by Ryan Casey
“You’re judging us as parents, aren’t you?” Mary said.
Donald sighed and shook his head. “Mary—”
“He’s judging us. He has no idea. No idea.”
“Look, I know it sounds bad,” Donald said, taking hold of the conversation again. “But you have to understand that Elaine was a bright girl. There was no other way of getting through to her. Even when she was only a small child, when she was upset, she’d lock herself in her room. If we tried to go in there, it only made her more upset. If we just left her to it, she’d come out a few hours later a completely different person. We just kind of learned to adapt to it. That’s why the disappearances didn’t ever strike us as anything off. Especially not when she was updating her social media.”
Brian nodded. “You know someone… You know Elaine had her social media posts scheduled, right?”
Donald lowered his head. “We made a mistake. An awful mistake. But what else could we do? We just wanted our girl back.”
Brian wasn’t totally sure about the Schumers’ parenting methods, he had to admit. But they had a point. If their daughter had a proven track record of disappearing, then weren’t they just doing the right thing by leaving her to get over her issues?
“Can you tell me what led to this disappearance? The final disappearance?”
Donald shook his head. Mary continued to cry. “There was nothing special really,” Donald said. “Honestly, we didn’t really see much of Elaine, not since she started university.”
“She was third year, right?”
“Yeah. She got her own flat with a few friends. We saw her a lot at first, but then it kind of became ritual that she’d just nip to ours for her tea on a Wednesday and a Sunday.”
“She went missing on a Wednesday,” Brian said.
“Yeah. She came here, had some food, and she left a few things upstairs. She said she was going to come back for them tomorrow. She never did. By that point we figured it’d be a week or two before we saw her. But…” Donald’s voice cracked, the realisation of what’d happened to his daughter hitting him all over again.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Brian said, “do you know if Elaine suffered from any… mental issues?”
“Mental issues?” Mary snapped. “Elaine was a happy girl.”
“One of her friends told me she was battling bipolar disorder.”
Mary’s mouth moved, but no words came out. She looked at Donald, and Donald looked back at her. The colour had drifted from both of their cheeks.
“That’s news to us,” Donald said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But as we said. Elaine… Elaine probably had secrets of her own. I just wish she’d come to us if that was true.”
Brian didn’t tell the pair of them that there were no traces of the bipolar meds in her system, or that the meds Elaine had in her possession were a brand from the eighties that actually enhanced the symptoms rather than eased them. He didn’t know what any of that meant himself yet. “You said Elaine dropped some stuff off here before she disappeared. What kind of stuff?”
Mary shook her head and wiped her eyes. “Oh, just bits and bobs. A few clothes to wash. Some university notes. An iPad.”
“An iPad?”
“She must’ve got it herself recently,” Donald said. “She never usually bought Apple stuff. S’pose everyone sees the way forward eventually.” He chuckled a little at his own joke, then that morbid look took over his face once more.
“You mind if I take a look at that iPad?”
“Sure,” Mary said. She pointed across the lounge to the kitchen area. “Just in that rucksack on the table in there.”
Brian expected to be walked over to it, but it soon became clear the Schumers weren’t going to be joining him. He got up and walked into the kitchen. He saw a little blue rucksack sitting on top of the kitchen table. Clothes spilled out of it.
Resting on top of them, a gold iPad.
Brian lifted the iPad. It didn’t look all that new, which didn’t add up to what Donald said about her only buying it recently. He clicked the button on top and expected to be met with a lock code.
He wasn’t.
Brian swiped across the screen.
There was an app open.
It was the Wordpress app. Inside the app, there were tons of blog posts dating right back to the start of her university course. All of the posts were published, but set to private. It looked like Elaine had been keeping some kind of diary. And it certainly looked like she was more of an Apple fan than she let on to.
But why was she keeping secrets?
“Everything okay, Officer?” Donald asked.
Brian was about to open one of the blog posts when he saw a recent one. One from the day of Elaine’s disappearance. Wednesday 24th May.
It was unpublished.
“I’m fine,” he said. He hovered his finger over the unpublished post, which didn’t have a title, just a date. “It looks like…”
He stopped speaking when he saw the words on the screen.
All he could do was stare, as icy cold goose pimples spread up his arms.
“Officer?” Donald asked. “You find something?”
Brian had found something. Something very significant.
Something that changed everything.
Twenty
As Brian sprinted down the A6, phone to his ear, he couldn’t get the words of that unpublished blog post out of his mind.
The sun was warm, which didn’t mix all too well with the thick shirt and tight trousers Brian was wearing. It didn’t help that he’d missed the bus, and there wasn’t another one for twenty minutes. He couldn’t drive, not just because he didn’t have a car anymore—some weird part of his improved health regime—but also because of what he’d done to his shoulder just a day ago, too.
But twenty minutes was too long to wait for a bus, especially after what he’d just read.
“Come on, Annie. Answer your goddamned—”
“Hello?”
“Annie. Where the bloody hell’ve you been?”
“Umm, it’s my afternoon off, remember?”
“No time for afternoons off right now. I’ve found some stuff.”
“Found some stuff?”
“The Elaine Schumer case. I’ve found out some things you’ll really want to know.”
A pause on the line, then the sound of another woman giggling in the background.
“Have you got a daughter?”
“No, I don’t have a… Brian, this isn’t a good time right now.”
“I thought your mum was dead?”
“Brian, it’s not my—Charlotte, don’t take those.”
“Charlotte?” Brian said.
“Look, my personal life’s none of your business. But the last thing I want to hear right now is news about that bloody Elaine Schumer non-case—”
“If you’re off this afternoon, you probably don’t know that Elaine’s death’s been changed from ‘accidental’ to ‘unexplained’.”
“Well that could mean anything.”
“There were signs of possible rape, although Samantha wasn’t too sure.”
“Then you should probably take the word of the pathologist over a hunch.”
“That’s not everything.”
“God, I hate it when you say that.”
“I went to see Mr and Mrs Schumer.”
“You did what?”
“I just paid a friendly visit. Had a glass of water. Asked them a few questions about their daughter.”
“And you did that when you were supposed to be at work doing, you know, real work?”
“Nah. I knackered my shoulder, remember? Enough damage to put me off for a couple of days. But I’m heading down to the station now ’cause I think we need to get back to Baker’s Inn.”
“And why do you think that?”
“I found an iPad.”
“Welcome to the twenty-first century. Do you know the Twin Towers got knocked down, too?”
“Elaine dropped it off at her parents the day she went missing. There’s some things on there. Blog posts, like a journal of her time at uni. There’s a very interesting unpublished post that I think our people at the station will be very interested to see.”
“What’s it say?”
“Wow. You actually sound curious now.”
“Don’t fuck around, McDone. What’s it say?”
Brian heard horns honking at him as he jogged across the road. “Aside from the blogs, the meds Elaine had in her possession were outlawed way, way back before she was even born. No chance she got ’em online. And even if she could, I’m not sure why she would. The drug, Poxy… something. It sends you mad, doesn’t cure you.”
“So she took some meds that sent her mad and she threw herself into the water tank. Looks clearer than ever to me. All an ‘unconfirmed’ death means is that it’s probably a clear suicide and not an accident.”
“Weird thing. No trace of those meds in her system.”
“She could’ve just—”
“Elaine had a bottle of meds from a time before her birth filled with LSD, yet there were no traces of the drug or the LSD in her system. Just some flu meds. But that’s beside the point. Whether Elaine was mad or not, she was worried about someone. Very worried about someone.” Brian paused. He was enjoying baiting Annie right now.
“Who?”
Brian looked up at the building rising in front of him. The words from that unpublished blog post spun around his mind, as well as all the words published prior to then.
“When Elaine first visited the hotel three months ago, she mentioned bumping into someone in Baker’s Inn. She said he seemed nice, but he was weird. There was something creepy about him.
“Then she talks about seeing him again in later posts. Bumping into him when she’s in town with her friends. Passing him when she’s out jogging. Everywhere she goes, he’s always there. It starts off that he’s only mentioned in a few of the posts. But nearer to the end, she starts to get more and more paranoid about him. He’s mentioned in every post. Even though there’s happiness in those posts, she seems scared, too.”
“Scared of who?”
Brian ignored Annie. “And then there’s a spell towards the end of her posts when she doesn’t mention him again. He’s gone. Elaine’s happy. Everything’s good. Then there’s the unpublished post. The post she wrote on the final day.”
“What post?”
Brian took a deep breath as he stared up through the windows of the Baker’s Inn. “She said she was coming back here to confront him once and for all. To end this madness. In her words: ‘I’m scared but I have to face him. I have to end this. I can’t take this anymore.’”
“Who was she talking about, Brian? Who was she talking about?”
Brian thought back to those early blog posts, the ones where she’d identified him, straight up. “She said he was a caretaker at Baker’s Inn. She didn’t catch his name the first time. But the second time, she saw his name tag clearly.”
“Dan?” Annie asked. “But that’s not possible. He was away on—”
“Not Dan,” Brian said. “A man called Bobby. I’ve already called the Baker’s Inn and confirmed a caretaker called Bobby is on their payroll. And it’s his shift right now.”
A pause on the line. “Don’t do anything stu—”
Brian cancelled the call.
He walked towards the Baker’s Inn.
He had someone to speak to.
Twenty-One
Bobby Wisdom might’ve been slippery as hell, but Brian was going to make damned sure he wasn’t going to slip away again, not this time.
Not now he knew that Elaine Schumer had been afraid of him all along, and that she’d come to this hotel with the sole intention of confronting him for his stalking.
Brian walked towards the hotel reception desk. A guy sat there with dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses perched atop his nose. He barely even glanced up at Brian as he approached, and when he did, he didn’t look like he recognised Brian.
“Hi there,” Brian said.
“Have you already booked a room or would you like to book one now?”
“Neither. I’d like to know where I can find Bobby Wisdom, please.”
The desk clerk’s face turned then, like he hadn’t been expecting Brian to mention Bobby Wisdom.
“He’s a caretaker here, isn’t he? I mean one of your colleagues told me it was his shift right now. That’s true, isn’t it?”
The man scratched at his acne-covered chin. “Just one moment, please. I’ll go see if I can find him.”
He stood up and walked away from the desk, leaving Brian all alone in this shithole again.
He looked around the reception area. To his left, he saw a woman sitting there reading a gossip magazine. She was rather large, and she eyed Brian up with suspicion and disdain, like she could smell the police officer on him without even knowing he was one for sure.
This entire reception area reeked of piss. There was a humidity to the air, as the rattling air con was clearly broken. A chef walked across reception and disappeared into a morbid-looking kitchen area. Shitting hell. There was even a canteen in this place? How the hell did trading standards allow this place to function?
Brian looked back at the desk. He was starting to grow agitated. The receptionist had been gone for a while now. He’d walked through into the back, which meant Bobby Wisdom was in there, right?
He started to worry about what might happen if the receptionist told Bobby that there was someone here for him. Once already, Bobby had done a runner from Brian. After all, he had to be the one who’d done a runner. What was stopping him doing it again?
Brian looked around at the woman at the opposite side of reception. She was thoroughly engaged in the soaps section of the magazine now.
Then he looked around at the door which the receptionist had disappeared through.
What was stopping him going in there and having a look?
He held his breath and walked around the back of the desk. He lifted his hand, thought about knocking, but then he figured the surprise element would be in his favour right now. He’d got the OK from the station to question Bobby Wisdom, not on the premise of murder, but on the hope that he could offer evidence as a witness.
But Brian knew exactly why he was bringing Bobby Wisdom in really.
He suspected him of killing Elaine Schumer. And he was going to prove it.
He grabbed the handle. He could hear voices behind the door. Bobby was in there. He’d never seen him face to face yet but he was very much looking forward to meeting him. Elaine had described him pretty clearly in her blogs, too. The dark hair, the spotty face, the greasy skin. Sure, there were a lot of those types in here, but at least it narrowed his search down.
He lowered the handle of the door and swung it open.
There was nobody in the staff room.
It was empty. Completely empty. The sound of voices came from a crackling radio at the far side of the room. Pots were stacked high over by the sink, flies buzzing around them. There was a smell of sour milk in the air.
No sign of the receptionist. No sign of Bobby Wisdom.
Brian looked around the staff room. Maybe the receptionist had just gone to the bathroom or something. There was a bathroom in the corner of the room, although the door was partly ajar.
He went to clear his throat when something caught his eye.
It was an employee of the month chart. It hadn’t been updated in a long, long time.
But there was no mistaking the face of the last winner of this god-awful contest, just under two years ago.
Time might’ve passed, but Brian could recognise that dead-eyed stare from a mile away.
The desk clerk’s face was gurning away on a photo on the wall.
Underneath the desk clerk’s face, the name, Bobby Wisdom.
“Bastard,” Brian said.
He ran towards the bathroom door.
“I
don’t care if you’re in here with your pants down or not, I’m coming in.”
He pushed the bathroom door open.
Bobby Wisdom wasn’t in there.
There was a window, wide open.
“Shitting hell.”
Brian thought about climbing through the window, but even for someone who’d lost a lot of weight recently, it was too tight a squeeze. He rushed back out of the staff room, ran through the reception, past the woman reading her gossip mag, still focused on the soaps section.
Then he ran out into the sun.
He moved around the side of Baker’s Inn to where Bobby must’ve gone. That fucker wasn’t getting away again, not this time. But there was no sign of him. Shit. He must’ve hidden somewhere. He must’ve hidden. And if he was willing to run from the police, God knows what else he’d be willing to do to defend himself.
Brian ran across the open grass field opposite the window. There were no buildings around here other than an old public toilets. Moss covered the cracked brick walls. The wooden door had crumbled. Brian could practically smell the place from here.
He knew where he had to go.
He ran over there and stopped by the door. He peeked through the crumbling wood, just to make sure Bobby wasn’t waiting for him. He was confident he could ring the neck of that scrawny shit, but if he’d killed Elaine then he had the capability to kill someone else.
“Bobby, I’m not fucking around here. I just want to ask you some questions. Simple as that.”
There were no voices. But Brian knew Bobby was in here. He had to be in here.
“Look, I’ve already dislocated my shoulder chasing you. I’m not gonna dislocate anything else—”
“I didn’t do anything!”
Bobby’s pitiful cry took Brian by surprise. For a man so keen on evading the law, he sounded remarkably cornered. Remarkably… worried. “Just come out of there so we can speak like proper grown men, okay? I’m sure that’s what Elaine would’ve wanted from you, huh? For you to be a proper grown m—”
Brian felt something smack against his head. He fell down to the ground, wincing as blood seeped through his fingers.
