Siren (14 page)

Except Mak.

Early evening on day two of Makedde’s investigation into Adam Hart’s disappearance, things were about to get interesting.

Mak was to meet Adam’s ex-girlfriend, Patrice, a woman his mother had failed at first to mention, and only grudgingly gave Mak the phone number for, once Mak mentioned her name. It appeared, if Tobias’s information was reliable, that she had been quite central in Adam’s recent life. Her name was Patrice, not Patricia—Tobias had that wrong—and she was four years older than Adam. She had sounded at least moderately helpful when Mak had called, and was a natural next stop. Hopefully meeting Patrice would give Mak more insight into Adam and his previous attempt to leave home.

Mak waited only a few seconds before the intercom was answered.

‘Come on up,’ the female voice said as the door buzzed, unlocking. Mak stepped into the building foyer.

Built in the nineties. Decent place. Not fancy.

She climbed two flights of stairs, found Apartment 308, and was about to knock when the door opened.

‘Hi.’

Patrice was an attractive young woman. She had a wholesome student look about her: large brown eyes, brown hair held back in a headband, good skin. Mak imagined her in a library somewhere, perhaps having finished a healthy game of tennis with some fetching young man who would let her win.

‘Thanks for agreeing to speak with me,’ Mak said.

‘Sure.’

Patrice sat down at her dining alcove and Mak took a seat opposite.

‘I have to leave in about ten minutes,’ Patrice began, sounding a bit short.

Okay, so that’s how it’s going to be.

Mak would have to cut straight to the point, which wasn’t always the best way to build rapport. ‘I appreciate your time, Patrice. I won’t keep you long.’

The young woman crossed her arms. ‘Look, I know this is about Adam but I don’t see what the point is because I don’t know anything.’

Mak nodded.
Great, she has her arms crossed defensively already.
‘You two dated for a while?’

Patrice nodded a silent yes.

‘I mentioned on the phone that I’m looking for him on behalf of his mother, and, because you dated for a while and knew him quite well, I thought I would ask you—’

‘I broke it off, like, a year or so ago.’

This is interesting
, Mak thought. According to Tobias’s story, admittedly vague, they had stopped dating no more than seven months earlier. Was Patrice being evasive for some reason?

‘I’m not a cop, Patrice, and you aren’t in any trouble. I just want to find out where Adam might have gone. I want to
make sure he’s okay.’ There was a nod, something that seemed like a positive sign of co-operation. Patrice even unfolded her arms. ‘Where did you two meet?’

‘The cafeteria at uni,’ Patrice answered.

‘And you started dating?’

‘Yeah.’

One-word answers really suck, Patrice
.

‘When was the last time you heard from Adam?’

‘Ages ago,’ she answered.

Ages ago. What is this ages ago? Does no one speak with reference to the normal passing of time?

‘Ages being one month, one week, one day?’ Mak pressed.

‘
No
.’ Patrice seemed cross. Those pretty eyes grew dark. ‘Not a day. Like, ages ago. Months.’

When a subject was being difficult in an interview, it was wise to wonder why. Did this young woman have anything to hide? Had she taken a dislike to Mak for some reason? Was she really so rushed? If so, why had she agreed to meet Mak?

‘So you haven’t heard anything from him in the past week. No notes? Emails? Phone messages?’

‘No. Why would I?’ Her response was immediate. ‘He didn’t write about me in that stupid diary of his, did he?’

Mak felt a touch of excitement.

Diary…There
is
a damn diary and I have to find it
.

Patrice opened up a touch. ‘Look, I liked the guy, but you know…he’s so
straight
. He doesn’t drink. Nothing. He doesn’t have a car. After I moved out of home, I just didn’t think we had much in common any more.’

Four years was not that much of an age difference, except when you considered that Adam was still living at home and
riding a bicycle. Patrice might have found her lifestyle being cramped by her younger boyfriend’s limitations.

‘Did he leave home? To be with you?’

Patrice bit her lower lip briefly.

‘Patrice, it’s okay. You can tell me; you won’t get in any trouble.’ Mak leaned forward sympathetically, and waited for more.

‘You said you’re not a cop, right?’

‘I promise you I am not a cop. I only care about finding Adam.’

‘Okay. Look. About a year or so ago, Adam decided to move in with me. Or maybe it was six months ago, I can’t remember. Anyway, he knew his mother wouldn’t approve, so I guess he just left and didn’t say goodbye, which I certainly didn’t make him do. That was his idea and I thought it was a bit…dramatic. It only lasted a week anyway. Not even. He is just
so straight
. It would never have worked.’

Mak considered that. ‘What do you mean by “so straight”?’

‘Like he would never drink or smoke or anything.’

‘Pot?’

‘Exactly. And I started bugging him about it. Eventually he agreed he would try it. So there is this party at my friend’s house and we’re all there. Adam doesn’t smoke fags, right? So we put some hash in a piece of bread, folded and toasted it. No big deal. Easy. And then an hour later he tells us he still can’t feel a thing. He is like, totally sober. So we did it again—another bud in some toast.’

Mak was no drug expert but she could see where this was going. If the drugs were ingested with food, they would take a long time to reach the stomach and take effect.

‘Finally it hit, like another hour later, and he completely freaked out. Adam was going on and on about how he couldn’t feel his tongue and he couldn’t talk. He said his hands were numb and he couldn’t breathe. He just freaked out. It was so uncool.’

‘You were embarrassed?’

Patrice nodded.

‘And then what happened?’ Mak prodded.

‘At the end of the night we all had to head home, but I’d been drinking, so he was the designated driver. Anyway, we got pulled over by the cops, and this cop, he actually shines his light across the floor of the car, and there it is, the rest of the hash. And Adam is driving and doesn’t even have a valid licence. Can you imagine? I thought we were really screwed. Then this cop just gives us a warning to drive carefully and waves us on. Adam went cold on the whole thing after that. He went home to his mother the next day. I broke it off with him after that. I mean, he was acting like a child.’

Mak nodded. ‘I haven’t found his diary yet. Do you know where he keeps it?’

‘I don’t know. Used to be under his bed.’

Mak had checked there already. She would check again.

‘I doubt his mother knows about it. There’s a lot she doesn’t know about him. She just tries to stifle his every creative impulse.’

‘What kind of other things wouldn’t she know about?’

At this, Patrice recoiled.

‘You won’t tell her any of this, will you?’

‘I just want to find him safe. That’s my job.’ She avoided the issue of disclosure. ‘Would there be anywhere else he might hide things, like his diary?’

‘Unless he took off with it, I’m guessing it should be somewhere in his room.’

Hidden in plain sight? Mak wondered.

‘Thank you, Patrice. That was very helpful.’

Yes, very helpful, actually.

Mak sat on the lonely loveseat and sipped strong tea that she didn’t want, as Glenise Hart searched her face for answers about her son’s disappearance. Mak wanted answers, too

‘Thanks for letting me take another look in Adam’s room, Glenise. But first, I need to ask you a few questions about Patrice.’

‘
Well
,’ Glenise piped up. ‘I
was
surprised when you phoned to ask about her. They are no longer together, you know.’

‘Yes, she told me. But tell me, what did you think of her?’

‘Well, she was a nice girl. But…’ Glenise trailed off. Clearly she had not approved. ‘They went out for nearly a year. It was Adam’s first real relationship. He suffered over her. I think it was the first time he’d had his heart broken.’

By the look of that photo on the beach, Adam was quite capable of breaking hearts himself, Mak thought.

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Glenise said. ‘He doesn’t talk to me about things like that.’ She fidgeted a bit with the pleat in her pants. ‘They split up about six months ago. I haven’t heard from her since. He didn’t talk about it, but I knew he was upset. He lost weight for a while there. He became even more…introverted, I suppose.’

Mak was finding it hard to reconcile the image of that bronzed beach Aussie with the introvert his mother spoke of.
She wondered if Adam was still not coping well with the split. Or with the death of his father.

‘For a while Adam wanted to get back together with Patrice. I try not to interfere in these things,’ Glenise said, clearly awkward with the subject.

‘And shortly before they broke up, that’s when he disappeared the first time?’ Mak asked, straight-faced. She sipped her tea.

This bombshell hung in the air for a while. ‘Uh. Yes. He left without telling me.’

So he
had
disappeared before and you didn’t tell me.

‘Do you think he might have done something similar this time?’ Mak asked, without directly challenging why Mrs Hart had withheld this vital information. She didn’t need to. The woman knew she should have told Mak.

‘Absolutely not,’ Glenise said. ‘That girl is out of his life.’

She blamed Patrice for the transgression. Of course.

‘You can’t think of anyone else important in Adam’s life? Or any other reason he might have left again?’

‘No.’ She was adamant.

‘Well, if you think of anything, please do let me know,’ Mak said. ‘Anything at all. Any little bit of information could help me find him for you. And on the off-chance, I recommend that you keep an eye on that credit card. Check the transactions daily, if you can.’ Glenise sat with her arms crossed, half defiant, half dejected. ‘I’ll get him home to you as soon as I can, Mrs Hart,’ Mak said soothingly. ‘Now, I’d like to have another look in his room to see if I missed anything.’

They stood.

Mak walked up the staircase to Adam’s bedroom, noticing that Glenise Hart did not follow her this time. Mak was glad for the space.

Makedde began her search of the room again, this time concentrating on hiding places she might have missed. Fake soft-drink cans with drugs stashed inside. Hollowed-out books. As clean as it was, there had to be some trace of Adam Hart in that room, some clue as to who he was and where he might be.

She felt a little guilty and destructive as she lifted the mattress off the bed, flipped it over and went through Adam’s drawers like a cop on a raid. Mak thought of the fake Bible from the magic store, and returned to the bed where she had seen a thick, innocuous-looking dictionary. She pulled it out, took a breath and opened it.
Damn.
No hollowed-out middle containing vitally important clues, or even an old flask of whisky. It was just a dictionary. So far her search had yielded nothing new. But then there was his bookshelf. It was so neat. So perfect. She cocked her head to one side, and began pulling each book out one by one, flipping through the pages to see if any notes might fall out. There was a slim volume at the end of one shelf, heavily worn and probably loved.
THE ACTOR’S BOOK OF MONOLOGUES.
Mak pulled it out, once more hoping for private notes or letters.
Was Adam interested in acting as well as magic?
Instead, she found a thin, stiff manual nestled inside.
Magic City Library of Magic, Volume 6
, it declared.
Folding Coin. ‘A Beginning in Magic’.
Mak opened the thin tome, and a DVD fell out.
Wild Card
, the sleeve declared, above an illustration of a magician in a turban and bejewelled costume gazing intensely into a crystal ball, surrounded by
flying cards, nymphs, bats and dancing figures, all in the style of the early twentieth-century posters of the great magicians Houdini, Thurston and Kellar, and most specifically the turban-wearing illusionist Carter the Great.

T
HE
W
ORLD’S
W
EIRDEST AND
M
OST
W
ONDERFUL
C
ARD
T
RICK
, it declared in smaller type.

So Adam was, or once was, interested in magic and performance. Patrice said his mother tried to stifle his creative urges. Perhaps there were more hints about his interests here? Perhaps there was some link between these interests and his current whereabouts?

She next pulled out a thick hardcover copy of the book
Shantaram
, another tome that seemed to give an insight to Adam’s interests and desires, and noticed that the glossy dust jacket did not quite fit.

‘Yes!’ she muttered under her breath.

It was a journal.

Adam Hart
did
keep a diary, and finally Mak had it in her hands.

She shook her head, delighted, as she flipped through the pages and saw just how in-depth the entries were, though she noted the last one, on the final page, was dated some months earlier. Still, the smell of well-used paper filled her nostrils, and she smiled. Ink. Felt pen. Pencil. This boy was a writer. He had written down
everything
he thought. She would be amazed if the diary did not reveal some valuable clues as to his whereabouts. Marian—and Glenise—would love her for this.

Now she could see the original hardcover copy of
Shantaram
, sans jacket, waiting further along the shelf. She eagerly continued her search, checking for any other valuable
finds, and could barely believe her luck when she found another diary hiding amongst Adam’s textbooks, this time concealed under a book jacket for a treatise by the German philosopher Hegel.

This made her laugh out loud.

Hegel. Of course.