LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      That was the only explanation I could think of, that she had been in a crash in the pizza van and was lying unconscious in a hospital somewhere with no means of identification on her. That would be why she hadn’t called to tell me. I got straight through to the station and explained that my daughter had disappeared during the night and asking if they knew of any reported accidents.

      ‘There’s been no incidents that we know about,’ the duty officer said, ‘and it’s too soon to report someone missing. I suggest you make the house safe and then go back home and wait for your daughter to phone you from wherever she is.’

      I had wanted to hear something more proactive than that, but I could see it was all I was going to get for the moment. To make the house safe we were going to have to do something about the window Gary had broken. I went back to the man across the road and told him what was going on. He said he had some wood and would bring it over. Gary climbed back out through the window and between them they boarded it up. I was feeling so agitated, desperate to do something positive to sort the situation out, that I could hardly stand still. As a mother it didn’t feel possible that one of my children could just disappear off the face of the earth without leaving any trace of where she had gone or why; it felt as if I was trapped in a bad dream.

      Kath from next door looked out again and I went over to talk to her at her back door, asking her to keep an eye on the house for me. If Julie came back, she was to get her to ring me straight away. I could see her son sitting in the kitchen with one of his friends. She promised to call me immediately if she saw anything at all.

      Next I drove down to find Charlie at his catering van, fighting to keep my rising panic under control. He was already open for business, serving customers through the hatch, and he looked surprised to see me parking up and hurrying over.

      ‘Our Julie’s missing,’ I blurted out the moment I got to the hatch, struggling to keep the tears back, hoping he would be able to calm me down with some logical explanation.

      ‘What do you mean?’ He looked totally puzzled as if I was talking a different language.

      ‘I’ve been to the house and she’s not there. I’ve no idea where she is.’

      ‘I’ll close up and come home,’ he said, immediately starting to pack up. Seeing him take it so seriously I knew I wasn’t overreacting and my worry increased.

      Once we were back at home I rang everyone I could think of to ask if they’d seen her. I made the calls as quick as possible, nervous that if I wasn’t careful I would be on the phone at the moment Julie tried to ring and I would miss the call. No one I spoke to had any more idea where she could be than I did. After an hour or so I went down to the pizza shop, pressing my face to the glass, my hands cupped over my eyes to try to see if there was any sign of life yet, but the premises were still all closed up and dark inside. Just a few hours before they would have been buzzing with activity and Julie would have been part of it; now the shop was as silent and deserted as her house.

      The hours were ticking past. Her appointed time at the court came and went and still there was no call. Now it didn’t seem likely that she had just overslept somewhere, but what other explanation could there be? I didn’t know what to do with myself. I just wanted to find her and put my mind at rest. Charlie wasn’t saying much but I could tell he was as puzzled and worried as I was. We both knew this wasn’t like her and when you don’t have any facts to go on, your mind always tends to go straight to the worst possible explanations. Neither of us wanted to voice the fears that were beginning to grow inside us. We wanted to put that moment off for as long as possible.

      In the afternoon we left Kevin with Angela and went back down to the pizza shop again. This time, to my relief, the lights were on. We could see people moving around at the back preparing the ovens and the ingredients for the evening’s orders.

      ‘Our Julie’s disappeared,’ I told them the moment we were in through the door. ‘Which of you took her home last night?’

      We must have been sounding frantic by then, and maybe they felt we were accusing them of something, because they seemed to become evasive, all denying they knew anything, shrugging their shoulders and avoiding our eyes, which made us even more angry and panicked. They were talking nervously amongst themselves in their own language, making us wonder what they were talking about, making us feel left out and suspicious. We just wanted a simple answer to the question of who had dropped her off at the house and when. We just wanted them to help us, to give us some clue as to where she might be, what her movements might have been after she finished work the night before. Why would this be causing them such a problem? We couldn’t make head or tail of what was going on.

      ‘Why won’t you tell me who dropped her off last night? What’s your problem?’

      I couldn’t understand why they weren’t being more helpful; every way we turned we seemed to bang into a brick wall. The police weren’t willing to accept she was a missing person yet and these people wouldn’t tell us what they knew about her movements during the night. The neighbours knew no more than we did and nor did her friends. There was no one else for us to ask. What had happened to Julie? Why were these people acting so suspiciously? It was as if she had been abducted from her bed by aliens and everyone was frightened to tell us the truth.

      Gary and Charlie were both getting heated and frustrated by the Iranians’ defensiveness and I could see there was going to be a fight, so I went out onto the pavement to get out of the way and leave them all to it. There was some angry shouting going on behind me and one of the Iranians came out of the kitchen brandishing a knife sharpener, wanting to chase Charlie and Gary out of the shop. He lunged at them and there were some blows exchanged. Someone must have called the police because the next thing I knew there was a patrol car tearing round the corner and screeching to a halt outside the shop.

      I tried to explain the situation, but the Iranians complained that Charlie and Gary had attacked them. After some more shouting and gesticulating, they were carted off to the police station leaving me in shock on the pavement outside.

      The Iranians went back to preparing their pizzas, talking angrily amongst themselves. Everything had become a thousand times worse and I was frantic now. I needed Charlie and Gary to help me look for Julie and the police wouldn’t tell me what was going on or whether they were going to be charging them with anything. No one seemed to want to tell us anything. The whole world was going mad around us.

      Charlie and Gary were kept in the cells overnight. Angela and I spent the evening alone and desperate, trying to keep things normal for Kevin. We couldn’t understand why our whole world had suddenly been turned upside down, with our family vanishing all around us. Every hour of that night felt like an eternity. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever sleep peacefully again.

      Friday dawned and nothing had changed. Julie was still gone. We hadn’t heard from her since Wednesday. The police let Charlie and Gary go and when they got home Charlie told me he had hardly slept during the night because it had been so cold and they hadn’t given him a blanket. They wouldn’t even let him stop off at home on the way to the station to get some blood-pressure tablets that he needed to take every day. One of the policemen on duty had accused him of being bad-tempered when in fact he was just frantic with worry about Julie and where she might be. It was all adding to my feeling that the entire world had turned against us and wanted to obstruct our search for Julie in any way they could.

      Charlie and Gary were sent home without any apology or explanation. We actually had to ask the police later what was going to happen and it was only then that they told us charges against them had been dropped. I probably would have had a lot more to say about the matter if I hadn’t been so beside myself with worry about Julie. I was desperate to get the police to help us and I didn’t want to alienate them if I could help it.

      Eventually, once they realized they weren’t in any sort of trouble, one of the Iranians admitted that he had dropped Julie home at about one-thirty in the morning, and that he had seen her put her key in the door before he had driven away. At last we had a piece of the jigsaw, which we could use to start building a picture of what might

Скачать книгу