The Family Remains(40)

I wonder about this building as I press play and continue to watch the video; the private bar gives the impression of it being a club of some sort. I wonder where it is. And then suddenly the front door swings wide open and we are in a manicured garden with small mazes carved into low hedges and a pair of cannons on stone pedestals, and the band heads down this path still playing their instruments. The lead singer has his face in front of the camera for most of the time, leaning down into it as if it is held by a very small person. And then the camera turns and we are, I see, by the River Thames – in Chelsea, I would hazard, the Embankment maybe.

The camera turns and I see the building in full: a double-fronted house, with three rows of windows; four on the bottom, six in the middle, six on the top.

Something inside my gut kicks out against my spine, hard. I hit the pause button again and I stare at the house. This video was filmed in 1988. The same year that Philip Dunlop-Evers claims his family fell out with his sister; the last time his family says they saw her; the time that she was about to be kicked out of her flat because she’d acquired a cat without permission; the same time a friend with a big house had suggested she might be able to stay with them for a while.

I take a photo of the image of the house paused on my screen and I leave my office, collecting my colleague Donal on the way.

‘Where are we going, boss?’

‘We’re going to Chelsea, Donal. We’re going to Chelsea.’





34





It’s five o’clock on Monday afternoon and Alf has just arrived at Henry’s apartment after an after-school club. They bump fists at the front door and Alf follows Marco in.

‘Yo. What’s going on?’

‘Fam. I cannot tell you. But bottom line: Henry’s gone and he won’t tell us where and he’s blocked me and he’s blocked my mum and we need to find him. Like, really badly. Can you do anything?’ Marco spreads his arm out across the display of Henry’s tech on the dining table.

Alf unloops his schoolbag from his torso and puts it on the back of a chair which he pulls out and sits on. He looks around the apartment. ‘Where’s your mum?’

‘Out with Stella.’

He shrugs and turns his attention to the devices. ‘These all his?’

‘Yeah.’

He tries switching them on in turn. Two of them are dead and he sends Marco to get the chargers. The other two come to life and he starts tapping at their screens.

‘Want anything to eat?’ Marco pulls open the fridge and looks at all the food that was left there before Henry disappeared which has not been replenished because his mum hasn’t been to the shops and is starting to look a little sad after four days. But there’s some unopened ham and a bag of grated cheese with no green bits and some eggs and Marco makes an omelette for each of them while Alf taps at Henry’s devices.

‘I’m in,’ he says. ‘His password is 0000. Can you even believe that? I mean, that’s, like, psychopathic.’

Alf taps and swipes and Marco brings the omelettes, a packet of fancy tortilla chips and two cans of Coke to the table.

Alf has accessed Henry’s email and is scrolling through it. ‘What is it you’re looking for, exactly?’

‘I dunno. Searches for flights, I guess. Hotel bookings. That kind of thing.’

‘Hold on.’ He double clicks on something and turns the screen towards Marco. ‘Look. He was chatting to someone on Tripadvisor. Someone called Nancy.’

They join heads to read the message. It seems to be a friendly chat about the woman’s experience at the game reserve where Libby’s dad Phin was working. But as they read the message thread, Marco sees that Henry has been asking her leading questions about Phin – or Finn, as the woman spells it – and that she has told Henry that Phin may have gone back to Chicago, where he has family. Marco and Alf shoot each other a look. Marco’s heart is pounding.

‘He’s gone to Chicago, hasn’t he?’ says Marco.

Alf nods.

‘Chicago is big.’

Alf nods again, then zooms up and down Henry’s inbox, but there’s no confirmation emails from hotels or booking engines.

‘Fuck,’ says Marco. ‘Where else could we look?’

‘I dunno. I dunno.’

Marco turns his attention back to his omelette and Alf puts his hand into the tortilla bag and pulls out a handful, which he throws into his mouth and crunches loudly.

‘Um, um, um,’ says Marco. ‘Let’s think.’

‘Browsing history? We could see which hotels he’d been looking at?’

‘Yeah. But he’d have been browsing on his main laptop. Not on this iPad.’

Alf shakes his head. ‘Doesn’t matter, if he’s logged in on both devices. Which it appears he is. So, let us have a look.’

And there it is. Henry’s browsing history. Bang up-to-date. The last thing he’d googled was a company that offered motorbike tours of the Magnificent Mile and Lake Michigan. Alf clicks on the contact link, where there is a phone number for a guy called Kris Doll.

‘Shall we call him?’

Marco shakes his head. ‘No. Shit. No. Don’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. Won’t he think it’s weird? And what would we even say?’