Читать книгу: «The Disappeared», страница 2
I didn’t understand the sneer in his voice. My gaze followed his. I could see the tops of the trees on The Ridge through the kitchen window, still bare from winter and fading against the darkening sky.
‘His family’s not heard from him for three months,’ I said. ‘You can understand why they’re worried.’
He reached for a packet of Silk Cut that was on the high up mantelpiece above a gas fire. He lit one, inhaled in a way that made me think my initial hunch was right – he’d only just got up. As he exhaled he turned back to face us.
‘Oh, we heard from him.’
My patience snapped. ‘He’s rung?’
His gaze flicked to me like he’d forgotten I was in the room. ‘Would have been nice,’ he said. ‘But no.’
‘Then?’
‘Wait on,’ he said, disappearing through the kitchen door towards the hall.
Jo pulled a face, like she didn’t know what he was on about either.
He returned a moment later carrying a brown envelope. He held it upside down over the table and an Old Holborn tin fell out – the old-fashioned kind, orange and black with a row of what looked like Georgian houses on the lid. It clattered onto the table. Jo and I glanced at each other, a weird feeling blooming in my chest.
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Open it.’
Chapter Three
A feeling of dread crept over me. Don’t ask me why. I’m starting to believe in sixth senses and I’m learning to trust my gut. It’s taken years, but, after what happened, well, let’s just say I learned the hard way. I knew whatever it was in that tin it wasn’t good. It had its own aura, a bad vibe, or some kind of shit.
Jo picked up the tin. It didn’t rattle, and I knew by the way she held it in her hand it had weight to it. She glanced up at Pants, then me, and she prised off the lid. I held my breath.
Inside was a small plastic bag plump with brown powder. I kind of hoped it was demerara sugar but a voice inside me said I was clutching at straws.
‘Smack,’ said Jo, her voice rising like she was asking a question, but one to which she already knew the answer.
‘Really,’ said Pants, the sarcasm hard to miss.
‘So …’ My brain tried to make sense of the messages my eyes were feeding it. ‘What? He posted you heroin? In lieu of the bills?’
‘Read the note.’ He tugged it out of the brown envelope, a piece of scruffy A4 paper, folded into quarters, and handed it to me. He dropped the envelope on the table. Jo held the bag, still inside the tin, to her nose. Then she gave it to me, and I did the same, like we were seasoned sniffer dogs. Pants went to stand back by the sink.
I unfolded the note and read it out loud.
‘“Soz, guys. Leeds does my head in. When they come looking for me, give them this and tell them I’ll sort the rest when I can. Sorry bout …”’ There was a word crossed out and I couldn’t make out what it said. Instead he’d continued, ‘“everything, but the less you know the better. Keep the faith. J.”’
‘Did you know he was into smack?’ asked Jo.
Pants looked uncomfortable. ‘Dunno. I don’t want to know.’
‘Who’s “they”?’ I asked, as I read the note again.
‘Funny.’ He glared at me. ‘Just take it and don’t come back.’
‘What?’
‘I’m serious.’
‘No,’ I said, as the realization of what he was thinking crept over me.
‘This isn’t how it was supposed to be,’ he said. ‘Not when we set it up. I don’t want to get involved.’
‘No,’ I said again. I’ve been accused of a few things in my time, but heroin dealer was a new low. ‘We’re private investigators, working for his family.’
‘Yeah, right.’ From his tone it was clear he didn’t believe me. ‘His family.’
‘Did you call the police?’ Jo asked as she replaced the lid on the tin.
‘What, to come to our squat to talk about the heroin one of our housemates just sent us?’ Pants stood with his arms folded across his chest. ‘Take it and go.’
‘Can we take his stuff too?’ asked Jo. She stuffed the tin into her jacket pocket. I frowned at her. She took a slurp of tea as she got to her feet.
‘I guess. We’re not planning a car boot.’
My cheeks felt warm. I hate misunderstandings. But in my experience, these things are hard to unravel. The more you pull, the more you tangle. Still, I gave it a limp shot.
‘We’re not drug dealers, you know.’
He didn’t show any sign that he’d heard me. Instead he continued to speak to Jo. ‘I just want it out of here. We’re on dodgy enough ground as it is.’
Jo had already stubbed out her cigarette, readying herself for the task of moving the bin liners. I folded the note, picked up the envelope and shoved both in my pocket. Pants helped us lift the bags out to the pavement in silence.
There were seven bin liners in all, added to the Old Holborn tin full of smack, and we had quite a haul. We crammed the sacks into the back of the van.
‘If anything happens, will you let us know?’ I handed him a business card.
He frowned, like he’d seen everything now. Smack dealers with business cards. I couldn’t think what to say. The more I protested the lamer it sounded. I stuffed the last bin liner into the van, and when I turned round Pants was already back in the house. The front door banged closed.
‘Don’t think he likes us,’ I said to Jo. She was crouched in the road by the driver’s door.
‘Whatevs,’ she said.
‘He thinks we’re dealers.’
‘Who cares what he thinks? He’s a bloke.’
Jo’s never been what you’d call a man’s woman and you can’t really blame her. When she was twelve, her dad ran off with her Girl Guide leader. He’s just had twins with his latest girlfriend, Stacey, who’s only three years older than Jo. Jo says he’s trying to be the Paul Weller of gastroenterology.
But lately she’s got worse. Five months ago, she caught her last boyfriend – Andy, the copper – in bed with the station typist, and since then she’s declared herself a political lesbian. Whether a political lesbian is the same as an actual lesbian, I’ve yet to discover, but Jo ranks men only a point or two higher than amoeba on the evolutionary scale.
I watched her trying to prise open the plastic cover on the inside of the driver’s door with a screwdriver. ‘What you doing?’
‘Trying to find somewhere to stash this. Case we get pulled.’
My discomfort grew. I wasn’t in a hurry to have anyone else suspect us of drug dealing, and particularly not the police. We drove back to the office in silence, the sky turning a dusky pink.
The offices felt safe, familiar. As soon as we’d carried all the bags inside, I locked the door and flicked the lights on. I made us a cup of tea while Jo quickly devised an inventory form on our second-hand PC. We sat in the front office, and Jo printed off a copy as I opened the first bin liner. Pants, or someone from the squat, had tied big knots in the top of each one, and it took me a few moments to prise it undone, the black plastic straining against my stubby fingernails.
‘Right, one thing at a time,’ said Jo. ‘Remember, this could be evidence.’
I paused. ‘Should we wear gloves?’
‘Shit, yes,’ said Jo, and I could tell she was pissed off she hadn’t thought of it. ‘I’ll run to Bobats.’
Bobats is the local hardware store. It’s open more or less twenty-four hours a day, and it sells everything from firelighters to lock cutters. I wasn’t sure it would sell gloves though; but sure enough less than five minutes later Jo was back with a box of disposable ones. We grinned at each other as we both pulled on a pair.
‘Remind you of anything?’
I shook thoughts of plastic speculums and wooden spatulas from my mind. ‘Probably should have thought before we handled a tin of heroin,’ I said.
Jo held the tip of her pen against the paper she’d attached to a plastic clipboard. ‘OK, what’ve we got?’
‘First up. A black jumper. Men’s.’ I looked at the label. ‘Marks & Spencer. Anarchy in the UK.’ I grinned. Jo didn’t respond. ‘Size: Large.’
Jo scribbled down the information.
‘Yeuch.’ I pulled out a pair of blue-grey underpants, glad of my latex. ‘Undies.’
That was all the first bag contained – clothes, and not all of them washed. The second one was a bit more interesting – a handful of textbooks, a biography of Bowie. A couple of ring-binder files with notes and hand-outs from the university sports psychology department and what looked like an advert dated May 2013 cut from the pages of the Manchester Evening News. ‘“Three Unforgettable Years. You will always be in my heart. Ciao. Roberto Mancini.”’ I turned it over. It had traces of Blu-Tack in the four corners. ‘Who’s he?’
‘Philistine,’ said Jo. ‘Manager at Man City, till he got sacked. Used to play for Italy.’
I put the advert to one side and carried on searching. At the bottom of the second bag I found a wallet containing an array of plastic cards – one for the National Union of Students complete with his photograph. I put that up on the desk as the photo was newer than the one we had. Also in the wallet were a couple of credit cards, past their expiry dates, and one that confirmed him as an organ donor. I tried not to see that as a sign. There were a couple of cardboard cards tucked in a pocket behind the leather – a library card and an out-of-date membership card for Alderley Edge Cricket Club. I guessed the wallet hadn’t been used for years. There was no money.
Jo continued checking the pockets in the heap of clothing in front of us. I’m not known for my colourful wardrobe, but it seemed Jack didn’t wear anything but black. She held up another pair of trousers, and a pair of underpants fell out of the leg. I shuddered. They say clothes maketh the man. If that’s the case, the man we were dealing with was shapeless, full of holes and had a bit of an issue with personal hygiene.
It wasn’t until the third bag that we discovered there was a whole lot more to Jack Wilkins.
Chapter Four
Jo had taken off her gloves and given up writing everything down. Mainly, I think, because she couldn’t keep coming up with alternative ways to write, ‘shapeless black jumper’ or, ‘pair of black canvas trousers with ripped hole in the knee’. As I watched the mountain of jumble grow higher, I did wonder what Jack was doing for clothes. It was March, but still bitterly cold – hardly time to be dispensing with jumpers. Had he decided on a whole new wardrobe direction or had he gone somewhere that clothes didn’t matter?
Which, of course, begged the question, where don’t clothes matter? I sparked up a fag and mulled it over. Two answers came to mind: a nudist beach in the South of France and the bottom of a lake. For some reason I couldn’t get the second one out of my head. I glanced at the clock. Four hours we’d been on the case, and I’d been quietly confident we’d have something for Mrs Wilkins by now. If not her son himself, at least news of his current address. Instead, all I could tell her was that he was mixed up in the supply of Class As and was probably naked.
Jo stood and crossed the room to retrieve the third bin liner. She left behind her a space on the floor, the brown carpet tiles resembling an island in a sea of black clothing. I watched her wrestle the knot for a few seconds, before giving up and ripping a hole in the side of the bag. A volcano of balled-up pairs of socks erupted. Jo frowned.
‘How many?’
The contrast of the neatly paired socks, different colours – blue, grey, tan – next to the heap of the rest of Jack’s clothes struck me. ‘They’re all brand new,’ I said, picking up the pair that had rolled closest to me. They had that unwrinkled freshness of having never been worn or washed. ‘Why would you have a million pairs of brand new socks?’
Jo freed two socks from their conjoined ball. She held them up, like Christmas stockings, then cocked her head to one side, her eyebrows knotting. I thought I heard something, a scrunching sound. Jo let one sock drop to the floor, and I watched her wrinkle up the other, like she was about to put it on. She turned it inside out, and as she did a wad of tightly folded paper popped out. Jo’s blue eyes shone. She’s got the most amazing eyes has Jo and the make-up she wears accentuates them, so that sometimes I catch people transfixed as they’re talking to her. She grinned at me as she smoothed out the bundle, and I realized what it was we were looking at.
‘Wowzer.’
I did the same to the pair I was holding. An identical wad of cash fell out. I picked it up and smoothed out the clutch of twenty-pound notes. I counted them out, as Jo snapped on another pair of gloves. When I’d finished I stared at her.
‘Ten. Ten twenty-pound notes. Ten times twenty? That’s two hundred quid.’
Jo nodded, indicating she had what I had. We both checked our second socks. Same result.
Jo grabbed a third pair. I didn’t, I was too busy trying to do the maths. I assessed the piles of socks. At least fifty pairs. Two hundred quid in each sock, two socks in each pair. That’s like what? My brain refused to do the sums, so I reached for my phone off the edge of the desk, as Jo popped out another wedge of cash.
‘Twenty grand.’ I sat back on the floor, propped up against the wall. ‘Give or take …’
Neither of us spoke for a moment. I felt a shiver, like someone had breathed down the back of my neck. I ran to the window and tugged the string that pulled the vertical blinds closed, making sure every centimetre of the dark glass was covered.
‘Get me some envelopes,’ said Jo. ‘We need to get this straight.’
Jo un-balled sock after sock and counted out piles of cash, every so often stopping to tuck a wedge of notes into a brown envelope and write something on the front.
I sat back and tried to work out what was going on in Jack’s life. If he owed his dealers, why didn’t he just hand over the cash? Why leave it at his house, wrapped in pairs of black, brown and blue socks? Why leave his clothes behind? Had he been planning on coming back?
‘Sixty,’ said Jo, when she’d sealed the last pile of cash into an envelope.
‘Sixty grand?’ I felt light-headed.
‘Sixty pairs of socks. Twenty-four grand.’
I crossed my legs and reminded myself to breathe from my belly and let the weight sink into the floor through my sitting bones.
‘Well. Our first case has been good for business, even if we haven’t solved anything,’ said Jo.
‘We can’t keep it.’
‘You think we should give it to his mum?’ From the tone of her voice, I gathered Jo didn’t think much to this idea.
‘I’m thinking his dealers are bound to come looking for it sooner or later. His note.’ I pulled it from my pocket. ‘It says, “when they come looking for me”. They must know where he lives.’
Jo reached up to help herself to a handful of rubber bands from the desk tidy and bundled the envelopes together.
‘Why would he post smack but not mention the cash?’ I asked out loud. Another thought hit me. We’d just removed heroin with a street value of God knows what and twenty-four grand in cash. ‘Shit. They’re going to go to his house and—’
‘We left them our business card,’ Jo finished the sentence for me. She straightened up from her position and stretched out her back. ‘Might not be a bad thing. They can come round here; we can give them the money; they tell us where Jack is. Everyone’s a winner.’
‘Mmm.’ I wasn’t convinced. ‘If it’s that easy, why didn’t Jack give them the money?’
‘He got greedy?’
‘If he got greedy, why’d he leave it behind?’
‘Maybe he got scared.’
‘If he got scared, why’d he run without his clothes?’
‘I dunno.’ Jo was obviously bored playing twenty questions, which was a shame because I had a whole stack more. She got onto her knees, used the desk to pull herself to standing. ‘I’ll lock this in the safe for now.’
She went through to the back room with twenty-four neatly labelled envelopes, a thousand pounds in each.
‘Don’t forget this.’ I lobbed the tin of heroin at her, and she caught it one-handed. While she was gone, I stuffed Jack’s clothes back into what was left of the bin bags. There were two more bags still to open.
‘The safe’s full,’ said Jo, coming back into the room. ‘Find anything else?’
‘More clothes. Some copies of the Socialist Worker, an old bus pass. Not much to show for a life, is it?’
‘He’s not doing bad. Twenty-four grand in savings.’
‘Hardly think they’re savings.’
‘But still—’
‘What’s not here?’ I asked. ‘If these are all his worldly goods?’
‘No computer, no iPad, no phone,’ said Jo, sitting on the edge of the desk.
‘Good point. Pants said he’d nicked Brownie’s PlayStation. So he’s taken electrical goods.’
‘To sell.’
‘Doesn’t make sense. Why nick a PlayStation and leave behind twenty-four grand?’
‘No toothbrush. No toiletries.’
‘We should ask Pants about that. Maybe they’re in the bathroom. It would be useful to know if he took his toothbrush.’ I scrawled a note on the pad on the desk.
Jo yawned. ‘What now?’
It wasn’t like we had much to go on. ‘Let’s try The Warehouse. They might know something there. And we might bump into Brownie.’
It struck me that I should have taken a notebook to the squat. My memory’s not great at the best of times. I felt like a schoolgirl with an appointment to see the headmaster. How was I going to explain this to Mrs Wilkins?
When I first had the idea for this business, I’d had visions of the kind of experiences Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell preside over on Long Lost Family – the ecstasy on people’s faces as I reunited them with lost loves. Not that I’m in it for the gratitude, but I want to make a difference. I know what it’s like to live with the ghosts of the disappeared.
But I had this quiet but persistent voice inside me, saying that that kind of arm flinging, oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-it’s-you, tears, laughter, hugging experience wasn’t going to be happening. In fact, the monologue inside my head continued, I should keep my nose out. Dealers, large sums of money, smack. It was obvious nothing good was going to come of this.
But it’s like I’ve got this kind of death wish when it comes to family. I’m driven by something I can’t explain, something about belonging and the self-awareness, the understanding that comes with it. I need it to work out.
I need to find the family that works. Because Christ knows, mine didn’t.
Chapter Five
We took the bus into town. Perhaps not the obvious mode of transport for professional investigators, but it’s a habit that’s hard to break. Besides, the number 93 rattles down Woodhouse Lane at a rate of about one every minute, ferrying students into town and college. And there’s never anywhere to park in Leeds.
It was early enough that The Warehouse hadn’t opened for the night. The big black doors were closed and there wasn’t a doorbell, so we hung around outside till we saw a young blonde woman turn the corner and push through the side door. We jogged to catch up with her before the door banged shut. Jo asked her if we could speak to the manager, and she said to come in.
Once inside, she told us to wait by the main door. No one goes to The Warehouse for the décor, but even so I was taken aback at the state of it, empty of its clientele and with the lights on. Bare, damp walls, the floor littered with cigarette burns, the seating areas stained and ripped.
I watched the woman who’d let us in cross to the bar and speak to a bloke with a straggly beard. She returned and told us Bill wasn’t in yet, but wouldn’t be long. She invited us to wait, asked if we wanted a beer. Jo nodded at the same moment I held up a hand to say no. I sighed, but on the inside.
At first, me giving up drinking had been a bit of an issue to our friendship, but Jo’s adapted now. We’d both known if something didn’t give, well, if something didn’t give, something would have given. Probably me. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt watching Jo swig from a bottle of Tiger beer that had beads of condensation on the glass.
Jo sat while I opted to stand, rehearsing my lines for Jack’s mother: It’s not gone quite as well as we hoped, Mrs Wilkins, but …
A tall, gangly man made his way across the dance floor towards us. He must have been six foot seven, a long, lean streak of piss. ‘You’re looking for me,’ he said, and it didn’t sound like a question.
‘You the boss?’ asked Jo.
‘Bill,’ he said. I held out my hand but he either didn’t see or he ignored it.
‘Nothing going at the moment, but if you come back next week, I might have something.’
‘Sorry?’
Jo stood up. She has this trick of making herself look taller than she actually is, but they still looked like a comedy duo as they faced each other. She wasn’t much above his waist.
‘We’re not looking for a job.’ She made the word ‘job’ sound like something you might scrape off the sole of your boots.
We followed him as he made his way towards the bar. He turned his head and spoke to us as he walked. ‘What then?’
The dance floor stuck to my boots as we crossed the room. The seating areas looked manky under the harsh lights, and the heat of the bulbs was making me sweat. God knows what the temperature would get like when the place filled.
Bill ducked beneath the bar and lifted a crate of beers onto the black melamine. He pulled half a dozen bottles out by their necks and stacked them on the shelves behind him.
‘We’re looking for Jack,’ I said. ‘Jack Wilkins.’
He froze for a brief second, so brief I wondered whether I’d imagined it and then resumed his shelf-stacking. ‘Why?’
‘He’s a friend. We’re worried about him.’
‘You and the rest of the world.’
‘Pardon?’
‘No idea.’
‘What?’ Jo was on tiptoe at the bar, straining to hear him.
He turned round, wiped his hands down his trousers. ‘He was on the rota, last week, three shifts. Didn’t turn up for any of them.’
‘Has he rung in sick?’ I asked.
‘Still don’t see why this is your business.’
Jo leaned over the bar, and I saw Bill’s eyes drop to her cleavage. When he got back to her face, he flinched as Jo glowered at him.
‘We’re looking for a friend who appears to have disappeared. No need to be defensive.’
Bill’s gaze flicked to the outskirts of the room, and I knew he was looking for the door staff. No sign of them, which was fortunate, as Jo’d had an altercation with one, heavily tattooed, the last time we were here. The list of places we haven’t been escorted out of is getting shorter; although since I stopped drinking I’ve adopted the role of minder. As soon as Jo shows signs of wear and tear I steer us back up the hill. It’s not that she goes out looking for trouble, but she can’t keep her mouth shut when she’s had a few – insists on intervening in any situation, particularly if there’s a political or feminist perspective that needs raising. She’s obliged to rescue women from unwanted male attention, or to point out issues of gender inequality that may have been overlooked by pissed-up blokes who are out hunting, looking to get their rocks off.
Bill turned his attention back to Jo. ‘Don’t come in here—’
‘We’re private investigators,’ I said. ‘We’ve been hired by his family. No one’s seen him or heard from him and they’re worried. About to call the police.’ I shrugged my shoulders in what I hoped was a disarming manner. ‘We’re trying to find him before that happens.’
He scooped his hair back and tied it with a piece of elastic he had plucked from his wrist. ‘Still don’t know where he is.’
‘When did you last see him?’ I asked.
‘He came to collect his wages.’
‘When?’
‘Pay day’s Friday.’
‘So you saw him last week?’
‘Week before.’ He dumped another crate of beer bottles on the counter and unpacked it, turning his back to us in order to stack the shelves. We waited a few moments before he glanced over his shoulder at us and said: ‘In fact, when you do find him, you can tell him from me, he’s sacked.’
‘Are you worried for his well-being?’ asked Jo. ‘Have you alerted the relevant bodies?’
‘Come again?’
‘An employee doesn’t turn up for work, doesn’t ring. Don’t you have some kind of duty of care? To make sure he’s OK?’
Bill pulled himself up to standing and turned to face Jo. ‘Who do you suggest I ring?’
‘The guy’s disappeared and no one gives a fuck,’ said Jo. ‘Who said society is dead?’
I moved to stand on the left-hand side of Jo so that I was between the two of them. I tried to ease her down the bar, away from Bill, using slight pressure from my right hip. Jo stood firm.
‘Do you know anyone who might know where he is?’ I asked.
Bill continued to stare at Jo. ‘You want me to ring his mother every time he don’t turn up for work?’
I felt genuinely sorry for Bill. He’d ended up on the wrong side of Jo, and when that happens you’ve got no chance.
‘Did you ring him even?’
‘Dint need to. His housemate came here. Said he’d done a runner and took his Xbox.’
‘Pants or Brownie?’ I asked.
‘Come again?’
‘The housemate?’
‘The guy with the piercings. Dint catch a name. Carly’ll know.’
‘Who’s Carly?’ I asked, but Bill clearly considered the conversation over.
He lifted up the part of the bar that snapped to the wall, allowing him an exit route, and picked up the two empty crates. He strode off back across the dance floor without saying goodbye.
I put my hand on Jo’s arm. ‘Steady tiger,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t help to get people’s backs up.’
‘It was a PlayStation last time we got told that story.’ She turned round and leaned against the bar.
The blonde girl returned, the one who’d let us in originally, and took over the space behind the bar that Bill had left. Jo persuaded her to sell two bottles of Tiger beer and asked her to point Carly out to us. She glanced around the cavernous space then gestured towards a young woman coming out of the women’s toilets. She carried industrial-sized toilet rolls, wearing them like bracelets. I led the way across to her, Jo still swigging her ice-cold beer. Leastways, I assumed it was ice-cold. Ice-cold and smooth as honey.
‘Hi,’ I said to Carly.
She frowned, an I-don’t-think-I-know-you kind of a frown. She had green eyes, and freckles splattered across the top of her nose like paint drops.
‘Bill says you might be able to help us?’ I waved in the direction of the bar even though Bill was long gone. ‘We’re looking for Jack.’
A burst of noise splintered through the sound system, bringing the place to life. Sound echoed off the walls as the lights dimmed. The DJ had obviously arrived.
‘What you want?’ Carly shouted to be heard.
Jo raised her voice to compete with the music. ‘We’re looking for someone and Bill says—’
‘You found him?’ Even in the dim light I could see her face grow pink.
Jo was still shouting out the remainder of her sentence: ‘know where his mate is?’
‘You know Brownie?’ I asked, my throat feeling the strain. Was the music always this loud in clubs? I haven’t been in one since I gave up the booze. I’ve somehow always managed to persuade Jo to get out of town before last orders. I realized as we stood there that I’d never come clubbing again because nightclubs are not intended for sober people. Being out of it is part of the deal.
‘How?’ Carly shouted.
‘What?’ yelled Jo.
We all frowned at our separate conversations. My eardrums pounded. Carly beckoned us into the toilets she’d just stepped out of. A hundred memories assaulted me. I always end up in the toilets, no matter what club I go to. In fact, most of my happiest memories of nightclubs are in the toilets. There’s something safe about the confined, women-only space. The volume decreased by a decibel or three as the door closed behind us.
‘You know Jack?’ I asked.
At the same time as she said: ‘Who are you?’
‘We’re looking for him. Know where he is?’ said Jo, offering her one of the bottles of beer she’d just bought.
‘Oh.’ Carly’s face fell. ‘No. Wish I did.’ She stacked the toilet rolls on top of the counter next to the sink, and I caught sight of the watch on her wrist. Almost nine.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘What’s it to you?’ she said, taking the bottle of beer Jo held out and putting it down on the side, next to the sinks. ‘I’ll get sacked.’
‘We need to find him.’
‘Why? Who are you?’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘No.’
I didn’t trust her. There was something about the way she refused to make eye contact.
‘We need to find him,’ said Jo. ‘We believe his life is in danger.’
Carly turned away from us and sank her face into her hands. Silence. I watched her run her fingers over her skin like she was washing her face. Finally, she peeled her fingers from her eyes and said: ‘He’s disappeared off the face of the earth.’
I stared at her. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who. She looked like she might cry as she picked the beer back up. ‘I shouldn’t really.’
‘Do you good. You’re upset. Not heard from him then?’ said Jo.
‘No, not a word,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Friend of a friend,’ said Jo, as I wondered where she was going with this.
‘What friend?’
‘One of his mates. From college. She’s worried about him. What about you?’
‘I work with him, is all,’ she said. ‘“Friend of a friend”? Who?’
‘She doesn’t want people to know,’ I said.
Carly turned to stare at me. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t have to believe us,’ said Jo.
‘Is it Liz?’
I glanced at Jo and we made a face at each other, like maybe we were nervous that Carly was on the right track.
‘You can tell her to get lost. He’s not interested.’
‘Because he’s interested in you?’ Jo asked, her voice sceptical.
A silence followed; well, as silent as you can be when there’s drum and bass throbbing in the background. Don’t be afraid of the silences, someone once told me, they tell you more than the bits in between. Sure enough, she cracked.
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