Lock Me In

They went down the sloping pontoon towards the water, Jupp confirming on the way that he hadn’t seen Matt since the morning of the day before.

‘Said he was going to go down to the pump-out.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Mile or so.’ Jupp indicated with his arm: downriver, east.

‘Did you see him go?’

Jupp shrugged. ‘Nope. But he came back, didn’t he? Must have come back last night on the big tide. Boat was in place when I did my patrol.’

‘But you haven’t seen him today?’

‘It’s not a prison.’ Jupp eyed Mae with obvious dislike as they approached the bottom of the slope. ‘They come and go as they please. Lot of us boaters just want leaving alone, tell the truth, not so keen on people coming round, poking their noses—’

‘Left or right?’ Mae asked with a smile, aware that life was short and he wasn’t getting any younger.

Jupp sniffed and turned, leading Mae left along the metal gridding.

‘How does it work then, mooring here?’ Mae asked. ‘Your tenants pay in advance?’

‘Invoice them on the twentieth, payment due first of the month. Month’s notice either way.’

The first of the month was coming up in a few days. ‘People rent these boats then, or own them?’

‘Bit of both. Matt rents his off my brother.’

Mae followed Jupp along a floating pontoon stretching maybe thirty, forty metres along the river. The walkway dipped and bounced as they moved along it, their footsteps causing the sections to clank together.

‘Watch your step, boy,’ Jupp said, glancing at Mae. ‘Dangerous if you’re used to nice safe driveways.’

‘Don’t worry about me. Spent my childhood fishing.’

Jupp frowned. ‘Din’t know your lot fished.’

‘Police?’

‘Chinese.’

Mae blinked. ‘Korean.’

He shrugged. ‘Same difference. Thought it was snooker. Gambling.’

‘OK, yeah. We’re all ninjas, too.’

Jupp frowned, but Mae raised a hand to dismiss it. Just could not be arsed.

The pontoon bouncing under their feet, they passed an assortment of boats. Traditional narrowboats; flimsy-looking fibreglass cruisers; wide, curvy-bottomed things with wheelhouses and Dutch-sounding names painted along their bows. Twee Gebroeders, Derkje, Ziet Op U Zelve.

‘Mr Corsham been here long? Regular with the rent? Any problems?’

‘Moved down from Scotland somewhere a few months ago. Pays on time.’

‘No wild parties, anything out of the usual?’

Jupp cast a look over his shoulder. ‘People call us gypsies, you get that? Pikies, river scum.’

Mae waited, unsure where this was going.

‘We get it in the neck, is what I’m saying. Brick brigade making their judgements. So we stick together, yeah? You’re not going to get us dishing dirt on each other.’

‘I’m not after dirt. I’m checking on his safety.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Jupp stopped, flipping through a bunch of small keys. ‘This one.’

Matthew Corsham’s boat was a red and green narrowboat, last on the stretch, past a mains hook-up board. Reasonable nick from the outside. Through a window in the front end – the fore? – the place looked tidy, nothing immediately suggesting forced entry. Moving along he tried the next window when the boat suddenly listed, the water slapping underneath the pontoon. Jupp had grabbed the thin handrail running along the edge of the roof and was hauling himself up, keys in hand. But after an extended fumble with a circular padlock, he grunted and gave up, huffing and stepping down clumsily from the gunwales.

‘Changed the bloody locks. Supposed to supply the management with a working key at all times.’ So much for the Anarchists’ Manifesto of three minutes previously. ‘You can have a look through the windows, but I’m not breaking the door without my brother’s say-so.’

Jupp turned to head back the way they’d come.

‘Do you have CCTV here?’ Mae called after him.

‘No. And I’ve got jobs to do.’ He paused to light a cigarette, then stumped off back towards his office.

Mae stepped up onto the deck. The smooth metal was slippery under his feet as he braced to shove back the hatch. It wouldn’t give, so he ducked down to the level of the two tiny doors that came up no higher than his thighs. Cupping his hands between his forehead and the glass, he peered inside.

Bear would have given her thumbs to live in there. Not that there was enough money in the world to pay him to endure what looked like several inches of negative headroom, but the attraction of the cosy, simple lifestyle in evidence there wasn’t hard to imagine. Shallow shelves tucked under the windows held books and a few video games, secured against the inevitable rocking with taut lengths of curtain wire. A crocheted blanket was stretched neatly over the back of a sofa, and the few feet of wall space between the single-glazed windows were covered in mismatched picture frames holding photographs.

He was about to leave when something caught his eye. A single sheet of paper on the table opposite the wood burner and a pen next to it. Mae went along to the window next to the table, to get a better look. Carefully bending into a crouch on the narrow ledge beneath the glass, he wiped the rain from his eyes and squinted in.

It was a list. Toothpaste, toothbrush, razor. Blue holdall, phone, charger, wallet, tickets. Camera, film, batteries. All the items on it crossed off.

He read to the end. Footsteps approached, and he waved Jupp away with his free hand as he brought himself up to standing. ‘All right, I’m coming.’

But when he turned, Mae saw that Jupp was long gone. The person who had passed him, who was now on the back deck and unlocking the door with her keys, was Ellie Power.

16.

Ellie

The dirty remains of the afternoon sun quivered in the puddles at my feet as I approached the marina. The office was closed up, but as I headed down to towards the boats I saw Mr Jupp. He threw his cigarette on the ground like a dart when he saw me, and came lumbering up the gangway.

‘We’ve got the bloody police down here, looking for Matthew,’ he said, passing me. ‘You’ve got keys, you bloody let him in.’

Shit. Fear swelled in my chest, inflating in seconds. But I made myself go down before I could change my mind. Before I’d had a chance to think through what I was and wasn’t going to tell him, there was Ben Mae, hanging off the side of Matt’s boat.

‘All right, I’m coming,’ he said, waving me away without looking up.

I cleared my throat, and he turned.

‘Ellie.’

‘DC Mae.’

He smiled. ‘Been a while. It’s DS now. I’m the lead on Missing Persons, so that’s why I’m …’ he trailed off, gesturing at the boat, the yard. Me.

‘Congratulations,’ I said.

We stood there for a moment, before I remembered what I was doing. I climbed up, got both locks open and swung the tiny doors open and slid back the hatch.

‘Coming in?’ I asked him.

‘Are you inviting me?’

‘That’s vampires, isn’t it?’

He laughed and gestured at the door. ‘After you, then.’

The familiar smell rose up around me as I went down, a woody warmness with the slight tinge of damp. I half-expected him to be there but the boat was empty. I stepped down into the cabin. Mae started to follow me in, but paused on the steps. He gestured at the four coat hooks next to the door.

‘Should these have anything hanging on them?’

‘It depends.’ I frowned, thinking of the last time I’d been there, when I’d hardly had room to hang my own raincoat. Matt loved being on foot, but winter was forging on and he was skinny. Usually, those pegs were draped with his layers.

I went in and sank into the built-in sofa. It was as if the place had been exorcized. So cold in there. The few square feet of hearth under the wood-burning stove had been swept after its last use, and the shallow pile of the fabric of the upholstery was sticking up unevenly, recently vacuumed. Usually the windows wept condensation, but now they were dry. Which only added up if there had been no breath to wet them. I unzipped my rain-soaked top and hung it above the stove. Mae came in and abruptly slammed his head on the ceiling.

‘F … lipping hell,’ he said, rubbing his scalp where he’d hit it. I almost wanted to laugh: Matt had a permanent bruise on his hairline at the front where he continually banged his head coming in. Unscrewing his eyes Mae said, ‘This is not sensible for a man of his height.’

I fiddled with the keys, rolling the cork float-ball keyring around in my palm. Mae nodded at them.

‘Mr Jupp couldn’t get his to work. Reckons the locks had been changed.’

I nodded. ‘First time I’ve used these ones. The old locks had just got rusty.’ Matt had said he’d been meaning to change them for ages, and had given me the set of keys as an afterthought, less than a week ago. He’d rolled down the window of his car and called me back after we’d already said goodbye outside the flat. Keep them to yourself, he’d said. You never know who might want to break in and swipe my dirty underpants.

‘You know why? Security worries?’

I gave it half a moment’s thought, and shook my head. ‘Not that I know of. No. He would have said.’

‘Sure? His colleague said the hospital had been expecting his laptop back, so—’

‘He’s lost it.’

‘OK,’ he said, his notebook out now and pen poised. ‘Details?’

‘I don’t know any more than that. He asked me to check around the flat.’

‘But you didn’t find it?’

‘No,’ I said, irritable. But now I thought about it, Matt hadn’t found it and I hadn’t asked. Guilt pecked at me as I ran that phone call back: he’d sounded really worried, but I hadn’t offered to help. ‘Does it matter?’

Mae made a search me face. ‘It wasn’t … stolen, or anything? You’re sure?’

‘Look, I really don’t—’ I started, then I broke off. Processed what he was saying. ‘Why did the hospital want it back?’

Mae took a breath before he answered me. There was a look on his face that I couldn’t interpret. ‘West London NHS Trust had him on rolling freelance contracts,’ he said, watching for my reaction.

‘Yes.’

‘Until the end of last week.’

I blinked. Thinking, no. He’d have said.

‘Did he not tell you he’d lost his job, Ellie?’

I said nothing.

‘I have to ask, do you have any problems in your relationship, would you say?’

‘No.’

‘Because that would seem like a rather big omission, if you know what I mean.’

‘We’re fine.’ It came out hard and loud, and he blinked at me. I felt Siggy spark at the base of my skull, goading, satisfied.

Were we fine?

Mae nodded solemnly, appraising me for a moment, then went to the table.

‘So there’s this.’ He handed it to me.

I took it. A list, printed out. Things you’d take if you were going away. I held it with both hands, the burn of tears starting up in the corners of my eyes.

A bloom of hope spread across me. Did this mean he’d just taken a trip? But if it did—

Toothbrush, toothpaste, razor

then he’d left. He’d left me.

There was a blue-biro tick next to every item. I scanned it again, a storm started spinning in my head.

‘Anyone could have written this,’ I said eventually. ‘Where’s the pen? Huh? Are we looking for the pen, for fingerprints?’

Mae spread his hands. ‘Ellie—’

‘No. He wouldn’t have just disappeared.’ Not without telling me. He loved me. He loved me. I brushed the hair out of my face and handed the list back to him, defiant. ‘This doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because we’re happy, that’s why.’

We were. There was no way Matt had been planning to go away. A few weeks ago we’d been talking about a trip, a long weekend. Mum was so worried, wouldn’t say why in front of Matt even though she knew he and I had talked about it all, but she went on and on about the locks on the hotel doors. Matt hadn’t flinched. When she got emotional, demanding to know how he planned on dealing with Siggy, asking did he really understand what he was getting himself into, he put his arm around me. I love your daughter, Christine. Nothing is going to change that.

‘What if he didn’t write it?’ I went into the kitchen and turned on the tap to fill the kettle. ‘I mean, it doesn’t prove anything, does it?’

Neither of us spoke for a moment, and I realized the water pump was rumbling, but nothing was coming out. The tap spat droplets and air. His water tank was empty.

I turned and checked the fridge: a Coke would do just as well. I opened the door, and looked inside. Dark.

Mae was standing next to me. ‘It’s been switched off.’

Meticulously cleaned and emptied, too. Mae paused for a while, then gently shut the door, leaving my hand to drop down to my side.

‘Sometimes I go away in the winter,’ he said, in a slow, quiet voice. ‘Take my little girl snowboarding. I turn the water off in my flat and run all the taps until there’s no water left in them. In case it freezes in the pipes, and the pipes burst.’

I opened the breadbin. ‘He wasn’t going away.’ The breadbin was empty.

‘And I use up everything in my fridge,’ he said, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘and give it a good clean.’

I pushed past him, cursing the lack of space, the fact that there is nowhere to go on a stupid tiny boat, nowhere to escape to. ‘I’ve said he wasn’t going away.’ I dropped onto the sofa and drew my hands over my face. I wanted my mum.

‘Ellie.’

When I opened my eyes, he was looking at my neck. I pulled my chin down fast, but it was too late.

Slowly, he asked, ‘What happened there, then?’

He wouldn’t have asked about the scar. He meant the bruises. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘No. It’s not.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘No?’ Mae came round and sat next to me, the other end of the sofa. ‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’

I let all my breath out at once. ‘Well, it is.’

Leaning forward, he said, ‘Was it Matt? Did he hurt you, Ellie?’

‘No! God, no! He would never. He’s not like that. No.’

Mae looked away, placed his hands on his knees. ‘Someone reports someone missing, we need to look at everything that might be suspicious. And to be honest,’ he said, indicating my neck with a nod, ‘mystery bruising might look a bit suspicious.’

I stared down at my feet. ‘It’s not mystery bruising.’

‘OK.’ He waited.

‘I was … sleepwalking. Mum tried to steer me back to bed. I was agitated. She had to be … forceful.’

‘And this was, when? Last night?’

I nodded, my heart hammering. Mae inclined his head to get another look.

‘Looks like she fought pretty hard.’

‘I was just confused,’ I mumbled.

‘Confused. OK.’ There was a pause. ‘See. Ellie, I get confused all the time. Sometimes I can’t remember if I’ve left the oven on. Or I lose my car, or, you know, I annoy someone and I get confused about what I might have said to upset them. But I can’t remember a time when confusion has ever ended up in me being held by the throat.’

‘I’m telling you it wasn’t him.’

Mae stayed where he was for a moment. Then he got to his feet, steadied himself against the motion of the boat under his feet, and turned to me.

‘So for now, we’re classing this as a low-risk case—’

‘Low risk. What does that mean?’

‘It means that we wait and see what happens. This is still very early days. To be honest it’s only because I saw your name on the information that it’s me dealing with this and not just a bobby making a couple of calls. But look, you have to realize that everything we have here is pointing to Matt having just gone away somewhere.’ He tucked everything into his bag. ‘It’s a dynamic thing, though. If anything changes—’

‘But what does it mean you will do?’ I interrupted. ‘You have to do something.’

He pressed his lips between his teeth for a moment, measuring his words. ‘Look. Men are weak. Sometimes they are really shitty. I’m sure he’s been great to you, and break-ups can be awful but—’

‘No. It’s not a break-up. He is the most honest, the most grounded person you’ll ever meet. He is a good man, and I can rely on him. I can. You’re making a mistake.’

He watched me for a second, like he was trying to find something in my face. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got a hundred other jobs stacking up and this is just,’ he gestured around the boat, to me. The whole thing. ‘It’s just not a police matter,’ he finished at last. ‘I’ve already done more than I am supposed to.’

‘Fine. Then go.’ I turned away. He would not see me cry.

On the deck, he crouched and turned back to me. ‘This isn’t about you, you know. Men are shits. He didn’t deserve you.’

I watched him swing himself down onto the pontoon, and I thought about how much Matt had given me. How bottomless his patience was, how hard he’d tried to help me believe in myself.

Mae was right. Matt didn’t deserve me. He really, truly did not.

17.

Mae

Mae had just swung his leg back over the crossbar when he heard the blip-blip greeting of the siren. Kit, in a squad car, a heavy shade of pissed-off darkening her face.

‘You planning to answer your phone any time soon?’ The window was wound all the way down and her shirt sleeve was rolled all the way up. The pointed toe of the 1950’s pinup girl tattooed on her bicep peeked out just above her elbow.

He dug his phone out, failed to wake it, showed her the screen. ‘Dead. Sorry.’

‘No deader than you are.’

He unsnapped the fastener under his chin and took the helmet off, leaning an elbow on the roof of the car. ‘How do you mean?’

Kit turned to speak into the radio clipped onto her lapel. ‘Got him,’ she told it, then, ‘I’ll deal with it, Ma’am.’ To him, she said, ‘Get in.’

‘That’ll be, “get in, Sarge”,’ he corrected, then gestured to the bike, opened his mouth to argue that he couldn’t, but she cut him off.

‘Get in the car, Sarge, right now. You forgot to collect your daughter, and she’s gone missing.’

18.

Ellie

I sat still for a long time on Matt’s sofa, listening to the boats bump and creak. Thinking about the list. I’d looked for all the things on it, ticked them off one by one. Every single one of them was gone.

My phone rang: it was the hospital.

I didn’t even say my name when I answered. ‘Have you found him?’

There was a pause. ‘Sorry, Ellie, found who?’ the caller said, and I placed her voice. It was Helen, who managed the volunteer schedule at the children’s ward where I worked. ‘I was calling about the session you were going to do with the kids this morning.’

‘Oh god, I’m sorry, I—’

‘Look, I’m afraid to tell you that we can’t have you volunteering here anymore.’

‘What? Why?’

‘We need reliability. We can’t have the children disappointed.’

‘You told me you were crying out for volunteers! That’s why Matt got my forms rushed through, so I could—’

‘Nothing was rushed,’ she said. ‘Look I’d love to keep you but the children have to come first, and if you can’t keep your promises to them—’

‘I’m sorry, I just—’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m sorry too, but that’s where we are.’ She said goodbye coolly and hung up.

I stood there in the kitchen, blinking, not believing it. Matt was going to be so disappointed. He’d suggested the volunteering in the first place, had set up my interview, helped me with the application. I’d loved it, too. I’d even started to believe maybe it could lead to an actual job, one day. And now I’d lost it. I slumped down onto the arm of the sofa.

Something caught my eye. A big metal bulldog clip hanging on a hook next to the sink, and between its teeth a wedge of scraps of paper. I reached over and took the clip down. Just receipts, mostly: a few postcards. But right at the back, with a fold of card across the top to protect it from being marked by the pressure of the clip, was something else. A faded, square-shaped photo, the old-fashioned instant kind that came straight out of the camera, ready-developed to be waved around and blown upon impatiently until the image slowly appears and definition emerges like a fog lifting. The colours were vague, less saturated, as if they were trying to fade back to a sleepy sepia.

A little girl. Less than a year old, probably, hair already thick and black. Even with the colours muted by age, the eyes clearly distinct: one eye sky-blue, one green with a narrow slice of brown in the iris. Her cheeks rounded with health and happiness.

Me.

As a child. The only picture in existence. What was it doing here?

I rubbed my thumb across the top of it, the two rust-stained puncture holes where a staple must once have been. We’d had a burglary when I was two and a half, a few days before we were due to move house. Everything we owned was in boxes by the door of the one-bed flat we’d been renting. Might as well have gift-wrapped it, Mum always said afterwards. All of my baby stuff, a whole load of Mum’s old things, but worst of all, all the photos of me as a little kid.

Maybe because I didn’t have any family, the absence of the pictures felt like a huge hole as I grew up. I used to make up pretend photo albums, drawing pictures of my dead grandparents, my dead dad. In my pictures, he was just like me, dark and broad-shouldered, each of us with one green and one blue eye, standing either side of petite, yellow-haired Mum. I pinned those pictures everywhere, but what I wanted more than anything was a photo. But they were all gone.

All but this one.

I’d found it inside a book. I was ten, and we had just moved flats again. I remember the swell of excitement when it fell onto the floor and I realized what it was. I’d never seen this one before. I ran into her room, beaming with pride at the discovery of such a coveted treasure. I had expected tears of joy.

None came. Just a request not to snoop in her things, and a dark, brittle silence for the rest of the afternoon. Confused, I apologized, and she put her arms around me and said the same.

‘It was a dark time with your dad,’ she’d say, by way of explanation. ‘I’ve got my memories of you, baby, and they’re good enough.’

The next day I found it folded into four, in the bathroom bin. So I saved it a second time. But this time, I kept my secret to myself.

In the picture I was smiling. I looked into the eyes of my infant self and tried to see Siggy. Was she there, in my head, when I was that small? Lurking, waiting for my eyes to close and for the dummy to drop out of my pink little mouth so she could show me all her horrible things?

But more importantly, why did Matt have it? I’d dug it out and shown it to him, maybe a month ago, after we’d gone through an old album of his. I hadn’t given it to him, though. I’d tucked it back into the book where I kept it. He knew how precious it was to me. So why had he taken it?

I tucked the photo into my pocket and looked around. I had come to look for a clue, and all I had was a photo and a printed-out list. Outside, a solid darkness was starting to fall. I noticed Mr Jupp’s light on, and realized he’d be locking up soon.

He snorted and hurriedly took his feet from the desk as I opened the office door. A thread of dribble hung sleepily from the corner of his mouth, which he noticed only when it hit his wrist.

‘You, is it?’ he said accusingly. ‘Police gone, have they?’

‘For now,’ I said, forcing a smile. His eyes swept down to my chest and up again, like a kid reaching for a sweet they knew they weren’t allowed. ‘But I’m still a bit worried, to be honest.’