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.’
‘I feel so fucking useless.’
They sat listening to the rush-hour traffic passing below, the noises from the kebab shop on the street directly beneath them. Through the wall came the applause and canned laughter of the neighbour’s TV set. Day was drifting into night, but neither of them moved to turn on the light and a thick gloom settled into the corners of the room.
‘Whoever sent the emails knows Luke well,’ Clara said. ‘Someone he must have been close to once, who for whatever reason holds a grudge.’
Mac frowned. ‘Yes, but surely the police have looked into who that might be?’
She nodded impatiently. ‘Yeah, maybe, but they said they’d not found anything suspicious.’
‘So …?’
‘Well, I don’t know – maybe we should start looking into it ourselves? Between us we’ve probably got a good idea of the different girlfriends, colleagues, flatmates and so on Luke has had over the years. Maybe the police have missed something?’
‘Hmmm …’ said Mac doubtfully.
‘But they could have. You were at school with him, and we both know some of his old uni friends, past flatmates, or colleagues he’s mentioned. I’m sure if we start digging … maybe the police have missed someone? And no one knows Luke like we do; we’d have a better idea if, say, something was mentioned that sounded off about his past behaviour, or if they said something that didn’t fit with what he’d told us. And at least we’d be doing something. I feel like we’re going slowly insane here.’
He pulled on his lip. ‘That’s true.’
‘Will you help me?’ She looked at him beseechingly until he sighed.
‘OK. If it’ll make you feel better, sure.’
She smiled. ‘Good. We need to make a list of people to approach. Ex-girlfriends from school and uni, old flatmates and female friends, women he used to work with – before Brindle, I mean. Anyone at all that he might have got on the wrong side of, or who might know of someone he fell out with at some point.’ She pulled out her phone. ‘Get your laptop. Let’s start with Facebook.’
For more than an hour they sat side by side in silent concentration. It was slow work: Miles, a friend from Luke’s uni days, was still in touch with the sister of Luke’s ex-girlfriend Jade. Andrew, who once worked with Luke at the digital publishing company he’d been at before Brindle, was Facebook friends with a woman who’d been on his team there, who herself still kept in contact with a couple more of their female colleagues. Yet despite the difficulty of their task, for the first time in days Clara felt a sense of purpose, and bit by bit a list of women began to emerge.
‘I’m worried this could be a massive waste of time,’ Mac said.
‘Keep going,’ she replied, her eyes still on her phone. ‘At least it’s a start.’
They were about to take a break when Clara noticed the New Message symbol on her Facebook page. She frowned in confusion when she saw she’d been contacted by someone calling themselves ‘Rumpelteazer’. But when she read the message, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. ‘Oh my God!’ she shouted.
Mac looked up in alarm. ‘What? What’s happened?’
Wordlessly she handed him her phone. The message had been sent from a locked account, with a blank Profile picture. Mac read it out loud.
‘“Clara. I saw you on the news. I’m Luke’s sister Emily Lawson. It’s very important you don’t tell my family I’ve contacted you. Do not tell the police. Can we meet?”’
Mac’s mouth fell open in shock. ‘No way,’ he said, as he looked from the message to Clara’s face then back again. ‘No way that’s her …’
‘I don’t know. I mean …’
They stared at each other. ‘Why has she called herself “Rumpelteazer”?’ Mac asked.
Clara gave a gasp of realization. ‘It’s from the book! Luke’s book, the one Emily gave him before she left. Don’t you remember? The T.S. Eliot one about cats.’
Mac shook his head. ‘Is it?’