Page 87 of Just Another Missing Person

“Then we realized that when people sent in the passports of people who’d died... rather than canceling them, we could sell them on. God.” She rubs her forehead. “It was so stupid. Anyone could have seen I was doing it, if they’d looked on the system. There will be people all over the country living under identities of people who’ve died, Dad.”

Prudence, I think, but don’t say it. So it was you who canceled the application.

“Who’s the guy? A gang?” I say urgently, instead.

You bite your lip, saying nothing. “I can’t,” you say. Your eyes stray again to the diner.

I reach for your shoulder, not letting you go, not ever. “It’s time.”

“But—Dad.” You catch your breath. “He said he’d kill me.”

“Who? Sadie, we’ve got to tell someone. We’ve got to tell the police.”

“But heisthe police. He’s called Jonathan.”

43

Julia

Julia is in the boot of a car. Her assailant parked up somewhere—she has no idea where. She tried to keep track for a mile or two past her house, but she lost it after that. Jonathan hasn’t done anything clichéd to her, her old colleague and friend. No gag, no binding. All he has done is betray her, a Brutus to her Julius, happy to dispose of her in pursuit of an enterprise, money, a dark-web syndicate of stolen passports. No wonder he was so content to help her. To help her to cover up and hush up what Lewis had done. To quietly drop the Olivia case. By this time, he knew: he knew she was on to Sadie.

Julia’s not yet given up, even though she knows it’s futile.

For the first time, in the eye of the hurricane, Julia is terrified. There is no calm any more. She knows she isn’t going to be found. Wherever they have arrived is almost totally silent. She can hear only the noises of nature at night. Maybe the distant sea, but it could just be the river, or the wind. Either way, Julia is in no doubt how she is going to end up: dead, and disposed of, by a consummate professional. A man with two decades’ experience of what he is about to do.

She hears gravel move underfoot. She listens so intently her ears strain. Is it gravel? It’s something loose. Shingle?

With nothing to lose, Julia calls his name: “Jonathan?”

The footsteps pause. He’s listening.

“How could you?” she says. A simple and loaded question all at once.

“It’s not personal,” he answers, his voice chilled.

“But it is. It’s me—it’s—we work together... I thought...” Julia doesn’t know why she is bargaining with him, her old friend. It was obviously never real, never genuine. And arguing with criminals hardly ever works.

“It’s a business opportunity,” he says simply. “It’s come a bit unstuck is all.”

“You don’t have to do it,” she says simply.

“Julia, this is not your concern.”

“But how—how did you start running these people for identities? Have you done anything else?”

“My whole career,” Jonathan’s voice says, disembodied, somewhere outside of the car. “I have had many mini enterprises,” he says, perhaps a gloat, but that’s how Julia knows he intends to kill her.

She blinks, turns her head away from the sound of his voice. She can’t bear to hear it. Those supposed detective instincts: duped by her right-hand man.

As she hears him walk away somewhere, she lies back against the cold, hard boot, and she thinks about the moment she worked it all out.

“A question I’ve asked before,” she’d said to Price, when he finally returned her call. “But with a different meaning this time. How much for a life?”

“The price to kill?” Price said, same as last time.

“The price to buy,” she had said. Matthew might haveappeared suspicious, but there was something crucial that Julia hadn’t been able to overlook: Sadie had worked at the passport office. And Prudence Jones’s passport had been sent there. It was that thing again, that piece of information her detective mind went back to over and over again. It was too much of a coincidence. And coincidences don’t often happen in investigations unless they mean something.

“How cryptic,” Price had said, one of the few people Julia knew who was exhilarated, rather than frustrated, by obscure communications.

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