Pip’s breath caught. ‘I saw him there after that. Maybe around eight, eight fifteen. He was walking through the crowd.’ She pulled up the memory, unpicked it from everything else last night. Jamie knocking into her as he made his way to the other side, his hurried apology, the way his jaw was set, determined. She’d thought it was strange at the time, hadn’t she? And the look in his eyes, not unlike Connor’s were now: somehow both distant and sharp. They looked very similar, even for brothers. They hadn’t as kids, but Pip had watched it happen over the years, the gap closing. Jamie’s hair was just a couple of shades darker, closer to brown than blonde. And Connor was all angles where Jamie was heavier, softer. But even a stranger could tell they were brothers. ‘You’ve tried calling him?’
‘Yes, hundreds of times,’ said Connor. ‘It goes straight to voicemail like it’s off or . . . or it’s dead.’ He stumbled over that last word, his head hanging from his shoulders. ‘Me and Mum spent hours calling anyone who might know where he is: friends, family. No one has seen him or heard from him. No one.’
Pip felt something stirring, right in that pit in her stomach that never quite left her any more. ‘Have you called around all the local hospitals to see if –’
‘Yes, we called them all. Nothing.’
Pip awakened her phone to check the time. It was half five now, and if Jamie hadn’t been seen since around eight last night, seen by her, that meant he’d been missing for over twenty-one hours already.
‘OK,’ she said firmly, bringing Connor’s eyes back to hers, ‘your parents need to go to the police station and file a missing persons report. You’ll need –’
‘We already did,’ Connor said, a hint of impatience creeping into his voice. ‘Me and Mum went down to the station a few hours ago, filed the report, gave them a recent photograph, all that. It was Nat da Silva’s brother, Daniel, the officer who took the report.’
‘OK, good, so officers should be –’
Connor cut her off again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No officers are doing anything. Daniel said that because Jamie is twenty-four, an adult, and has a history of leaving home without communicating with his family, that there is very little the police can do.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, he gave us a reference number and just told us to keep calling Jamie’s phone and anyone he’s been known to stay with before. Said that almost all missing people return within forty-eight hours, so we just have to wait.’
The stool creaked as Pip shifted. ‘They must think he’s low risk. When a missing persons report is filed,’ she explained, ‘the police determine a risk assessment based on factors like age, any medical issues, if the behaviour is out of character, things like that. Then the police response depends on whether they think the case is low, medium or high risk.’
‘I know how it might look to them,’ Connor said, his eyes a little less far-away now, ‘that Jamie’s disappeared a couple times before and he always comes back –’
‘The first time was after he dropped out of uni, wasn’t it?’ Pip said, scratching at the memory, how the air had been thick with tension in the Reynoldses’ house for weeks after.
Connor nodded. ‘Yeah, after he and my dad had a huge argument about it, he stayed with a friend for a week and wouldn’t answer any calls or texts. And it was two years ago when Mum actually filed a report because Jamie never returned from a night out in London. He’d lost his phone and wallet and couldn’t get home so just stayed on someone’s sofa for a couple of days. But . . .’ He sniffed, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. ‘But something feels different this time. I think he’s in trouble, Pip, I really do.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘He’s been acting strange the last few weeks. Distant, kind of jumpy. Short-tempered. And, you know Jamie, he’s normally really chilled out. Well, lazy, if you ask my dad. But recently, he’s seemed, at times, a little off.’
And wasn’t that how he seemed last night when he knocked into her? That strange focus, like he could see nothing else, not even her. And why was he moving through the crowd right then, anyway? Wasn’t that a little off?
‘And,’ Connor continued, ‘I don’t think he’d run off again, not after how upset Mum got last time. Jamie wouldn’t do that to her again.’
‘I . . .’ Pip began. But she didn’t really know what to say to him.
‘So me and Mum were talking,’ Connor said, shoulders contracting like he was shrinking in on himself. ‘If the police won’t investigate, won’t contact the media or anything, then what can we do ourselves, to find Jamie? That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Pip.’
She knew what was coming but Connor didn’t pause long enough for her to cut in.
‘You know how to do this; everything you did last year where the police failed. You solved a murder. Two of them. And your podcast,’ he swallowed, ‘hundreds of thousands of followers; that’s probably more effective than any media connections the police have. If we want to find Jamie, spread the word that he’s missing so people can come forward with any information they have, or sightings, you are our best hope of that.’
‘Connor –’
‘If you investigate and release it on your show, I know we’ll find him. We’ll find him in time. We have to.’
Connor tailed off. The silence that followed was teeming; Pip could feel it crawling around her. She knew what he’d been going to ask. How could it have been anything else? She breathed out, and that thing that lived inside her twisted in her gut. But her answer was inevitable.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t do it, Connor.’
Connor’s eyes widened, and he grew back out of his shoulders. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask but –’
‘It’s too much to ask,’ she said, glancing at the window, checking her parents were still busy in the garden. ‘I don’t do that any more.’
‘I know, but –’
‘Last time I almost lost everything: ended up in the hospital, got my dog killed, put my family in danger, blew up my best friend’s life. It’s too much to ask. I promised myself. I . . . I can’t do it any more.’ The pit in her stomach ripped wider still; soon it might even outgrow her. ‘I can’t do it. It’s not who I am.’
‘Pip, please . . .’ He was pleading now, words catching on their way up his throat. ‘Last time you didn’t even really know them, they were already gone. This is Jamie, Pip. Jamie. What if he’s hurt? What if he doesn’t make it? I don’t know what to do.’ His voice finally cracked as the tears broke the surface of his eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Connor, I am,’ Pip said, though the words hurt her to say. ‘But I have to say no.’
‘You aren’t going to help?’ He sniffed. ‘At all?’
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t.
‘I didn’t say that.’ Pip jumped down from her stool to hand Connor a tissue. ‘As you can probably guess, I have a certain relationship with the local police now. I mean, I don’t think I’m their favourite person, but I probably have more sway in matters like this.’ She scooped up her car keys from the side by the microwave. ‘I’ll go talk to DI Hawkins right now, tell him about Jamie and why you’re worried, see if I can get them to rethink their risk assessment so they actually investigate.’