The Disappeared by Ali Harper

Author:Ali Harper [Harper, Ali]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008292652
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

Brownie tried to get his legs into the tracksuit bottoms. After two failed attempts I wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held him up while he got them on. We left the flat, almost falling down the stairs in our hurry to get away from there, out of the building, dreading bumping in to anyone. Through the main door, back to the car park, the night air cold, my senses heightened.

‘Do you think she … did she …?’

‘No,’ I said as I unlocked the van.

‘Top herself?’

‘No,’ I said again, trying to keep any trace of doubt from my voice. ‘She couldn’t have. Not as easy as you think.’ Believe me, I’ve tried – got right up to this peaceful, white-light state – a moment that makes you believe in an afterlife. I shook the memory clear. ‘You need a current,’ I said to Brownie. ‘Otherwise the survival instinct pops you up. Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with rocks. You need something to drag you down.’

He screwed up his eyes, wiped the snot from his nose. ‘OD?’

‘You checked the flat. Never heard of anyone ODing on pot.’

‘Then—?’

‘I don’t know, Brownie, but we aren’t going to figure it out standing here. Get in.’

‘You think it was Duck and Bernie?’

‘How come there’s no fag ends in the ashtray?’

‘She flushes everything.’ He ducked his tall, gangly frame into the van. ‘Paranoid about getting busted.’

I climbed into the driving seat, started the engine and crunched the gears. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Brownie didn’t answer. I glanced at him. He was bent over, holding his head in his hands, his shoulders juddering so much the van rocked.

‘Seatbelt,’ I said.

‘Fucked it all up.’

I strapped myself in. ‘You didn’t kill her.’

‘She lied,’ he said.

‘Come on, seatbelt. I really don’t want to get pulled over now.’

‘Why? Why do women just mash your mind?’ He nutted the dashboard of my van so hard it dented.

The noise made me jump and a flash of anger zapped my veins. ‘All right, steady on. Let’s get out of here, think what to do.’

I released the handbrake, let the clutch up and we lurched towards the car park entrance. I hesitated, not sure whether to turn left or right. Shock had wiped the contents of my brain and in the vacuum a plan formed. Maybe my subconscious had been mulling it over while the rest of me had come to terms with the horror of Martha’s flat, I don’t know. But suddenly I had a fully formed plan in my head.

We had to get out of Leeds.

I had to get Jo.

And we needed a safe house.

But first, we had to swoop by the office. I needed envelopes.

It was only a five-minute drive from Martha’s flat to our office. I parked the van a couple of streets away, down the hill. ‘You stay here,’ I said to Brownie. ‘I’ll only be ten minutes.’

He threw open the van door and vaulted onto the pavement faster than Usain Bolt.

‘No chance.’

He kept close to me as

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