Page 9 of Just Another Missing Person

Her body begins to shake. Sweat tracks down from between her shoulder blades, sliding toward her lower back. She licks her lips, trying to think. He will want something. She just needs to work out what it is, and how to give it to him.

Julia looks at those brown eyes again. He must be an enemy. A suspect, a criminal, a gang member. Somebody she knows. God, she has too many enemies to count: all police do.

A couple of crow’s feet around his eyes, nothing heavy. He’s maybe her age.

After a beat, he speaks: “I have an address.” Okay. He is disguising his voice. Deliberately gruff, farcically so. So either she knows him, or he’s a smart enough criminal to know that he must be unidentifiable. “Seventeen, East View Lane,” he continues. A chill moves through Julia’s body: that is Olivia Johnson’s address.

***

“Okay,” she says in a cool voice, progressing along the street at twenty miles per hour.

A civilian is driving behind them. She could stop abruptly, get out, flag them down. Her phone is just there in the cup holder. She could call 999 easily, has the entire police force at her disposal. And if they’re going to Olivia’s, it will be surrounded by officers.

Instead of finding all of this comforting, Julia finds it disturbing. This man will know all of this. He isn’t mad. He is composed, informed. Knew how to break into her car. Is sitting collectedly now, in the back, in complete control.

Why does he think she won’t get help? The road widensinto two lanes, and she moves over to the right to give her an excuse to check her rear-view mirror. She scans his body. He must be armed.

Panic finally begins to burn, quick and hot, in Julia’s chest. She thinks of Art, and everything that’s still unsaid between them. And she thinks, too, of Genevieve, and how Julia always wishes she had made the time to have another child, though she worried she would never love a second like she loves her. How could she? Julia doesn’t feel as though she loves Genevieve because she’s her daughter; she loves Genevieve because she is Genevieve.

She wonders, if he kills her now, if they will be surprised, or if they expected it, somehow; that one day the job would finally take her away completely, rather than partially.

“Why there?” she says to the man. Third gear. Fourth. They’re doing thirty-five miles an hour, now, on roads that look totally, absurdly, normal. Ubers. A bus.

“You know.”

Fifth gear. On an A road, now. It is a blur of red lights. Busy, surprisingly so for the time of night. “You’ll park up outside it, where I tell you to,” he says. Julia recognizes his voice. She’s sure of it. There’s something familiar about it...

A roundabout. First exit. The man begins to rifle around in the back. The movement distracts her. He’s hidden from the outside world by the suit jackets she’s in the habit of hanging by the windows. They give him the perfect cover.

He is making a noise with something. Julia drives and listens intently. It’s metal. Each hair stands up on the back of her neck, a fearful sweep of goose bumps, as she waits to see what he does. He’s about to play his card, Julia’s sure of it.

A car in the distance has rap music on. The beats reverberate along the road, obscuring whatever noises he’s making.Julia waits for it. She can imagine it precisely: cold metal on the vulnerable skin at the back of her neck. The cock of a gun. Her heart throbs along with the bass. Perhaps she’s been waiting her entire career for this to happen.

They pass under a flickering streetlight which strobes the man’s eyes in the mirror, dark oak to ash. Julia feels like she’s dreaming, like she’s taken LSD, like she’s got a fever. The calm has disappeared, replaced with panic.

Olivia’s house is off this next junction. Julia indicates left and moves over. The man in the back does nothing at all, but Julia knows he’s going to do something, soon, before they reach the house surrounded by police. She tries to think, but it’s impossible in this loaded, violent silence. All she can hear is her breath, and his.

She drives for two more minutes, taking glances at him in the mirror. Time ticks down slowly, sand through an hourglass, and Julia wonders in that strange, cold way that characterizes situations like these if these might be her final moments.

Olivia’s house looms up ahead. Despite herself, Julia can’t help but appraise it. Victorian terrace—good; hopefully the neighbors overheard something.

Two police cars sit outside it. A PCSO on the door; Julia can’t quite make out who, but she thinks it might be a man called Harry who she knows well.

“Keep going, away from everyone,” the man says, flicking a hand in front of him, pointing down the road.

She drives, and a plan forms in her mind. Despite twenty years in the police, it doesn’t come naturally to Julia to keep her cards close to her chest in this way. She is straight up. Everyone knows her for this. She doesn’t withhold disclosure.She doesn’t tell lies in interviews. Julia believes everything is better when everyone knows the same stuff. But she can’t do that today, not now.

The forensics van is parked up. Erin and her team will be inside, preparing to or having already started to search Olivia’s room, to see what she took, what she left behind, and to check for signs of a struggle.

But what evidence does this man in Julia’s car leave behind? Perhaps some unknown skin and hair fibers, her number plate seen on ANPR, him invisible behind the jackets, but nothing else. For all of her life, Julia has followed the evidence ruthlessly, but here is the real world, playing out in front of her, and what use would forensics be? If he took her now, nobody would really ever know what happened to her. Male DNA would be found, but, unless he has a record, it could be anyone. A friend. A colleague. A mechanic.

Her hand goes to her seat belt, ready to leave, to run.

The man immediately grabs her wrist. He’s wearing gloves.

This is exactly what Julia wanted to happen, but, nevertheless, her entire body blooms with sweat at the physical contact. Before he releases her, she does it. She scrapes her fingernail down his arm.

“You’re not to leave,” he says softly, looking at his arm. But, if he’s figured out what she’s done, he doesn’t seem bothered. “Park there. On the right.”

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