The Runaway Read online

  Aunt Edie chose that moment to crash through the door.

  I stood up, bashing my knee against the table leg. I took the tray from Aunt Edie and set it on the table in front of us. Aunt Edie passed a box of tissues to Nikki as I hovered by the door, my back to the wall. The room felt smaller than normal.

  I try not to think about the past. Nothing good comes from raking over coals or making plans for an unpredictable future. There is only the here and the now. But I couldn’t stop the images flooding my brain. Another young woman I once knew, who didn’t mean to get pregnant.

  Fiona.

  My half-sister.

  A sister I didn’t know I had until four or so years ago, when I first set out to find my dad, a man who’d disappeared the day I was born, a man I’d never met. A man I now wish I’d never met, pray I’ll never meet again. The man that haunts my nightmares. It’s his face I see when I jolt awake in the pitch-dark, panicked and drenched in cold, wet sweat.

  I wasn’t there for my seventeen-year-old sister when she discovered she was pregnant. I wasn’t there when she had to break the news to our father. I wasn’t there to protect her. I’ll pay the price for that as long as I live.

  I watched Aunt Edie cluck around, handing out mugs of builder-strength tea, and knew that it didn’t matter whether Nikki Cooper-Clarke could pay for our services. It didn’t matter that Jo was convinced Matt had done a runner because somehow he’d sensed his girlfriend was up the duff. I knew there and then that I’d go and find him and I’d force him to face up to the consequences of his actions. Decision implies rational consideration of the facts. Choice is a leap of faith. In that moment, I chose.

  We’d got our second case.

  Chapter Two

  I mumbled something about having to make a phone call and left the room. When the three of them came out, a few minutes later, I was behind the desk, pretending to type up case files. As Nikki left, her cheeks mascara-streaked, I asked her to bring in a photograph of Matt – the most recent she could find. She nodded and I promised her we’d give it everything we had. For an awful moment, I thought she was going to hug me, but the desk blocked the space between us. ‘We bill by the hour,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve paid the deposit.’ She gestured towards Jo, who, I noticed for the first time, held a wad of £20 notes in her left hand.

  *

  ‘Poor lamb,’ Aunt Edie declared from the kitchenette, once Nikki had gone. ‘Still, least it’s not like it was in my day. She’d be shipped off faster than you could say, “Up the duff without a paddle.” Never knew who was going to disappear next. It was like those murder-mystery parties where they pick you off, one at a time.’

  ‘Let’s start with his mate,’ I said to Jo. ‘Clearly Nikki thinks he knows something.’

  I googled the address Nikki had given us for Matt, The Turnways – up near the cricket ground. ‘No time like the present.’ I grabbed my jacket from the peg by the door. ‘Come on.’

  Jo drove the company van as I gave directions. We found a nice little residential street in the heart of Headingley. At least, it was probably a nice little residential street once upon a time, before students had overrun the area and landlords disregarded their obligation to keep properties in a good state of repair. The houses were identical, substantial semi-detacheds, arranged in a gently curving semi-circle. Jo parked up and we knocked on the door, waited a few minutes, knocked some more. No answer. I patted my jacket pockets for a pen.

  ‘A note?’

  Jo wrinkled her nose. ‘Let’s keep the element of surprise. Least till we know what we’re dealing with.’

  ‘What then?’ I glanced up, spotted an open window on the first floor. An open sash window. No window easier to get through, even without my ironing-board physique.

  Jo caught me scoping it out and shook her head. ‘Give him a chance. We’ll come back.’ She left the garden and strode towards the van. ‘Let’s try the uni.’

  *

  We detoured via the office to drop off the van – getting into the University of Leeds’ car park is harder than getting into Glastonbury. ‘Nikki gave us the name of his tutor, didn’t she? I’ll get the form.’

  ‘I’ve had a Martin Blink on the blower,’ said Aunt Edie as soon as I stepped through the door. I keep telling her she watches too many cop shows.

  Martin Blink. I grinned. If it wasn’t for Martin Blink, Jo might be on remand in Armley nick, waiting for some pen-pusher to decide whether self-defence is now an offence. ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘Says he’s got a case for you,’ Aunt Edie said in a tone that suggested she had trouble believing him. ‘A suicide.’

  ‘We’re a missing persons’ bureau.’ I hung my jacket back on its peg. The day was warmer than I’d realized. ‘What we going to do with a suicide?’

  ‘Wouldn’t give any details,’ Aunt Edie continued. ‘Like I might not have the wherewithal to take a proper message.’ She tutted and balled up the piece of paper in the palm of her hand. ‘Insisted on coming to see you.’ She took aim at the wastepaper bin next to my desk. ‘I told him we can’t have people dropping in willy-nilly. I told him, you’re both busy women.’

  The ball of paper flew through the air and landed dead centre in the bin.

  ‘Not that busy, Aunt Edie.’

  ‘He said you’d make time for him.’ She raised eyebrows at his temerity. ‘I said, “Oh, will they now? And who might you be?” Bloody cheek.’

  ‘He’s the journalist I told you—’

  ‘Retired journalist. Talks like he’s part of the team. Well, I told him, I don’t care who you are, you have to have an appointment.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘And did you make him one?’

  Jo pushed open the door. ‘Come on,’ she said, tapping at an imaginary watch on her wrist.

  ‘Martin Blink wants to see us,’ I said.

  ‘Ace. Let’s go.’

  ‘He needs reminding that this is a female detective agency, isn’t it?’ Aunt Edie looked to Jo for support.

  I’ve given up trying to explain the difference between a detective agency and a missing persons’ bureau to Aunt Edie. At times I think she’s deliberately trying to misunderstand.

  ‘That’s right, Edie,’ said Jo. ‘No persons with dangly bits will ever work in this office.’ She made a diagonal cross over her left breast as she spoke. ‘You know what it’s like. Let one in and they’ll all want to start waving them around.’

  I frowned at Jo. I put my hands on my hips and tried to adopt a managerial tone. ‘Did you make him an appointment?’

  ‘In the diary.’ Aunt Edie sniffed.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Half past four.’

  ‘Today?’ I glanced at the clock.

  ‘I squeezed him in.’ She switched on her computer screen and took a seat at the desk. ‘Not that he was grateful.’

  *

  It’s only a ten-minute walk from our offices to the uni, through Hyde Park, the decompression chamber between city centre and student-ghetto. Jo found the Earth and Environment building on a map of the campus while I checked the form. Nikki had given us the name of Matt’s tutor – Professor Kenrick, or Kennick.

  We found the name – Kendrick – on a tutorial list; office was on the eleventh floor. It was already two o’clock in the afternoon and it appeared that the university had done its main business of the day and was winding down to home time. We passed several empty seminar rooms as we marched along the corridors, reading the names on the doors. We climbed another flight of stairs and encountered an identical set of corridors before we found the room we were looking for. I glanced through the window. A woman with short hair, hunched over a desk.

  Jo knocked and pushed open the door. ‘Professor Kendrick?’

  The professor glanced up from her desk, and the familiar feeling of being a schoolgirl in the firing line washed through me. I braced myself for her displeasure at being disturbed. She looked us both up and down.

  ‘You’ve found me.
’ She placed her pen down on the pile of paper in front of her and pushed her glasses up into her short, spiky hair. ‘And provided a welcome distraction. What can I do you for?’

  ‘We’re looking for Matt Williams.’

  The professor inclined her head. She was younger than I first thought. Perhaps not even forty. ‘Popular chap.’

  ‘We’re private investigators,’ said Jo. ‘We need to talk to him.’

  The academic stood up and I realized how tall she was. Impossible to miss, she must have been over six foot. In the small room she took on almost comedy proportions.

  ‘I do beg your pardon. I thought you were students.’ She brushed down her rumpled suit trousers with one hand as she held the other out to shake Jo’s. ‘Private investigators. Fascinating.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jo.

  ‘How long have you been in this line of business?’

  ‘Long enough,’ said Jo.

  ‘Do come in, and close the door. If I move this pile of papers,’ she grabbed a stack from a chair in the corner of her shoebox-sized room, ‘you’ll even be able to have a seat.’

  Jo didn’t move and as I was stood behind her, I didn’t either. The professor didn’t appear to notice as she continued to rearrange the boxes and piles of paper. ‘So, Matthew. Matty, I believe the girls call him. Obviously, I’m too old to be swayed by his charms, but not so old I can’t appreciate why he causes such a stir.’ She turned to smile at us both.

  ‘Do you know where we might find him?’ asked Jo.

  ‘Afraid not. Haven’t seen him, not recently.’

  ‘It’s rather urgent,’ said Jo.

  She finally cleared both chairs and crossed to the doorframe. Jo moved aside to let her pass, which put Jo deeply inside the room. I followed, inching past the professor, straining to avoid body contact. After glancing out into the corridor, Professor Kendrick closed the door and returned to perch on the edge of her desk. She folded her hands across her knees. ‘Take a seat.’

  Jo sank into one so I took the other. This gave Professor Kendrick an even bigger advantage and she loomed over us. Her white shirt tucked in at the waist, emphasizing her slender frame. ‘Now, what’s this about?’

  ‘Matt’s missing,’ I said. ‘No one’s seen him since a party on Saturday night.’

  ‘Then I suggest you talk to admin and see whether they’d be willing to contact his parents. You can leave—’

  ‘We’ve spoken to his mother,’ Jo lied.

  Professor Kendrick raised her voice and continued speaking as if Jo hadn’t interrupted, ‘Your number with me, and if I see him, I would certainly be happy to pass it on. Although I suspect he may be in hiding.’

  ‘In hiding? Who from?’

  She pulled her glasses down to the brim of her nose. ‘From whom?’ She peered at me over the top of the frames. ‘Well, from me I suppose. It’s the deadline for his dissertation. We were supposed to be having a final run over it on Monday afternoon and he didn’t show. Not like him, I must say. I intend to email him.’

  I didn’t like the feeling of claustrophobia that had settled over me as soon as Professor Kendrick had closed the door. I like always to know my escape route, and as we were on the eleventh floor, she’d just sealed the only real option.

  ‘Any concerns about his work up until this point?’ asked Jo.

  ‘No, he’s a committed student. One of my best. More or less on target, as on target as any of us ever are. But he’s not the first student to go AWOL in the month running up to submission. What did his mother say?’

  ‘She hasn’t heard from him,’ Jo said, and even I wouldn’t have known she was making this up. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  The professor stuck out her bottom lip. ‘She’s hired a firm of private investigators to find him? As far as I’m aware she hasn’t contacted the university. I’m his supervisor, I’d expect that message to come to me.’

  I pretended my interest had been caught by the poster about climate change pinned to the wall.

  ‘You said he was popular,’ said Jo. ‘What did you mean by that?’

  Professor Kendrick’s grey hair fell forward to partially obscure her glasses. She flicked it away with the back of her hand. ‘You’re not the only ones looking for him.’

  ‘Other people are looking for him?’ I asked.

  ‘Other women.’

  ‘How many other women?’

  She smiled. ‘I am perhaps exaggerating for dramatic effect. Forgive me, a knee-jerk reaction to reading the musings of my undergrads.’ She nodded at the pile of papers that towered on her desk.

  Jo raised a single eyebrow. ‘How many?’

  ‘Undergrads?’

  ‘Women looking for Matt.’

  ‘Two, that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Of whom you are aware?’ I couldn’t resist.

  ‘Who?’ asked Jo, shooting me a look that left me in no doubt I should shut up. I went back to the poster.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s any of my business.’

  I’d had enough of the professor, and I worried the oxygen supply was depleting. I’d never survive working in this rabbit hutch. Books lined the walls, giving it an underground bunker-like feel, despite its high-rise situation. ‘People are worried,’ I said.

  ‘What did they look like? The two women looking for him?’ asked Jo.

  ‘One had hair like rattlesnakes.’

  ‘Dreads?’ said Jo. She turned to me. ‘Nikki.’

  ‘Nikki?’ asked the professor.

  ‘His girlfriend.’

  Professor Kendrick nodded. ‘I’ve seen her hanging about before.’

  ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘Well, I’m not one to gossip, and there might not be anything in this.’

  ‘We’re professional private investigators,’ said Jo. She showed our police-issued identity card. ‘It’s not gossip, it’s helping with our enquiries. Anything you tell us will be treated in the strictest confidence.’

  The professor’s brow creased as she took in the badge. ‘The police are involved?’

  ‘They’ve been informed,’ Jo lied again.

  ‘And?’

  ‘They share your view – nothing too ominous in a student disappearing the week before his dissertation is due.’

  Professor Kendrick put Jo’s ID down on her desk. ‘There was an incident. A strange incident. Not strange, that’s too strong. Was it yesterday? What’s today?’

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘Yes, must have been. I wasn’t in Monday, not in the morning. Yesterday morning, Sally from the office came to see me to say she’d caught a young woman taking mail from the pigeonholes. The student pigeonholes. She’d asked said young woman what she was doing, and, she said, the woman had seemed,’ Kendrick paused, searching for the right word, ‘flustered.’

  ‘Did she stop her taking the mail?’

  ‘Of course. Not that any of it would be of any interest. Hell, it’s not of interest to me and I wrote most of it. The system is mainly used for hard-copy submissions and leaflets about forthcoming symposiums, information we can’t email. To be honest, hardly anyone uses them anymore. I can’t think why on earth—’

  ‘It was Matt’s pigeonhole?’

  ‘She may have thought she’d find a timetable, perhaps.’

  ‘Where’s Sally now?’

  ‘Probably her office.’

  Jo got up, filling the air space between me and the professor. I wondered again whether there was enough oxygen in the room to support three people. If anyone was going to keel over, like the sacrificial canary in the coal mines, it was going to be me.

  ‘Can we talk to her?’ Jo asked.

  ‘Follow me.’

  *

  Sally was housed in a much bigger office, but she shared it with at least three others.

  ‘Could we have a word, please,’ said Professor Kendrick, indicating to the middle-aged woman to step outside the room.

  ‘These two young women are private investiga
tors,’ the professor said to Sally once we were all standing together in the corridor. ‘They want to know more about the woman you saw interfering with the pigeonholes yesterday.’

  Sally’s cheeks reddened but I didn’t read anything in to it. The smallest hint of official enquiry can cause some people to colour up.

  ‘I didn’t recognize her so I asked her what she was doing.’

  ‘Professor Kendrick says you thought she was flustered.’

  ‘She struck me that way.’

  ‘What did she take?’

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t let her. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was on the wrong floor. She left very quickly.’

  ‘Can we see the pigeonholes?’

  Sally glanced at the professor.

  The professor shrugged. ‘Well, they are open mailboxes. We’ve never considered locking them – which goes to show how uncontentious the contents are.’

  ‘They’re this way,’ Sally said, and we trooped round the corner to where the lifts were.

  Outside a room that bore a plaque stating ‘Earth and Earth Sciences Department’, was a grid of shelves – four wide and about a dozen high – each one about the size of a shoebox. Each box had a name tag. Matt Williams was easy to find – the last one on the right-hand side.

  ‘Are you sure it was Matt’s pigeonhole she was interested in?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sally. ‘It was the bottom one.’

  ‘Can I?’ I crouched so I was level with Matt’s mail.

  ‘It goes without saying I’m not condoning such behaviour,’ Professor Kendrick said.

  I scooped up a handful of paper. The professor was right. Flyers about upcoming conferences, speakers from foreign countries coming to lecture, discount offers on everything from books to nightclubs. I frowned at Jo and handed the pile to her.

  ‘Are you sure she was taking mail?’ I turned back to Sally. ‘Perhaps she was leaving him a note?’

  Sally pulled a face as she considered what I’d just said. ‘I didn’t think of that. But if she was, why didn’t she just say? Instead of running off?’