Ali Harper - The Runaway

‘Don’t know. He works Thursdays.’ She grabbed a bag and a ring binder from the floor in the hall.

‘Works where?’

‘The bookshop.’ She was out the front door, standing on the step waiting for me to leave so she could shut the front door. ‘The one opposite the uni.’

I stepped out of the house and she slammed the door behind me, locked it and put the key in her pocket.

‘What time does he start?’

But she didn’t hear me. Or if she did she didn’t acknowledge it. She was already out of the gate and headed down the street towards town. I watched her stride away until she turned left at the end and disappeared from sight.

I caught the bus to Hyde Park Corner and threaded my way through the streets back to the office. Aunt Edie was at the computer, two-finger typing and swearing under her breath as I slung my bag onto my desk. I noticed Jo was wearing her hangover lipstick – dark purple, like crushed blueberries.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.

‘Matt’s house.’

‘Why didn’t you answer your mobile?’

‘Oh.’ I pulled open my desk drawer and rummaged. ‘It needs charging,’ I said, holding my new iPhone aloft.

‘You’re supposed to charge it at night so that it’s ready every morning,’ Jo said, snatching it off me and plugging it into the wall socket. ‘How many more times?’

‘I went for a run – had a chat with Matt’s housemate, Jan. She said he disappeared once before – didn’t show for days.’

‘Told you,’ said Jo. ‘He’ll show up with numb nuts and a hangover, I’d bet money on it. Or he knows she’s preggers and he’s moved to the Outer Hebrides. You know what men are like.’

‘But,’ I said, crossing the room and pulling the file from the cabinet, ‘his car’s been done over, like, seriously done over.’

‘Crap,’ said Aunt Edie.

I frowned at Jo. ‘What’s she doing?’

‘She’s doing my head in, that’s what she’s doing.’

I glanced back at Aunt Edie. Her glasses had fallen to the tip of her nose and her lips were pursed but she didn’t appear to have heard Jo’s comment. I raised my eyebrows at Jo. We both know Aunt Edie doesn’t take criticism well.

Jo shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t care. ‘She’s typing up Martin’s notes. Thought I might as well get her doing something, seeing as how we didn’t know where you were.’

I put my notes from my interview with Jan into the file and thought about what we had. A possible date in Old Bar today at 2 p.m. And Tuff. We needed to speak to him – it looked like he was the last person to see Matt – and maybe he could shed some light on what had happened to Matt’s car. The bookshop was opposite the university Union, which housed Old Bar. It made sense to combine the two appointments, not that Tuff knew we were coming. A glance at the clock above the filing cabinet told me it wasn’t even ten. I dropped the file with my notes onto Aunt Edie’s desk so she could type them up later. She peered at her computer screen and cursed again.

Call me sensitive, but I was picking up on an atmosphere. Luckily, I’ve been mates with Jo long enough to know what she needed. ‘Why don’t we take a drive to see the flats where the woman’s body was found? Martin said they overlook Roundhay Park. There’s got to be a café round there somewhere. I’ll buy breakfast.’

Jo and I left the office together. I didn’t even take my jacket. The van was parked just round the corner, and I clambered into the passenger seat and got that buzz I always get when I know we’re leaving our normal. A trip. Probably I need to get out more.

We had to negotiate the mad ballet dance that is the Sheepscar Interchange, which involved a few car horns and Jo sticking the Vs up out of the window as the satnav lady fired directions at us. We eventually joined Roundhay Road, which takes you out to the north-east of the city.

Leeds 6 is a bubble: it insulates against the real world. Its only inhabitants are the young, the impressionable and the idealistic. The shops are all takeaways, off-licences, laundrettes and taxi firms, so there’s never any pressing reason to go anywhere else. But as Jo drove us down a hill, into Roundhay Park, and we caught a glimpse of the enormous lake, I thought perhaps we should have made more of an effort and visited before.

‘I googled Roundhay Park this morning, while you were out, running.’ Jo made the last word sound like a euphemism.

I rose above it. ‘And?’

‘It was bought by the mayor of the city, for the people of Leeds, a couple of hundred years ago.’

‘That was nice of him.’

‘Before that it was privately owned. There’s a stately home at the top.’

I peered out of the windows but all I could see was parkland.

Jo turned into the car park at the bottom of the hill and reverse parked into a space. ‘Roundhay Park had its own serial killer, once upon a time,’ she said.

‘The Park Killer? That was here?’

You couldn’t live in Leeds and not have heard of the Park Killer. He was a serial killer who’d killed all of his female victims in parks, hence the moniker. He’d been caught by a late-night dog-walker, who’d discovered him cutting up his final victim in bushes and had made a citizen’s arrest. According to folklore, the dog, a black Labrador, had pinned the killer down, holding him until the police arrived. Some people claimed the Park Killer had been inspired by the Yorkshire Ripper, who’d stalked Leeds’ streets back in the seventies, but the truth was no one really knew what had motivated him to do what he had done, because the Park Killer committed suicide in prison, before his case had come to trial. I glanced around.

‘He killed two women here,’ Jo said. ‘Think the others were in Meanwood.’

‘Fucked up,’ I said.

We climbed out of the van and surveyed our surroundings. ‘The flats are up there,’ said Jo, pointing to the crest of the park.

‘Food first,’ I said. I’m not stupid. Hanging out with Jo when her blood sugar is low is taking your life in your hands.

We made our way over to the Lakeside café – a wooden building jutting out over the lake – and I ordered us both a full English breakfast with an espresso for Jo. We sat on the balcony, the sun glistened off the water, swans and ducks glided past, and I filled Jo in on the details of my conversation with Jan while we waited for breakfast to arrive.

‘Matt could have easily popped home Sunday,’ Jo said when I told her everything I could remember. ‘Picked up his stuff and bought a single ticket away from planet parenthood.’

‘Seems weird that he’d know Nikki was pregnant before she even did. And Jan said she couldn’t tell whether any of his stuff was missing.’

‘He’s probably out getting laid in between typing up his dissertation.’

‘What about his car?’

‘Or getting laid while some woman types up his dissertation. A woman on my course did that. Typed up her boyfriend’s dissertation. He dumped her like a week later.’

I paused as the waitress arrived and handed us two plates brimming with sausage, eggs and beans. Jo poured vinegar onto her fried eggs – she likes them dripping with the stuff.

‘There’s the note in the pigeonhole as well,’ I pointed out. ‘Someone else is looking for him.’

‘Could be weeks old, that note. And from anybody.’ Jo spooned a forkful of baked beans on her slice of bread, folded it over and took a bite.

‘We’ll find out this afternoon,’ I said. ‘Even if Matt doesn’t turn up, the person who wrote it might.’

‘Might,’ Jo stressed as she chewed on her baked bean sandwich.

‘Not like we’ve got anything else to go on.’