Then You Were Gone (14 page)

Jazzy nodded, as though this ought to mean something to him. ‘And was he a big bloke?’

Ayanna scowled furiously and pulled her sleeve down her face again. ‘No, I told you, he was a skinny little fucker. About as tall as me.’ She snorted. ‘About as broad as me too if I’m honest but he had the element of surprise, didn’t he?’

‘And was he…’ Jazzy thought of Julie’s choice of words. ‘Was he, you know, English?’

Ayanna shrugged. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. Dunno really, I’m no good with accents. I mean, I can tell if someone’s not English, and I can tell if they are English but they’re not from London – like vaguely northern maybe – and I can tell if someone’s Somalian, but that’s about it. This guy sounded like he was from round here. That’s all I know.’

‘Did you… have you called the police?’

‘Course I haven’t called the fucking police! I’m not fucking stupid!’

‘Ayanna,’ Jazzy said, rubbing his temples with his knuckles, ‘I mean it, stop swearing. It really doesn’t suit you.’

‘Sorry.’ She did not sound sorry. ‘But in answer to your question, no, I haven’t spoken to the police,’ she said sarcastically. ‘And end up with them sniffing round my brother, sniffing round Mack for buying off my brother?’ She sniffed again. ‘That’s why I came here.’ Her mouth was squeezed into a harsh circle, as though she was consciously trying to hold her face in one piece. ‘I’m scared,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want to go home cos he’ll follow me. But if I don’t go home then he might go round there and frighten my mum or my gran or my little brothers. Or do something worse.’

‘Where’s Hakim?’

‘He don’t live at home now. He lives with my cousin who’s married with three little kids.’ She gave a gulping sob. ‘Oh, Jesus, I really don’t want that guy to find out where Hakim lives, I don’t want him doing nothing to my cousin’s kids.’

‘He won’t,’ Jazzy said senselessly. How did he know what this mysterious, terrifying stranger was capable of? ‘What about your dad? Will he be there to look after your mum and your gran?’

She shook her head. ‘He works on the minicabs, he’s never at home apart from sometimes in the afternoons for a sleep. He’d be no use anyway. He’s old. And fat.’ She squeezed her hands into skinny, brown fists. ‘Shit, man. What am I going to do?’

‘Come home with me,’ Jazzy said without thinking. ‘You’ll be safe there.’

Ayanna gave him a sharp look.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jazzy said. ‘I’m a married man. I’ve got a baby.’

She nodded slowly. ‘OK. OK.’ She looked hopefully at Jazzy. ‘Because he doesn’t know you, does he? This guy? He wouldn’t be able to find you?’

‘No,’ Jazzy said with the bluff, idiotic confidence that comes from knowing a lie is better than the truth. ‘He doesn’t know me. And at least I’ll be more protection for you than your mum or your gran.’

Ayanna reached in her pocket and took out her phone. ‘I’ll text my mum and say I’m babysitting for my Maths teacher – I do that sometimes. I’ll say that she’s asked me to sleep over cos they won’t be back till late.’

‘Will your mum buy that?’

Ayanna shrugged. ‘No, probably not. But what can she do about it? It’s a good thing really, cos if I’m not home she usually gets my uncle to sleep round there. He’s a bit younger than my dad and not quite as fat, so better than nothing, hey?’ She smiled bravely and Jazzy wanted to hug her.

‘This place is awesome!’

Jazzy was not sure at first if Ayanna was being sarcastic. There was nothing very awesome about his and Petra’s three-bedroomed semi with a garage that was too small for their car and a garden that neither of them could be arsed to look after so it was little more than a gigantic pile of weeds. But then Jazzy thought back to being seventeen and part of a big family. From her point of view just having a house this size that she wasn’t having to share with two siblings, two parents and a grandparent plus assorted uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces who happened to drop by, was pretty awesome.

‘No offence though, but when I get my own place I don’t think I’d want to decorate it like this. You know, all flowers and Cath Kidston and that. I mean this is sweet and everything, but I want my place to be ultra-modern, you know like a Thames-side penthouse apartment or something.’

‘Right.’ Jazzy nodded. He had no idea how to talk to teenage girls – never had had, even when he was a teenage boy. ‘Petra chooses all this. I leave it up to her.’

‘Is she rich, then? Are you both rich?’

Jazzy thought about it for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Quite rich, at least.’

‘Cool.’ Ayanna seemed to accept this pretty matter-of-factly. ‘What does she do? Your wife?’

‘She’s an actuary. That’s someone who…’

‘I know what an actuary does,’ Ayanna said scornfully.

‘Oh, right, sorry. It’s just that normally people don’t really know. I get so used to having to explain it…’

‘Nah, I know all about it. We had a talk from an actuary in Careers lesson last year – cos I’m good at Maths they thought I might want to be one, but… I don’t mean to be rude or nothing but it sounds well boring.’

Jazzy laughed. ‘Yeah, well I have to say I agree with you. Petra loves it though. She’s one of those odd people who find numbers interesting.’

‘She must be clever then? This guy who came to talk to us, he had like a million A-levels and went to Cambridge and stuff.’

‘Yeah, she is. She’s the brains of the outfit, that’s for certain. Anyway, would you like a drink?’

‘Can I have a cup of tea? Is that OK?’

‘Of course it’s OK. You can have something stronger if you want. I’m going to.’ He took a can of beer from the fridge and waved it at her. So what if it was not yet midday? He was in his house in the middle of a Tuesday morning, and instead of his wife and son for company he was offering to share a can of lager with a seventeen-year-old Somalian student/office cleaner who had just slagged off his taste in interior design and called his wife boring. It was probably safe to say normal rules no longer applied.

‘I don’t drink, thanks.’

‘Fine. Do you mind if I have one? I need it.’

‘Fill your boots. I’ll get myself a cup of tea.’ Her tone was not aggressive, rather it was indulgent, almost kindly. He could imagine her teasing her dad and her uncles about their weight, their snoring, their old-fashioned outlook. He and Petra planned to have more children, and Jazzy hoped that one of them would be a girl. As he observed Ayanna boiling the kettle and helping herself to teabags and milk, a snap-thin bundle of self-assurance and tentative pride, he found himself hoping that one of them might be a girl like Ayanna.

Sipping her tea, Ayanna leaned back in her chair and looked at Jazzy. ‘Thanks for bringing me here.’ As soon as they had arrived in his house the terror had seemed to leave her and her tone now was calmer and steadier than it had been at any time he had seen her. ‘I feel loads better. It’s like, if I’m here, then none of it’s real. Because it’s unreal being here, with you, in this house in the middle of the day with your wife and kid gone. I should have been cleaning at your offices first thing, and then,’ she looked at her watch, ‘then I should be in double Maths right now. Being here is just something that shouldn’t ever happen. And because it’s so mad, it feels like that must mean nothing really matters while I’m here.’

Jazzy nodded. He was already halfway through his can of beer.

‘Do you honestly not know who that guy was?’ Ayanna asked, a dampened note of fear back in her voice. ‘Or what he wanted from me?’

Jazzy sighed. ‘I honestly don’t,’ he said flatly. ‘I honestly haven’t got the faintest idea.’

‘Don’t you think, though, that that just makes it scarier? That none of us know?’

‘Yes. Yes I do.’

Ayanna screwed up her mouth and nose and widened her eyes. ‘Shit, man.’ She got up and took her tea mug over to the sink. ‘OK, fine. But can you tell me who Jess is?’

Jazzy looked up sharply. Ayanna’s back was to him. ‘Jess who?’

‘I don’t know, can’t remember. Some Polish-sounding name I think. Why, who is she?’

‘What do you know about her?’ Jazzy remembered the birth certificate Simone had shown him, the horrible things it had made him think, things he had been unable to put into words, both for Simone’s sake and his own.

‘I don’t know nothing about her. I’d never even heard of her until that brute asked me about her. But I was wondering… You see, Mack used to ask me a lot of questions when I was working – you know what he’s like, he was always trying to distract me and get me to distract him. Does he get bored easily or something?’

Jazzy smiled ruefully. ‘Yes. Very.’

‘Well, anyway, he was always asking me what did I like doing in my spare time – I used to say, “what spare time? I’ve got four A-levels, a cleaning job and two little brothers to concentrate on.” And he’d ask what music was I into, what books or magazines did I read, what kind of phone have I got, what games are on it, where did I buy my clothes? He was just chatting really, just passing the time of day, but he used to ask about a lot of stuff, all the time. And he’d ask if that was what all girls my age liked, did all the other girls like this band or this TV programme or whatever it was we were talking about. I used to take the piss, you know, saying, “Oh, nice cardigan. Is that what all the thirty-something white guys in Dalston wear?” As if he thought that all girls my age were exactly the same or something. But one day I said to him, “Why do you keep asking me what all the other girls like doing? You into young girls or something?”’ Her face took on a wistful quality, and Jazzy suspected she would have been quite pleased if Mack’s answer had been yes. ‘But he just said he’s got a niece who’s my age and he likes to get ideas of presents to buy her or things to talk to her about. And one time I was showing him this bag that I’d seen that I’m saving up for, and I said do you think your niece – what’s her name? – would like it? And he said, like he wasn’t properly listening, he said, “Jessica”.’

‘His niece?’ Jazzy could not keep the concern out of his voice.

Ayanna shrugged. ‘Yeah. I think so. Cousin, maybe? But no, I’m sure he said niece. And after he’d told me her name he looked kind of pissed off with himself and it was like he just wanted to end the conversation as quickly as possible, and then he never really talked to me about her any more.’

‘So, when the guy who attacked you started demanding to know about Jess…?Simone asked you about her’

Ayanna shook her head. ‘I’ve only just put two and two together. You kind of jolted, when I was describing what that guy said to me, and it was obvious the name “Jess” had struck a chord, which got me thinking. So?’ She turned away from the sink to look at Jazzy. ‘Who is she?’

Jazzy put his head in his hands. ‘Jessica Novak. It’s the name on a birth certificate Simone found in Mack’s flat. We don’t know who she is. But I’m pretty sure she isn’t Mack’s niece. He’s an only child.’

Chapter Fifteen

The expedition from Lancashire to the wilds of Northumberland was less gruelling than Simone had feared. Just one taxi, two trains and one bus after leaving the pub in Dan and Melissa’s village she was in the middle of what seemed at first to be England’s most incongruous council estate. The village of Kielder was almost entirely pebble dashed, the twentieth century’s idea of workers’ housing being somewhat less picturesque than the weavers’ cottages and olde worlde blacksmiths’ shops found in more populous parts of the countryside. The bus from Hexham, chugging over exposed moorland where everything – trees, walls, houses – had seemed to be cowering against the wind, had not passed through many other settlements of any size, and the traffic in either direction had been scant. This was, Simone reflected, an excellent place to choose to hide. She wondered if Mack fancied himself as the hero of The Thirty-Nine Steps, hiding out in the border lands dressed as a humble workman and begging scraps of bread from kindly farmers’ wives. Looking at the rough, hard landscape she knew that Mack could not have gone off grid round here anywhere. She almost wanted to laugh at the thought; a hopeless townie like Mack would not last five minutes out here. But still she felt hopeful. The wildness did not mean Mack could not be here somewhere; it simply meant that he would be somewhere where he had at least a roof over his head. She remembered what Dan had said about them staying in the youth hostel as students, and decided that that was where he must be. If Mack was lonely and afraid then he would want the comfort of familiarity, she supposed. Although, she pondered as the bus slowed to a stop, how could she say now, after all this, what Mack would want? The confidence she had felt a few seconds ago began to ebb away. The only reason she was so sure he must be here at all, and in the youth hostel in particular, was because if he was not here then he was nowhere. He had to be here, because she needed him to be here. The alternative, that he was loose, at large somewhere else in the whole of the rest of the world, was enough to shoot her into panic.

The bus driver pointed her in the direction of the youth hostel as she stepped off the bus, but just before the doors closed he called to her, ‘It’s closed now, mind.’

She whipped back round to face him. ‘When does it open?’ She was almost shouting.

‘April I think, pet,’ and with a cheery wave and a cloud of diesel he disappeared.

Simone flicked an angry V-sign after him as he rounded the bend and she saw him raise a hand in laconic acknowledgement. ‘Oh, fuck it,’ she said softly, utterly defeated. She was the only person in sight, the only sounds were the soft rush of wind through the trees and the muted shrieks of the few birds left behind for the winter. Somewhere far away a truck rumbled past. Why had she come here like this, alone, on a whim, so far from home? What had she thought? That she really was the ballsy smart-mouthed PI of her fantasies who was actually following some kind of a trail, building on some sort of evidence, rather than a desperate, pining lover trailing around the country after a man who, she was beginning to suspect, she did not really know at all?

She knew, from the eighty minutes she had had in which to study the timetable while she waited for the bus in Hexham, that the next bus out of here was two hours’ wait. She walked in the direction the bus driver had indicated anyway. There might, after all, be somebody around who could help her, somebody who had seen Mack, or not seen him, even somebody who could say, ‘No, there’s been no strangers here for months, that man you’re looking for, he’s not here.’ Even that would be something.