I Came to Find a Girl (14 page)

Jason looked agitated. “You must have some idea. Is it Jenny?”

“Sir, I’m afraid I can’t divulge any information at this early stage.”

“You know though, don’t you?” Jason said, “I want to speak to someone. Who’s in charge?”

“Jase, they’re not going to tell us anything.” I tried to pull him away.

“My girlfriend, Jenny, she’s been missing four weeks. I’ve a right to know.” The boys on bikes looked at one another with open mouths as if to say, this is the real deal, but still the young policeman couldn’t or wouldn’t say a thing.

“Jase, leave it.” Warren pulled him away, and Donna and I followed, leaving behind the muffled sound of whispers.

“Look, flowers already.” Donna crouched down to place her bouquet next to a bunch of white chrysanthemums. The flowers were as close to the river as the police tape would allow. Donna crossed herself in prayer, as she read out the attached note: “Sleep sweetly, dear angel.”

Jason snorted. “She’s not asleep. She’s dead.”

“What shall I write?” Donna asked.

“Jen, you’re awesome, and we miss you,” I said, “or, I don’t know, mention what a great runner and chef she...”

“What if it’s not her?” Donna said.

“For fuck’s sake.” Jason walked off.

“I’ll go after him,” Warren said.

“Just put some kisses,” I said, “until we know.”

We walked away, glancing back at the riverside with its white mini-marquee shielding whatever grisly finds were being made. Jason dropped Warren and Donna back at Saviour’s and offered me a lift home.

“Do you want to come in for coffee?” I thought it best he wasn’t left alone.
 

“Yeah,” he said, and parked up badly with his car’s back end jutting out.

Upstairs in the kitchen, he sat down at the Formica table while I filled the kettle. “Are you going back to work later?” I asked.

“Nah, fuck ’em. The bitch won’t sack me at the moment, seeing as Jen went missing from her shitty restaurant.” He stared down at his hands while I made the coffee. I passed him a cup and joined him at the table. “I thought by going there I’d find out if it was her.” He tipped three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. “I can’t stand not knowing.” He leant his head on his right hand, a look of despair on his face. “You got anything to put in this?”

I nodded. “Give me a minute.” I went up to my room to retrieve my bottle of vodka, used for preloading before club nights. And before long, our knees began to gently bump. I should pull away, I thought, but didn’t.

“Where’s your music?” Jason asked, and we moved up to my room. He chose Nirvana. The sound of pain and anger, I thought, as I watched him closely. He wasn’t looking after himself, not shaving or spending much time on his hair. It had flattened and softened like trampled grass, and his eyes were red and sore.

“Jen really likes you, you know,” he said. And I watched his lips as he spoke.

“It doesn’t seem real,” I said. “I never thought something so awful would happen to someone I know – and someone so nice as well.”

He looked towards the sash window. “I keep thinking there’s a simple explanation – something we’ve overlooked. Like she’s gone to visit her gran in Scotland and the phone’s not working and she’ll come back and wonder what all the fuss is about. Or that she’s entered a marathon somewhere abroad and forgotten to tell anyone – nuts, I know.” He ran his hand through his hair. We were side by side on my bed, backs to the wall. I turned towards him.

“People do choose to disappear and leave everything behind. She might have wanted to get away for some reason that we don’t know about.”

“You don’t believe that.”

We looked at each other in silence as the words gave way to something else, something needier – his mouth on mine, my mouth responding.
Bad idea,
I thought as his hand cupped my breast, his mouth moving down.
We should stop.
I pulled back.

“Yeah, you’re right.” He looked away. And I touched his face. He turned back. It began again – with urgency this time. We pulled at each other’s clothes and ended up on the floor. His fingers at my hair, angry at the world, at himself, and angry at me because I wasn’t Jenny and that there was nothing he could do.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Sorry – I’m sorry.” We moved back onto the bed and carried on until he stopped and shuddered. His body relaxed and slipped away from me. “I need a fag.” He searched the pockets of his jeans and took out a folded strip of photo-booth snaps. “We had them done at the station.”

“Aw, like you do when you’re teenagers.” I felt a pang of guilt.

Jason nodded. “She’d never done the photo-booth thing before – she’d never really been out with anyone.”

She looked distant already in the photos: sweet, smiling shyly, her long mousy plait hanging down the front of her sweatshirt, Jason beside her, posing like a rap star. The photos already seemed like ancient artefacts. This time had passed. She had truly gone. “She looks really pretty,” I said. “She’s wearing her cross.”

“Fat lot of good that was,” Jason said.

“You think she’s gone, don’t you?”

He didn’t reply, though his eyes were watery as were mine.

We heard the door – a particularly loud knock.

“Who’s that?” I said.

Jason pulled on his jeans. “How should I know?”

“Come with me,” I said, and he followed me down where at the door stood two policemen – the same two that had come round when Jenny first went missing.

Everything has an expiry date though most things are not clearly labelled. Jenny Fordham should have said “Best before 10 June 2005” in which case there were conversations we would have had, things I should have said if only I’d realised... Only we were both young, indestructible, blissfully unaware there could possibly be a Best Before date in any way earlier than the average life expectancy. Now I know different. It’s a supermarket world and we are merely stock items pre-stamped: Best Before, Display Until, Sell By, Use By – only we don’t know the exact date.

I had shown the policemen into the living room, worried it was obvious we hadn’t been sitting there.
Do we smell of sex?

“Please sit down,” the older officer said. He had a deeply lined, seen-it-all before face. DCI Cameron was his name. I took it in this time.

I sat on the collapsed green sofa, Jason sat beside me and the older officer took one of the chairs with the wooden arms.

“I’ll stand,” said the younger one, DC Stanmore.

This is it, I thought. This is where they tell me my friend is dead – the way, when and how I’m told forever remembered.

DCI Cameron said the words. My fears confirmed. Jenny is the body fished from the River Trent, only she’s not because she disappeared long ago – four weeks before in fact. The body is just a body, a vessel; essence of Jenny vanished on the wind with the fatal moment.

“It helps to be with someone right now,” young DC Stanmore said.

“Close friends are you?” DCI Cameron asked.

“We work together,” I said, as Jason looked at the floor.

“We’ve talked to you before. You’re the boyfriend?”

They took DNA samples then – ‘for elimination purposes’. We opened our mouths in turn; let swabs be taken from the inside of our cheeks. And I couldn’t help wondering whether the recent mixing of our saliva would confuse matters. Was there a chance of cross-contamination?
Am I sure Jason had nothing to do with it?
The green flaky paint on the walls of the living room seemed to be closing in, the lack of evening light betraying the perfect sunny July day it had been.

The police told us nothing. When I asked if Jenny’s murder was in any way linked to other recent local attacks, they said only that it was too early to tell.

I had seen TV police dramas – they wouldn’t give anything away.

“Stay,” I said to Jason once the police had gone. But he was preoccupied, pacing the room, swearing under his breath.

“Fucking bastard – I can’t just sit here. I have to do something.”

“What can we do?”

“I can’t sit and wait for the fucking police to sort it out – fucking useless, the lot of them.”

“We could go back to the river?” I said, without thinking.

Jason’s eyes widened. “Yes, that’s it; let’s go back where they found her.”

Twenty-one

It had gone seven by the time we arrived, the water glowing amber in the evening light. This time I took Jason’s hand as we approached.

“They’ve gone,” he said. A streamer of police tape had come loose and was flapping in the breeze. “How come they’ve gone?” He let go of my hand. “They’ve fucking fucked off already.”

“I’m sure they’ve done all they can here.” I held his arm, trying to calm him.

“No way has that been thorough. They’ve missed stuff. They probably needed the tent elsewhere – a stabbing or some other shit.”

“The police are good at solving murders,” I said. “I mean statistically it’s something they’re good at – shit at burglaries but all right at murders.”

“What about that murder near your place, in fact, two murders – they solved them yet?”

“No, good point.”

“
Cunts
.” Jason walked past the broken police tape, ignoring the mounting cellophane-wrapped bouquets. He sat down on the top concrete step, running his fingers through his wilted hair as he stared at the water.

“Pity it can’t talk,” I said, watching the light trip across the ripples.

“What?” Jason’s voice was gruff.

“The river – pity it can’t talk.” It was a stupid comment. I wished I hadn’t said it. And I expected Jason to tell me to shut-the-fuck-up.

“That’s it.” He stood up. “Who knows what happened?”

“What do you mean?” I squinted up at him.

“The only people who know who did it are the fucking cunt who did it and who else?”

“Well – Jenny, I suppose.”

“Exactly.”

“So?”

“We can’t ask the murdering cunt because we don’t know who the fuck he is and if I did know I’d kill him, but there’s Jenny.” He stared at me, waiting for an answer but he wasn’t making any sense. My head hurt. I wanted to go home, but Jason had other ideas.

The metal lift smelt of urine.

“It’s rank, I know, sorry,” Jason said.

His flat on the eighth floor, however, was spotless.

“Is your brother here?” I asked, as we walked in.

He knocked on one of the beech doors off the bright white hall. “Lee, you in?” There was no answer. “Must be at Lena’s,” he said. “You wanna beer?”

He handed me a bottle and sat down at the small wooden kitchen table and began to write letters out on a piece of paper.

“I’m not sure about this.” My voice came out whiney, so I coughed.

“You’re doing it for Jenny. You ready?”

“No,” I said, but still I put my hand on his.

“Just fingers,” he said, pulling away so only our fingertips met on the base of the upturned glass. He took a deep breath as I held mine. “Do you think I should turn the lights off?”

“
No
.” The very thought made me panic.

“Calm down,” he said. “Ready? How do I start? Is there anyone there?”

We watched the glass.

“Is there anyone there?”

The glass remained still.

“If anyone is there could they please come through?”

There was nothing but a faint buzz from the bulb above.

“Say something else,” I said.

“Like what?”

I tried to remember what I’d seen on TV. “Say we respect the spirit world, say we need their help.”

“We believe in the spirit world,” he said, as we held each other’s gaze. “We have great respect for you spirits. We need one of you to come through. We need your help, your guidance and superior knowledge...”

We waited. The only sound the dull hum from the fridge in the corner.

There was a slight tremble in the glass. Jason’s hands were shaking, but it wouldn’t move. It wasn’t happening. Twenty minutes we sat waiting. I didn’t want to be the one to stop even though my arm was aching. It had to come from Jason and he was hanging in there.

“It’s no good.” He knocked the glass onto its side and stared at the table, his shoulders shaking a little as he tensed his jaw. He was trying not to cry.

“Oh, Jase.” I hugged him as best I could. “We’ll get someone for this, you’ll see.” I kissed his cheek, happy to let our wet faces slide against one another, but Jason pulled away, stood up, and straightened his chair.

“It’s late, I’ll give you a lift back.”

I didn’t want to get out of the car. I didn’t want to go into the house, not alone.

“Can you come in for a minute and check no one’s there.” I felt stupid saying it, but my imagination was working overtime. The house felt bigger and emptier than ever. I knew what sort of night lay ahead. I was under siege from my own imagination. “I hear things that aren’t even there.”

Jason dutifully checked through the whole house for me.

“You’ll be all right,” he said, as I unlocked my room.

“I’ll see you at work.” Jason turned to leave, then paused. “About earlier...”

“I know,” I said, “we were both feeling so bad.”

“Yeah.”

“Forget it ever happened.”

He looked at me, his face tender. “See you tomorrow.”

“I’ll see you out.”

“There’s no need.”

“I want to double-lock the door.” I followed him down, and he turned round at the door and I think he considered kissing my cheek but thought better of it. I watched him walk to his car; head down, as he stared at the ground. He didn’t look round. And by the time I’d shut the door, applied the bolt and chain, the house had changed. It was dark, silent and foreboding. I flicked on the hall light, decided to leave it on for the night, and ran up the first flight of stairs, stopping off at the kitchen for supplies: crackers, Brie, grapes and a cup of tea, and I left another light on, and then up to my room where I locked myself in. This was all well and good but as a plan it was seriously flawed. I would at some point need the toilet. I would need to wash.

I left the tea and crackers on my desk by the lamp and looked out the window. There was a car stopped on the opposite side of the road. It was dark grey, an older model; I’m not sure what make. I sketched its dull, saloon shape and it drove away.