The Lies We Told(32)
Afterwards, when the ordeal was finally over and she and Mac were standing outside the station doors staring back at each other, she found she was shaking so violently that Mac had to reach out and clamp her arms firmly to her sides. ‘I’m so sorry, Clara,’ he said miserably, ‘I’m so fucking sorry you’re having to deal with this.’
She looked dazedly back at him. ‘Mac, I wouldn’t be able to cope with any of it if it wasn’t for you.’
He hugged her then, wrapping her tightly in his arms and when they drew apart he exhaled a long breath. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s get the fuck out of here and have a drink.’
It made the national news later that night. Clara was sitting on Mac’s sofa, half-heartedly picking at some pasta he’d made for her when Luke’s face suddenly loomed large on the TV screen. She cried out in shock, causing Mac to rush in from the kitchen and together they watched in silence.
‘Fears grow for missing London man, Luke Lawson,’ the newsreader said. It was the picture she’d taken of him herself earlier that year, at a bar in King’s Cross where they’d all gone to celebrate his twenty-ninth birthday, and for a moment she was back there again, tasting the tequila shots, laughing as the whole bar joined in with an impromptu round of Happy Birthday. Luke smiled back at her from the TV screen with joyful, blameless eyes.
Anderson appeared next, addressing the camera, describing Luke’s last-known movements before he was replaced by the CCTV footage of Luke leaving work. She watched as the familiar, denim-jacketed figure with its loose easy gait made its way up Duck Lane. When the film cut to a still of the abandoned blue van she stared at it in dismay. Such a lonely, desolate spot: had Luke really been there? It seemed unimaginable. Next, and most distressing of all, was a close-up of the bloodstained seat.
Finally, there Clara herself was. Huddled between Anderson and DCI Carter, her face deathly pale, her voice shaking as she read from the piece of paper that trembled in her hand. ‘My boyfriend Luke is a kind and loving man,’ she began. ‘We all – his family, his friends – we all miss him so much. If anyone knows anything, anything at all, please, please come forward. We haven’t seen him for four days, and we just want him back …’ An information number ran along the bottom of the screen as she talked. When she finished, the camera zoomed in on her face, lingering on her tears. After a few more words from the detective chief inspector, the film cut back to the studio, the newsreader soon replaced by a weatherman standing before a map of Britain annotated with swirling clouds of rain.
For two days, Mac and Clara holed up in his flat on the Holloway Road, an anxious, stultifying existence while they waited for news, broken only by aimless walks around Highbury Fields beneath the muggy April sky. On the third day they sat miserably in Mac’s local, staring into their pint glasses. ‘Shouldn’t you be working?’ Clara asked him, it suddenly occurring to her that he hadn’t been disappearing off at night with his camera as usual.
‘I’m taking a break for a while,’ he told her. ‘Perk of being freelance, I guess.’ He looked at her. ‘How about you? How long have you got off?’
‘A couple of weeks. They said I could tack some holiday time on to that.’
He nodded and each of them silently wondered the same unknowable thing: how long would it be before they were released from this nightmare?
Realizing she could put it off no longer she phoned her parents in Portugal, downplaying the situation for all she was worth – as much out of her ingrained desire not to cause them any trouble as to prevent them from flying over to stay with her: she wasn’t sure she could cope with that on top of everything else. ‘No, no,’ she soothed, ‘there’s nothing you can do. The police are handling it. I’m sure there’ll be good news soon. I’m OK. Honest, Mum, I’m fine. Mac’s looking after me, and Zoe. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.’
Her conversations with Anderson did little to lift her spirits. They had found no identifiable fingerprints in her flat and the upstairs neighbour, who it turned out was named Alison Fournier, a twenty-eight-year-old IT specialist from Leeds, had been traced to her cousin’s home in Middlesex, where she’d been staying since a day before the break-in. They had ‘no reason to think she was involved’, Anderson said.
‘But … what about the sweatshirt?’
‘We’re satisfied that it belongs to Ms Fournier.’
‘Well, what now, then?’ she asked desperately.
‘We’re doing all we can,’ he replied. ‘Clara, we are looking into everything, I assure you we’re doing our utmost to get to the bottom of this, and I’ll be in touch as soon as we have more news.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘OK.’
After she’d put the phone down, she met Mac’s gaze and he shook his head in silent sympathy.
‘This is day eight,’ she told him helplessly. ‘Day fucking eight since Luke went missing. Four days since they found the van. They’ve had no useful response to the appeal, he’s just completely vanished. How can that be possible? How can anyone disappear into thin air?’ Her voice rose in despair. ‘What if this is it, Mac? What if they simply give up on him and we never see Luke again? If his mum and dad never see him again?’
‘No one’s going to give up on him, Clara,’ Mac told her firmly. ‘They know what they’re doing. We have to trust that they’ll find him.’