Reported Missing: A gripping psychological thriller with a breath-taking twist Read online

  ‘Do you watch TV, love?’ he calls after me half-heartedly.

  I see the shop I am looking for, the reason I came into town, and go inside and pretend to look at phones, tapping at the screens. There are a couple of other customers in the shop. An old woman complaining about a bill she has received that isn’t accurate, and a man with a glazed expression as he tries to take in all the information about data and minutes and models that the assistant is reeling off.

  ‘But will I be able to send a picture message to my daughter? That’s what I want to know. She lives abroad, you see.’

  This re-energises the assistant even more and she flicks through the catalogue again, telling the man about video messaging and apps where he can draw on his photos.

  ‘Can I help you, madam?’

  I jolt. ‘I’m just browsing, thanks.’

  ‘Well, I’m Adam, and if you need anything in store today just give me a shout, yeah?’

  I am surprised at how deep the voice is and to see that he is so much taller than me. I have to look up to meet his eye. His hair is brushed forward and gelled, like the teeth of a rake.

  ‘Actually I’m a journalist from the Courier. I’m er…’ That came out easier last time.

  ‘Right. You looking for a phone with plenty storage then, for videos and that?’

  ‘Not exactly. I was wondering if we could have a quick word.’

  ‘Alright, yeah; is there like a specific type of phone you’re after or something? A tablet?’

  ‘It’s about Kayleigh. Kayleigh Jackson.’

  His manner changes from the polite sales pitch. He speaks more quietly, pretending to tidy and straighten up the display phones. ‘Why? What do you want to talk to me for? What’s been said?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just, you know, gathering some details to keep the campaign going. Do you have a moment?’

  ‘Well, not really, no. I’m working.’

  I look at my wrist, but I’m not actually wearing a watch. His eyes follow my hand.

  ‘No one wears them anymore, do they?’ I say, breezy. ‘When do you finish? I could wait for you; or I could come back.’

  He looks over his shoulder towards the rest of the shop, then back to me. ‘Look, I’ll meet you out front in a minute, right.’

  He shouts down to his colleague. ‘Mark? Am nipping out for me break while it’s quiet, right?’

  ‘Well, actually it’s not really a good time, mate,’ his colleague says.

  I go out and wait on the bench outside.

  He comes out of the shop pulling a hooded top over his head. He doesn’t come over to the bench but turns right and keeps walking. So I follow him, half jogging to catch up.

  ‘You can buy us a drink then. I’ve not sat down all day.’

  We go into Costa Coffee and Adam sits down on a stool at the window bench looking out into the shopping centre.

  ‘I’ll have a large mocha with cream. And a brownie. Chocolate. Cheers, you can put it on your expenses, can’t you? Can’t wait till I get a job where I can claim expenses, me. And get a car.’

  I order for him and buy a tea for myself, clenching my fists and pushing my nails into the palm of my hand as I make the card payment, praying it won’t be declined.

  He rubs his hands together as I pass him his drink; so big that it has two handles.

  ‘Have we talked before?’ Adam asks. ‘You look familiar.’

  ‘Erm… yeah, I think we did. A while ago now. When... well, you know, when all this first happened.’

  ‘Because I ain’t never talked to the papers before. That’s all. No one asked me, to be honest. I don’t read the papers anyway. Especially not after all this. My dad says I should. But it’s all so depressing, isn’t it? I’d rather not know.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re not wrong there. Hmmm… maybe you’ve seen me in the shop then, I don’t know. I’m always losing my phone or breaking things. And it’s such a small town anyway, isn’t it?’

  He frowns and seems to scrutinise my face. ‘So what’s this about then? Why you wanting to talk to me now?’

  ‘Well, you know, with the vigil and everything. Kayleigh’s birthday coming up… I just wanted to revisit things. Make sure people remember Kayleigh, yeah?’

  He scoops cream out from the cup with his finger.

  ‘So, I understand you used to go out with Kayleigh?’

  ‘Yeah, but we split up. Not long before she went missing. But… but that don’t mean nothing. Don’t write that.’

  I don’t say anything; I just look at him, willing him to continue. The less I say, the better.

  ‘Look I’m not a suspect or nothing so you better not print that. I’ve told the police everything and it’s all above board.’

  ‘Don’t worry. That’s not what I am getting at at all. I’m just trying to build up a picture of Kayleigh. Who she really was. Those last few weeks before she went missing. Jog people’s memories, you know?’

  ‘OK.’ He looks unsure but shoves almost half the brownie in his mouth at once, using the thin wooden stirrer to load it with cream first.

  ‘So, were you and Kayleigh together long?’

  His eyes are fixed while he chews and it seems to take forever for him to swallow. I wonder if he is playing for time. ‘Erm, quite a while, like a month or six weeks or something. I liked her but she were a lot to handle, you know.’

  It’s sweet that he classes a month as ‘quite a while’ in relationship terms. It is when you’re a teenager.

  ‘How do you mean, “a lot to handle”?’

  ‘Sometimes she didn’t turn up to meet me and she wouldn’t say why. And she wanted to go fancy places – like clubbing or buying stuff in town. Trainers, games, clothes and that. I’m working full time but I don’t have the money. I’m saving up for a car.’

  ‘OK. How old are you, Adam?’

  ‘I’m seventeen. So, listen, I don’t want my name in the paper, right? I’m trusting you because I want to find her – after all this time, we need to do more. But I want to apply to go in the army. I can’t risk my chances with anything like this.’

  ‘OK, that’s fine. I don’t have to name names. Hey, I don’t even know your last name and I am not going to ask. So Kayleigh wanted you to buy her stuff?’

  ‘Nah, it weren’t really that – she had money herself. I dunno where she was getting the money but I can’t have my girlfriend paying for everything. I felt like I had to try to keep up with her.’

  ‘And that’s why you broke up?’

  ‘That was part of it, but it weren’t just that. She went home late one night, her mum hadn’t been able to get her on her phone. Sometimes I couldn’t neither. It weren’t nothing to do with me, though. I live with my mum – I can’t have girls back at mine or nothing like that. I mean, please. Ugh.’ He screws his face up at the idea. ‘But her mum came into the shop shouting the odds at me and to keep away from her daughter. Kayleigh told her she had been with me. But she weren’t.’

  ‘What do you mean? So Kayleigh went missing before?’

  ‘Well, she weren’t missing missing. Not like now. More like she was off the radar when she wanted to be. Her mum was worried. And I’m thinking she’s saying she’s with me but she ain’t, so where is she? I just thought, I don’t need it, you know? I didn’t want to get involved. I ain’t getting blamed for that shit. I’m going in the army, that’s what I’m focused on now.’

  We both look out of the window for a while. A few schoolkids wander past but the centre is emptying out now, people heading home for tea.

  His phrasing ‘off the radar when she wanted to be’ catches in my mind. I hadn’t been able to put my finger on it before, but that’s how I’d sometimes felt with Chris too. His battery was often gone on his phone – straight to voicemail. Or he’d go out for the day to work or to football, or saying he was going to take pictures, and leave his phone at home. It annoyed me, but it almost became a running joke about him being scatty. Doesn’t feel so funny now.

&n
bsp; ‘I didn’t like it. I just thought… it weren’t going to be worth it, you know?’

  I take a sip of my tea, gone cold now.

  ‘I mean it’s a shame. She’s a really nice girl and that. Just dead sound.’

  ‘And... you didn’t think she was too young for you?’

  He straightens his back at this, bristling.

  ‘Well, she said she was sixteen. I believed her.’

  He drains the rest of his drink and checks his phone. ‘Nothing happened though like… you know, like that. Nah nah nah. I swear. I only knew she was younger when all this came out when she went missing. We just met up in town a few times on a night and at the weekend and that, and that was it. It weren’t serious but I thought she was nice. I liked her. She was funny and stuff.’

  ‘And you didn’t see her again before she went missing?’

  ‘No. That was it. I’m upset, don’t get me wrong. I hope she’s alright and she’s found. Or maybe she’s happy or whatever, I don’t know. I mean, it’s pretty fucked up however you look at it. But I just want to put it behind me, you know?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Listen, I better go. I’m gonna be late back. My boss already hates me and my mum will have me if I get sacked.’

  ‘OK, thanks, Adam. Take it easy.’

  He looks back at me again and shakes his head. ‘I’m sure I do recognise you from somewhere.’

  Back out on the high street, some of the shops are already starting to close. There are lights off in some; in others people are cashing up or hoovering, ready for tomorrow.

  I head to the seafront and sit there on a bench for over an hour. The waves are hypnotic. But something keeps pulling me out of the trance I’d prefer to be in. It’s the money. Adam said Kayleigh had money. A knot in my mind. The day we went to the beach with Jeannie and Dan. Ellen tried to give Chris the change from the chips. They were standing a little way off and he dropped it back into her pink beaded purse. She grinned and flushed. Every memory gets poisoned.

  The idea that Chris could have been giving Kayleigh money keeps pushing in. Our money, my money – all of it – gone. And my dad’s voice is stirred up from somewhere, how he always used to say, ‘You don’t get anything for nothing.’

  Fourteen

  Wednesday, 11 November

  Everyone round here calls the street I am standing on now ‘Cheap Street’ because it’s full of pound shops, Cash Converters, a food weigh house, charity shops. There are two dodgy pubs and a Tesco Express. I pop in there to buy teabags and tins of soup. The white strip lighting in the store is harsh and bright. Outside, it’s dark now, starting to rain, so I put up the hood on my coat and pull the tie around my face. The lights from the shops create blurred, coloured ribbons across the puddles on the street.

  There are people crowded outside The Grapes pub smoking, despite the weather. A paper sign in the window advertises the cheapest drinks in town. Inside it already looks busy: men in hi-vis jackets and boots stand at the bar, the after-work drinkers. ‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles blares out. It’s the bright blue that gets my attention. Someone is drinking something the shade of a highlighter pen. The pop of colour catches my eye against the grey drizzle. It’s Paige.

  She has the hood of her jersey top up but she’s arranged her hair carefully at the front, tendrils framing her face. She’s leaning against the wall, one leg bent up, engrossed in her phone. I think about going over, trying to smooth things out from the other day at the school, see if she’s willing to talk any more now that she’s on her own. But before I can make a decision, a man goes over to her and claps his hands in front of her face. She jumps a little. She holds the straw to her mouth and drinks while he talks to her. She seems detached, disinterested.

  After a while, Paige tips her head to the side and gestures to the man to walk with her. He follows with his hands in his pockets and his step has a bounce to it.

  I go after them, a safe distance behind. We go past the pound shop, toilet rolls and tubs of fat balls for birds stacked in the window. Past the bookies, the bright lights glowing around the edge of the window, but what’s going on inside is hidden by digital screens explaining the latest odds. It’s one of the betting shops I went into after I found out about Chris’s gambling from Detective Fisher. The police probably checked the CCTV from all the betting shops too. In some of the gambling places, they told me they remembered him. But so what? He gambled – after the shock of initially finding that out, him being seen in a bookie’s didn’t really tell me anything new.

  We pass the other pub on the street, and the man high-fives someone drinking in the doorway. After he and Paige have passed, he turns round and walks backwards for a few paces. ‘Y’alright, mate? Aye, aye, sound, mate, sound.’ Even from here I can see his cheekbones jut out through his skin.

  Every so often Paige adjusts her hood. I worry that she is going to turn round and see me, but she doesn’t. What would she do? It’s hard to tell if they are chatting, like friends, or walking in silence. I can’t risk getting close enough to find out.

  They walk up one of the alleys towards the seafront – the street is narrow, I could too easily be seen, so I decide to go up the parallel one. I don’t really know why I am following them. Closer to the truth about Kayleigh, closer to the truth about Chris. It makes me want to turn and go back again.

  I run quickly up the side street; I don’t want to lose them. All the shops are closed and it’s eerily quiet, badly lit. They’re nowhere to be seen when I reach the top. I think they must have got away. Got away. Listen to me, running around Shawmouth like I’m in a 1970s detective show.

  But when I look down the alley, they’ve stopped; they look like they’re having a row. He tries to walk away, back the way they came, but she grabs his sleeve and pulls him back. They’re coming up the alley again, faster now, so I move away and stand in a doorway, shrinking into my hood, pretending to look at my phone. They cross the street, waiting in the middle for the traffic to pass, her gripping on to the sleeve of his jacket. I think they must be heading for the bus but they walk the other way from the stop. They turn to go down the steps to the beach. I cross too and reach the top of the steps.

  There’s a level between the beach and the road because it’s so far down. Down the first flight of stairs is a concrete stretch and some benches under a wooden canopy. Elderly people often sit here to watch the sea. When I’ve been here for an early-morning walk, I’ve seen tramps lying on the benches under newspapers, empty bottles nearby.

  I can’t follow them down because it would be too obvious, but I stand as close as I can without being seen. I can hear them talking, but over the waves and the wind the sound cuts in and out, just broken words. The man’s voice sounds raised, a whiney edge to it, but maybe it’s just the way the sound is carrying.

  A woman comes along walking her dog, a fluffy white husky type. She lets it run on a long, extendable lead for a while but when she sees Paige and the man she calls, ‘Come on, Sheba, come on, girl,’ and pulls the lead back in, looking back a couple of times as she goes up the steps.

  I chance a look, and Paige and the man have their backs to me now. They’re going into the disabled toilet. She looks out before closing the door but she doesn’t see me. From my vantage point I can just see a corner of the floor in the toilet, covered in muddy footprints. Bile shoots into my mouth, hot and acidic.

  I wait. A couple of people walk past, eyeing me suspiciously, so I return to pretending to look at my phone until I hear the lock click again. I cross over the road to watch from the doorway.

  When they get to the top of the steps, they exchange a few words. The man comes over the road towards me. I notice again how hollow his cheeks are, his eyes sunken. I think of the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, a Halloween house party Chris and I once went to. I look right at him but he doesn’t notice. He goes back down a side street, probably towards town again. Paige is sitting on the railing, one leg hooked over, talking on the ph
one, and fighting against her hair blowing across her face. I wince to think of her falling backwards. A long drop to the concrete ground below. Eventually, she hops off and crosses the road. She doesn’t see me.

  She goes back down the side street she came up with the man. I keep a safe distance and go to follow her, but she goes inside the only building with its lights on. I stand and wait for a while but she doesn’t come back out. I walk past; it’s a takeaway. A white cube in the otherwise darkened street. There’s just one man, his back to me, agitating the fryers. Paige is nowhere to be seen.

  I recognise the place now that I’m standing in front of it. Dirty windows, starving drunks. We saw a fight in there once when we were walking past on the way home from a night out. A group of lads. The place exploded in arms and legs flying everywhere, blood splattered across the white wall tiles. I remember dragging Chris away by his arm, saying we shouldn’t get involved. Selfishness, really.

  The wind is freezing now, causing my eyes to water. It’s making a howling and whistling sound, clattering empty cans along the side of the road and sending crisp packets swirling into the air.

  The walk back to the caravan park seems to take ages and my shopping bag is beginning to cut into my fingers.

  I decide to go to Barnacles when I get back. The lights are bright; there’s a table of men playing dominoes, two men having a game of pool, and a man and woman sitting at the end of the bar. The man’s wearing a sports jacket and the woman has a French pleat in her black hair, like they got dressed up for a night out. Maybe they’re going somewhere else later. The woman is perched on a stool and he stands to the side of her, his hand on her back, but they’re not talking. She sips white wine from a small, round glass.