Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

  But what she also felt, with knife-keen alarm, was that if he was capable of such brazenness he was also capable of more. She was a woman alone in the darkness with someone that had threatened to throw acid into her best friend’s face and had knifed her car. His crazy rage, his desire, was stronger than his fear of consequences, his fear of prison.

  She trifled with him at her peril.

  She swallowed, her throat dry, aware that he could sense her terror.

  ‘You need to tell her to stop this,’ he said. Despite his tight, controlled words, he was breathing hard. His chest rose and fell beneath his thin shirt. ‘To stop being so fucking stupid.’ He licked his lips briefly with a pale tongue. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said Fiona, her heart pounding. ‘It’s out of everyone’s hands.’ She resisted the temptation to step back from him, though she was shaking. ‘There’s a restraining order now. You can’t talk to her. I can’t take messages to her. You’re not supposed to contact her, either “directly or indirectly”.’ She swallowed again, glancing around, hoping against hope someone would pass by. ‘You need to leave her alone, Dom.’

  His glare was suddenly hot, murderous. ‘Don’t tell me what to do. You’re fucking loving this, ain’t you, you interfering cow?’

  ‘Dom …’ Her throat was so dry she could barely get the word out.

  ‘You’re so jealous of her. I can practically smell it on you.’ He was advancing on her, and the upraised finger he was pointing at her trembled. ‘It’s you that’s done all this, isn’t it? You’ve broke us up. You must be so fucking proud of yourself, you smug little bitch …’

  ‘Excuse me,’ shot out a nearby voice. ‘Is everything all right here?’

  Their heads whipped around. A tall man in a white shirt and crisp trousers stood under the streetlight. Near his feet a French bulldog sniffed the ground, her stub of a tail half-wagging, oblivious to the human drama unfolding in front of her.

  He looked vaguely familiar, a neighbour. His eyes glinted with suspicion. Neither of them had heard him approach. He looked at Dom but spoke to Fiona. ‘Everything okay?’

  There was a pause, a mere breath, and in it Fiona understood how furious this interruption, this potential witness, made Dominic Tate. For a flickering second she saw his desire to lash out, to challenge the newcomer, but again that stymied cowardice was winning over.

  Instead he snarled at Fiona. ‘This isn’t over, cunt.’

  ‘I think you’d better leave,’ the man with the dog said in a cold, still voice. ‘Before I call the police.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ snapped Dominic Tate, but he was already backing away. ‘This is nothing to do with you.’

  By way of reply, the man reached into his trouser pocket, drew out a phone.

  ‘Call the fucking police then,’ snarled Dom. ‘See if I care.’ But he must have cared on some level, Fiona realised, as his retreat was growing hastier. He was already halfway across the carpark lot from them, his face in shadow.

  She stood rigid, breathless in the face of his hatred, watching until he had vanished under the budding trees with a final malicious leer.

  Suddenly there was a cool, wet flash at her ankle and she jumped, startled.

  The bulldog had edged forward, tentatively licked at the sticky dark stain on her capri pants.

  ‘Jemima! Stop it! Sorry. She’s got no manners. Are you all right?’

  ‘I … yes … I’m fine, thanks …’ Again that light-headed feeling, as though she was going to faint. ‘I just need to get back inside …’

  ‘Are you sure? Who was that?’ asked the man. His voice held a mixture of concern but also a kind of judgemental and wary distance – she appeared to him, she realised, to be the sort of woman that strange men screamed ‘cunt’ at in public, someone with questionable relationships and perhaps guilty of dire choices. ‘A bitter ex?’

  She felt stung, suddenly. ‘Absolutely not,’ she shot back.

  He recoiled. She’d offended him, she realised.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to get her feelings back under control. ‘He’s my friend’s ex. She’s got a restraining order against him. He wanted me to pass a message on to her – sorry, I’m in bits. I thought that would be the end of him …’

  ‘Do you need me to call someone?’ he asked, but there was a pronounced drawing back in him, as though, in being not wholly grateful and distraught, she had let him down in some indefinable way.

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll be fine. Once I’m in the house …’ She glanced down at her hand, saw it was shaking. ‘I’ll be fine. I only live on Saxon Street …’

  ‘All the same,’ he said, the French bulldog fighting against him to reach Fiona’s pants cuff. ‘I’ll walk you to your door.’ His gaze flickered over the car park. ‘It looks like he’s gone for now. But you never know.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  ‘He did what?’ asked Madison, the phone line crackling with her outrage. ‘What was he playing at?’

  Fiona sat hunched on her faded, oversoft purple sofa. The article she’d been reviewing flickered on her laptop, forgotten. ‘He wanted me to give you a message.’

  ‘What message?’

  ‘Oh, does it matter?’ said Fiona, weary now of the whole affair. She was sick to death of Dominic Tate, she realised, of discussing and thinking about him, and had been for months. ‘“She needs to stop this, we need to talk.” You know. The whole “I’m the victim here” shtick.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him, all right,’ sizzled Madison. ‘But I don’t think he’d like what I had to say …’

  ‘No, you won’t!’ snapped Fiona, alarmed. ‘You won’t talk to him at all! There’s a restraining order, Mads, remember?’

  ‘Well, he clearly didn’t get the email,’ said Madison, ‘so what are we supposed to do, then?’

  ‘We don’t call him. He’s breached his restraining order, so we call the police.’ She flopped back on the couch, passed her hand over her face. ‘They take it from here.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Oh,’ said Madison eventually.

  Fiona felt a prickle of foreboding tickling the back of her neck, a presage of things to come. ‘What do you mean, Oh?’

  There was a sigh, the quick burble of a vaper. ‘Listen, Fee, I know he scared you …’

  ‘And?’ asked Fiona, her voice hardening.

  ‘And I know he’s an appalling dickhead and all, but listen, do you really want to get into all that again?’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Fee, listen to me … wait, don’t get angry. I’m not talking down or minimising what happened to you tonight, honest. But just listen. Say we do that, right? We go to the police. We dob him in and we can actually prove it and there’s a hearing and they send him off at Her Maj’s pleasure for six months … I mean, is it worth it? Really? He’d be out in four months with good behaviour.’

  ‘Mads …’ she began, boiling.

  ‘No, you’re not listening to me. You’re angry ’cos he scared you and you think I’m taking his side. He’s already furious, because that’s the kind of entitled arsehole he is. How much more furious is he going to be if he gets sent to prison just for trying to send a message?’

  Fiona could feel herself bridling. ‘He’s not going to prison because he tried to pass on a message, Mads. He’d be going to prison because the courts have told him to leave you alone, and he still can’t control himself. He’s got no self-restraint, and he’s going to hurt someone someday …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know all that.’ Again the bubbling of her vaper. ‘I do, honest, I do. I am merely suggesting that we, you know, pick our battles here.’

  Fiona was stunned. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘If he’d threatened you, I’d say yeah, definitely we should get the cops involved, but the fact is he was just doing what Dom does when he’s not getting his own way.’ Madison had shifted away from the phone, must have been reaching for something nearby. ‘And that involve
s throwing his toys out his pram and being a prick.’

  ‘So what do you think we should do?’ said Fiona, amazed. ‘Just let it go?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Madison said. ‘I’m suggesting exactly that – we let him have this one for free. Let’s assume he didn’t understand the real lie of the land, that he’s not supposed to be getting to me through you. Just this once.’

  ‘How could he not understand?’ Fiona could feel her temper rising again. ‘The judge, the police, the probation service, his solicitor – they would have all told him what would happen …’

  ‘He didn’t understand because he doesn’t ever listen to things he’s not interested in hearing,’ said Madison with weary frankness. ‘But there was a witness tonight, and he’s getting no joy from you, so I don’t think you’ll see him again, Fee. I just don’t.’

  ‘And what if he comes back again?’ demanded Fiona.

  ‘We call the police.’

  ‘Or he slashes my tyres …’

  ‘Of course, we’ll call the police.’

  ‘Or he starts hanging around at my work, or …’

  ‘If you catch so much as a glimpse of him, anywhere,’ said Madison, with a grandiose calm, ‘we’ll call the police and tell them everything that’s happened. I promise. But I just think going after him over this could backfire. For both of us.’

  And Fiona felt it then, the real reason for Madison’s seeming indifference. She was frightened – frightened of the consequences for her if Fiona pursued things further.

  You picked him, Fiona thought bitterly.

  All the same, she understood. Madison wanted to downplay all this, because she had always maintained that eventually it would go away. The fact was, Fiona knew, that if it went away or not, it would be because something changed for Dominic Tate, and not anything that she or Madison did.

  She could, however, see the appeal of Mads’ plan.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘One freebie. But only one.’

  SUNDAY

  * * *

  21

  Kirkwall Airport, Orkney, January 2020

  Kirkwall’s airport was a tiny building surrounded on three sides by low, flattish hills, and on the fourth there was a smudgy blue expanse of water that could have been either lake or sea. The terminal itself was warm, and dominated by a surprisingly lively café which was offering a special of ‘cheese and mince baked tattie’.

  Fiona, who had not slept a wink since the incident with the car in the middle of the night, was sorely tempted by this paean to carbohydrates and grease. Instead she restricted herself to a single latte and settled in one of the seats facing the large windows. From here she would see Judy’s plane arriving.

  She rang Adi on video chat.

  ‘How are you feeling today? Better?’

  She’d phoned him last night, waking him up in his hotel bed in Zurich at four in the morning. She’d blurted everything out to him before breaking down into large, sucking sobs that he’d been powerless to calm.

  She was tired of being frightened, of not knowing, of being lost. So very tired of it.

  But she felt a little surer now. She pressed her right headphone closer into her ear.

  ‘I’m … I’m okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I was so hysterical last night.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ he said quickly, almost irritably, his dark brow creasing. ‘You don’t have to be sorry. It’s okay to be scared sometimes. If I’d been there, I’d have freaked the fuck out.’

  Fiona giggled despite herself at the thought of meticulous, calm Adi ‘freaking the fuck out’. She found such a thing hard to imagine.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he scowled. ‘Laugh away. Mock my lack of exceptional SAS butchness, why don’t you? But I’m glad you seem better. I was worried about you. Where will you stay tonight?’

  She paused, hearing the hesitancy in her own voice, hating it. ‘I was going to stay at the cottage again.’

  ‘What? No! Are you kidding? I thought you were going to go to a hotel?’

  ‘I know,’ she said, bracing herself for his objections. ‘I said that. But I was thinking about it some more. I think I imagined a lot of it – I mean, the noises inside the house. And the door was locked anyway, so no one could have …’

  ‘What? What does that mean?’ he asked, his voice growing louder. ‘Whoever it was could have had a key. It’s a holiday home, isn’t it?’

  Fiona tried to rally her resistance. ‘I know, but …’

  ‘And the people who own it – you say they seem nice but you don’t know them, Fiona, not really. Madison went missing from that house, remember. Think about that. They didn’t like her and poof, she’s vanished.’

  She glanced around uneasily, wondering if people who knew the Fletts might be listening to this, realised that they wouldn’t be able to hear him.

  ‘I don’t think they disliked her that much,’ she countered. ‘And it was only the wife …’

  ‘I have never approved of the idea of you staying there. Not once. Who offers you their house for free the first day they meet you? Just get a hotel room.’

  ‘Well, Adi, it’s just that …’

  ‘Is it the money?’ he barked, and she felt her first flicker of shame, of irritation. ‘’Cos if it’s the money, I’ll pay. I’ll book you a place right now, on my card. I don’t want you …’

  ‘No,’ said Fiona, with sudden force, so loudly that people nearby turned to look at her, startled. ‘Sorry, but … no. I want to stay there.’

  Adi had fallen silent, shocked. She never raised her voice to him, and she felt embarrassed now, mortified.

  ‘But why?’ he asked after a long moment.

  ‘Because what if Madison comes back there?’ Fiona swallowed, her mouth dry. ‘What if she comes back and there’s nobody home? She could be in trouble. She could be scared, or hurt, or she might … she m-might …’

  Adi sighed out, finally understanding. ‘Ah. I get it.’

  ‘You see?’ she asked, aware of her sinuses flooding, her eyes watering. ‘I have to be there. I have to …’

  ‘Fee,’ he said softly.

  ‘I have to …’

  ‘No, you don’t. Listen. You really don’t. I know this is hard on you. I wish I could be there for you, I really do. But you don’t need to be in that house. She knows how to get in touch with you if she wants to. Just like the police.’

  ‘But I’m just so … I’m just sat here, doing nothing …’ She swiped at her wet eyes with her hands.

  ‘Listen – how much good can you do her if something happens to you right now? Clearly Madison was scared. She left. Maybe,’ he said, trying to keep his voice even, calm, ‘you should follow her lead.’

  Fiona fell silent. She had not considered this.

  He glanced over the top of his phone, frowned again. ‘I have to go,’ he said, low and reluctant. ‘The car’s just pulled up outside.’

  ‘What are you up to?’ she asked, swallowing down her tears, trying to pull herself together.

  ‘Oh, this stupid tour of Zurich,’ he shrugged dismissively. ‘Some hospitality thing. We’re taking the client round the city for the day.’

  ‘It sounds nice to me,’ she said with a weak smile, trying to move the conversation back into less heated channels. ‘Y’know. Zurich.’

  He made a little hmph noise. ‘Maybe it would be, if it was you and me doing it. But they’re … they’re so horrendous. Just a bunch of shouty spoiled toffs. Their lead negotiating guy has already started dropping heavy hints about ending up at some strip club tonight. But the business they’re bringing – it’s gonna be huge. So …’ he trailed off. ‘Well. You know.’

  She should say something now, she realised in a lightning flash, perhaps along the lines of looking but not touching at this strip club, of not getting any ideas, but somehow the words stuck in her throat. They felt presumptuous, clichéd, vulgar.

  And with that phrase look but don’t touch, suddenly Jack Bergmann was in the forefront of her min
d again, with his easy kindness and rolling biceps.

  She blinked his face away. What was the matter with her?

  ‘I guess you’ll be unavailable for a while then,’ she said to Adi, trying to muster a smile.

  He didn’t return it, and she realised that yes, she should have said what she planned to say. It had been another opportunity to cement their intimacy, one that she’d once again spurned. Neither of them ever committed, in word or in action. They skirted around each other, as skittish as teenagers, shooting jokes at one another, each waiting for the other to break first.

  Completely pointless.

  And yet …

  ‘You can still text me, though – if anything comes up.’ He ran his hand through his velvety dark hair, before remembering to pat his neat hairdo smooth again. ‘You know, if I have to, I can escape the Personality Vacuum. Don’t let that stop you, seriously.’

  She laughed then, and he did too, and for the first time that day, she felt almost normal, almost okay. Then there was a sudden rapping on wood, and he turned, startled.

  ‘Gotta go, Fee. That’s Andreas.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said, trying to keep smiling, at least until the call finished. ‘Have fun.’

  ‘I’ll try. Look,’ and he was urgent now. ‘Promise me you won’t stay at that cottage. Please.’

  She scrunched up the napkin the latte had come with and wiped her nose with it. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll find a hotel.’

  ‘I’ll call you tonight.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  A long pause, pregnant now with the words neither of them said.

  ‘Bye.’

  And then he was gone.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  In front of her, between the two big viewing windows, the world’s troubles were being blasted across the waiting area on a television – BBC news.

  There was already a tiny propeller plane on the forecourt, with Loganair painted near its nose. From the departure board it looked as if it was heading to North Ronaldsay, and she marvelled for a moment at the idea of such a fragile thing with its feathery blades crossing those stormy seas, even if the journey was only minutes long.