The Day She Disappeared Read online

  Then there was a harassed-sounding DS on the line, maybe her own age by the sound of her voice. DS Garfield: she repeated it as Nat itched with impatience. Donna Garfield. “We’re a bit busy just now, don’t know if you’ve heard.” Sarcastic.

  Nat felt her blood rise. She had to work hard to keep her voice even. “I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” she said.

  “Miss…?”

  “My name’s Natalie Cooper. It’s … I’m worried about my friend, that’s all.”

  A pause, then the DS sighed. “Well, tell me again,” she said. “She’s left her stuff behind and disappeared.”

  “She left her phone,” said Nat. “Messages were sent on it saying she’d gone to her mum’s, but her phone’s still here.”

  A silence. “And you last saw her—”

  “We last saw her on August the third.” Nat hurried on, trying to detain her. “She worked the afternoon shift, went off at four, five.” Had she said what she would be doing that evening? No. She had been the same old Beth, same old secret smile. “She knew him. The dead boy, Ollie. We all did.”

  “Go on,” said the policewoman warily—maybe all sorts of people had turned up saying they knew him, wanting their fifteen minutes.

  “He would come in the pub,” said Nat. “He fancied her—well, most of the punters did—but he didn’t come on to her, just looked.”

  “And her? Did she give him any encouragement?”

  “No. No.” Nat was uneasy. How could you explain what she was like, Beth? “She didn’t tell him to get lost, exactly, but you have to understand she got it day in day out, part of the job, she couldn’t be slapping them down every five minutes, and he was only a kid. She just thought he’d grow out of it.”

  There was a silence. Were they both thinking the same thing? Ollie wasn’t going to grow out of anything now. Nat cleared her throat. “How … how long had he been in the water? Do you know yet?”

  “A while,” said the DS shortly. “We’re working on that.”

  “So, does that make it harder—I mean, evidence on the body will have been lost?”

  DS Garfield cleared her throat. “Look,” she said, a warning note, “I thought this was about your friend? I can’t talk to you about an ongoing investigation: what we can say will be released through the usual channels.” Nat fell silent and she heard the woman get impatient. “Someone will come over and get your friend’s phone off you. If we can spare an officer—well, it’ll be me—we’ll check out her flat too.”

  “Thanks,” said Nat, wanting to shout at the woman. For fuck’s sake. Was this how it worked, with the police? Treating everyone like a time-waster? It was what it felt like. But if she started yelling now …

  Garfield sighed. “I can tell you it won’t be today, though,” she said. “Sorry. I’ll be in touch.” And hung up, leaving Nat to crash the receiver back down in rage.

  Mo was still there, triumphant on her barstool; she’d even managed to get a tonic water out of Janine, who was standing at the far end of the bar, drying glasses savagely. Steve seemed to have done the sensible thing and gone out for some fresh air, or maybe he had a job to go to.

  “I would leave the place as it is, if I were you, M— Mrs. Hawkins,” said Nat. “In case the police … you know. Want a look around.” She had no faith they would, but it didn’t do any harm to put the wind up Mo Hawkins. She could have already flogged half the stuff on eBay.

  As if the thought had occurred to her, the old woman eased herself painfully off the barstool and defiantly drained the tonic water. “It’s all there,” she said. “Far as I can see, she didn’t take nothing with her. Can’t blame me for doing a bit of tidying, can they?” Nat took the glass, Janine came up beside her, and after a moment’s aggressive staring at them Mo Hawkins made her way toward the door, just in time to meet a stream of pensioners elbowing their way inside, all walking sticks and rain ponchos.

  “Jesus,” said Janine, shading her eyes. “I’d forgotten. Daycare center in Leigh, ploughman’s lunch and strawberries and cream. Eighteen of ’em, so you’d better get plating up.” She tugged her blouse into place as the group’s leader approached, a red-faced man with a gleam in his eye. “Shandy or a glass of house white each, and no more,” she muttered to Nat.

  Then Janine picked the mobile up off the counter and set it carefully on top of the racks of spirits. “Keep it safe,” she said. “’Cause that’s us for the day. They would be bloody early, wouldn’t they.”

  Nat took the tray full of shandies Janine shoved at her and turned and walked out to the garden and the tables of old biddies all yattering like birds. She walked and listened and answered and handed out drinks mechanically, but she was thinking about that night at the movies and Beth pulling her back on the pavement: Beth, Beth, Beth. Her whole insides hurt her, right up to her heart.

  A big hard fist of fear.

  Chapter Eight

  The light was going, at last, in the London street, darkening door after door stretching away down the hill and the sky a bright deep blue over the rooftops. She couldn’t think of him, of where he was, what the light was doing, what he could see.

  Turning from the window Sophie locked the door carefully, quietly, and turned to Rufus, who was sitting patiently in the bath waiting for her to soap him. The bruise was low on his back, a little to one side, at the dark stage. She tipped water over him gently.

  If Richard tried the door she would think of a reason as to why she had locked it. To keep us safe. Not that reason, perhaps. Because she was safe, they were safe, of course they were. The house beyond the door was quiet, it was peaceful. The clock ticking in the hall, Richard at his desk. He wouldn’t try the door.

  She had asked him about the telephone call last night, of course, how could she not? “Was that Daddy?” she had said straightaway, Richard’s head turning as she said the word, his mouth scornful. “No,” he’d said, “not him. Just someone…” irritable with her, for guessing correctly, she knew that. “Someone from the campsite, some girl, saying he’s … oh, something and nothing, I’m sure. Taken a tumble, soon be back on his feet, nothing to worry about.”

  Lying awake last night she had been reduced to guessing, increasingly urgently. She could hear Richard say, You’ve always been a panicker, and she had, a worrier, a worst-case scenario person since her mother died—and he had always been very understanding. She had seen him begin to write something down with the receiver under his ear, pretending, dropping the pencil.

  A chubby, shy child who grew into an awkward adult, Sophie had always believed Richard loved her. Why, otherwise, would he have married her? In this day and age, getting pregnant, even at forty-eight, didn’t mean you had to marry someone (although in Richard’s world, said the inner voice, she supposed it did, and she had been determined to have him, Rufus, obstinate at last over that). Her best interests at his heart. He decided everything.

  “Come along, darling,” she said, getting to her feet. In the bath Rufus tipped his head back, trusting, looking into her eyes, and she reached for him with the towel, warmed on the radiator. He set his small soft hands on her shoulders as she held out the pajama trousers for him to step into. She led him, buttoned up and teeth brushed, to his room, pulled the quilt up to his chin and held a finger to her lips.

  Richard was working on a big contract case in the sitting room: had been there all day. He didn’t like to be disturbed. But the sitting room was where he answered the telephone.

  He had laughed at the idea of her having a mobile phone: why on earth? He had pointed out to her that she would need to give bank references for a contract. But Sophie happened to know that there were mobile phones you could buy for almost nothing, topped up in cash. She thought perhaps she would get herself one. Richard might disapprove but … but … She swallowed at the thought of his discovering her with such a thing.

  She would be brave. She left Rufus in his bedroom and went down. Supper to be made, the vegetables were chopped and
laid out. All she needed to do was find the piece of paper. She came into the sitting room and Richard’s head turned, briefly. He looked back at the page, but she could tell from the set of his shoulders that she had irritated him just by entering the room, just by her continued presence there. She walked to the wastepaper bin and swiftly picked it up.

  “What are you doing?” he said sharply.

  “Empt—” She had to catch her breath, turning for the door so she wouldn’t see him, the basket still in her hand. My father, he’s my father. Be brave. “Emptying the bins, darling,” and the door closing, closing behind her. “Supper in ten minutes,” she called back over her shoulder.

  * * *

  It had been a knackering day. Nat felt as though she’d been running on adrenaline and it had used her up, she was twitching with tiredness, but she couldn’t stop. From where it sat behind the bar, Beth’s phone sent out a signal, the steady pulse of a message just for Nat. Find me, find me, find me. Keep going.

  In the fading light she stood at the turning into the little modern close where Beth had rented. She’d been on her feet seven hours, and she swayed. It was silent in the dusk, some curtains drawn, no lights visible. She hesitated. In her pocket, though, she had the keys. Two keys on a greasy strip of ribbon, given to her by Mo Hawkins.

  Craig had remembered about the daycare center lunch, even if Janine hadn’t. His trail bike had hurtled into the car park ten minutes after their arrival, and he had run into the kitchen pulling off his helmet just in time to garnish the plates and have his head tousled by half a dozen old ladies, all high as kites on a hot day out and two sips of house white, as he did the rounds with their ploughmans’. There had been gales of laughter coming from the garden all afternoon. Some of them had circumvented the group leader to get a second glass, and by the end of the day they had gotten through a bottle and a half of port on top.

  Craig hadn’t been himself, though. He had tolerated the old people’s jokes about gherkins and questions about girlfriends, he had nodded and been polite, but barely: Nat could see he was on the edge. Ollie. Nat had cornered him in the kitchen to ask if he was OK, and he had just mumbled, avoiding her eye.

  “You go,” said Janine, hanging a damp dishcloth over the pumps at seven. The minibus had come back for the old folks at six thirty and there was a brief respite. If anything it had gotten hotter, and no one normal wanted to sit in a steamy little pub till a lot later, when a breeze might come up from the water. “Steve’s said he shouldn’t be much longer, anyway, he was only over to Ipswich in the rig.” Something else had come into Janine’s face then, thoughtful. “He’s talking about moving in,” she said. “Says he doesn’t want his name over the door or nothing, just…,” and the frown, Nat could see, was just her pretending to weigh it up. “He wants to see more of me.” And then Janine couldn’t disguise it, the broad grin spread and spread.

  Be happy for her. Not that hard: Steve was a good guy. Quiet, responsible: Janine’s adoring face as he took over some task. He’d been clearing the drains for her a week ago.

  The close where Beth had lived was still quiet, just the odd murmur in a back garden, a bit of barbecue smoke from somewhere. In her pocket Nat’s hand curled around the key. There was another one out there somewhere, because Beth hadn’t returned hers.

  “The latest one, then,” she had said to Janine, who was shaking her head trying to remember. “That last message, saying she wasn’t coming back. What time did it come in?”

  “It came in late, yes,” Janine said, screwing up her face in an effort to remember. “One, two, maybe. Woke me up.”

  Somewhere between Thursday night and Friday morning, Friday, August 12. Nat tried to rerun the conversation she’d had with Janine. Bad temper, woken up in the middle of the night and Steve needing a lie-in. Two o’clock in the morning of that Friday sixteen days ago, someone, if not Beth then someone, had held her phone in their hand, composed the message. Someone who knew a bit about her but not enough, that she had a mother but not that her mother was in the West Country and they hated each other. Knew where she worked, and who her friends were. If you had someone’s mobile you knew a lot about them.

  She tried to think of what she knew, about mobile phones, about what the police could do. Two young girls had been murdered, a hundred miles away and ten years ago, and they traced their last whereabouts through the mobile signal. How old had they been? Ten, eleven years old and already with their own mobile phones, back then. Nat took out her own and looked at it. It couldn’t save you, could it? It could get you into trouble, was all she knew. She’d ended up deleting the dating app because just looking at it made her feel sick. All those blokes.

  Beth hadn’t really bothered with online dating, she had laughed when Nat had gotten the app. What had she said? Barmaid was one profession where you had cut out the middleman: you were already in the pub with blokes. But then Beth could find a boyfriend just walking to the bus stop. Nat’s argument had been that she didn’t want to go out with anyone she’d seen propping up the bar day in, day out. After … after Jim, she had wanted someone who knew nothing about her. She shoved the phone back in her pocket.

  So. Beth’s phone, sitting in the pub up there above the jiggers, would tell the police where she’d been. Where it had been. If the phone had been here all along, someone had been here to use it.

  It wasn’t safe there. The thought sprang into her head. Janine shouldn’t have put it there, it was practically on display. It would have been an automatic response, it was where they put stuff people left in the bar: an umbrella, a lunch box. Victor’s bobble hat had found its way up onto the shelf one time.

  Victor, Victor. The thought of him rose unbidden, and with it the tide of formless anxiety. He’s safe, he’s safe, he’s in a hospital: Nat pushed the thought into that box.

  Janine had put it up there like it was lost property, and Beth’d be back for it.

  Someone else had been using it, though. Here, in Beth’s place. The thought that was forming wasn’t welcome, particularly not where she stood, with night falling visibly, softly, like a blur in the evening air. Nat turned into the close. It was quiet. She wondered if you could access the house from the rear. She tried to assess where the river lay. The close was a small loop of seventies’ semis, a circle of ground planted with ornamental trees in the center, for privacy, she supposed. So that everyone couldn’t look into everyone else’s front room. The soft twilight blanketed everything; it was so still, so quiet. Then something altered and she moved her head, trying to trace it. Something … and there, she saw behind a curtained window a fine crack of light had appeared. She approached the front door. Along a windowsill this side of the curtain she could see a row of ornaments. She stopped, turned, gauged the distance from her to number six, where Beth had lived. Line of sight: yes.

  Unless he came in at the back, to send those messages. He or she? Whoever. Someone had sent them.

  She stepped up to the door and pressed the bell.

  The woman didn’t open the door more than a crack to start with. All Nat could see was heavy framed glasses. She was sourly pleased about Beth’s disappearance: she didn’t seem interested in why Nat was asking, she was itching to dish some kind of dirt. “Yes, I knew her,” she said and the door opened an inch or two more. Hefty, dark perm, in big slippers, maybe seventy. “Well, to look at. She did shout to me now and then, but I never answered.”

  She spoke with satisfaction, and Nat stared back at her, feeling her jaw rigid.

  “When did you last see her?” she said quietly. “Do you remember?”

  The woman leaned against the doorjamb, examining her. Monkey-brown eyes calculating. “Month back?” she said eventually. “Beginning of the month. Hanging out her washing, didn’t see that often, neither, so I remember. Tol’ her, you can hang your knickers to dry inside, it’s not decent.”

  “In the back garden?” The brown eyes stared, hostile, and Nat persisted. “Is there a back way into the gardens?�
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  “No gate, if thass what you mean,” said the woman, without interest. “There’s just the field behind, and the river. I seen her come up that way now an again.”

  “Not lately,” said Nat, her heart in her mouth suddenly, please, please, let Beth walk up there now, through the grass from the river, but the woman shook her head.

  “Foxes is all,” she said. “Disgusting what they bring up.”

  “Foxes?”

  “Doing their dirt. Scrabbling around.”

  “Late in the night?” Nat held her breath. “Any particular … a couple of weeks ago, did you hear … around one, two in the morning? Say, Thursday eleventh, that night?”

  The woman’s face screwed up, leaning forward into the crack. “Could be,” she said. Then with relish, “Good riddance, I say. She had no consideration.” Examining Nat. “There was noise.”

  “What kind of noise?” said Nat. “Mrs.—”

  “What d’you need my name for?” said the woman suspiciously, then, relenting, self-important suddenly, “Margaret, then, if you like.”

  “What noise, um, Margaret?” Nat had the idea Margaret and Beth had never been on first-name terms. Or any terms at all, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t known all about each other. “Like, loud music, you mean?”

  “And the rest,” said the woman. There was movement inside the house, and the shape of a man appeared behind her in the hall. Nat could see wisps of hair on an almost bald head, shining in the hall light. Margaret snapped at him to go back in, and he lumbered off meekly. “She didn’t care who heard,” said Margaret. “It upset my husband.”

  Nat knew she was talking about sex. Margaret’s face was pressed to the crack now, obscuring everything behind. “Come a cropper, has she? About time. They need to learn, women like that. Old enough to know better. Only ends one way.”

  Nat wanted to shove the woman backward into her hallway and throttle her till her little eyes popped, but instead she stood very still. One last try. “Did you see—”