Page 79 of Just Another Missing Person

“Leave that to me.”

37

Julia

Julia is hoping what Lewis finds will assist her. She wishes she could discuss it with somebody, with Jonathan, maybe, though he’s still away, revisiting the Sadie file in the evenings, looking for clues.

She is just down the road in a pub, meeting a contact of Price’s. Nobody has followed her here, so far as she knows. The last thing Julia needs is to make another dangerous acquaintance, but she has no choice now. Isn’t even really acting consciously, is just the lion chasing down the deer, everything else be damned.

The pub is called the Sparrow, and is very much not her style. It has a sign outside that swings and creaks in the wind. Inside is old-fashioned: ugly carpets, swirls of brown and orange to hide the stains. Four exposed-brick columns. A dark-wood bar. High-up windows threaded with lead. Tatty green velour-covered stools. Almost empty, the chilly sun from outside heating the insides so the carpet begins to smell sour. So retro, as Genevieve might say, meaning: oh-so-ugly. The thought makes Julia miss Genevieve, and she sends her a text saying so, which Genevieve reads straightaway.Oh, well, I would miss me too!she writes back, and Julia fizzes withaffection, and even more so when a second arrives:We’ll have a lovely day together soon x.

It’s the middle of the day. The door is propped open, bringing a light breeze inside. She turns in a slow circle as she tries to work out if he’s here yet. When she sees him, it’s obvious: the man at the table in the shadows near the back is so clearly a criminal he may as well be carrying a swag bag. A heavy coat even though the weather doesn’t demand it, all the better for hiding things in. A steady gaze, right on hers. Two phones.

He is tall, elegant. Long white fingers, a straight spine. Cropped gray hair. In front of him is a glass of what looks like Coke, no ice, a full pint, the surface of the liquid right to the top, untouched, a black, glassy, distended meniscus. Next to that is theTimescryptic crossword.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Julia says, reaching a hand out.

“Pleasure,” the man says simply. He has filled in half of the crossword. Next to it, he’s written the date as though he intends to cut it out. A daily habit, then. Well, good.

She glances at her phone. A text from Lewis has come in: Prudence Jones’s passport was never canceled. It was sent in to be canceled, but the application was never completed. Just as she suspected.

The man meets Julia’s eyes. His are colorless. Maybe blue, maybe gray, maybe hazel but, really, none of them. “You’re interested in supplying one of my patches,” he says.

“Sorry—you go by...?”

“Nines,” he says. He is affiliated with a gang called 4Place, the most notorious in Bristol. Nines doesn’t deal in drugs, or arms, or trafficking. He deals in the very essence of who people are.

Clouds pass over the sun outside, plunging the pub into shadows. Two men arrive, half-cut already, at noon on a weekday. It’s a dirty old pub for dirty old men, and Julia feels completely alien here. When she gets home, eventually, whenever that is, she will run a shower, fast and hot, and stay in there for half an hour, until her feet turn pink. And then she will try to forget that she has accepted this instruction at all.

“Yes, I’m interested in supplying your patch.”

“You got the necessary documents?” he says. He means passports, but doesn’t say so. If Julia’s hunch is right, then Nines is going to lead her to answers.

“Yes, I do,” she bluffs.

“Never met a bent copper before,” Nines says. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He reaches out wordlessly with his hand. Julia shakes it. It feels skeletal in her grasp, a dead man’s hand.

38

Emma

I set the passports and the lock of hair and the clothes down on the coffee table in front of us wordlessly. You’re on the sofa, feet tucked up under you, a hand underneath your top, resting on your stomach. Ostensibly relaxed, the portrait not of a twenty-year-old bailed pending further police investigations but somebody on holiday, instead. Somebody lazing around on a Sunday morning. Somebody the day after their exams have finished.

You don’t see what I’ve done at first. Eyes down on that phone that holds your secrets, only some of which I have managed to unearth. It’s dusky outside, just before ten at night. We’re almost at the part of the year where it doesn’t ever feel like it gets truly dark. The lamp is on next to you, illuminating one side of your face, the other in shadow. Navy wall behind you. Jewel-green sofa. And you: sitting there, the sometimes-guilty love of my life.

I notice the exact moment you spot what I’ve put between us. Your body—not exactly moving a lot before—stills in an animalistic way; a rabbit stopped in the wild, listening for a predator. You turn only your eyes up to me after a few seconds. The rest of your body stays exactly where it was.

“I found them,” I say simply. I look at you, waiting a beat. I can see the crown of your head from up here, standing over you. When you were a baby, for maybe eighteen months, your hair grew only outward, totally straight, like you’d touched a static balloon. I called you my baby hedgehog. Funny to think nobody will ever know about that: you can’t remember, and single parents have fewer witnesses. We have only the photographs we had the time to take—not many, all blurred, none posed, none just the two of us—and our memories.

“Right,” you say, and it’s at precisely this moment that I realize you’re not going to explain anything to me. No matter what.

Nevertheless, I look searchingly at you, and you stare back up at me. It occurs to me, now—a thought I used to have often—how unalike we look. You’re all your dad—as far as I can remember, anyway. That blue gaze, that dark brow.

“Right? A lock of hair? Bloodstained clothes? The only remaining question is—where is the body?”

To my surprise, you shoot to your feet like the sofa’s burned you. “Don’t you think I’d tell you?” you say.

“What? Where the body is?” I take a step back from you, startled. You’ve basically just admitted it. You notice this immediately, but rather than your anger burning brightly, your face only falls in disappointment as you realize: I am afraid of you.

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