The Girl You Lost: A gripping psychological thriller (13 page)

I
open
my mouth – but to do what? Shout? Scream? It is not yet dark and there are cars driving past and people walking the pavements, so would he risk hurting me out here? Perhaps he plans to force me to go somewhere more secluded with him. I try to control my breathing, keep quiet and wait, but I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do. Kick him somewhere it will hurt is the only action that comes to mind. I am debating how best to do this when he takes me by surprise.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m … can we talk? Please? It’s important.’ He holds up his hands, palms facing me, and takes a step back. His expression is more anxious than menacing, but that does little to calm me.

There is no point pretending he didn’t find Grace and me searching Lucas’s apartment. I need to find out what he wants. And quickly. ‘Okay. Talk.’ I force my words to be firm, to disguise the fact that my whole body is shaking.

‘I know you’ve seen me before. But my name’s Chris Harding, and I’ve been looking for Lucas Hall.’ He pauses. ‘Apparently you have too.’ It is only now I notice his slight Irish accent.

Again, I am taken by surprise. ‘But … who are you? What were you doing in his flat?’

‘Look, I don’t really want to talk out here in the middle of the street.’ His eyes flick towards the house. So I was right about him being outside the other night. It was a reconnaissance before he made his move.

I shake my head. ‘Not in there. But we can sit in my car.’ I don’t have time to assess how reckless this decision may be, but at least we will still be in view of passers-by.

Once we’re in the car and the doors are shut, he turns to me and I study his face. He can’t be older than twenty-five and the patchy stubble and dark bags under his eyes hide a pleasant-looking face. Frown lines crease his forehead, showing me he is troubled.

‘What were you doing in his flat?’ I repeat, more confident now. ‘How do you know him?’

He exhales a deep breath and stares through the windscreen. ‘I don’t know him. I’ve never met him. All I know is that Lucas Hall was the last person to see my sister. Before she disappeared.’

He turns to me, shaking his head. ‘They were seeing each other, or at least Mel thought they were. She told me she had no idea he was married at first, and by the time she did, she had already fallen for him.’

‘Wait,’ I say, ‘slow down. Start from the beginning.’ If I’m to understand this fully, he needs to make more sense.

He leans forward, but doesn’t look at me as he speaks. ‘About six months ago my sister Mel met Lucas in a bar. She was on a hen night for one of her friends, just having fun. She told me she wasn’t looking to meet someone. So when Lucas started talking to her she really couldn’t be bothered with him. She gave him the brush off. Told him she wasn’t interested. But somehow he got her number and kept calling her, trying to convince her to meet up with him.’ He sighs and turns to face me. ‘I guess his persistence paid off because a few weeks later she had given in and agreed to meet him. She told me he’d grown on her and she thought she really liked him.’

The windows in the car are steaming up, so I turn on the engine and blast the radiator. Chris continues with his story.

‘Anyway, they met up a few times and all I know is I got a text from her on the day she disappeared, saying she was meeting up with him that evening.’ He pulls out his phone and scrolls through his messages, holding it out to me when he finds his sister’s text.

I read her words.

Hey bro, hope you’re ok? Can’t meet up tonight as seeing L. Sorry, but I really like him! xx

Handing back the phone, I ask him how he knows for sure she was talking about Lucas. ‘The
L
could be anyone, couldn’t it?’

He shakes his head. ‘She’d told me his name before. Lucas Hall. Mel and I are close, we tell each other stuff. She knows all the names of the girls I’ve dated, and I know what’s going on in her life too. At least I did.’

Forgetting I am somehow part of this, my natural instinct to get to the heart of a story kicks in. ‘What’s your sister’s full name?’

‘Melanie Harding. Mel. She’s twenty-eight and is a legal secretary. She works hard, she has everything going for her, I know she wouldn’t just run away and leave it all behind. She wouldn’t do that to our parents. I know people always say that when they lose someone, but I know it in here.’ He thumps his chest.

I try to recall if this story has come through to us on the news wire, but her name is unfamiliar. ‘Have you been to the police? Reported her missing?’

He nods. ‘My parents did. Back in November when she first went missing. But the police spoke to Lucas and he claimed he’d never met my sister. They believed his lies, and we couldn’t prove otherwise.’ Anger crosses his face now and his hand clenches into a fist. ‘We even searched her flat for anything that would link them together, but there was nothing. He was obviously making her keep it a secret because of his wife.’

It is easy to jump to conclusions. Desperation forces us to try and make sense of things, to get answers, no matter how starved of evidence we are. I have done exactly this with Grace. I need to be objective. I believe Chris’s story but, just like me, he needs to keep an open mind.

‘So how did you know about that flat?’ I ask.

‘I … I started following him.’

My eyes must widen because he quickly defends himself. ‘Well, if the police weren’t going to investigate him then I had to do it myself.’ I cannot judge him for this; it is exactly what Abbot and I have been doing. ‘I found out everything I could about him,’ he continues, ‘and went to confront him at that flat. I thought he lived there, but now I know different. It’s not his home, just some place he takes women to so his wife doesn’t know. It makes me sick to think of him bringing Mel there.’

I picture Hannah, how distressed she was when we sat in her living room. She had mentioned him leaving her before, but I wonder if she knows the extent of her husband’s infidelity.

‘That’s when I saw you,’ Chris says. ‘And that girl. I heard everything. So now I need you to tell me what the hell’s going on.’

Now that it is my turn to talk, I have no idea where to start. I don’t want to tell him about Grace’s story that she is my daughter, but I struggle to remember what we talked about in Lucas’s flat, so there is a good chance he already knows. But I will take my chances and explain myself if he confronts me about it. So I only tell him that Grace is the daughter of a friend.

He silently listens and when I’ve finished he shakes his head, his mouth hanging open. ‘I don’t get it. I mean, I heard what you said in his flat, but it made no sense to me. Actually, it still doesn’t. But what the hell’s happened to him then?’ This is good, he is not questioning how I know Grace.

I shake my head. ‘I don’t believe Lucas is dead. There was nothing to suggest it. It’s possible she only thought she’d killed him. There’s every chance he got up and walked away after she’d run off.’ Or she was lying to me about everything.

Chris frowns. ‘But why the disappearing act? What could he hope to gain from that? Unless he wanted to frame Grace? Teach her a lesson?’

Until now I hadn’t considered this possibility. ‘That seems extreme, doesn’t it? And how could he frame her if there was no body?’ And then something occurs to me. ‘Do you think there’s any chance he’s gone off with your sister somewhere? I don’t know, to start a new life maybe?’

‘No chance.’ He vigorously shakes his head. ‘I told you, Mel just wouldn’t do that.’

I don’t want to tell him that he can’t know for sure. I have seen it a thousand times: family members acting out of the ordinary, surprising their loved ones with what they are capable of. Instead, I ask him if he believes without a doubt that Lucas is responsible for his sister’s disappearance. ‘Perhaps he only lied to the police because he didn’t want his wife to find out he’d been unfaithful?’

Chris considers my words. ‘I just don’t know. He could be innocent in this, but I know she was meeting him that night. He must have been the last person to see her so I desperately need to talk to him. That’s all I’ve got to go on. But from what you’ve told me, he doesn’t sound like a trustworthy man.’

I tell Chris about Abbot and how he’s been helping me, and he frowns. ‘But, you’re married? Or you at least live with someone. I’ve seen him at your house.’

I explain that I didn’t want to get Matt involved because of his job, and Chris seems to accept my reason.

‘Okay, well, I’ll be careful, but I think we should work together on this,’ he says, turning away from me to stare through the windscreen.

He has a point. The more eyes that are out looking for Lucas, the better. ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Give me your number and I’ll call you later.’

He tells me his number and I store it in my phone, then ask him what he’s going to do now.

‘Think I’ll go back to his flat in Embankment. I need to ask the neighbours if they’ve seen him. I tried the other day but most people were out. As it’s Sunday today, though, I’m hoping I’ll get more responses.’

His plan sounds like a good idea, and I wonder why I didn’t think of it myself.

Watching him walk off, I tell myself I shouldn’t be so quick to trust him. I only have his word for it that he is who he says he is, and that his sister is missing. For all I know he could be in on this with Lucas Hall, checking up on me, sussing out how much I know. I will ask Abbot if he can find a way to check the man out.

Once he has disappeared around the corner, I head into the house and stand in the hall, leaning back against the wall, too exhausted by what I’ve just heard to move. If Chris Harding’s story is true, it is just one more reason to mistrust Lucas. One more reason to believe Grace.

A shadow appears at the front door and I am convinced it is Chris Harding, until a key turns in the lock and Matt steps inside. ‘You scared the hell out of me,’ I say, walking over to him.

‘Sorry.’ He smiles. ‘But who else do you think would have a key?’ He closes the door and throws his keys on the telephone table. While he takes off his coat I double lock the door.

‘I was just a bit distracted thinking about work, and wasn’t expecting you back so soon,’ I say, hoping I sound convincing, and that he won’t notice I’ve latched the front door when it’s not bed time.

Matt appears to be oblivious and wraps his arms around me. ‘We need a break, don’t we? When was the last time we gave ourselves a holiday? Florida, about five years ago, I reckon. What do you think? Shall we get away somewhere? I know this business with Grace has been hard, and it’s brought up fresh feelings about Helena, so I really think we need to be kind to ourselves. Doctor’s orders.’

He is right. But there is no way I can go anywhere now, not when I am on the edge of discovering what happened to our daughter. Especially now I’ve just met Chris Harding. But as I look at the hope in Matt’s eyes, and witness his desperation to escape, I know I can’t let him down. ‘How about in a couple of months?’ I say. ‘Work’s just so crazy at the moment and there are some things I can’t leave dangling.’

I wait for Matt to present a counter argument but he surprises me. ‘It’s one of the things I love about you,’ he says. ‘Your dedication to work. To me. To everything you do. A couple of months will be fine, but we need to stick to it. Come on, let’s have a cup of tea. I’ll tell you what Spencer’s been up to.’

And as I follow Matt into the kitchen, I know how lucky I am, despite everything that was taken from us. The guilt that has been my constant companion since this started almost forces me to tell him everything, until I remember what’s at stake, and that right now I have no firm evidence to show him.

L
ater that evening
, when Matt is watching a science fiction film I have no interest in, I sit on the bed and call Abbot. There is no answer and I wonder if he’s still sleeping. He said he only needed a couple of hours and then he was going to chase up the progress with Lucas’s laptop, but tiredness must have overcome him.

Using my mobile, I search the Internet for Chris and Mel Harding, but nothing turns up except Facebook pages for several people with those names.

I’m still holding my phone, contemplating what to try next, when it rings with an unknown number. I usually ignore unidentified callers, but my hand presses the connect call button with no hesitation. It could be Grace.

‘Hi, Hayley?’ The voice is male, one I don’t recognise.

I am about to tell the person they’ve got the wrong number, when I remember that I have been calling myself by this name. I spurt out a quick greeting.

‘It’s Nick Gibbs. We met the other day?’

I try to keep the surprise from my voice. ‘Oh, hi. Thanks for calling. Have you heard from Lucas?’

‘Oh, no, sorry. It’s not that.’ In the background I hear children’s voices. ‘Hang on a sec.’ The sounds become muffled as Nick sees to his family, and I feel a pang of envy. Moments later he is back, and I focus on what he has to say. ‘I got worried after you left, wondering where Lucas could be. I know Hannah’s a very private person so it must have taken a lot for her to ask for your help. Anyway, I did some digging around and I have to be honest, I’m a bit freaked out by what I’ve found out.’

I suck in my breath and ask him what he means.

‘Actually, do you mind meeting me tomorrow evening? It will be easier to tell you in person. The kids are here, you know.’

‘Okay. Where and when?’

There’s a pub near here and it should be fairly quiet on a Monday evening. It’s called the White Cross and is practically on the river. Lovely place.’

‘Okay,’ I say, my mind a whir of activity. Has he found out that Lucas is dead? Surely he would have gone to the police if that were the case? In the background I hear his wife calling so I quickly thank him and end the call.

Checking that Matt is engrossed in his film downstairs, I close the bedroom door and try calling Abbot once more. There is still no answer so I leave a message asking him to call me as soon as he can, and telling him that I need him to check something for me.