Page 64 of Just Another Missing Person

The lie comes much more easily this time. She needs a place to talk to Matthew with no cameras or recording equipment, as so very many corrupt police officers before her have required. Julia is disgusted to think of the traditions she’s joining: forced confessions, roughing a suspect up before they talk—and worse. But this isn’t that, she thinks: this is a mess. Blackmail and distraught fathers and missing and found identities and—this man. This boy. Somehow at the center of it. And Julia is hoping he will talk.

“The media interest is too much, around Olivia Johnson,” she lies to the custody sergeant. “So Matthew is being moved.”

“Okey-dokey,” she says in a bored tone. Julia checks her expression, but there’s nothing. So she doesn’t know. The custody suite isn’t near the main foyer. She’s got away with it, for now. The sergeant—iPhone in one hand, set of keys in the other, trust in Julia invisible and implicit somewhere between the two—hands her a key, not even looking up at her. Julia stops for just a second and notes this is another line crossed. Wonders if, since the first one, they have become easier to leap over, like she’s acquired a rare and horrible skill.

“Love Islandin a month,” the custody sergeant says, through chewing gum. “Reckon we can repurpose just one of the CCTV screens and have it on?”

“Not really,” Julia says, and evidently her deadpan response is not especially out of character, as the custody sergeant just shrugs, and keeps scrolling on her phone. Julia and Art used to watchLove Islandtogether when they could. Out of character for both of them; she thinks that is why they enjoyed it so much. The summer before last, Art turned to her and said, “I’m going to apply next year, dad bod and all.” That night, she’d put it on her worry list, and their laughs had woken Genevieve.

Julia takes the keys, her fingers clutching the cold metal. She moves to get Matthew before she can think any more about it.

He’s in the cell at the very end. She watches him for a second on the CCTV. He’s on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor, arms folded over his knees. Like a painting. Like a meditation.

Julia will need to release him soon, she knows she will.She’ll have to tell his mother, too. She can no longer detain somebody for the kidnap of an invented person, and she knows the desk sergeant will be busy spreading the word about that soon. She doesn’t have much time. But she needs to keep hold of Matthew, at least temporarily, in order to find answers. About Sadie, and about Prudence.

She only hopes that nobody will notice they’re gone, just for now, an hour in the dead of night. That nobody will look at the footage. That nobody will check anything Julia has done over the past week—ever. She knows, somehow, that this is not realistic, but Julia is being driven forward by a force much greater than caution, or guilt, or ethics: her detective brain is on the case, trying to find out what happened to Sadie.

“Come with me for a transfer,” she says through the hatch to him. He startles. He looks so small in the flesh—on the bed, still so childlike in so many ways, that Julia finds her heart roll over in her chest like a barrel.

“Why?” he says, meeting her eyes in the hatch, recognition crossing them. It is not a question most criminals would ask. Most would refuse, assume the cops are out to frame them, but Matthew seems only to want the facts. Well, so does Julia. He stands reluctantly, his body side-on to the door as he looks at her.

“I’ll explain. Ready?” she says, and he moves quickly, his movements lithe and fluid.

Unlike other cells, his doesn’t smell at all. Not of stale coffee and tea, not of the awful egg special ready meals, not of sweat or fear or anything: Matthew seems completely composed.

She leads him outside. The custody sergeant notices he isn’t handcuffed, but says nothing. Whether innocent or guilty, Julia can spot a flight risk, and this isn’t one.

Through the scanner and then the automatic doors, and the night is like jumping into a cold pond. Julia watches Matthew begin to shiver, then try to pretend he isn’t. “Where’s the transfer to?” he says.

When it becomes evident Julia isn’t going to answer, Matthew walks slowly, perhaps stalling, perhaps thinking. It strikes Julia that he seems to consider every word he speaks, every step he takes: somebody with something to hide, or just the way he is?

Julia’s car is parked half a mile away, and she won’t say anything until they’re safely inside it: the undiluted privacy she can provide.

Matthew doesn’t ask any more questions. She can’t work out if his compliance hints at something or nothing. Nevertheless, she doesn’t say anything, either.

The flats above the shops on the high street all have their lights off. The shops shut up, some with roller shutters, others just darkened and locked. It’s like a living museum, a homage to 2023, whatever that will mean in the future. Parked silent cars, faded social-distancing signs rubbed off the pavements, sodium streetlamps.

Matthew isn’t stupid, and he starts to look uncomfortable, turning his head left and right, looking around him at the night air, the completely empty street, the lack of recording equipment, other officers, solicitors—anything. Realization breaks across his features: his eyes widen, his hand twitches by his side. They reach her car.

“Your mum found the QR code,” Julia says.

He says nothing, but his posture changes. His movements slow: he’s thinking. Julia wishes that she could promise confidentiality, a bargain, or something, but she can’t. She’s always, always tried to be honest. Even amid everything that’shappened. Pockets of the truth, folded in with her lies. She looks across at him as she unlocks the doors. His face in profile against the silvery wet night. He really is just a kid.

“I don’t know what that is,” he says eventually. The oldest and easiest lie in the book:I don’t know.

“Try again,” Julia says.

“Why are we not with my lawyer?” The whites of his eyes yellow as they catch the interior light as he folds himself into the car. She’s surprised he gets in, but then, she supposes she would, too, if she were a young lad out only with a DCI.

She climbs in, too, closing the doors and feeling like a monster as she looks across at him: pink, still-teenage skin, the memories across his knuckles of where there were only dimples. She can just imagine what he was like as a child: shy, self-possessed, interesting. Julia would’ve done everything Emma has done, if she were her. Even the alibis, if they’re false. Even handing Matthew over.

But she isn’t Emma. Julia is Julia, mother to Genevieve, trying to find out what happened to Sadie for Lewis, and these facts somehow make some of them enemies: only Julia can’t quite work out who’s who.

She needs time. She needs to keep up the pretense of the Olivia investigation, just while she lines a few things up.

She needs to find out what happened to Sadie to end the mess they’re all in: her impasse, that she can’t tell her colleagues how she knew Olivia was invented, nor about the blackmail. She needs to protect her daughter. And she needs to find out what happened to Sadie to save Lewis: to bring him peace.

But, more than that, she needs to find Sadie because that is what Julia does. A mother and a cop: always the two, never just one. Her two great loves have been competing with eachother for almost twenty years. It’s only this year when it’s become something more than emblematic.

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