The Disappeared. Ali Harper

uh.’

      ‘Did he leave a forwarding address?’ I knew as the words came out of my mouth that they were overly naive.

      ‘Ever heard of someone doing a moonlight flit and leaving a forwarding address?’

      ‘Pants, what’s your problem?’ said Jo, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back in the chair. ‘It’s not like we’re not asking nicely.’

      Pants stared at her, like he wanted to say something, but he checked himself.

      ‘You said you had his stuff,’ I said. ‘Does that not mean he’s coming back?’

      ‘No idea. He didn’t tell me his plans.’

      ‘Can we see it? His stuff?’

      ‘You mean the stuff from his room?’

      ‘Yeah, I guess.’ I still had the feeling we were speaking in riddles.

      Pants thought about this for a moment, then he shrugged. ‘What do I care?’ He moved across to a door in the corner of the room and flicked back the bolt. ‘It’s in the cellar.’

      I glanced at Jo. Was it wise to follow a man we’d only just met into a cellar? Possibly not, but six weeks of punching a leather bag had made my biceps swell and there’s a confidence that comes with that. Besides there were two of us, and he was barefoot.

      ‘After you,’ Jo said to him.

      Pants went first, I followed, and Jo brought up the rear as we made our way down the narrow stone steps. When Pants got to the bottom he flicked a light switch. He nodded towards half a dozen bin liners in the corner of a small room that might have been where they once delivered coal. My first reaction was to grin.

      ‘That’s everything.’ Pants said. ‘I mean, apart—’

      ‘Can we look?’ asked Jo, already inspecting the bags.

      Pants looked at me like he was daring me to say something. I shrugged as he squared back his shoulders. OK, we hadn’t got Jack, but we’d got his stuff: surely the next best thing. There had to be something in there that would tell us where he’d gone, who he was with. An old phone would be great. And we had something we could tell his mother. I practised the words in my head. Yes, that’s right, Mrs Wilkins, we’ve a few leads we’re working on.

      ‘Can we?’ I asked.

      ‘Bring them up. It’s freezing down here.’

      I hadn’t noticed the temperature, but Pants’s bare toes were crunched up against the cold concrete.

      Jo and I grabbed the necks of the nearest bin liners.

      ‘Pen’s supposed to be taking them to the charity shop.’

      ‘What’s in them?’ asked Jo, as we followed him back up the stairs, lugging the bags behind us.

      ‘Crap,’ said Pants. He returned to the kettle, poured the just boiled water into the mugs, while Jo and I went back for the last bags.

      When we’d brought them back upstairs, Jo said: ‘They’re not very heavy.’

      ‘Clothes mainly.’

      That wiped the grin from my face. I frowned, trying to make sense of what we knew. ‘He took Brownie’s PlayStation but left his own clothes?’ I tried to undo the knot at the top of the first bin liner, but it was tight.

      ‘Don’t open them in here,’ Pants said to me. ‘I’ve just hoovered.’

      ‘Has he got any mates?’ Jo asked. ‘Anyone who’ll know where he went?’

      ‘Only Brownie, and he doesn’t know.’

      ‘Where is Brownie?’

      ‘Out.’

      ‘Out where?’ said Jo, in a voice that said she was trying to be patient.

      ‘He’s gone to try The Warehouse again.’

      We waited for him to expand.

      ‘Jack works there. Or he used to. Brownie’s gone down, looking for him.’ He opened the fridge and took out a carton of rice milk. ‘You’re not the only ones, you know. He owes his share of the gas bill.’

      That surprised me. People living in squats pay gas bills? Struck me as a bit pedestrian. ‘Not the only ones what?’

      ‘How do you know he left?’ asked Jo, sitting back down at the table and returning to her roll-up.

      ‘What?’

      She lit the end, her eyes screwed up against the smoke. ‘How do you know he’s not dead?’

      Sometimes I hate Jo. She has this way of putting into words the things that lurk in the corner of your mind, the things you don’t want to think about. She just puts it right out there, like there’s nothing to be scared of. Pants kicked the fridge door shut with his foot.

      ‘He’s not dead.’

      ‘How do you know?’ Jo stared at Pants without blinking.

      Pants didn’t say anything.

      ‘He might have fallen in the canal,’ Jo said.

      ‘What you trying to say?’

      Wasn’t it obvious enough? I flinched as Jo continued to bat around the possibilities.

      ‘Been mugged, got run over?’

      Jo listed the various tragedies as I tried not to think how plausible each of them sounded. More plausible than someone doing a runner in the buff with his housemate’s PlayStation.

      ‘Did you try the hospitals?’

      Pants raised his eyebrows.

      ‘How do you know it was him that took the PS4?’ Jo paused and tapped the end of her cigarette into the ashtray on the table.

      ‘It’s obvious.’ He put two mugs on the table in front of us with a bit too much force, so that a splash of hot liquid leaped over the rim. ‘Who else? There was no break-in.’

      I thought I saw him frown, his features darkened for an instant.

      Jo didn’t let up with the questions. ‘Have you rung his family?’

      He mopped at the spilt tea on the table with a dishcloth and then rinsed it in the sink. ‘He didn’t—’

      ‘Sounds like you didn’t give him much of a chance,’ said Jo.

      I took my first sip of scalding tea. I love it so hot it burns the skin off the roof of your mouth. ‘She’s right,’ I said, after I’d thought about it for a moment. ‘If my flatmate went missing—’

      Jo didn’t let me finish either. ‘Ever heard of the benefit of the doubt?’ she asked.

      Pants folded his arms across his chest. The beginnings of a tattoo poked out under his T-shirt sleeve. ‘You didn’t live with him.’

      ‘He could be dead in a gutter for all you know,’ said Jo.

      I got a sudden flash of my Aunt Edie, although she’d have said ‘dead in a ditch’. Guilt clawed my stomach lining. She’s my only living relative, and I hadn’t rung her in weeks.

      ‘Don’t you take the moral high ground with me,’ he said, his voice lower, quieter. He turned away.

      I didn’t understand the sneer in his voice. My gaze followed his. I could see the tops of the trees on The Ridge through the kitchen window, still bare from winter and fading against the darkening sky.

      ‘His family’s not heard from him for three months,’ I said. ‘You can understand why they’re worried.’

      He reached for a packet of Silk Cut that was on the high up mantelpiece above a gas fire. He lit one, inhaled in a way