by Luke Delaney
She waited for the chemicals to ease her pain and anxiety, but as the storms calmed the quieter ghosts began to sweep forward. The tears seemed to start in her throat, but no matter how hard she tried to swallow them back down they found their way to her eyes and escaped in heavy drops that ran down her face, each finding a new route, dropping on to her hands and into her drink. Once the tears were flowing she knew there was no point fighting them, better to let them come until she would be too exhausted to cry any more; then she would sit quietly, motionless, her mind still and blank, her heart fluttering in the silence until finally sleep would take her. In the morning she would feel a little better, hung-over, but a little better, just about able to face the world.
Since she went back to work she’d been holding it together OK during office hours, getting the job done, not asking for any special treatment, but there were frequent moments of burning anxiety, when she’d been scared to speak for fear of her voice shaking, scared to hold a pen in case someone noticed her hand trembling. And every morning before leaving for work she stood frozen by her front door, physically unable to reach out and open it, hyperventilating with fear of the world beyond. Two weeks ago she’d suffered one of her worst attacks, remaining slumped against her door for more than an hour while she desperately tried to gather up the courage to leave her sanctuary. Even on the days when she overcame the fear and made it to her car, she would drive through the streets pretending nothing was wrong, sit at her desk pretending that she didn’t have to endure this daily ritual of personal torment.
Sally drained the glass and reached for her old friend in the freezer to pour a refill.
It was midnight by the time Sean arrived home, a modest semi-detached Edwardian house in the better part of Dulwich that he shared with his wife Kate and their two young daughters, Mandy and Louise. He knew Kate had been working the late shift as the attending physician in the Accident and Emergency Department of Guy’s Hospital and would therefore not long have got home herself. Probably he’d find her awake, eager to talk about her day and the children. On a normal day at a normal time he’d have looked forward to sitting with Kate and chatting about the unimportant and important alike, but this had been no normal day. His mind was swimming with images and ideas he wouldn’t share with her – images and ideas that would make it difficult to concentrate on anything she said. He reminded himself that women needed to talk, that somehow he would have to focus on his wife’s conversation. All the same he was hoping she’d be asleep so he could grab a drink and watch the TV in the kitchen and pretend to himself he wasn’t thinking about Louise Russell.
He turned the key and quietly pushed the door open. The lights were on in the kitchen. Dropping his keys as noisily as he dared on the hallway table, hoping Kate would hear the noise and know he was home before he accidentally startled her, he took a breath and walked to the kitchen.
Kate looked up from her laptop. ‘You’re late,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to be on lates this week, remember?’
‘Sorry,’ Sean told her. ‘We picked up a new case.’
‘So you won’t be around much the next few days?’
‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘You know what it’s like when a new one comes in.’
‘Yes, Sean,’ she answered. ‘We all know what it’s like when you get a new one. Shame,’ she continued, ‘I was hoping to save some money on childcare this week.’
‘Kirsty’s all right looking after the kids, isn’t she?’ he asked. ‘She probably needs the cash.’
‘So do we,’ Kate reminded him. ‘At least if you were still a sergeant, you’d get paid overtime. The hours you work, we’d be rich.’
‘I doubt it,’ Sean scoffed.
‘So what’s the new case?’ Kate asked. ‘What tale of horror do you have to untangle this time? I assume it’s another murder?’
‘Even if it was a murder, you know I wouldn’t tell you about it. Work stays at work.’
‘Even if it was a murder,’ Kate pointed out. ‘Meaning it’s not a murder this time. So why is a Murder Investigation Team investigating something other than a murder?’
‘As it happens, it’s a missing person,’ Sean told her.
‘Oh,’ Kate said, interested and concerned. ‘A missing person who you think is dead. Get you on the job early, ready for when the body turns up. That’s not like the Met, planning ahead.’
‘I don’t,’ Sean said.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Think she’s dead. I think someone’s taken her.’
‘A kidnap case?’ Kate asked.
‘I’m not expecting a ransom note.’
‘Then what?’
‘Like I said, no details.’ Sean changed the subject: ‘How are the girls?’
Kate paused before answering, unsure as to whether she should try and prise more details from him. She decided she’d be wasting her time. ‘Last time I saw them awake they were fine, but they miss their dad.’
‘I suppose that’s good.’
‘I think I know what you mean,’ Kate smiled. ‘Next time you’re home they’ll mob you – you have been warned.’
‘I look forward to it.’ Sean headed for the fridge, searching around inside for a beer. Kate waved her empty wine glass in the air. ‘While you’re in there, a top-up please.’ He grabbed the bottle of wine and poured as little as he thought he could get away with into her glass, not wishing to delay her going to bed any longer than was absolutely necessary, before putting it back in the fridge and grabbing a beer. He took his favourite glass from the cupboard and sat at the table with Kate, using the remote to click the TV on.
‘I take it that’s the end of conversation for the night,’ Kate accused.
‘Sorry.’ Sean turned to her with a mischievous grin. ‘I thought you were playing on your computer.’
‘Ha, ha,’ Kate replied. ‘Working, Sean. Working. All we ever do is work. Work and pay bills. That’s it.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ Sean argued, now glad she’d waited up, pleased to have the distraction of conversation.
‘We should think about New Zealand again. Remember, after what happened to Sally, you said we ought to get the hell out of here, start a new life, one where we actually see each other. Where we see the kids.’
‘I don’t know,’ Sean answered. ‘It just feels like running away.’
‘Nothing wrong with running away if it’s running away to a better life.’
‘There’s no guarantee of a better life,’ Sean argued. ‘I did my research. New Zealand’s not all green fields and blue skies. They’ve got plenty of problems too. You don’t really think they’d stick me in a plush office somewhere overlooking the Pacific with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs and admire the view all day, do you? They’d find some shithole to stick me in and we’d be back where we started, only stuck on the other side of the world.’
‘It can’t be as bad as it is here,’ Kate insisted. ‘I’ve lived with you too long not to know your job and how it works. If you were to so much as hint that you want to go home and see your family once in a while, they’d all look at you like you’ve gone mad, like you’re somehow letting the team down. Only losers want to actually go home now and then, right?’ Sean shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘And as we both know, there’s no way you could ever, ever walk out on a job and let somebody else deal with it. You’re way too conscientious for that. True?’
‘I can’t walk out in the middle of a job. There’s no one else to pass it on to. A case comes in, it lands on my desk and that’s it. It’s mine until it’s finished. If I don’t get to come home for a week then I don’t get to come home for a week. That’s the way it is. It goes with the territory. It’s the job. It’s what I do. I can’t run off to New Zealand. I can’t run off anywhere. I am what I am. I do what I do. You don’t want to see me sitting in an office in the City pushing paper around, living for my bonus, another clone – that would kill me. I wouldn’t be me any more.
I’d bore you to death.’
Kate thought for a long while before answering. ‘You’re right,’ she told him. ‘I know you have to be a cop. You thrive on it. It makes you proud – and so it should. But the kids are getting older. At least one of us needs to be here more for them.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I’m just saying,’ Kate went on. ‘The fact is I earn almost twice what you do and I don’t have to nearly kill myself to do it.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Sean asked, his voice thick with suspicion.
‘I don’t really know,’ Kate admitted. ‘I think we need more of a plan, that’s all. I have no idea where we’re going.’
‘Who ever knows that?’ Sean questioned. ‘All anyone can do is live in the day, try and get something out of every day. All these books and gurus spouting plans for a better life – it’s a load of crap. You have to just try and live your life the best you can.’
Kate studied him a while. ‘I am happy,’ she told him, ‘but surely there’s more for us somewhere. Something better.’
Sean searched her brown eyes for signs of happiness. He saw no signs of unhappiness and decided that was good enough, for now.
‘I do love you,’ she continued, ‘which is why I worry about you, which is why I don’t want to share you with the bad people, the psychos, the drug dealers, the angry madmen. I want you all for myself and the kids.’
Her words made him smile. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I want you and the kids to be proud of me. I want them to know what I do.’
‘Christ,’ Kate replied. ‘You’ll scare the bloody hell out of them.’
‘I’ll spare them the details, but you get what I mean.’
‘So,’ Kate surrendered, ‘we carry on as we are, ships that pass in the night, absent parents?’
‘I’m not ready to walk away yet,’ Sean told her. ‘Let’s give it a couple more years, then we’ll see.’
‘I wouldn’t ask you to walk away if you don’t want to,’ she assured him.
‘A couple more years,’ Sean almost promised. ‘Then we’ll see.’
‘I’ll remember this conversation, you know,’ she warned him.
‘Of course you will,’ Sean conceded. ‘You’re a woman.’
3
Thursday morning shortly before nine o’clock and Sally was knocking on the door of a nondescript house in Teddington on the outskirts of West London, steeling herself to ask the occupants a set of questions that even their closest friends wouldn’t dare to broach. Though she’d never met these people, experience told her they would see her as their potential saviour. This morning she felt more like an intruder come to wreak havoc. So long as she got the answers to her questions – answers that could progress or kill off this new case – she didn’t really care what impact her visit might have on their lives.
While she waited for an answer, she took a couple of steps back from the door, surveying the large ugly house that would have been the pride of the street when newly built in the seventies, but now looked tired and out of place amongst the older, more gracious houses.
She heard the approach of muffled footsteps, comfortable slippers or soft indoor shoes, moving rapidly, but shuffling, the effort of lifting feet too much for ageing, tired muscles. There was a hurried fumbling of the latch then the door opened to reveal a grey-haired couple who resembled each other: both small and slightly dumpy, curly hair long since abandoned to nature, tanned skin from too many cruise-ship holidays, cardigans and elasticated trousers, thin-framed spectacles magnifying bright, hopeful, blue eyes. They answered the door together, something that only happened in times of joyful or fearful expectation. Sally thought they looked like children sneaking into a room in the middle of the night where their parents had lied to them that Father Christmas would have left their presents, excited by the promise of toys, afraid of being caught.
‘Yes?’ the old man asked, his wife peering over his shoulder. Sally flipped open her warrant card and faked a smile.
‘DS Jones, Metropolitan Police …’ She managed to stop herself adding Murder Investigation Team. The last thing she needed was two old people passing out on her, or worse. ‘I’m looking into the disappearance of your daughter, Louise Russell. You are …’ Sally quickly checked her notebook, silently cursing herself for not having done so before knocking, ‘… Mr and Mrs Graham – Louise’s parents?’ They were too desperate to notice her hesitation.
‘Yes,’ the old man confirmed. ‘Frank and Rose Graham. Louise is our daughter.’
Frank and Rose, Sally thought. Old names. Strong names. ‘Can I come in?’ she asked, already moving towards the door.
‘Please,’ said Mr Graham, stepping aside to allow her to enter the hallway.
Sally felt the carpet under her feet, worn and thin, too colourful for today’s tastes, like the floral wallpaper and framed prints of famous paintings, Constable mingling with Van Gogh.
‘Have you heard anything?’ he asked, his patience failing him. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Frank,’ Mrs Graham reprimanded him. ‘Maybe Sergeant Jones would like a cup of tea first?’
‘Of course. Sorry,’ Mr Graham apologized. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come through to the lounge. We can have tea in there – or coffee, if you’d prefer.’
‘Tea will be fine,’ said Sally.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Mrs Graham announced and scuttled away to where Sally assumed the outdated kitchen would be. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes,’ she called back over her shoulder.
‘This way,’ said Mr Graham, indicating the nearest door as if he was showing her to a seat in the theatre.
Sally entered the room, taking everything in: more cheap-looking prints of paintings, moderately expensive bric-a-brac, china figurines of women in Victorian dresses holding parasols, a mustard-coloured carpet so thick it was bouncy, and as the centre piece an old oversized television newly adapted to receive a digital signal. Sally doubted they even knew why they needed the strange box that now sat on top of their former pride and joy.
‘Please,’ Graham invited her. ‘Take a seat.’
Sally looked around for a seat no one would be able to share with her and decided on the fake leather armchair, the type she’d seen in old people’s rest homes.
‘Thanks,’ she said, perching herself on the edge of the chair, dropping the computer case that she used as a briefcase on the floor by her feet. Graham sat in what she assumed was his usual chair, prime of place for TV viewing.
‘This has all been very difficult for my wife,’ he began.
‘I’m sure it has,’ Sally empathized. ‘And for you too.’
‘I’ve been OK,’ he lied. ‘Bearing up. Someone has to, you know.’
‘Of course,’ Sally pretended to agree.
‘Ten years in the army teaches you a thing or two about coping with, with difficult situations.’
‘You were in the army?’ Sally asked, warming him up for the hard questions still to come.
‘I was.’ His voice and posture suddenly became more soldierly. ‘I did my National Service and, unlike most of my mates, I loved it. So I signed up for regular army when my year was up. The Green Jackets. But it’s a young man’s game, the army. After ten years I moved to civvie street.’
‘What did you do there?’ Sally asked, already knowing she wouldn’t be interested in the answer.
‘Sales,’ he answered curtly, as bored by his life as Sally would have been. An uncomfortable silence hung in the air until Sally thought of something to say.
‘Was …’ she began clumsily. ‘Sorry, is Louise your only child?’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘I didn’t,’ Sally lied. She’d recognized the desperation of single-child parents the moment they’d opened the door. Once Louise was gone they’d have nothing. ‘Not for sure.’
‘Oh,’ was all he replied, then more silence. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and check on that tea. Rose has been a l
ittle distracted the last couple of days. Won’t be a minute.’
‘Of course,’ said Sally. As soon as he was gone she stood and began to move slowly and silently, scrutinizing the room’s contents, careful not to touch anything. She homed in on the framed photographs on the mantelpiece above the old fake-flame electric fire. One or two showed Frank and Rose Graham in exotic locations, but most were of Louise, a collage of her life from young girl to womanhood. Sally liked the photographs. They were very different to the one and only photograph of Louise she’d seen up to now, the lifeless passport photo her husband had given them. These pictures were full of energy and joy, hope and expectations: a child beaming for the school photographer, a teenager posing with friends on a trip to the London Eye, a young woman receiving her graduation diploma outside some university. ‘Where the hell are you, Louise?’ Sally found herself saying. ‘What’s happened to you?’ Her peace was snatched away as the Grahams clattered back into the room, Mr Graham carrying the tray of tea and accompaniments as his wife opened the door and made sure his path was clear.
‘Here we are,’ Mrs Graham said almost cheerfully. ‘Pop it on the table, Frank, and I’ll sort it out from there.’ He did as he was told and retreated to his comfortable old chair as Sally returned to hers. ‘How do you take it, Sergeant?’
‘Milk and one,’ Sally told her. ‘And please, just call me Sally.’
‘All right, Sally,’ Mr Graham replied. ‘How can we help you find our daughter?’
‘Well,’ Sally began to answer before pausing to accept the cup and saucer Mrs Graham held out to her. ‘Thank you. Well, there may be questions that you’re best able to answer, about Louise – things that only a parent would know.’
‘She’s a good daughter,’ Mrs Graham insisted. ‘She always has been, but I shouldn’t think there’s anything we could tell you that John hasn’t already.’
‘Her husband?’ Sally sought to clarify.
‘He may be her husband,’ Mr Graham sniffed, ‘but he doesn’t know her like we do.’ So, Sally thought, Louise is a daddy’s girl and Daddy sounds a bit jealous.
