Page 70 of Just Another Missing Person

“So I just...” I continue.

“The court will compel me to give evidence if they charge him,” she interrupts, but she says it kindly. “So I’m afraid I can’t speak to you, Ms. James.”

“But—are you as shocked as me?” I say. “Just—tell me that.”

Linda doesn’t answer. I sigh, wanting to sit on the bed again, cry like a child. “I mean—” I add, then stop, not knowing what to say, thinking maybe I have gone just totally wrong somewhere with how I’ve raised you. Maybe it’s the lack of a father figure; I was so determined for it not to matter, but perhaps it just does.

Eventually, Linda speaks: “So he has been accused twice.”

“Only accused,” I say quickly, automatically, but I knowshe’s right. It’s the internal/external thing again. Externally, I defend you. Internally, I crumple.

“Linda,” I say. “Has he ever mentioned a Prudence?”

“I can’t say,” she answers. And, for some reason, I feel like this is more likely to be a yes than a no. Something about her tone, shifting like sand underneath my feet.

We hang up, and I stay there next to that bed that sometimes still smells of that late-summer/early-autumn evening when we bought it, the one on which I wonder if you almost told me something, but didn’t—couldn’t.

I hold my phone in my hands, still warm from the call, and google missing Prudences again. There are hundreds of thousands of hits, but this time I have the time to go through them all, piece by piece. I sink down on to the hardwood floor, my head resting against the edge of your bed, and scroll. None of them are missing. None of them are dead. I suppose I should find relief in that, but I don’t.

Three Hundred and Seventy-Second Day Missing

32

Julia

Price is smoking a cigarette outside a nightclub called the Flamingo. It’s early morning and Julia’s had an hour’s sleep. It would have been two, but she sacrificed one of them to eat croissants with Genevieve, who seems better. She went through some sort of catharsis, maybe, when she told Julia about her dreams.

This is where Price has agreed to meet Julia.

She told the team earlier that Olivia had returned, and that Julia had bailed Matthew, but wouldn’t answer Emma on whether he’d be brought back in. How could she guarantee that, without knowing what his connection is to Sadie and Prudence?

Only Julia knows the full story: that this particular Olivia never existed. Only Julia knows that the evidence against Matthew is fabricated. It’s a matter of time before somebody realizes—before the media get hold of it, before the real Olivia sells her story to a tabloid, before she chases up her stolen-identity case with the authorities, before somebody starts to ask Julia exactly how it all came to pass. Julia’s on borrowed time.

She suggested here to Price precisely because she knowsit to be a CCTV blackspot. The club behind them operates as a drugs exchange. Julia knows it, everyone knows it, but they’re not interested in small fare: footmen, suppliers, punters buying ecstasy.

In the morning light it looks tawdry, the flamingos graffitied on the side cheap, the chalkboard-black paint behind them mattified and dulled.

“Another favor,” she says as she walks up to Price.

“No one found your bodycam footage?”

“No. You always do a thorough job.”

Price smirks around his cigarette. “Don’t try to flatter me, DCI Day, when you’re here to coerce me.”

Julia winces: she deserved that. It came to her earlier, on her bed. Everyone knows—even the police,especiallythe police—that criminals are better at some things than the coppers. The state, the establishment, the authorities, they’re always a step behind. They’re reacting. They find out what the criminals are doing, and then they try to stop it. It is the criminals who blaze the trail. The wrongdoers, the hackers, the scammers.

“What is the value,” Julia asks him, “of a life, on the street?”

Price lifts his chin, appraising Julia, hiding a surprised expression—though she can tell. “Of taking a life? Why?”

“I’ve got a man in. A missing woman. Maybe others. Pretty sure he isn’t a sociopath or a sexual deviant. So I’m wondering if he’s paid.”

“Are you sure he’s a man if he isn’t a sexual deviant?”

Julia ignores the joke.

“Who’s the woman?” Price asks.

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