Page 88 of Just Another Missing Person

“A life including a passport. How much would this be—on the market?”

“Ah, dealing fullz, are you?” he said seamlessly, and Julia had tilted her head back and closed her eyes, her antagonist forgotten. This was why she dealt with Price: he’s a specialist. Only, while her niche is stopping crime, his is committing it.

“Fullz?”

“A full identity. Off the rack, ready to go. A grand, maybe?”

“So—lucrative, then. Second question: what happens to a woman with access to these, dealing in these, who doesn’t deliver?”

“Death. No question. Betrayal in gangs is the worst thing you can do,” he had said softly before he hung up.

She knew she was right: Sadie had been trading passports. Matthew was protecting her, happy to look guilty himself when, in fact, he had been trying to stop her. That is what their arguments had been about. That is what the bitcoin transfer was, and why Prudence wasn’t ever missing, or reported on the PNC. Prudence was a sold identity, that’s all, that’s why it saidI have Prudence Jones for you. She was never a missing woman, only a passport. Half of the missing women in this story are illusions. Half real.

And Matthew had been happy, too, to take away that evidence for Sadie: the dud runs, the bitcoin transfers, the passport she was living under: Gail Hannah’s.

Because that is the only reason Matthew would’ve kept her goods: if she wasn’t dead but somewhere waiting for them. A lover’s talisman, not a murderer’s. And he kept frequenting an anonymous diner. It had to be worth a shot. Where better to disappear, to be paid cash in hand, living under an assumed name that—of course—she had the passport for?

Julia had known some of this before Lewis told her that Prudence’s passport had never been canceled—a sure sign identity forgery was taking place—but she couldn’t let him know of her hope. Let him believe he was trying to find Sadie’s killer, when, really, Julia hoped they were still trying to find Sadie. She hopes he’s reunited with her now.

And when she worked it all out, before and during her phone call with Emma, that is why she sent that final text message, before Jonathan took her phone. Not a text calling for help, not a text to Art, or even to Genevieve: she had protected Genevieve, done her best by her. With her final words, she instead sent a text to Lewis. Not only because this is Julia’s job, but because, with her final moments, it was the very best thing that she could think to do: reunite father and daughter, herself be damned.

And here she is, in the boot of a bad man’s car, surely damned.

She closes her eyes, ready. Jonathan. So careful with money. So keen to keep it. Of course he found another enterprise.

At first, she thinks it’s only her imagination. Cool night air piping in. Noises. She thinks that perhaps she is delusional. Hallucinating.

But she isn’t. The clunk of the boot. She winces, eyes still closed, hoping Jonathan will be quick.

Another noise.

But Lewis and Sadie are reunited.

And Emma will know that Matthew is good.

And isn’t this a happy enough ending? Hasn’t Julia done everything right, in the end? She started out on this journey by putting her family before the job, and ended it by putting her job before her own survival, a goodbye to her own family. Neither is right. That’s the position she’s forever been in.

The smell of the outside air. The slow lifting of the door, like a helium balloon rising up, up, up—and then.

Jonathan.

A single gunshot rings out in the night, a real, full-bodied two-syllable shoot and echo, like close-range thunder, and, after the shot, and after the echo, then there is only the aftermath.

Nineteen Months Later

44

Julia

“All rise,” the judge says, and Julia stands. She is in Courtroom One of Bristol Crown Court. A grand, pale stone building with a balcony out the front that looks more fitting for a royal wedding than a trial.

Still, Julia had often thought it might all end here. The courtroom is where most catastrophes have their grim conclusion, including—as it turns out—her own. Ending in her trial for Zac’s murder. Genevieve’s crime, dressed up as Julia’s.

It’s deepest winter. Early December. Outside, it’s hard to tell if the sun’s only just risen or is about to start going down again; near to Christmas, they merge together, the world in perpetual dawn/twilight. It’s later than she wanted for day one to begin. Listing problems, absent jurors; this trial has so far had every setback it’s possible to have.

She looks at the bench—a single judge, wearing lavender robes with an absurd red sash—and then at the lawyers, sitting in the bowels of the room, the people expected to defend and prosecute the worst. The defense lawyer is Bill, her brother, in a wig and a robe. He texted her this morning to say he had to get new criminal robes, that he had to get size XXXL. “I’m honored,” she had told him, and she had meant it.

“Approach the bench,” the judge says to the lawyers. Julia glances up, toward the public gallery, where Genevieve and Art are sitting, their faces impassive.

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