Then You Were Gone (23 page)

Ayanna pulled a face. ‘Well, he managed it didn’t he, at my college?’ She indicated Jazzy. ‘And no offence but he’s a middle-aged bloke.’ Jazzy sputtered at the word ‘middle-aged’ but Ayanna appeared not to notice. ‘He’s got to seem far dodgier than me, a girl who could be any of the students here. And you didn’t see this woman’s face; she was shitting herself but she was also kind of getting a buzz off it, like she’d been expecting something like this to happen and she was ready for me and she was glad she was going to be the one to get rid of me. And then she was also a bit pissed off with herself for cocking it up at the end.’

‘You got all this from sixty seconds in her office?’ Jazzy spoke for the first time since Ayanna had come out of the building.

‘Yeah,’ Ayanna said defiantly, ‘I did. I’m good with people. Plus, don’t you think that if a sweet innocent girl,’ she pointed at herself with both thumbs, ‘came to your office asking where she could find a class that she wanted to sit in on, don’t you think the first thing you would ask was which teacher it was that had said she could come in? Or which subject it was for? You wouldn’t just get all self-important the second she mentioned a name of one of your students and then practically have her escorted from the building, would you?’

‘Is that what happened?’ Simone asked. ‘You got escorted from the building?’

‘Nah, not really. But she said, “You need to go now” in this really severe voice, and then when I started walking out of the room I saw her pick up the phone and I reckon she was calling security to tell them to make sure I left.’

‘Did you not get the chance to get any more info on Jessica then?’ Jazzy asked. ‘You couldn’t get to their files or anything to find her address?’

Ayanna rolled her eyes. ‘No, Jazzy I didn’t miraculously manage to find her address.’ It still jarred, Simone found, the easy, joshing familiarity that had grown up between Jazzy and Ayanna. ‘I know I managed to pull a fast one on that old bastard Keith,’ Ayanna went on, ‘but a) he’s stupid, b) the stuff I was looking for was in a different room, and c) what I got from him was on a piece of paper, not a computer. Those people in there are going to keep all the students’ info on computers aren’t they? What did you think I was going to do? Quickly hack her computer while she turned her back to water the house plants?’

‘Fine,’ Jazzy said flatly. ‘Just asking.’

‘So,’ Simone rubbed her eyes, desperately trying to focus on what mattered. Mack, she reminded herself. Mack was what mattered. And finding these people meant they would find Mack, or at least get closer to finding him. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘Eat,’ Jazzy said. ‘I know we had breakfast at mine but I’m starving again. Let’s get some proper food then decide where we go next.’

They got back on the bus and got off at a small parade of shops, one of which was a kebab shop that also did all-day breakfasts during the day. The food was surprisingly good and the tea was jet black to the point of opacity, and after consuming it Simone felt better able to organise her thoughts. ‘OK,’ she said, pulling her phone from her pocket. ‘So we’ve assumed from what we can see of his Facebook page that this Marcus guy is still in hospital. And after this morning’s disaster…’

‘Hey!’ Ayanna sounded hurt.

‘Sorry, Ayanna, I didn’t mean it was your fault – just that, you know, we got seen off pretty sharpish. I mean, this guy’s already been the victim of a crime. They’re probably going to be extremely cautious about who they let into the hospital to see him, even assuming we can find out which hospital he’s in in the first place. So the only other person we’ve got to go on is this Maria Novak,’ she pulled the letter out of her bag, ‘who we’re assuming is Jessica’s mum?’

The other two nodded their assent. Both of them were still eating.

That morning at Jazzy’s Simone had also looked up Maria Novak. Again there had only been a handful of people by that name in the UK, and only two in London. One was a schoolgirl with an enviable record at cross-country running, the other was a paralegal at a firm of conveyancing solicitors called Gonagall and Partners in south London.

They arrived at the offices of Gonagall and Partners just as a small stream of workers was beginning to leave the building and those surrounding it for the beginning of lunch time. The journey there had not taken them long from the area near Jessica’s college; Gonagall and Partners was only five stops further along the bus route that had brought them out from Waterloo that morning. The solicitors’ offices were in a converted Georgian townhouse opposite a small retail park, and it was towards this that most of the workers from that and the nearby office buildings were heading.

After a tetchy discussion on the bus it had been decided that Simone should be the one to front up in the office and ask for Maria Novak, purely because she was the one who so far had not done any covert surveillance. She had argued that barging your way into a couple of two-bit further education colleges then bumbling around hoping to bump into the person you’re looking for barely counts as a surveillance operation, but Jazzy and Ayanna had been insistent. In the end she had convinced them that she and Jazzy should go in together, posing as a couple who were buying a flat. When she had said this, she had involuntarily glanced at Jazzy, anxious to see his reaction, but he had winked at her and pulled a face that told her everything, and at that moment she knew with a solid certainty that they were going to be all right, her and Jazzy. They were always going to be all right. It was just this slippery bastard that she had fallen in love with that she had to deal with now.

The receptionist at the front desk was disarmingly friendly and it took Simone a moment to remember what it was she was supposed to say.

‘We wondered if we could make an appointment?’ she said. ‘My friend bought her place through you guys last year and she said that Maria Novak helped her loads. She said it won’t matter which solicitor we get from you because they’re all good,’ at this the receptionist’s already broad smile nearly split her face, ‘but she said ask which team Maria’s on and make sure you get her because she’s so lovely.’ Simone bit her lip and prayed that at least some of this rang true. The woman’s photograph on the Gonagall and Partners website had made her look lovely and helpful and all those other things. She had long dark hair tied back from her round face, and she looked years younger than she would have to be in order to be Jessica Novak’s mother. But appearances, particularly in a studio portrait on a corporate website, could be deceptive, and there was every chance that the real Maria Novak was a tight-arsed jobsworth, despised by everybody she had ever come into contact with.

But the receptionist giggled and said, ‘Oh I know, she is lovely. We all love Maria, the place isn’t really the same without her around as much.’

‘Oh?’ Simone and Jazzy exchanged a glance. ‘Why? Has she changed jobs or something?’

The woman shook her head as she typed something on her keyboard, her eyes on her computer monitor. ‘No, she’s just having a few erm, well, you know, some personal stuff. We all feel terrible for her. I mean, if anyone didn’t deserve such a hard time it’s Maria. But because of all the, you know, trouble,’ she looked at Simone almost conspiratorially, as though they both knew the delicate nature of the trouble being referred to but were too polite to acknowledge it, ‘well, she’s only doing part-time hours at the moment. In fact,’ she nodded towards the pavement outside, ‘I reckon you’ve just missed her, she said she was going to go home at lunch time.’

Simone closed her eyes slowly, then opened them and looked at Jazzy. She could see what he was thinking. He was thinking,
For Christ’s sake, can we not just catch one break today?
He was thinking,
Can we get this done with so we can all go home and sleep?

Instead Simone girded herself for one more try. ‘Do you think you could check if she’s still here? You know, just so we could have a quick word now, give her an idea of our situation.’

‘Erm, OK.’ For the first time the receptionist’s smile faltered. Lovely as Maria Novak evidently was, it was probably unusual for people to turn up unannounced begging to see her. ‘I’ll try her phone.’ After a minute or so she shook her head apologetically. ‘Sorry, no, it’s her voicemail. Says she’s out of the office until tomorrow. Would you like me to leave a message for her to ring you tomorrow?’

‘No,’ Jazzy said, already half-turning away. ‘We’re going to go.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jazzy was ready to give up. Not just on looking for the various members of the Novak family who had, until the last forty-eight hours, been less than strangers to him, but on this whole farcical chase they had somehow embarked on. He found himself wondering what would happen if they never found Mack. It was something he had barely contemplated until now. Of course Mack would come back, or they would find him. Of course they would discover not only where he was, but why he had gone there and what it was that he had been running from. But now, as they slammed face first into dead end after dead end and the essence of Mack became something he could no longer truly recall, Jazzy became aware – deeply, elementally aware – that people do disappear and never come back. He thought of those blurry, tweeted photos that he scrolled past every day:
aged 23… totally out of character… last seen wearing a beige raincoat… known to have contacts in the Prestatyn area…
He had always assumed that those people came back home pretty soon, and that the ones who did not were deliberately absenting themselves from a life they no longer found bearable.

Warm, handsome Mack could not be amongst those lost souls, Jazzy had always assumed. If anyone loved their life it was Mack; everything life offered him he would eat up with a spoon. And yes, Mack was scared now, and yes, the events of the last few days had proved that he was scared with good reason. But Jazzy, veteran of a life utterly cushioned from true fear of any kind, had not so far allowed himself to entertain the possibility that Mack might stay scared forever, that he and Simone and Ayanna might continue to be pushed and threatened and intimidated until finally they agreed to stop looking for Mack. That every day, for the rest of their lives, they would be left wondering, always more than half-afraid, always wondering, always searching the crowds for his face.

He thought of Simone and what she had said that morning. The way she had spoken of Mack was revealing, the things she had said to him about her feelings for Jazzy himself even more so. The old Simone, the only Simone he had known until now, was incapable of expressing even that weak, stunted stub of emotion. He had not of course said so to her, but that was a large part of why he had always known that he and Simone had no romantic future. The repression of emotion was a barrier in itself, but moreover he was apprehensive about what would happen if the dam finally broke, as one day it must. He knew Simone well enough to understand that her rich inner life was far deeper than her vague, distant exterior betrayed, and in a way that had been what he meant when he said he was not man enough for her. He was not able for the Simone that was underneath the veil, the true one that she would ultimately reveal for the one person she allowed herself to love. She must, he felt sure, have begun to reveal her true self to Mack, and the betrayal of his leaving her just as their love had begun, would doubtless result in her shutting down altogether. It had been true what Jazzy had said to Simone that morning about wanting to have her in his life forever, but now he was beginning to see that if Mack stayed gone then Jazzy was going to lose Simone anyway, lose her to a fog of pain and betrayal from which she would never emerge.

‘Where is she?’ he heard Simone say. They had trudged wearily down the grand stone steps of the solicitors’ office and back onto the street. Unthinkingly, Jazzy had followed Simone along the pavement for a few metres, then she had stopped abruptly, looked around her and asked the question.

‘Who?’ Jazzy said dumbly, then realised who she must mean. They had arranged to meet Ayanna outside the office, but it was not a busy street or a shopping area where a person might plausibly loiter with no eyebrows being raised. ‘She probably went over there,’ he said, indicating the retail park, ‘so she wouldn’t look quite so suspicious.’

However, ten minutes later after a thorough scouring of the shops and car park, there was still no sign of her.

‘Gah,’ Simone said, rubbing her eyes with the back of her wrist. ‘I can’t look for any more missing people. I just can’t do it.’

Jazzy knew what she meant. ‘I’ll ring her,’ he said, but the phone call was cut off after two rings, then an automated message popped up from Ayanna’s number:
I’m in a meeting
.

The absurdity initially made Jazzy laugh, but then he felt cold. Wildly, he spun round, scanning the whole area as though they might possibly have missed Ayanna among the sparse lunchtime crowds. What if they had been followed? What if somebody had taken Ayanna while he and Simone were inside Gonagall and Partners and were even now intent on inflicting serious harm on her?

His phone beeped again. It was another message from Ayanna.
At bus stop on other side of shopping centre from office, come quick!!!!!!!!!

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Jazzy muttered. Simone looked round, distracted, but he waved to indicate it was nothing. He would save the explanation until he actually knew what he was trying to explain.
WHY?????
he replied to Ayanna. He began walking rapidly to the other side of the retail park, beckoning Simone to follow him.

The reply came back in seconds:
Our girl Maria!! She came out of office when you were in, I recognised her from photo then I followed her and she waiting at bus stop, going home I think.

‘Oh shit,’ he said, more quietly, and Simone did not look round. She was still eyeing the shoppers around them, presumably in the hope that Ayanna was about to emerge from a changing room or toilet. Just as he was bringing up Ayanna’s number to ring her, another message came through:
Don’t call me, only me & her and an old gran at bus stop, she will hear. Come quick, we can get on bus with her!!