Local Gone Missing(22)

The signature is a scrawl but I know who it is. Now I want to know what they told each other. The painful things they dug up.

Leave it alone, Dee, I tell myself. It’s ancient history. And Phil is dead.

But I know I won’t. Can’t. It’s never over, is it? The past is always there, flickering like our old telly in a dark corner of my head. Most of the time, I can make myself blank it out, but little things—like a song that used to make me cry or the smell of cheap Chinese takeaway, our Friday night treat—make it fizz back into focus. I’ve got a lot of bad memories—my childhood was one long nightmare, really. But this is different. Unfinished business—a time bomb ticking quietly like a second heart in my chest.

I ring Claire and get a number for Phil’s sponsor. And dial.

“Hi, I’m Phil Golding’s sister. I wanted to thank you for helping him.”

“I was happy to—he was a lovely man. And I know he was planning to get in touch with you. Before . . .”

“Thanks for saying that.” I choke on the thought. “I hadn’t heard from him for years but it means a lot. I wish I’d known about the vigil but I didn’t find out until afterward. I hear there were some old friends who came.”

“Well, one. A man he’d only recently reconnected with. Apparently they knew each other when they were in their teens. In London. Actually, he said he was back staying in the same street where they used to live.”

And I’m back there too. Curled up on an old mattress. Waiting for my brother to come home.





NOW





Sixteen


SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2019





Elise


Elise’s Post-its were color coded in eye-watering tones—the only ones available at the paper shop. Screaming pink for Charles Williams, acid yellow for Charlie Perry, and neon green for Pauline. Elise started with the pinks. He’d been Williams until he’d moved to Ebbing, according to the records. Her money was on the “misunderstanding” in London prompting his reinvention as Mr. Perry.

This isn’t your first tangle with creditors, is it, Charlie? Her working theory was that Charlie had done his vanishing act to escape the looming cash crisis and she pictured him sunning himself like a lizard on a Spanish beach. And wondered what name he was using now.

Except he’s got a disabled daughter. Elise had been genuinely touched when he’d mentioned the girl the other day. That emotion had been real. Would he really abandon her? Leave without a word?

She looked through her pink notes and found the first wife’s name. Lila Nightingale. Nice and unusual. You don’t want to be looking for a Linda Smith. And found the birth of Charlie’s daughter, Sofia. She was now living in an institution about forty minutes north of Ebbing, according to the electoral register, but Elise couldn’t just ring her up. Charlie had mentioned brain damage and Pauline had said there was no point trying to talk to her.

I’ll have to speak to the mother.

There were three possible addresses linked to the name. Elise rang each one, her amateur-detective script rehearsed in her head.

“Hello. I am sorry to bother you but I am trying to contact people who might know Charles Williams, who used to live in Addison Gardens in Kensington.”

The first two were sorry but they’d never heard of him. The third, at an address in Surrey, went quiet on her when Elise said Charlie’s name.

“Ms. Nightingale? I think you may have been married to Mr. Williams in the nineteen eighties?”

“Who is this?”

“My name’s Ronnie Durrant,” Elise said, pinching her leg to punish the lie. “I’m a friend of Charlie’s second wife.”

“Well, if she wants to give him back, she’s barking up the wrong tree.”

“No, no. I’m ringing because we’re worried about him.”

“I stopped caring about Charles a very long time ago. Sorry.”

And the phone went dead.

Elise sat for a moment. “Well, that’s that,” she said out loud, but she knew she couldn’t leave it. She’d asked the first questions now. She needed to know the answers. It was like a deep itch. But she hesitated. She knew going to knock on Lila Nightingale’s door was taking the next step down a tricky road. The truth was that she shouldn’t be doing any of this—it was none of Elise’s business.

Oh, I’m just prodding about for a neighbor, she told herself. Just having a look, if anyone asks.



* * *



—

    Ronnie didn’t know whether to be pleased or offended when Elise told her she’d used her name. She plumped for pleased in the end and fetched her car keys.

“So I’ll be DI King,” she said as she started the Mini. “You’d better brief me on where we are on the case.”

I’m unleashing a monster. Elise groaned silently.

Forty-five minutes later, they pulled up outside the house. It was crammed into a terraced street with a bay window, a glossy racing green front door, and an enormous ginger cat stretched out on the sill to capture every ray of sun.

Lila Nightingale took her time to answer. Elise could see her approaching in the dimpled glass of the door, a small, dark figure shimmering toward her. When Lila opened the door, she was immaculately made-up—her face was painted a uniform creamy pink and her eyeliner looked as though it’d been applied with a laser. Elise found herself wondering if it was in someone else’s honor or if she painted on her younger face every morning.