I Came to Find a Girl

by Jaq Hazell

  A month had passed since Jenny had disappeared. She’s dead, I’m sure of it. But that didn’t stop me looking or dreaming. Jenny was very much alive in my head and everyone at Saviour’s talked about her, attempting to remember everything she’d ever said, while I filled in the gaps, turning her into some sort of half-creation of my own, convincing myself I knew her better than I did.

  I told Mum how the police call them ‘mispers’. “Sounds like whisper doesn’t it?”

  Jenny would whisper to me in my dreams. She’d appear, always flighty and I could never quite catch up, never quite pull her back into the real world. Sometimes, the joy of seeing her would quickly diminish, as the figure of Flood would enter the frame. “Don’t take a drink,” I would warn her – like that would help.

  I drew little girls lost in short skirts and ankle socks, sucked into dark alleys or cowering behind metal dustbins. Some were obviously young; others ambiguously older while their attire made it clear they were stranded in girlhood, forever about to go missing. Eve Goes Missing I, II and III.

  Eve began to look more like Alice in Wonderland as I drew a champagne bottle labelled ‘Drink me’. Her clothes were girlish, her hair in pigtails, but now she sat at the end of a bed without her skirt. Eyes Wide Shut, I called that one. Then another, similar but with legs parted, while another had blank eyes, a bottle labelled Rohypnol Fizz and a camcorder – I Can Put You in the Movies.

  I stood in my room momentarily exhilarated by my productivity. It’s happening, really happening. Then doubt set in, like it always did. Are they pornographic – a paedophile’s dream? I tidied them away in my art folder to look at afresh the next day, hoping the break would provide perspective.

  My parents took me out for meals all weekend and filled my fridge with luxurious food from M&S. I’d eat well for a week.

  It was hard to concentrate on any artwork while they were there, and just as hard after they’d gone, as the house appeared ugly and emptier without them.

  Early afternoon, my day off, and I knew I should eat something but it was too hot, stifling even. There was no movement in the air. I went to my window, forced open the rotten frame of the sash. Girls were out on the wall, itty-bitty skirts, smoking, chewing false nails. Girl-with-braids was one of them. She took out a small mirror from her tiny rucksack and checked her lovely face.

  I grabbed my sketchpad and, careful I couldn’t be seen, made a few fast, fluid marks on the page. She could be Cleopatra if it weren’t for the backdrop of unloved terraced houses, crumbling wall with working girls and general urban decay.

  I should go out, take my camera, walk around, and see what I can find. Only I felt lethargic. It’s too hot to do anything. I withdrew from the window, switched on my portable TV, and flicked through the limited channels. News was on Three: a reporter, broadcasting by a river, and behind him, frogmen in a black dinghy. The place looked familiar but I didn’t register where it was, not immediately, and then a red box appeared at the bottom of the screen: ‘BREAKING NEWS: woman’s body found in River Trent, Nottingham’.

  Twenty

  Saviour’s was my first thought as I tried to take in the enormity of what I’d seen. I left immediately and arrived as the lunchtime rush drew to a close.

  The bar was dark compared to the sunshine outside and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. There were office workers sitting at tables, and men at the bar. Vivienne was serving. Her eyes locked with mine. “You’re not due in today.”

  “You saw the news?” I asked.

  She handed the man his change, and came round the side of the bar. “Nothing has been confirmed,” she said. “You rushing in won’t help. Jason is beside himself as it is. You’ll only make it worse. It’s best you go, leave things as they are until we hear one way or the other.”

  But it was too late. Donna had seen me. She smiled and then her expression faltered. “They’ve found a body.” She welled up. “It’s Jen – I know it. I’ve got this sickly feeling of dread.”

  Vivienne frowned. “We don’t know anything yet. It could be anyone.”

  “How’s Jason?” I asked.

  Vivienne looked heavenwards and said, “Go and see him.”

  Donna opened the swing door to the quietest kitchen ever.

  “Table two gone yet?” Warren said.

  “Just about, chef,” a young lad said.

  “Who’s that?” I whispered.

  “He’s from the agency – covering for Jen,” Donna said.

  “Should have been out five minutes ago,” Jason said. He noticed me then in the doorway. “Mia?”

  “Can’t keep away,” Warren said.

  “It’s Jenny,” Jason said. “You know something?”

  “No – it’s just...”

  “It’s her, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  After service, it was negotiated that the new temporary commis, and Clint the kitchen porter would clean up and wash down so Warren, Jason, Donna and me could take a couple of hours out to drive over to the Meadows area to see if we could locate where the body had been found and glean some information from the police.

  “What about flowers?” Donna said, as we squeezed into Jason’s car. We stopped en route at a petrol station and bought the best on offer – a yellow cellophane-wrapped bouquet of carnations.

  Onwards past the Sixties-built shopping parade towards the rows of back-to-back terraces on Wilford Grove. “I used to live round here,” I told the others. I knew the river was up ahead, beyond the playing fields. I braced myself as I watched sunbathers, kids playing and dog-walkers. “Stop here, Jase,” I said, as he turned right along the embankment.

  The water was calm, the River Trent lapping gently at the concrete steps. There was something municipal about this stretch of the river. It had been tamed and contained, lined in concrete on either side. Easy to spot a body, I would have thought. But then I guessed it could have been thrown in anywhere upstream and just floated down, bloated with water, to a busier stretch.

  “Over there, look.” Jason pointed towards a white police tent.

  Donna linked arms with him.

  Why didn’t I think of that?

  “You can hold my hand,” Warren said.

  “I’m all right.” I gave him a look and turned away.

  Jason broke into a run, and Donna struggled to keep up, as we hurried in a diagonal across the playing fields, past the men playing football, some of them bare-chested. It was hot, the hottest day of the year so far. A couple of teenage girls were sunbathing in pink bikinis and a small queue had formed at an ice-cream van. How can people carry on as normal?

  Blue and white police incident tape marked off a small stretch of the embankment. A young policeman stood guard. In the water, some way off, there was a dinghy and men in wetsuits.

  Kids on bikes had stopped to watch, along with a couple of old ladies. The oldest one, who was wearing a long knitted dress in the heat, shook her head. “Every week it’s more bad news. Makes you scared to go out, doesn’t it, Brenda?”

  “Them frogmen – what they looking for?” a boy on a bike asked.

  “Any evidence we can find,” the policeman said.

  And that’s when Jason said, “It’s Jenny Fordham, isn’t it?”

  Everyone turned to see who had asked such a specific question.

  The policeman cleared his throat. “The body’s yet to be identified.”

  Jason looked agitated. “You must have some idea. Is it Jenny?”

  “Sir, I’m afraid I can’t divulge any information at this early stage.”

  “You know though, don’t you?” Jason said, “I want to speak to someone. Who’s in charge?”

  “Jase, they’re not going to tell us anything.” I tried to pull him away.

  “My girlfriend, Jenny, she’s been missing four weeks. I’ve a right to know.” The boys on bikes looked at one another with open mouths as if to say, this is the real deal, but still the young policeman couldn’t or woul
dn’t say a thing.

  “Jase, leave it.” Warren pulled him away, and Donna and I followed, leaving behind the muffled sound of whispers.

  “Look, flowers already.” Donna crouched down to place her bouquet next to a bunch of white chrysanthemums. The flowers were as close to the river as the police tape would allow. Donna crossed herself in prayer, as she read out the attached note: “Sleep sweetly, dear angel.”

  Jason snorted. “She’s not asleep. She’s dead.”

  “What shall I write?” Donna asked.

  “Jen, you’re awesome, and we miss you,” I said, “or, I don’t know, mention what a great runner and chef she...”

  “What if it’s not her?” Donna said.

  “For fuck’s sake.” Jason walked off.

  “I’ll go after him,” Warren said.

  “Just put some kisses,” I said, “until we know.”

  We walked away, glancing back at the riverside with its white mini-marquee shielding whatever grisly finds were being made. Jason dropped Warren and Donna back at Saviour’s and offered me a lift home.

  “Do you want to come in for coffee?” I thought it best he wasn’t left alone.

  “Yeah,” he said, and parked up badly with his car’s back end jutting out.

  Upstairs in the kitchen, he sat down at the Formica table while I filled the kettle. “Are you going back to work later?” I asked.

  “Nah, fuck ’em. The bitch won’t sack me at the moment, seeing as Jen went missing from her shitty restaurant.” He stared down at his hands while I made the coffee. I passed him a cup and joined him at the table. “I thought by going there I’d find out if it was her.” He tipped three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. “I can’t stand not knowing.” He leant his head on his right hand, a look of despair on his face. “You got anything to put in this?”

  I nodded. “Give me a minute.” I went up to my room to retrieve my bottle of vodka, used for preloading before club nights. And before long, our knees began to gently bump. I should pull away, I thought, but didn’t.

  “Where’s your music?” Jason asked, and we moved up to my room. He chose Nirvana. The sound of pain and anger, I thought, as I watched him closely. He wasn’t looking after himself, not shaving or spending much time on his hair. It had flattened and softened like trampled grass, and his eyes were red and sore.

  “Jen really likes you, you know,” he said. And I watched his lips as he spoke.

  “It doesn’t seem real,” I said. “I never thought something so awful would happen to someone I know – and someone so nice as well.”

  He looked towards the sash window. “I keep thinking there’s a simple explanation – something we’ve overlooked. Like she’s gone to visit her gran in Scotland and the phone’s not working and she’ll come back and wonder what all the fuss is about. Or that she’s entered a marathon somewhere abroad and forgotten to tell anyone – nuts, I know.” He ran his hand through his hair. We were side by side on my bed, backs to the wall. I turned towards him.

  “People do choose to disappear and leave everything behind. She might have wanted to get away for some reason that we don’t know about.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  We looked at each other in silence as the words gave way to something else, something needier – his mouth on mine, my mouth responding. Bad idea, I thought as his hand cupped my breast, his mouth moving down. We should stop. I pulled back.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” He looked away. And I touched his face. He turned back. It began again – with urgency this time. We pulled at each other’s clothes and ended up on the floor. His fingers at my hair, angry at the world, at himself, and angry at me because I wasn’t Jenny and that there was nothing he could do.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Sorry – I’m sorry.” We moved back onto the bed and carried on until he stopped and shuddered. His body relaxed and slipped away from me. “I need a fag.” He searched the pockets of his jeans and took out a folded strip of photo-booth snaps. “We had them done at the station.”

  “Aw, like you do when you’re teenagers.” I felt a pang of guilt.

  Jason nodded. “She’d never done the photo-booth thing before – she’d never really been out with anyone.”

  She looked distant already in the photos: sweet, smiling shyly, her long mousy plait hanging down the front of her sweatshirt, Jason beside her, posing like a rap star. The photos already seemed like ancient artefacts. This time had passed. She had truly gone. “She looks really pretty,” I said. “She’s wearing her cross.”

  “Fat lot of good that was,” Jason said.

  “You think she’s gone, don’t you?”

  He didn’t reply, though his eyes were watery as were mine.

  We heard the door – a particularly loud knock.

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  Jason pulled on his jeans. “How should I know?”

  “Come with me,” I said, and he followed me down where at the door stood two policemen – the same two that had come round when Jenny first went missing.

  Everything has an expiry date though most things are not clearly labelled. Jenny Fordham should have said “Best before 10 June 2005” in which case there were conversations we would have had, things I should have said if only I’d realised... Only we were both young, indestructible, blissfully unaware there could possibly be a Best Before date in any way earlier than the average life expectancy. Now I know different. It’s a supermarket world and we are merely stock items pre-stamped: Best Before, Display Until, Sell By, Use By – only we don’t know the exact date.

  I had shown the policemen into the living room, worried it was obvious we hadn’t been sitting there. Do we smell of sex?

  “Please sit down,” the older officer said. He had a deeply lined, seen-it-all before face. DCI Cameron was his name. I took it in this time.

  I sat on the collapsed green sofa, Jason sat beside me and the older officer took one of the chairs with the wooden arms.

  “I’ll stand,” said the younger one, DC Stanmore.

  This is it, I thought. This is where they tell me my friend is dead – the way, when and how I’m told forever remembered.

  DCI Cameron said the words. My fears confirmed. Jenny is the body fished from the River Trent, only she’s not because she disappeared long ago – four weeks before in fact. The body is just a body, a vessel; essence of Jenny vanished on the wind with the fatal moment.

  “It helps to be with someone right now,” young DC Stanmore said.

  “Close friends are you?” DCI Cameron asked.

  “We work together,” I said, as Jason looked at the floor.

  “We’ve talked to you before. You’re the boyfriend?”

  They took DNA samples then – ‘for elimination purposes’. We opened our mouths in turn; let swabs be taken from the inside of our cheeks. And I couldn’t help wondering whether the recent mixing of our saliva would confuse matters. Was there a chance of cross-contamination? Am I sure Jason had nothing to do with it? The green flaky paint on the walls of the living room seemed to be closing in, the lack of evening light betraying the perfect sunny July day it had been.

  The police told us nothing. When I asked if Jenny’s murder was in any way linked to other recent local attacks, they said only that it was too early to tell.

  I had seen TV police dramas – they wouldn’t give anything away.

  “Stay,” I said to Jason once the police had gone. But he was preoccupied, pacing the room, swearing under his breath.

  “Fucking bastard – I can’t just sit here. I have to do something.”

  “What can we do?”

  “I can’t sit and wait for the fucking police to sort it out – fucking useless, the lot of them.”

  “We could go back to the river?” I said, without thinking.

  Jason’s eyes widened. “Yes, that’s it; let’s go back where they found her.”

  Twenty-one

  It had gone seven b
y the time we arrived, the water glowing amber in the evening light. This time I took Jason’s hand as we approached.

  “They’ve gone,” he said. A streamer of police tape had come loose and was flapping in the breeze. “How come they’ve gone?” He let go of my hand. “They’ve fucking fucked off already.”

  “I’m sure they’ve done all they can here.” I held his arm, trying to calm him.

  “No way has that been thorough. They’ve missed stuff. They probably needed the tent elsewhere – a stabbing or some other shit.”

  “The police are good at solving murders,” I said. “I mean statistically it’s something they’re good at – shit at burglaries but all right at murders.”

  “What about that murder near your place, in fact, two murders – they solved them yet?”

  “No, good point.”

  “Cunts.” Jason walked past the broken police tape, ignoring the mounting cellophane-wrapped bouquets. He sat down on the top concrete step, running his fingers through his wilted hair as he stared at the water.

  “Pity it can’t talk,” I said, watching the light trip across the ripples.

  “What?” Jason’s voice was gruff.

  “The river – pity it can’t talk.” It was a stupid comment. I wished I hadn’t said it. And I expected Jason to tell me to shut-the-fuck-up.

  “That’s it.” He stood up. “Who knows what happened?”

  “What do you mean?” I squinted up at him.

  “The only people who know who did it are the fucking cunt who did it and who else?”

  “Well – Jenny, I suppose.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So?”

  “We can’t ask the murdering cunt because we don’t know who the fuck he is and if I did know I’d kill him, but there’s Jenny.” He stared at me, waiting for an answer but he wasn’t making any sense. My head hurt. I wanted to go home, but Jason had other ideas.

  The metal lift smelt of urine.

  “It’s rank, I know, sorry,” Jason said.