if we can help?’
‘I didn’t know where else to turn.’ Her right hand twisted the gold band on her wedding finger. She turned it round and round, over and over. The ring seemed loose, a little too big on her slender fingers. I examined my own bitten fingernails, the silver rings I wear like knuckledusters. As she opened her mouth to speak, I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see Jo pushing through the door, a box of paper in her arms and a Spy Shop carrier bag dangling from her wrist.
‘Hi, Jo.’ I raised my eyebrows and nodded, trying to telepathically answer her unspoken questions.
Jo dropped the reams of paper on the edge of my desk and beamed at the woman. ‘You’ve come to the right place,’ she said.
Jo sounded so certain I felt my shoulders relax. The woman stared at Jo. Most people do. Jo inherited her Afro-Caribbean curls from her Jamaican grandfather on her mother’s side. Her startling blue eyes came from her Liverpudlian dad. They make a stunning combination. It must have been windy out – her hair was wild even by Jo’s standards. The woman turned to me.
‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’ she said, pushing up the sleeve of her dark jacket.
‘Go through to the back room,’ said Jo, putting a casual arm across the woman’s lower back and propelling her forward. ‘I’ll make you a nice, strong cup of tea. Looks like you could use one.’
We’ve got three rooms out back. I use the word ‘room’ in its broadest sense – you have to step outside the kitchenette in order to open the fridge, and how anyone could ever use the gas cooker is a mystery. There’s a toilet next door, but when you sit on it, your knees graze the door. The windowless back room contains a punchbag, as well as a small wooden table covered with decaying green felt, and three chairs. The bag came from the boxing gym round the corner and dangles from the ceiling. I’d spent much of the previous six weeks in there, punching till my arms ached and beads of sweat flew, trying to fight the worry that I’d blown my inheritance on a business that wasn’t ever going to see a client.
The back room also has a broom cupboard – now converted to Jo’s spy equipment store – which has a safe cemented into the brick wall at the back of it. That small metal box had sealed the deal when we’d been looking for premises. We figured the previous tenants must have been dope dealers.
I cleared a space on the table by stashing the playing cards to one side and setting the ashtray on the floor.
‘You smoke in here?’ She didn’t miss much, I thought.
‘No. Well, only in emergencies. I mean, sometimes clients—’
‘Would you mind if I smoked?’ she asked.
‘Oh. No, not at all. I’ll open the kitchen window.’
When I got back, she’d lit a long, dark brown cigarette, and I noticed the tremor in her hands. Jo popped her head round the door and handed me a new client file.
‘Right, yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
I heard the click of the kettle from the kitchenette. I opened the file, spread it on the table in front of me and cleared my throat. ‘So, how can we help you?’
‘I don’t think you can.’ She blew a cloud of smoke into the air. ‘I was stupid to come.’
I bristled at that. It’s personal – the business; my chance to put right what I’ve done wrong. OK, this woman was our first potential proper client, but it wasn’t like we didn’t have previous experience. Besides trying to track down my own dysfunctional family, last year Jo and I travelled to the other side of the world to find a missing person – Bert’s wife. Bert lived next door to my mum, took care of her in what turned out to be her last years. Me and Jo managed to track down his missing mail-order bride, in Thailand, despite not knowing the language. We have a natural flair for finding people.
‘You had your reasons,’ I said.
‘I saw your ad. About reuniting families.’
I extracted Jo’s Initial Enquiry Form and read the tag line out loud. ‘Are you missing someone?’
‘Yes.’
I waited a moment, but she didn’t expand. I coughed again and wished I had a glass of water. ‘Who? Who are you missing?’
‘My son.’
Another silence. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know what to do.’
I tried to sound like a well-seasoned investigator, battle weary. ‘Start with his name.’
‘Jack.’
I made a note on the form as she exhaled. Instinct told me to stick to simple questions. ‘Age?’
‘He’s 22.’ She stubbed out the first cigarette, which was only a third of the way smoked, and lit another straightaway. ‘I was very young,’ she said, in answer to a question I hadn’t asked. But it did make me think. I stared at her, but she held her cigarette to her lips almost permanently, so that her hand obscured the bottom half of her face. It was hard to put an age to her. Older than me, but I’d be surprised if she’d hit forty. ‘He’s had problems.’
‘Problems?’
‘He’s driven us to our wits’ end. We’ve given him everything. Cash. Car. You name it.’
‘And now he’s missing?’
‘Not a word in three months.’
I wrote that down. ‘Tell me about the last time you saw him.’
‘Christmas. He came round for dinner, borrowed twenty pounds.’
‘This was to your house?’
‘Yes.’
‘In Leeds?’
‘Manchester. But he came back to Leeds. He’s a student here. Or he was.’
‘Where does he live?’
She sat a little straighter in the chair and leaned in. ‘That’s why I chose you. You being so close, I mean. The last address I had for him was a squat on Burchett Grove. It’s not very far from here.’
I got a shot in my veins; the feeling’s hard to describe, like I’m kind of coming alive. A trail, a scent of someone. I knew Burchett Grove. Locals called it Bird Shit Grove. It was ten minutes away, in Woodhouse, an area of Leeds favoured by the politically earnest. This was my neck of the woods.
‘Which one?’
She put her hand in her jacket pocket and took out a piece of paper, ripped from the pages of a spiral bound notebook. She handed it to me. ‘I hate going round there.’ Her whole body juddered as if to prove her point. ‘The last time I went, they said he’d moved. I don’t know if they were telling the truth.’
I probably grinned, reading the address. There are two squats on Burchett Grove, and I’ve known people living at both of them over the years. If he was there we
