Page 14 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

‘Th-thank you,’ Connor said, stepping past as Pip shut and locked the door. His T-shirt was sticking to his back, damp and bunched up.

‘Here.’ Pip led him into the kitchen and pointed him into one of the stools, her trainers discarded beneath it. ‘Do you want some water?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer, filling up one of the clean glasses on the draining board and placing it in front of him with a thud that made him flinch. ‘Did you run here?’

‘Yeah.’ Connor picked up the glass with two hands and took a large gulp that spilled over his chin. ‘Sorry. I tried to call you and you didn’t answer and I didn’t know what to do other than just come here. And then I thought you might be at Ravi’s instead.’

‘That’s OK. I’m right here,’ Pip said, sliding up into the seat opposite him. His eyes still looked strange and Pip’s heart reacted, kicking around her chest. ‘What is it? What do you need to speak to me about?’ She gripped the edges of her stool. ‘Has . . . has something happened?’

‘Yes,’ Connor said, wiping his chin on his wrist. He parted his lips and his jaw hung open and close, chewing the air like he was practising the words before he said them.

‘Connor, what?’

‘It’s my brother,’ he said. ‘He . . . he’s missing.’

Five

Pip watched Connor’s fingers as they slipped down the glass.

‘Jamie’s missing?’ she said.

‘Yes.’ Connor stared at her.

‘When?’ she asked. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘At the memorial.’ Connor paused to take another sip of water. ‘I last saw him at the memorial, just before it started. He never came home.’

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 byher, 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.’