself, and arouse even more suspicion.

I drive in a slow circle around the estate, back on to the A road, past the station. And that’s when I see her. Walking somewhere. Maybe to Olivia’s.

Julia. Her gait is heavy, tired, jaded perhaps.

Experiencing regret about something in my past.

I pull my beanie down over my face, impulsively rip out three holes for my eyes and mouth with a Swiss army knife from the glove box and drive ahead of her.

The car she drove last year while investigating your disappearance is next to a park. I use my car key to lever the window down. It’s depressingly easy. No tennis ball needed. Her car’s old, creaky. I’ll tell her I’ve got evidence of what she did. CCTV, or something.

---