by Jack Benton
‘Slim, I’m a forensic linguist; this is hardly my specialist field. As always, I’ll ask around, see if I can unearth someone who might know. What exactly are you looking for?’
‘I’m chasing a ghost.’
Kay laughed. ‘Good luck.’
Slim hung up. As he did so, he noticed a voicemail message box. Opening it, he found a message from Toby, apologising for the previous night and wanting to meet again later, when he was feeling better.
Slim didn’t call back. Instead, he walked down to the station and caught the next train that stopped at Wentwood. There, he walked to the library—a larger one than Holdergate’s—and spent some time going through old newspapers again.
By lunchtime, the pull of the nearest pub was insidious, so he took the first road heading out of the town and walked uphill until his feet hurt and his stomach ached. He found a small lookout point and lay down on the grass, trying to visualise the scene as it must have been on the night of January 15th, 1977. Jennifer, moments after hanging up a call to tell her daughter she would be home soon, walking out into the snow. Seeing something that shocked her—it had to be the man, but Slim was keeping every option open—then turning in her tracks and fleeing, never to be seen again.
The biggest mystery was who she had seen that night, the supposedly vanishing man photographed by Toby Firth. But it had to go deeper than that. As Slim concentrated, he started to see a deeper scenario, one in which a woman was faced with a tough walk through unexpected snow heavy enough to delay a train. Her daughter was at home, but at twelve—particularly in those days when children grew up quicker than they did now—Elena would have been capable of looking after herself, and even had she not, surely her father would have been home? Why would Jennifer have foregone the offer of soup and a warm station waiting room for a traipse of an hour or more through snow that along the old bridleway might have drifted to knee deep in places?
Three reasons, as far as Slim could see. The first two seemed unlikely: that she had seen someone who scared her outside or she had gone to meet someone.
But what about the third? That she had a reason to get home so great that she literally couldn’t wait.
Slim sat up and opened his eyes. Blinking in the sunlight, suddenly bright as the sun emerged from behind a cloud, he pulled out his phone and called Elena.
26
‘Mr. Hardy, are you insinuating that there might have been something amiss about my family?’
Slim frowned into his coffee, unable to meet Elena’s eyes. ‘I’m not insinuating anything,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to look at the case from every possible angle.’
‘Don’t beat about the bush. You think that my mother might have been in a rush to get home that night because of something my father might do to me.’
To deny it would be a lie. Faced by the anger in Elena’s eyes, Slim could only shrug.
‘It crossed my mind,’ he admitted. ‘Figuring out your mother’s motivation for leaving the warmth and comfort of that station is paramount to finding out what happened to her. However, it’s worth remembering that it might not be something that actually happened. It might have just been something your mother thought was going to happen.’
Elena wiped a tear out of her eye. ‘I had high hopes for this investigation,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure how much longer I can keep paying you. You’ve found nothing concrete whatsoever and as a result you’re trying to soil my memories of my parents by insinuating heinous things.’
Slim declined to point out that when you dug for dirt that was often what you found. It wouldn’t help and would only hinder Elena’s progress through the denial stage he hoped would soon pass. He needed some actual information.
‘I know this is hard to talk about, but is there anything from the last few weeks before your mother’s disappearance that seemed out of the ordinary? Anything at all—behaviour that seemed odd, unfamiliar phone callers, meetings with people you’d never seen before, secrecy of any kind … anything like that could be a clue.’
Elena frowned for a long time. Finally she shook her head.
‘No, nothing. Not that I remember.’
‘It might seem insignificant.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
Slim, who often struggled to remember the events of the previous day, could sympathise. ‘Just let me know if anything comes back.’
‘Of course.’ Elena took a sip of tea, leaving an awkward silence to develop. Finally she said, ‘So, do you have any leads at all?’
Slim grimaced. ‘More than when we started, but I’ll be honest with you, it’s proving hard to get much headway. I’m confident that some of the leads I’ve uncovered will give us something to go on, however. I was expecting this case to be easy to crack, and it’s certainly not proving to be.’
Elena mulled this over her tea. Slim was reluctant to offer her much hope when he was fearful that all he might uncover would be more dirt.
After a few minutes more of covering ground they had already been over, Slim made his excuses then took the train up to Wentwood, where he met Mark Buckle in a sandwich bar not far from the station.
‘Thanks for meeting me again,’ Slim said, gesturing to the menu. ‘I’ll get this.’
Buckle laughed. ‘I’m officially out on business,’ he said. ‘So it’s all good. Going on the expense account.’ After they had both ordered, Buckle choosing a vegetarian roll and Slim a meatball sandwich with chili sauce he hoped would burn the relapse out of his stomach, Buckle added, ‘So, how’s your investigation coming?’
Slim grimaced. ‘Slowly. I wanted to ask you more about the Evans family, in particular the father. I remember what you said about how hard he worked during the search, but I’m trying to establish a reason why Jennifer might have felt a special need to get home that night, despite the blizzard. Something … inappropriate.’
Buckle nodded. ‘You think the father might have been messing around with the daughter?’
‘It crossed my mind.’
‘And let me guess, when you put it to Elena, it didn’t go down well.’
Slim sighed. ‘Not at all.’
‘You know, that kind of questioning is likely to cause more damage than it’s worth,’ Buckle said. ‘This is a buried case. If, for example, something was going on, then it’s been long-suppressed. If you’re going to drag it up again, you’d sure as hell better hope you find Jennifer. Otherwise you could do more harm than good.’
Slim nodded. Buckle had put into words exactly how he thought. ‘It was never my intention when I took this case to destroy anyone’s life,’ he said. ‘If anything, I took it because I hoped, after a couple of tough cases, it might prove to be nothing more than a gentle distraction for a few weeks. Unfortunately, it isn’t turning out that way. And sometimes, if you want to overturn the stones other people have missed, you have to ask the questions no one else is prepared to ask.’
Buckle cocked his head. ‘That may be true, but one thing that’s safe to assume is that Jennifer isn’t coming back, and in the intervening years her family repaired itself in the best way it could. Elena’s life might not be as she’d like it, but it’s probably better as it is than if you dig up something about her mother having an affair, or her father being a child molester.’
‘My intention is only to find out what happened to Jennifer. I didn’t expect it to lead into the dark places it’s starting to go.’
‘All crimes are connected to that dark place,’ Buckle said. ‘It’s the reason I went to work for the Chronicle’s Rural Affairs section. I preferred writing about farming practices than mangled bodies.’
‘Was there nothing you suspected at the time?’
‘Of course there was. I wondered the same thing as you, but there was no evidence for it and I worked for a broadsheet, not a scummy tabloid.’
‘Her father seemed outside suspicion?’
‘On a social scale, he was a nobody. A simple family man. The kind of person who your eyes wou
ld slide over in a crowd. He worked an office job, came home, did the usual dad things of those days: watch TV or occasionally saunter down the local pub. I interviewed a few people who knew the family. The overwhelming response was that they were as normal and boring as a family could come, with nothing particular about them to set them apart. Just, you know, regular people.’
‘The normal families usually have the most to hide,’ Slim said. ‘You said he was an office worker. What company?’
‘He worked in the claims department of a commercial car insurance company called Astak National. About as boring as you could get.’
‘Commercial claims?’
‘They specialised in discount insurance for fleets of vehicles, for example transportation companies, building contractors. That kind of thing. Companies these days are more catch-all than they used to be. As far as I’m aware, though, Astak National was bought out by a larger company sometime in the mid-eighties.’
Slim thanked Buckle for his time and headed back to Holdergate, feeling a creeping sense of disillusionment about the investigation and where—if anywhere—it was leading.
As he was exiting the station, he saw Lia clearing a table through the window of the Station Master. Unsure what he was thinking, he found himself going in through the door.
‘Hello, stranger,’ Lia said, offering more of a smile than Slim felt he deserved. ‘I wondered if you mightn’t have given up.’
‘I’m too stupid to give up,’ Slim said. ‘Can I buy you dinner?’
Lia laughed. ‘No. However, you can buy yourself dinner and sit and talk to me while I finish my shift. Then, when I get off at nine you can escort me past the Tesco Metro so I can buy a sandwich, then come and drink coffee in my kitchen while I eat it. If I’m in a good mood I’ll let you sit with me while I watch News at Ten, then I’ll kick you out so I can get a decent sleep without worrying about you sneaking off to drink my mouthwash in the middle of the night. How does that sound?’
‘It’s a date,’ Slim said.
27
Against what she said was her better judgement, Lia let him stay overnight. However, concerned with overstaying his welcome, Slim told Lia he had early appointments and made his excuses to leave before it was even fully light outside, arranging to meet her later for lunch.
Holdergate was just waking up as he walked back to his guesthouse, hoping Wendy would already have gotten up and unlocked the front door. The streets, admirably clean, had an old-fashioned feel when cars were absent, and Slim found himself recalling his childhood, the meat of it during the mid-eighties when the music was as blandly electric as the fashion was gaudy. He remembered walking up to the corner shop in a dark purple shell-suit to buy football cards and chocolate bars in the carefree days before he had started to drink, before the last innocence was shaken out of him by the military and a pair of boots in the sand, before his fading dreams of a normal life were stamped out by a butcher named Stiles, a knife, and a crumpled abortion letter in a rubbish bin. He sometimes thought it would be more of a surprise if he didn’t drink.
With a few kind words and an unprecedented level of tolerance, Lia had made him feel normal and valuable in a way no one had in twenty years. The fragile scaffolding of his returning happiness would inevitably come crashing down, but the way Lia had made him feel gave him reason alone to extend the case.
If only he could get a break, everything would be perfect.
He was back at the guesthouse in time for breakfast and had just finished when his Nokia rang. It was Toby, wanting to meet. Twenty minutes later, Slim was waiting in the park where they had first met when Toby arrived.
‘I’m sorry again about the other night,’ Toby said. ‘I guess I still have some issues. A bit of booze tends to bring it out.’
Slim considered mentioning that there hadn’t been much booze left by the time Toby was done, but decided it wouldn’t help. Instead he just said, ‘It was interesting to hear things from your perspective.’
‘So, do you think you might be able to find Jennifer?’
Slim shrugged. ‘At the moment I have a list of names and numbers as long as my arm with no idea who might be worth calling first.’
‘I want to help,’ Toby said.
‘Help?’
‘To find her.’
‘I’m not sure—’ Slim began, but Toby held up a hand.
‘On the surface it might look like I have everything,’ he said. ‘Without mincing my words, I’m loaded. I’m only halfway through a ten-book deal and each release sells more than the last. I have a nice house in London, a beautiful wife, two good kids in a private school. I’m made, wouldn’t you think?’
‘On the surface,’ Slim said, echoing Toby’s words, only too aware that demons could hide beneath any skin.
‘There’s a knot inside me that’s growing tighter as the years pass. I see buses go past and I think about how it would feel to step out at exactly the wrong time. I stop my car on bridges and get out, gazing down at the water for longer than I feel safe. I don’t trust myself, Slim. And it’s all because of that knot inside that got tied on the night Jennifer went missing.’
‘Toby—’
‘Look, I’ll be in Holdergate for the next week. I’m doubling it as time to research my next book. If there’s any way at all I can help, I’m here. Just ask.’
Slim nodded. ‘Sure. I’d certainly like to go over again what you saw. Just to make it clear in my own mind.’
‘What would you like to know?’
Slim opened a packet of crisps he had pilfered from a basket in the guesthouse’s breakfast room, ripped one edge and then spread them out on the table. He took one, offered them to Toby, and then said, ‘What do you think happened? You’ve told me what you saw, now tell me what you think. Police work is always so much about evidence, but private investigators go on theories more than anything else, trying to spot an angle the police might have missed. Who was the man? Where did Jennifer go? Is she alive or dead?’
Toby took a crisp then looked down. ‘Well. … this might sound stupid,’ he said. ‘It took me years before I even saw it, and even longer to come around to what it meant, but in the end it made perfect sense.’
‘Try me.’
‘There’s a visitor in that picture.’
‘A what?’
‘A visitor.’ Toby gave Slim an embarrassed grin. ‘It’s a term I use in my books. That picture’s where the idea came from. A visitor is a person who isn’t from this time and place.’
Slim suppressed a groan. ‘So … you mean like a time traveler?’
Toby nodded, then gave a frantic shake of his head. ‘Yes, but also no. A visitor could be one of a number of things. A time traveler, or a spirit, or even an extraterrestrial. What’s important is that they’ve been here.’
‘Important?’
‘Yes!’ Toby had a huge grin on his face, but his voice held a tremble of fear. ‘And their appearance upsets the fabric of what we know of reality.’
Had he not been sitting down, Slim night have been tempted to take a backward step. He had dealt with psychotics before and still had the scars. He had no intention of getting close to another.
‘Go on. I’m still listening,’ he said. With half a barrel of salt, he didn’t add.
‘When a visitor appears in our world, it can upset the balance of a great number of things. Time. Reality. Order.’ Toby spread his hands. ‘Look, you’re probably thinking that I’m crazy. Here’s the guy who writes books about magic and strange creatures wanting to be taken seriously about a woman’s disappearance. But we once thought the world was flat, right?’
Slim shrugged. ‘I imagine there are people who still do.’
‘And we’re nowhere near the peak of our intellectual understanding. What I’m talking about is a pseudo-science, one that has a basis in fact but doesn’t yet have the backing of the greater scientific community.’
Slim lifted his hand. ‘Look, this is all very nice, but how do you think
it’s going to help me find Jennifer?’
Toby took a deep breath. ‘Because I don’t think she is lost. I think that in a certain reality, she’s still right here.’
28
‘A space cadet,’ Slim said, taking a sip of coffee. ‘Without question. And believe me, I’ve met my fair share of nut jobs. He kept talking about “visitors”. If there was anyone who met that description, it was the man in front of me.’
Lia laughed. ‘So I suppose his profession didn’t surprise you?’
‘He certainly has an imagination. Whether it would help with the case … at this stage I doubt it.’
Lia reached across the bar and patted Slim’s hand, letting it linger a little too long to be casual. Slim met her eyes and felt a momentary hesitation at what he saw there. Lia actually seemed to like him, something that in its very unlikeliness made Slim uncomfortable. Enjoying it gave him the same sort of guilt as when he turned back to the bottle, and he found it hard not to draw his hand away.
‘Don’t give up,’ she said. ‘I have faith in you. Oh—’ she gave his hand another frantic tap, ‘—my friend spoke to her great uncle again. Robert Downs? He said he’s willing to talk to you again.’
‘That would be great.’
‘Apparently he felt bad about the way he treated you. He said you caught him unawares with what you wanted to know. She said she’ll call me later.’
‘Excellent news. Our conversation was somewhat stunted last time. It’s my fault really. I should have been straight with him from the start.’
They talked for a short while longer before Slim excused himself to go and make some calls. Standing on the street outside, he returned a missed call from Kim.
‘Good morning, Mr. Hardy,’ she said, sounding full of cheer. ‘Great news. I got in touch with Manchester Piccadilly as per your request and was told you would be welcome to come down and have a look at the train that used to run on the Hope Valley Line back in the seventies. I spoke to the goods yard’s caretaker, but he couldn’t give me much detail on the train’s condition, only that while it had been used for parts, it was mostly intact. He said you were welcome to come down and take a look any time. He said he would gladly show you around.’
