“Liam, you’ve got every right to be here.”
“But I’m not up to the fight today, Josie. I had a really bad day yesterday.”
“Ok, I’m sorry my friend. Look, somebody broke into my house last night and stole something I, well, nicked from outside Hannah’s place.”
“What? What did you nick?”
“I found a notebook, well, a diary, on the canal path at the back of Hannah’s. It looked like it had been tossed there. Anyway, I took off with it and last night someone broke in and took it while I was in the bath.”
“Jesus! Are you alright Dude?”
“Not exactly. They left me a threatening message on the bathroom mirror.”
“Whoa!”
“Liam, don’t sound impressed, you fool. I was scared witless.”
“Sorry Dude, lost myself there a bit. I’m back now. What was the message?”
“I’m watching you.”
“Whoa…. Sorry. Look, where are you?”
“I’m in the canteen. I’m heading to the library.”
“Well, come around to mine when you’re finished. You can stay if you want, like, if you’re too scared to go home and stuff.”
“Thanks Liam.”
“Are you alright, Dude?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I’m going to go back to sleep for a bit. Just come around when you’re done, Ok? And keep your eyes open. Well, you know, just be careful Dude.”
“Yeah, Ok. I’ll see you later.”
“See you later.”
As I hung up, I realised that I hadn’t told Liam about the photocopy. I had been about to call him back when I thought better of it. Liam really had sounded rough, and I could certainly look through the papers on my own.
My hurt little feelings had climbed back into their box and I was ready for a bit of detective work. Betty wouldn’t let over-sensitive feelings stand in her way, and neither would I.
So, I hurriedly finished my tea, resisting the urge to eat the polystyrene cup just to get my money’s worth, and set off for the library.
I’d established myself in one of the single booths at the very far end of the silent study area. For the most part, the silent study area tended to be sparsely populated; only people like me who were far too serious to talk ever used them.
Most of the other students preferred to be in a part of the library where all that was required were hushed tones. Not my end of the library where even noisy breathing was punishable by death.
I was pleased to find that there was only me and one other in the silent study area, and the other person was at the opposite end, on the cusp of being allowed to talk. So, I more or less had the place to myself.
I don’t really know why I was so keen to hide away. It’s not like I would look out of place studying papers in a university library, after all. Still, the feeling of my own wrongness was still with me, and I wanted to stay way below the radar.
I took the great wad of paper out of my rucksack, along with my own notepad, in case there was anything worth scribbling down. As soon as I looked closely at the first page, I knew it was Hannah’s.
The handwriting was pretty unique. It was chubby and arty, and looked so neat that you could be fooled into thinking you could read it with ease. That was actually not the case. It was so arty that it kind of took a bit of work. On that first page was written the same thing over and over, which kind of creeped me out a bit. The word Rebellion was everywhere, in all different sizes and styles.
The larger ones were written in a kind of elaborate 3D, and filled in with hand-drawn stripes and dots. It was a genuine word-doodle, and I wondered if the whole Rebellion thing was something to do with an art project.
As I moved to the next sheet, I realised that nothing was dated. It was a diary notebook rather than a traditional diary. I resisted the urge to skip ahead to see if Hannah had actually dated anything herself later on in the book; I wanted to be as methodical as possible. If I skipped ahead, I’d no doubt get side-tracked reading another bit, then I could easily miss something. See, real detective work.
Page two looked like a shopping list of art supplies. There were brushes and paints, pads and what-not. Then there was a list of art history text books. I chewed my pencil for a bit; this looked like the list I had made of things I would need before starting university. I mean, obviously not the same stuff, but text books and sundries. So, the diary must have been started before Hannah even arrived at Grantstone University.
The next few pages were more helpful; there were going-out plans with names and dates. Fliss and Amelia cinema 4th Aug. Fliss clothes shopping 9th Aug. All pretty standard stuff. Fliss and Amelia at spa 12th Aug (Richie).
Not quite sure about that one. Did Hannah go with Fliss and Amelia to the spa? Or was that just when they were going? And where did Richard fit in? Assuming that’s who Richie was. All in all, I couldn’t see how this stuff was helping me in my quest.
It went on in this vein for many pages. Family birthdays, meals out, aerobics classes; I was starting to wonder if this book was such a gem of a find after all.
I looked at my watch. Already it was nearly eleven o’clock, and I had a fluid mechanics lecture at one. I really didn’t want to miss it, even though I had my new-found responsibility of finding Hannah.
If I started missing lectures, well, put it this way, the stuff I was studying wasn’t so easy to catch up on, and I dreaded to think what would happen if I began to get behind. I know that’s geeky, but there it is.
If Liam was going to start missing lectures, then I would need a good job at the end of it all to help subsidise his wage at the hamburger drive-thru. Add overactive imagination to geekiness.
Finally, I reached a page with more bite to it. There was the usual run of things-to-do and dates, but scrawled at the top of the page was an e-mail address. It was upside-down, so I guessed that it was done in a hurry and not necessarily on the same day that the rest of the stuff had been written. It was that kind of writing you do when you need to make a quick note of something and you scrawl it down just about anywhere. [email protected]. Trixie? Maybe that was one of Hannah’s friends. And yet, somehow, I couldn’t quite imagine Hannah having a friend called Trixie.
After all, they had once been talking about middle names in the canteen, and when I said I didn’t have one, Fliss said “Are you sure? It’s not Chardonnay, is it?” Fliss had let out a super-bitch snigger, which Hannah quietly echoed.
Once again, I was having to swallow it down. However much I despised Hannah and Co, she was still out there somewhere, and probably far from safe and happy. Still, I’ve got to be brutally honest, it wasn’t easy.
So anyway, I jotted down the e-mail address on my notepad. If this was a friend of Hannah’s, I thought that maybe I could contact her.
The next page took my mind right off e-mail addresses. The writing had turned from chubby and cute into angry and haphazard.
How am I supposed to deal with this? Everything I thought was real is a lie!
As Liam would say, Whoa! Whatever it was supposed to mean, it seemed like it was kind of heart-felt. But was it anger? Was it despair? Whatever mood it had been written in, it had been meant.
The handwriting was clearly Hannah’s, but the emotion had turned it into something much more hasty and far less arty. The hastiness had made it so much more legible. I wondered what had happened in Hannah’s life that made everything she had previously known a lie. I very quickly realised that staring into space would not help me. The answer just wasn’t there.
I scribbled it down verbatim in my notebook. Already I was thinking about just highlighting it on the photocopy, but then wondered if I might end up having to hand it in to the Police after all. I shuddered. I really didn’t want to think about that and the great pile of crap I’d be in. But, if it came to it and I found something obvious, I wouldn’t have a choice.
Fighting a mental image of myself in a stripy uniform breaking rocks along
a dusty highway whilst chained to my nearest inmate, I ploughed on. The next couple of pages were nothing to get excited about.
Hannah had drawn out her timetable for her first semester at Grantstone University. It was neat and pretty; a perfectly straight table strewn with pencil drawn flowers and bumble bees.
I looked closely at the detail of the little sketches and realised how talented Hannah really was. Personally, any bumble bee of mine would be a vague baked-bean shape with makeshift wings. I was not an artist by any stretch of the imagination.
I had my own talents, but I was well aware how I could sometimes see the things I was learning and achieving as real and of much more importance. Looking at the tiny sketches, I was forced to re-think.
As I squinted at the little bees, I could see the fine lines which created that furry look that bees have. The nearer I pressed my nose to it, the more life-like it became. There was something odd about that moment; the realisation of the time and effort that must have gone into the perfect little bees and the thought that their artist might never sketch again brought unexpected tears to my eyes.
Nobody was more shocked than me, I can tell you. I squashed the tears with my fists before they had a chance to roll down my face. It was time to get on with it; crying and staring at bumble bees wasn’t going to help in any real way.
The next page was a revised version of the beautiful timetable. There had obviously been a couple of changes in the first few weeks. I’d experienced the same thing myself. This new timetable was neat, but without any of the artistic flourishes of the first, which was good; I didn’t want my emotions to be further provoked.
Written underneath the timetable was a single sentence, again in the not-so-neat handwriting. Maybe it’s time for a rebellion of my own! What? I wished I could have made sense of it. The fervency of these declarations made me feel that they were of great importance. If only I could find something that would tell me what had happened in Hannah’s life to bring on the cryptic phrases.
Anyway, I scribbled it down in my notebook. Time was getting on and I needed to find something which might help me get to the bottom of it.
For the next few pages, life seemed to have returned to normal for Hannah. The usual run of social engagements was back, each one neatly listed. These were dated throughout October and November, so around the time we were all settling into our first semester.
At the end of the third page was an entry which made my stomach lurch. Not because of its evidential value by any stretch of the imagination. No, the reaction was just a gut-thing. 30th Nov First date with bad-boy Liam!
I can’t explain why it was that I hated to see his name in Hannah’s diary, but let me re-iterate it’s not a jealousy thing! Just friends, remember? I think it was because it somehow marked the day when things in my world started to shift uncomfortably. It wasn’t just the date with Hannah that had prodded at me, but what that date represented to me.
Change. The end of the old order. And bad-boy? Seriously? Liam? That got my hackles back up again. Who was she calling a bad-boy? Liam had never done a bad thing in his life.
As I pondered the possibility that Hannah had confused bad with poor, I knew I was losing my focus. How was I going to figure this out if I was forever trying to work with a giant chip on my shoulder?
I wrote it down. There had clearly been something big going on with the whole idea of rebellion in Hannah’s world. Was bad-boy Liam nothing more than an expression of that? I wrote that down too, not because I had thought it overly important, but because it was the only conclusion I had drawn so far and I thought it warranted a mention.
The next page almost had my eyes popping out. The handwriting had returned to normal, but the content was just about the last thing I had expected. Emjay is so funny! He acts like the sight of naked flesh is some kind of spiritual experience! So, so amusing to watch him trying to be normal with me in front of everyone else. He’s just so awkward.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! What the hell? Who was Emjay? I didn’t need to rack my brains; I already knew there wasn’t an Emjay that I knew of. It was an unusual name, that was for sure. I wrote it down, all the while wondering about the timing.
If this diary was written in any sort of chronological order, then this Emjay character, and the whole business of nakedness, was something which ran kind of concurrently with Liam.
Whichever way I looked at it, I couldn’t see how it didn’t mean sex. I mean, sure, it could have been something else, but seriously, what? I began to feel a sense of outrage that my friend had been cheated on already.
They had only been together five weeks, for Heaven’s sake. That seems like an awfully short time for boredom to set in. I wondered if Liam had any idea. But, of course he wouldn’t, would he?
Already breaking my sworn method of detection, I flipped the pages quickly, scanning for any other sign of the Emjay. After several minutes, I found nothing. Still, I knew that I would have to go back over it meticulously, I might well have missed something.
I went back to the Emjay page and stared at it. There was something about this diary. Things were said but not said. Events were hinted at but not described. It was almost as if these were just reminders, and that Hannah could look back over it and, from her few scattered phrases, conjure up the events of her life in detail.
This book was not meant for anybody else’s eyes. I mean, most diaries weren’t, this much I knew. But this was written in a way that almost seemed like code. If it fell into the wrong hands, it couldn’t be entirely made out. You know, like if the Bletchley Code Breakers had found it laying in the bushes, and not an engineering student without the first idea about detection.
I looked at my watch; it was nearly twenty past twelve. Not long before I would need to pack up and head off across campus for my fluid mechanics lecture. I neatly stacked the photocopied pages and put them back in my rucksack.
I kept my notebook out and had a last glance at everything I had found so far. I had an e-mail address, the use of which I wasn’t yet sure, the hint of some catastrophic life event, and the whiff of infidelity. I had a feeling about this Emjay which I couldn’t shake. Perhaps he might have something to do with Hannah’s disappearance.
It was getting to that time where I would have to make myself accountable to the Grantstone Constabulary and throw myself upon their mercy. Mercy? Yeah right! Because Liam had been treated so well.
I wondered what the police would make of the Emjay thing. I couldn’t help but suspect that they would assume that Liam had found out about an affair and had done something terrible in a jealous rage. If I handed them the photocopy, perhaps I would be setting Liam up further. I wondered for a moment if Liam actually had known.
Still, I couldn’t see it; Liam was like an open book to me and I would have felt his disappointment. Anyway, Liam would have told me. I had been treated to every other trial and tribulation of his life; some big, some unbelievably tiny. My point is, the guy misses nothing out. He’s open more often than our local Euro-Saver.
I put the notebook away too, and rose to leave. As I was putting my duffle coat on, something caught my eye. It was such a quick and tiny movement that I didn’t actually see what it was. I had seen movement itself, rather than anything tangible. Suddenly, my heart was pounding again.
Amidst my studies, I had more or less forgotten about the message on the mirror. With one arm in my duffle coat and my mouth dangling open most unattractively, I scanned the room. The movement had been a tiny and fleeting thing, over by the natural history shelves.
I stared hard, but nothing was out of the ordinary. Students and staff were quietly going about their business, with no sign of the cloaked and fanged creature who had left me the warning.
I did up the toggles on my coat without taking my eyes off the natural history section. I moved from the silent study area with uncharacteristic grace, and made my move. As I rounded the corner of the shelf in question, I felt sweaty and unpleasantly tingly. For reasons best
known to my fight-or-flight system, I was holding my breath as I darted around the shelf to see who was there.
Nobody! There was nobody there. I must have imagined it. My nerves were probably on red-alert, so a bit of paranoia was to be expected. Wasn’t it?
Chapter Five
The whole fluid mechanics lecture was painful. I kept on top of it and made even more copious notes than usual. Fearing that I wasn’t entirely taking it all in, I knew I’d have to have some pretty thorough notes to look back on. When it was finally over, I decided to make my way to the canteen to get a cup of tea. Yes, another one.
With my tea and a packet of posh crisps, I sat down at the table we tended to sit at, my head whirring with all sorts of thoughts and fears. I felt kind of lonely sitting there without Liam, and vaguely looked about the canteen for the first time since I had walked in. Immediately, I was aware of being stared at.
Well, not stared at exactly, but glared at. Several tables away sat Fliss and Amelia, with three other girls, none of whom I’d ever seen before. So, I could presume that they wouldn’t be continuing to join me for lunch the way they had when Hannah was there. When Fliss saw me looking back, she huffed loudly enough for me to actually hear it across the room, and tossed her head so wildly in the opposite direction that it had to have hurt.
Once Fliss had performed her little theatre piece, naturally Amelia did exactly the same. Seriously, I hoped that every muscle in their necks had twanged like knicker elastic, and that neither one of them would be able to turn their silly heads without pain for the rest of the year.
The rest of their table seemed to follow suit, albeit with a little more decorum. So, the new group of girls were all over the poor Fliss has lost her best friend riff. Wow! What a way to attract new and interesting people into your stratosphere.
I was torn really as to what I should do next. There was a part of me that seriously considered walking over to their table and up-ending Fliss’ chair without either warning or explanation; but the larger part couldn’t give a damn about the silly girl’s antics, and was secretly relieved not to have to spend valuable life hours in the vacuous damsel’s company anymore.
The Girlfriend: A Josie Cloverfield Detective Novel Page 6
