‘I’m an old friend of Jess Thomas’s, but I’ve been away, I’ve lost touch. I found her work address in the book but she’s not there and the someone told me she did a lot of work for you and…’ ‘She lives there,’ said Fox. ‘Battersea. In that last little pocket of… well, if she’s not there, I really can’t help. The people who could are in Nepal, climbing, I gather you have to, it’s all uphill in Nepal. So that’s not much use.’
‘Who are they, the people in Nepal?’
‘Mark and Natalie. They’re the Craig and the Zampatti, the principals here. Look, leave your number, I’ll ask around. Umm.’
A wait.
‘There is someone you might try called David Nunn. They came to our Christmas party together. An item, I thought, more than just good friends. You could try him. He’s with Musgrove amp; Wolters, I can give you a number, it’s here somewhere…’ Caroline left her number and rang Musgrove amp; Wolters. David Nunn was in Singapore. It took almost an hour to reach him, late afternoon there.
Too late to stop lying.
‘Mr Nunn, Detective Sergeant Moody, Battersea police. I’m hoping you might be able to help me locate someone called Jessica Thomas. I understand you know her well.’
‘What’s happened?’ He was alarmed.
‘Possibly nothing. There was some sort of disturbance at her place the other night and she hasn’t been seen since earlier that evening. We’d like to be certain she’s unharmed.’
‘Well, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for a while, not since January or February.’
‘Close family?’
‘She doesn’t have any.’
‘Friends?’
‘Anne Cerchi, she’s a good friend.’
‘Do you have an address?’
‘Not a number, no, it’s in Ladbroke Grove.’
The old address.
‘We’ve tried her. Anyone else?’
‘Umm, she’s friends with Natalie Zampatti. Natalie and Mark Craig. They’re architects, the firm’s…’ ‘I know the firm.’
‘Right. She goes back a long way with Natalie, with the family, I think.’
‘They can’t be contacted. They’re in Nepal.’
‘Shit.’
‘Anywhere she might go? She might want to get away from everything?’ ‘Not that I know of, no.’
She said her thanks and sat for a long time with her eyes closed, slumped, an ache in her shoulders, in the back of her neck. Then, a man and a woman walked by, the woman laughed, a shrill birdlike sound.
What else to do, to try? Help me, McClatchie, she thought, wherever you are, help me.
73
…WALES…
Niemand got up early, left Jess asleep, innocent-faced, and went for a look around. They were high here, the farm buildings on a terrace cut into the hillside. Behind it, the slope was dotted with scrubby wind-whipped trees and then there were conifers, solid, dark.
Below the farm, the road twisted down the hill and crossed a small stone bridge over a stream. He couldn’t see water but the stream’s course was marked by dense vegetation. Low drystone walls flanked the road and all around on the slopes other walls marked out fields, nothing in them, no farm animals, no signs of tillage.
He could see where the road ended at a gate. From behind the barn, a track, deep wheel ruts, went around the side of the hill. There were no other buildings in sight, no power lines.
He went into the dark house and took the map off the corkboard in the kitchen, went outside and sat on an old bench beside the front door. It was large-scale, British Ordnance Survey, a decent map. He knew about maps, he had had maps beaten into him-reading them, memorising them, summoning them up on moonless nights in swampy tropical lowlands and high, hard, broken country.
Someone had marked the position of the farm in ballpoint. He traced the road they’d come on, the village, some long name full of ‘l’s and ‘m’s, the other roads around them. There weren’t many roads and most of them dead-ends. He studied the contours, the elevations, the beacons, the watercourses. A little peace began to fall on him. It would be hard for anyone to surprise them here.
‘You sneaked away.’
Jess, still in her nightdress, arms folded against the cold, no makeup. She looked like a teenager, he thought. Beautiful. He looked away, shy.
‘Nice country,’ Niemand said. ‘Looks like sheep country but no sheep.’
She came up behind the bench and kissed the back of his neck, put both hands on his forehead and pulled his head against her stomach. He felt the soft warmth of her and a lump rose in his throat.
Niemand made breakfast out of cans in the pantry: grilled tomatoes and pork sausages. There was mustard powder and he made some with water and a little dark fragrant vinegar.
‘Useful around the house then,’ she said when she came from the bathroom, shining clean, hair damp.
They ate.
‘Good this,’ she said. ‘Who says you need fresh food? I could live out of cans.’
They were almost finished when he realised that he hadn’t noticed her eating. His feeling about eating with other people seemed to have left him.
‘There are clothes here,’ she said. ‘But you’ll drown in them, he’s big and overweight. Fat, actually.’
Niemand knew he should do what he had said he would do. Go. He had a chance of finding the Irishman and they could get him out of the country. But his fears had abated. How could they find them here, so far from London? He thought he knew how they’d found him at Jess’s place. The motorbike. The registration. It was obvious. The man chasing him had got the number, they could bribe the owner’s address out of some clerk.
But now these people had nothing to go on. Jess had brought him to a remote farm owned by a sister of a friend and the friend was somewhere far away, Nepal, and the sister was in America.
These people didn’t have supernatural powers. They’d had luck, that was all. Just luck.
They washed up, she said, let me do it, she pushed him with a hip, he pushed back, they bumped and jostled, laughing, at the end she rested her head on his arm for a few seconds. He kissed her hair. She turned her head and he was kissing her lips, faintly salty.
He broke away. Something said, she’ll think that’s all you want.
‘Could we stay for a while?’ he said. As he said the word, he thought, we, who am I to say, we?
Jess nodded. ‘I’ve got nothing urgent.’
He showered and found clothes that hung on him. They went outside, walked down the track around the side of the hill, shoulders touching, hips touching. He found her hand, long fingers.
‘Tell me about your life,’ she said. ‘We’re like people who meet because they crash into each other.’
They walked in the wind, a sky to eternity, torn-tissue clouds. He talked, he told her. He had never told anyone. He couldn’t remember anyone ever asking, but he wouldn’t have told them.
‘When I was a kid, my dad wouldn’t come home for days. An alcoholic. Once my mother was in hospital and he wasn’t there and the welfare took me, put me in this place. The man there tried to make me…do things. He beat me with a belt, I was bleeding. The belt buckle. I remember later I could see the buckle on my legs. Anyway, I ran away, to the railway yards. My pants and my shirt stuck to me, the blood. I was there for weeks, hiding in the old carriages, the black men gave me food, the workers, they had nothing, they owed white people bugger all, they were treated like dirt, but they looked after me. That, I’ve never forgotten that. No. You end up with these pricks, they’d waste any black. Well, this white guard saw me one day, he chased me, he couldn’t catch me, and the police came with a dog and it sniffed me out. They took me home. My dad was sober and my mother came back, so that was okay for a while.’ He stopped. ‘You don’t want to hear this stuff.’
Jess swung their arms, bounced her right temple against his upper arm. ‘Yes. I want to hear it.’