Wrong Place Wrong Time(103)

‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘Nobody comes in or out.’

She tugs at one of the bins with a gloved hand. It moves easily. She opens both bins, then stares in. Nothing. One pristine, looks never used. It doesn’t smell of cleaning fluid. The other has a single can of Carling in it, but the stain that’s dribbled out of it is ancient, a dark brown fuzz.

She adds it to her mental list: fingertip searchers and forensics on the bins. This skill is now a living, breathing thing. The way tasks leap up the priority list. A mystical but methodical sort of sifting, the larger items naturally rising to the surface, the finer grains falling to the bottom. She gets it right most times. But not enough.

She casts a gaze across the ground. Old chewing gum. She’s looking for blood. A weapon. Signs of a struggle. But there’s nothing.

‘Right,’ she says, taking another look before she leaves. She’s freezing. There’s so much to do, and none of it here. She gets her phone out. ‘I need every single bit of CCTV on this alleyway,’ she says to Jonathan.

‘Mad, isn’t it?’

‘Completely and utterly,’ Julia says, looking at the walls, looking for tiny holes. Could somebody have used a ladder, then taken it off the wall …? She scans again, but sees nothing but clear bricks, mortar, nothing.

‘Maybe it wasn’t her,’ Jonathan says.

‘If it wasn’t, whoever it was still went in and never left,’ Julia replies.

‘Yeah,’ he says slowly. ‘Yeah. I’ll send it. But I have watched it. I promise, she doesn’t come back out.’

It’s after midnight, and Julia leaves the station with gritty eyes that have watched four videos at a time on her monitor, followed by another four. She has covered every single camera, and every single minute. She has barely blinked.

It can’t be true, but it is: Olivia goes into the alleyway and doesn’t leave. Nobody else walks in there. The bins do not go in or out. At two o’clock in the morning, a fox enters then exits. And that’s it. No cars, no people. Nothing. She’s called both the estate agents and the pub, and both have confirmed the bins aren’t used. ‘Why are they there then?’ Julia asked, and neither could give a satisfactory answer. They’re on Julia’s list, somewhere in the middle, troubling her like a couple of nuisance summer flies. Think, she implores herself. Think outside of the box.

She is now walking to her car. She’s parked half a mile away, due to a lack of police parking spaces. The younger guys steal them, getting in earlier and earlier, and she lets them. She rubs at her forehead. This morning feels a hundred years ago. Another day that’s passed without her seeing her children. Perhaps Art was right.

Out of guilt, she checks Saskia’s last seen. Two minutes ago. ‘You up?’ she texts.

Saskia calls immediately, just as Julia wanted her to. ‘Always,’ she says. She has inherited Julia’s insomnia.

‘Same,’ Julia says with a smile. How amazing that Saskia, her posing toddler, once a fan of wearing sunglasses and a volatile expression, is now an adult she can call up for a late-night chat.

‘We made dinner, in the end,’ Saskia says. ‘We’ve saved Nando’s for tomorrow. How are the criminals?’

‘We have a missing person, actually, not much older than you.’

‘Ooh. Colour me intrigued. Cal is still up, too,’ Saskia says. ‘Want him on?’

‘Sure,’ Julia says, her voice high and light. Her two children’s voices chorus down the phone to her, and she closes her eyes. It’s okay. They’re okay. She’s okay.

‘Saskia is doing last-minute cramming,’ Cal says to her in his low, amused drawl. Julia’s children are as opposite as can be. Saskia may be sardonic, but she is also a conformist. Happy to work hard and get a good job, finds life easy. Cal is on the fringes, awkward, emotional, intense.

Julia’s breath makes cirrus clouds in the cold April air as she walks. She cuts through a park, the iron gate singing behind her, the sky dark blueberry beyond. There’s nobody around, except her; except them.

‘I’m just looking it over,’ Saskia says.

‘Where are you?’ Cal asks. Julia is glad he’s at home. Wholesome, fifteen, and with his older sibling. She closes her eyes. She doesn’t regret it.

‘Almost at the car, now,’ she says.

‘Is it juicy?’ Saskia asks. ‘The misper?’

‘Very.’

‘Oh – how so?’

‘Disappeared into an alleyway – only it’s blocked up. No escape. Riddle me that,’ Julia says.

‘Wow,’ Saskia says. ‘That’s so weird. You need the TikTok detectives on the case.’

Julia has to laugh. ‘Maybe I actually do.’

‘What’s that saying? You can’t hide one body, but you can hide a body in a hundred pieces?’

‘Jesus, Saskia,’ Cal says.

‘I know,’ Julia says. ‘Right – home in ten. Love to you both.’ She hangs up. It isn’t even a ten-minute drive to home, new home, anyway. After everything with Art, they moved, even though it felt like the wrong thing to do, to move house together, still as a family, while she and Art sleep in separate bedrooms and ruminate (Julia can only speak for herself here).

But now they have a new semi-detached house for which they paid a huge premium: it’s overlooking the beach at Portishead. During winter storms, the sand glasses the windows and blows in the cracks. Julia finds it everywhere. It is unimaginably romantic.