‘Have you been following me for long, Julia?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
I believed her: I’d spotted her straight away in the restaurant, and seen her the second she started to approach me. If she’d been following me for any length of time, it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. Tailing was an art. If you followed someone, you had to stay invisible at the same time.
‘I’ve read about you,’ she continued, nodding at the printout. ‘I mean, you can see that. I read about what you did when you found that place up north. How they tried to hurt you. What …’ She stopped, looking down at the scars on my fingers. ‘What they did to you. Then I saw another story about you in the papers last year. To do with that man the police found. The one who took those women. When I saw those stories, I thought, “That’s a man who can help me.” ’
‘Help you?’
‘Do you believe in fate?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t.’
That seemed to stop her in her tracks. But then she found her feet again. ‘I saw you and your …’ Her eyes drifted to the restaurant. ‘Your friend. I saw you walk past me. The man I’d read about on the internet. So when you passed me I couldn’t help but see it as fate. And I suppose I lied a little. I did follow you – but only after I saw you tonight. I followed you to the restaurant because I wanted to be sure it was you. And when I saw that it was, I realized I needed to speak to you.’
‘What do you want, Julia?’
‘I want you to find my husband,’ she said, pausing and kneading her hands together. For a moment she seemed to shrink into the shadows: head bowed, shoulders hunched, protecting herself in case I turned her away. ‘Six months ago he got on to the Tube at Gloucester Road. And he never got off again.’
3
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in a café on Long Acre. Liz had taken my car and gone home, doing a good job of disguising her curiosity. She’d seen enough in the eight months we’d been dating to know this wasn’t how it normally worked. I liked some sort of plan in place before I met the families; liked to know who they were, and where they were coming from. But, with Julia Wren, there was no plan. She was a blank.
We ordered coffees and sat at the window, neon signs smeared in the drizzle, the sky black and swollen. She laid the printout on the table, manicured hand across it as if scared it might blow away. Often, they were caught halfway between expectation and fear: expectation that this might be the moment their loved ones came home; fear that it would be in a body bag.
She glanced at me, tucking a cord of red hair behind her ear. I couldn’t tell yet if she was naturally timid or just nervous. ‘I read that you used to be a journalist.’
‘In a past life.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘It definitely had its moments.’
‘You got to travel, I expect.’
‘I got to see a lot of the world, but it was more like a busman’s holiday.’ I smiled. ‘With added warzones.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘The States on and off for five years. South Africa before and after the elections. Israel and Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan.’
‘You must have seen some things.’
An image formed in my head: running for my life through a South African township, bullets ripping holes through the air, bodies scattered across the road, blood in the gutters, dust and debris and screams of pain. ‘Let’s just say you gain an appreciation of what people are capable of.’
She paused. Rocked her head from side to side as if sizing up her next question. I knew what was coming. ‘Did you give it up because of your wife?’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t offer anything more. ‘Why don’t you tell me about your husband?’
She nodded and produced a photograph from her bag. ‘This is Sam.’
He was in his late twenties, had bright blue eyes, fair hair and a nose that seemed too big for his face. He was unusual-looking, but not unattractive. In the picture he was dressed in a black suit and red tie, and standing in the front room of a house. At a guess, he looked about five-nine, but a little underweight. The suit didn’t fit, and there were minor hollows in his cheeks where his skin seemed like it was pulled too tight. I made a note to ask her about that later: people were underweight either because they were ill, weren’t eating enough – or had something to worry about.
‘When was this taken?’
‘Six months ago. Tenth of December.’
I pulled the photograph in closer. There was a Christmas tree reflected in one of the windows. ‘How long after this did he disappear?’
‘He was gone six days later.’ She paused. ‘The sixteenth.’
About two hundred and fifty thousand people went missing every year in the UK, and while two-thirds of them were kids under eighteen, the next commonest group was men between the ages of twenty-four and thirty. Sam Wren was a perfect fit for the statistics. The reasons why adult men went missing were often predictable – relationships, financial issues, alcoholism, mental illness – but the resolutions normally weren’t. Many were reported missing long after they’d disappeared, when it was impossible to pick up the trail. And even if that wasn’t the case, even if they were reported missing within a day or two, they had often planned their escapes in advance, given thought to their route out, and had a fair idea of how to cover their tracks. Sam had been gone six months and, as I looked at the photograph, I imagined – at the moment it was taken – he’d already firmed up his exit strategy.
I gestured towards the picture. ‘Tell me about the day he disappeared.’
She nodded but then paused. This is where it started, where it began to unravel, where the road split, and eventually she was either lying next to him in bed again or standing over him in a morgue.
‘He left a little earlier than normal,’ she said, starting quietly. ‘Usually he was gone by about 7.20, 7.30. That day, it was 7, 7.10.’
‘Any reason why?’
‘He just said he had a lot of work on. That wasn’t unusual. He’d often head off at that time on the days he knew were going to be busy.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He worked for an investment bank in Canary Wharf. He advised people on where to put their money – stock, shares, that kind of thing.’
‘Which company was that for?’
‘It’s called Investment International. I2 for short. It was set up a few years back by a guy Sam worked with at J. P. Morgan. They’d been to university together. Sam had originally gone into the graduate programme at HSBC but never really liked it, so his friend helped him make the move to JPM, and then got him involved at I2 as soon as it got off the ground.’
‘Was the company doing okay?’
She rocked her head from side to side. ‘Not great. They’re a relatively small company, so the recession hit them pretty hard. Sam’s wages were frozen at the end of 2010, and so were his bonuses.’
‘Did he still like his job, despite that?’
‘It was a bit stressful, but I’d say he liked it about as much as any of us like our jobs. He’d come home sometimes and tell me he’d had enough of it, but the next day – if things went well – he’d be completely different. I didn’t really look harder than that, to be honest. We all have ups and down, bad days and good days.’
I glanced at the photo of Sam again: the gaunt, thin features, the suit hanging off him, a faint look of disquiet in his face. Maybe there were more bad days than good.
‘So, he didn’t seem any different the day he disappeared?’
‘No. And, if he was, it was so subtle I missed it.’
‘You two were getting on okay?’
‘Fine,’ she said, eyes flicking to the window and then back to me. She didn’t elaborate. Instead she just sat there, looking for me to pick up the conversation and move it forward, the muscle tone changing at the side of her face; tighter and more rigid, like she was clenching her teeth.