Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

  ‘And now the weather,’ said a man on the television, as though reading her thoughts. ‘Deep snowstorms throughout most parts of Great Britain and Ireland, with plummeting temperatures and rising winds in Scotland and the North which are destined to get worse after the weekend. The RAC are reporting record numbers of callouts …’

  The ghost of a thought occurred to her then, of Madison trapped somewhere in her rental car on these bleak isles, broken down perhaps, injured in a ditch somewhere, freezing to death, the petrol running her car heater having long since run out.

  And she was sitting here in the warm, doing nothing …

  She shook her head free. Don’t do this. Though they appear huge and empty, these islands are really quite small. Someone would have seen her by now if that was the case.

  You did what you were supposed to.

  But still …

  She typed in yet another text, to join the dozens she had already sent since Mads had gone missing.

  I know you probably can’t read this or reply to it, but if you can, please please do, Mads. I’m at the airport in Kirkwall waiting for your mum and Hugo. We’re so frightened for you. Please put us out of our misery. And if you can’t, then know we’re looking for you. Love always, Fee XXXXX

  P.S. I have commandeered your wolfy hat so if you want it back please get in touch.

  None of these texts had been answered, but still, she sat with the phone loosely in her hand, as though Madison would respond instantly, the way she usually did.

  The little lounge was starting to fill up – old men with white fisherman’s beards, harried mums and excited children, the latter running across the concourse and looking like little starfish in their mittens and thick winter coats.

  Quickly she drained her coffee, put her untouched paperback back into her bag, some crime novel – it had seemed so appealing when she bought it, but now its dark content felt too close to home. Outside, orange windsocks streamed out in the lively breeze.

  The plane was arriving, right on time – a proper-sized plane this time, and after what could only be a few minutes of delay, the crushed, dishevelled passengers were emerging into the freezing wind, fastening their coats, cramming down hats and wrapping scarves around their throats. Judy would be amongst the last off, Fiona expected – or would she be the first, being in a wheelchair?

  And Hugo would be with her. The thought was enough to push her anxiety almost into nausea.

  Well, it made no difference. She would be civil.

  Act like nothing had happened.

  Be careful not to be alone with him.

  She stood up, wandered up to the glass, pretending to herself that she was controlling her impatience, despite the fact her teeth were sunk into her bottom lip.

  The first arrivals were reaching the glass doors, emerging on to the small concourse, some hobbling through with grim determination, others being caught up in kisses and bear hugs. Fiona could feel it all around her, this static of noise and interaction, a human sea surrounding her while she stood there, her own island of dread and loneliness.

  She needed to perk up. It wouldn’t do to look as worried as she felt in front of Judy.

  Oh God. Please God. Don’t let Hugo be with her.

  The stream of passengers was dwindling away now, a few stragglers hurrying to the glass doors, the wind licking their scarf ends and free hair into swirling shapes, battening the padded material of their jackets.

  She schooled her expression into something neutral, something serious but not grave, and waited.

  And waited.

  Fiona knew it would take a little while to get Judy and her wheelchair off the plane, so she wasn’t alarmed, not really, even when the loudspeaker began to announce the flight back to Glasgow, or at least until she saw the small flurry of departing passengers crossing quickly across the tarmac through the doors, heading for the plane.

  A small, sick feeling shot through her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she asked the cheerful-faced woman in a blue shirt sitting at the information desk. ‘I’m waiting for a passenger. Judy Kowalczyk. She was supposed to be on flight LM434 …’

  ‘Aye? From Glasgow?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the one …’

  ‘Well, that plane’s boarding again now. Are you sure you didn’t miss one another?’

  ‘No, we wouldn’t have done. She would have been in a wheelchair.’

  ‘She can’t be on the plane. Are you quite sure you didn’t miss her?’

  ‘I …’ Fiona’s head twisted this way and that. Could she have missed her? It would merely have been another impossible thing after all, in a hail of impossible things. ‘I don’t see how. Can you tell me if she was on board? Her name is Judy Kowa …’

  ‘I’m sorry, love, I can’t tell you about the passenger list. Data protection. Perhaps she was late for her flight.’

  ‘But – but she texted me from Majorca. From the airport …’

  The woman’s eyes were calm, sympathetic, but there would be no budging. ‘I don’t know what to tell you. Has she got a mobile? Try texting her.’

  Of course. Text her. Fiona was already pulling her phone out.

  ‘If she’s missed this flight …?’ she asked.

  The woman anticipated her, smiling, clearly glad reason was winning out over panic. ‘The next flight in from Glasgow is at seven-fifteen tonight. If she’s not on that, it will be tomorrow.’

  Fiona thanked the woman, her fingers quickly working the screen, still peering at the boarding passengers, the plane, the concourse, as if Judy had somehow sneaked out past her vigilance, perhaps by hiding in one of the luggage trolleys.

  She hit Send and waited.

  She didn’t even put the phone away, carrying it as she drifted through the airport, checking the toilets, emerging into the car park at the front, her nerveless, gloveless fingers clasping it, waiting for that telltale vibration, for Judy to explain what was happening.

  But she didn’t.

  An hour later, when Fiona finally climbed into her freezing car alone and defeated, the northern clouds were falling over all like a fire blanket, and there had still been no reply.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  ‘Her mum didn’t show up.’

  Fiona could hear that thin, tiny tremor in her voice, as though Judy was her own mother and had abandoned her.

  Jack sighed down the line. He’d picked up Iris’s phone – she was in the shower, he said. Fiona could hear a television going in the background, and Becky, her voice raised, demanding to know who had not switched the dishwasher on.

  It had felt an imposition to call, especially this day, Sunday, the archaeologists’ day off.

  But she simply couldn’t do this alone, she realised.

  ‘Bloody hell, Fiona, you’re getting no joy lately, are you?’ he observed.

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘But I think you’ll find this is something trivial. She likely missed her plane. She’ll be on the next. She won’t be able to contact you if she’s in the air.’

  ‘That’s just the point, Jack – she won’t be in the air yet. Her flight from Glasgow won’t take off till this evening.’

  ‘Do you know what plane she was supposed to catch from Majorca?’

  ‘No. And she’s still not texted me back, or answered the phone …’

  She’d left Adi a text and there had been no reply, though she was not expecting one. He was probably being ushered around the Fraumünster even as they spoke.

  Or not. It was as though there had been some apocalypse beyond Orkney’s southern shores, and the world beyond had vanished. She imagined London empty and silent, the buses inert and abandoned, only the pigeons still going about their business. She imagined Judy’s flat in Majorca, her pet parrots trapped in their cage, waiting for someone to feed them, someone who would never come …

  She thought she was going to scream.

  Somehow it seemed as though Jack sensed this down the phone. ‘Where are you?’
r />   ‘I’m at the hotel. The Lynnewood. I … I didn’t know where else to go. I thought, you know, perhaps I missed her and she caught a taxi here from the airport, and …’

  Her storm of tears caught her off-guard, sudden and sheet-thick.

  ‘Okay, I’m going to come and get you,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t need to do that …’ She was embarrassed suddenly. Here she was, a senior lecturer at a prestigious university, a putative grown-up, weeping down the phone to virtual strangers. She was aware of herself as unhinged and needy, a growing burden.

  ‘Of course I do. This is our problem too, remember?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘I’ll be right there, okay? Don’t go anywhere.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Jack was sitting out in the car park in the dig’s van, just switching the engine off, when she walked over to join him. He was back in his fleeced hoodie, his chin freshly shaved but his blond head stubble giving him a dishevelled look. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was low, as it always seemed to be this far north, and cast an elongated version of him as he jumped out to meet her, his shadow reaching her long before he did.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been waiting out here all this time, Sword Lady.’ He reached down, gently squeezed her in greeting. ‘You must be freezing.’

  ‘No. I saw you pull in from inside. I just … I wanted to get out of the hotel.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Sorry about the drama on the phone earlier.’

  He waved that away. ‘Did you hear from Madison’s mum yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sure you will.’

  Fiona wanted to believe this. ‘I hope so. Bloody hell, it’s almost exactly what happened with Madison. I feel like I’m losing my mind.’

  ‘It’s always in the last place you look.’ He grinned at her, as though selling his weak joke through sheer force of personality, and she found herself bursting into nervous laughter.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Come on. There’s no need to panic yet. When’s the next flight?’

  ‘Seven-fifteen.’

  ‘So we’ve time to kill.’ He folded his arms. ‘Do you want to see something very cool?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly use up your day off …’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Do you want to see something cool or not?’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  She let her bag fall on to the seat first, then climbed up towards it. Jack was already starting the van, and she felt the breath of the heater, still warm. She flexed her cold fingers against the grilles, letting the hot air rush past them.

  She was starting to calm down. It was a simple travel snafu. Nothing that required this level of histrionics.

  ‘You need proper gloves,’ observed Jack, startling her out of these thoughts.

  She glanced down at her thin green fashion gloves. ‘I need proper everything. I managed to buy boots in Kirkwall, at least. I was not really prepped for this trip, to be honest.’ She offered him a sad smile. ‘Is it obvious?’

  ‘And yet you came,’ he said. He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘And at short notice. I suppose I’m wondering why.’

  ‘Well, I …’

  Why had she come? She’d come because Dom was back on the scene, and because Madison was in trouble, obviously.

  And she would have said as much, but she had a sudden burst of memory then, or rather something re-remembered; a bright flash, almost as though she was watching a film. She was lying in her bath in her little flat on Saxon Street, and Madison was on the phone, and she was saying …

  ‘She said there was something she needed to show me.’

  As Fiona said the words out loud, she felt for the first time their real significance.

  ‘Show you?’ Jack’s brow furrowed impressively.

  ‘Yep,’ she said, filled with a kind of vague wonder. Why was she remembering this now? ‘That’s exactly what she said.’

  Of course, she had mentally scrutinised every conversation she had had with Mads since her disappearance, searching for some clue, some snippet that could help. How had she forgotten this?

  You didn’t forget what Mads said. You just thought it didn’t matter. You thought that she was just covering for her fear, for her anxiousness that Dom was on her trail again.

  She turned to Jack, who was peering over the wheel, trying to see around a blocky sandstone building into the street beyond to make a turning.

  ‘Do you have any idea what she meant?’ Fiona asked.

  ‘No.’ He rubbed his chin with his hand. ‘But surely she meant the dig.’ He gave her a roguish wink. ‘Let’s see if we can persuade Iris to let you have a little poke around the finds tomorrow.’

  22

  Cala Llombards, Majorca, July 2019

  ‘I hate him,’ Madison told Fiona, while they lazed on the beach together near Judy’s house. Madison was leaning up on her elbow, her sunglasses pulled down low. ‘I fucking hate him.’

  They had arranged this holiday a few months ago, during an icy English winter while they rubbed their hands ruefully in the front room of Madison’s flat and fantasised about escape – they would spend a couple of nights with Judy on Majorca, then travel on to Ibiza on spec and do some clubbing.

  But somehow, the ‘couple of nights’ here had become the whole week, and Ibiza dropped out of the picture. Still, Fiona was happy enough – money was short for both of them at the moment, and Judy’s villa was gorgeous, beautifully situated on top of the cliffs overlooking the white sands of Cala Llombards, and her guest room window was a pure piece of plate glass, giving fantastic views of the sea.

  That was before they discovered Madison’s brother and his wife would be here too.

  Fiona, lying on her back on her red beach towel, opened her eyes, blinked at Madison.

  ‘Are you talking about Hugo?’

  ‘Who do you think I mean?’ she huffed. Her skin gleamed with sunscreen. ‘The fucking twat.’

  ‘What’s he done now?’ Fiona asked.

  Madison didn’t reply immediately, merely shaking her head. ‘He … well,’ she said, her voice crisp, ‘I think he’s “borrowing” money off her.’ Madison waggled angry little quotation marks with her fingers.

  ‘Off who?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘Mum.’ Madison threw down her sunglasses on to her towel, as though they disgusted her.

  ‘Is he? But I thought his business was doing so well …’

  ‘Told you that, did he?’ Madison didn’t look at her.

  ‘He’s always dressed in the best, got the newest car …’ Fiona ventured. ‘Always off skiing with Tara …’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Madison with real bitterness. ‘He’s got looking the part of the successful financial advisor right. That’s down pat. What he doesn’t have is any “free capital”, apparently. Or talent. Or investors.’

  Fiona pulled herself up, concerned. ‘What has your mum said?’

  ‘Nothing to me. But I came downstairs early this morning and I could hear Mum whispering to him, “Now, Hugo, I’ll need all of this back by the end of January. Please. Don’t let me down again.” Then I walked in, pretending I hadn’t heard anything, and they both started up this false, chatty “Did you sleep all right, Madison darling?” thing.’

  ‘“Let me down again?”’ asked Fiona.

  Madison replied with an ominous nod. ‘Caught that, did you?’ She sighed. ‘I’ve had a feeling that something’s been going on for a while.’

  They both fell silent, Madison staring out to the crystal blue sea.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mads. What are you going to do?’

  ‘What can I do?’ asked Madison. ‘It’s her money.’ She rolled over on her towel. ‘And if he has his way, it will be his money.’

  ‘Well, if he’s borrowing off her …’

  ‘Not just that,’ said Madison, with a decisive slice of her hand. ‘He keeps making all of these noises about wanting power of attorney if she gets too sick to make
decisions.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You know she’s got a bad heart. He wants to be able to control the money if anything happens to her.’

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘Why’s he moved over here so suddenly?’ hissed Madison, though they were the only people around. ‘I think he’s lost his house. Not that Mum will tell me anything.’ She let her head drop back to her towel with a furious sigh. ‘He always was her favourite.’

  ‘Since he’s the oldest, wouldn’t he get power of attorney anyway?’ asked Fiona.

  Madison had simply smiled. ‘No. He might be my mum’s favourite, but she’s not completely stupid.’ She closed her eyes. ‘If anything happens to her, the power of attorney goes to me.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The sea bream was undercooked and glassy, the vegetables had barely seen the water. The anchovy crust was little more than mush. The whole thing could have done with at least another ten minutes in the oven, but nobody pointed this out, or had the opportunity to, as Tara, Hugo’s wife, chattered on and on, in the strain of a pre-emptive conversational strike.

  ‘I think nothing ruins a fish more than overcooking it, don’t you? Losing all the vitamins and micronutrients, you might as well just throw it in the bin.’ Her face was flushed in the rising Mediterranean heat, her messy blonde ponytail flicking from side to side as she set the tray and its contents on the table.

  ‘Oh yes, dear,’ said Judy, her breathy voice sweet. She liked Tara. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘It makes no difference to me,’ said Hugo, who sat at the table, his pink shirt rolled up his forearms and collar open, with a glass of Grenache in front of him that he never let get less than half full. ‘I just eat what she puts in front of me, isn’t that right, love?’

  He turned to Tara, who was quickly spooning the fish and the vegetables on to plates, and offered her a vague smile, as though she was an amusing pet.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ said Fiona, accepting her portion and managing to smile. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘You’re so lucky, Judy. They do such nice fish here,’ said Tara, who never seemed to know what to do with Fiona, and so found it best to ignore her. ‘Fresh straight out of the sea!’