Any One of Us, page 19
“Thank you.” The call ended and she strode back to the desk.
Now Ruby felt even more compelled to track Alfie down. The old adage is true. The less you want to speak to the police, the more they want to speak to you. But she’d exhausted all legal avenues. And now she had a big decision to make.
Ruby sat alone, elbow on the desk, surviving hand pressed against her chin. Her phone was face-up next to the mouse and she was just staring at it.
Could she? Could she call him?
Years ago, Ruby would have spoken to Elizabeth at a time like this. She was the source of grounded, compassionate wisdom. She’d have listened and explored the options without prejudice, not burdened by the weight of professional obligation, not tethered to the law or fear of judgement or any of the other countless things that stop people saying what they really think. Ironic that what she wanted right now, at this moment, at these crossroads, was to speak with her friend. But she couldn’t. Because Elizabeth was dead. Because someone had caved her head in for reasons Ruby did not understand.
Finally, she imagined what Giles might say. Clarity. Absolute and direct. Would this course of action help her achieve her goal? And she nodded to herself. The answer was unequivocally yes.
Ruby snatched up her phone and called Eduardo.
“Well, hello there,” he said. “How is the UK today?”
“Bleak.”
“I saw you on the news – made it all the way out here. I sense it is going slowly?”
“Very. How’s the course?”
“You were right. Preparation proved fruitful.”
“I’m pleased.”
“How’s your dad?”
Ruby still hadn’t been to see Giles. But she didn’t want to think about, let alone explain, why. So, she just said, “He’s fine.”
“I miss you.”
“I, oh . . .” This stopped her. It was a surprise. Not that he missed her, but that he’d said it. Now, on the other side of the planet, she could see it so clearly. You do not spend four nights camping alone in the Australian outback with a colleague. Eduardo and Ruby’s time together – which had been so rapidly derailed by all of this – really was nothing to do with work. They’d pretended it was, like teenagers, children, intimacy growing, reaching for the light of unspoken things, nourished in the silence of a glaring secret that was, as they both knew, common knowledge.
Glimmers of another fantasy. A straight line through the earth. As far away from all this as she could get. What if Elizabeth had never called, never died? What if Ruby was still out there, down there, warm in the sun, telling him how she felt with every form of communication beyond words?
“Are you there?” he added.
“I am, unfortunately, very much here.” The heart’s cruel affinity for absence. “I miss you too.” She’d been so close. Right on the cusp of normality. A stable job. A reasonable apartment. An attachment to another human that she would never openly admit to yearning for every scrolling night she slept alone. “I miss you so much.”
They spoke for a while about the case. Eduardo clarified that it was the twenty-year school reunion that set it all in motion. Ruby had been with him when she received the invitation and imagined how she’d have conducted herself if she had gone. If she’d stepped into that raging furnace of insecurity and self-promotion.
There’s a script for such occasions. Ruby had even rehearsed lines in her mind, well aware of things she might exaggerate. Questions she might divert. So . . . why hadn’t she settled down? Would she have children? If so, when? Would the judgemental eyes of her former peers slip down to the drink in her hand and see her empty ring finger? Would she say she was seeing someone? Would Eduardo have to be something more? Was he her partner now? Oh, they might say, hand on her forearm, pray tell.
If, by some improbable geographic glitch, he was there, if plus ones had been allowed, and he overheard her saying this, would he laugh? Or would he smile, put his arm around her waist and agree? Would he tell them he felt like the luckiest man alive?
Are those wedding bells we can hear? Reddening cheeks, eye contact and half a shrug of maybe. Of who knows. Of time will tell.
“Though, now,” Ruby said, on the phone, speaking in the real world, “I have hit a bit of a dead end.”
She was gradually steering the conversation towards the real reason she’d called. Eduardo’s speciality was uncannily fitting for her current situation.
How would they frame his career in those reunion circles? When the pleasantries glide along to their inevitable destination. And what, they would invariably ask, do you do?
Maybe she’d jump in, take the question. Eduardo trains law enforcement personnel. Cyber security, intelligence, tackling the ugly world of organised crime. But they’d probe. Sounds cool, more, tell us more. How does one get into this line of work, Eduardo?
Ruby wouldn’t mention his past. But would he? Or would he dance around the truth?
Obfuscate about his very unique insight?
Considering her own expertise in this field, Ruby wasn’t actually sure about the social norms when it comes to discussing an extensive criminal record. Perhaps it’s like medical procedures or close calls with a disease everyone knows. Rude to ask, but perfectly acceptable to volunteer a life-affirming story. Though criminal rehabilitation does not elicit similar adoration or praise. And sympathy? That’s rarely on the cards.
Eduardo didn’t seem ashamed of his background. But Ruby imagined he would be keen to establish early on that this was another life. Again, anyone searching for something to say in the awkward silence that would follow may not feel comfortable asking for detail. Like grilling a soldier on just how many people they’ve shot. Was it fun? Do you feel bad?
Eduardo did feel bad. The immorality of what he did was inescapable. In this other life, which ended years before Ruby met him, Eduardo worked for a number of nefarious organisations. His speciality was finding people. Individuals who had left gangs, wronged cartels, informants hiding from the awful consequences of their lawful actions.
And, if he was candid about this, here would be the longest silence of all. People would nod and wonder. They would conclude that, while not having any direct violence on the charge sheet, Eduardo’s hand, the very hand they shook at the start of this conversation, in this imaginary retelling of a school reunion she never even attended, had not always been as clean as it was today.
But he’d served his time and he was, Ruby knew, fully rehabilitated. Having waded through the murky waters of malevolence and vice, Eduardo had found clarity in moral virtue. He was now dedicating his life to ensuring that the wrongs of his past could be averted in everyone else’s future. To her, he was living proof that people can and do change.
Back in the persistently real world, all this made what she was about to ask incredibly insensitive. She needed his help to find Alfie but a big part of her wanted him to refuse. Any answer would be bittersweet. Was his rehabilitation a façade? Something he would drop for her? And would she think less of him, or more, if he agreed? This predicament turned over in the back of her thoughts as she began to explain.
“So, there’s no official way you can reach out to this guy?” Eduardo asked.
“None.”
Once she’d outlined the details, the obstacles, the locks on the door, both old and new, there was the longest pause of the call.
“Are you asking me to help?” Eduardo finally said.
It seemed he knew the stakes too. The trust. Everything felt like it was on the line, as though the future of any relationship they might have depended on his response. Ruby looked up to the photograph on the wall, feeling guilty, scared, lost and alone all at once. And she sighed. “I am.”
“OK,” he said. “With all my heart, no.”
And Ruby smiled, eyes closed, she nodded. “Ah,” she breathed. “I kind of thought you’d say that.”
“I’m really not that person anymore.”
“I know. I’m sorry for asking.”
“However,” he added. “I can give you a name – the kind of person who could assist. This is someone with extensive knowledge. He could set up some online scrapers to see if there was anyone who fits. This would hinge on how seriously the individual in question had been treating their new identity.”
“What would that person need?”
“As much information as possible. Old name. Photos, the more recent the better. Connections to any groups, family, where they grew up, hobbies, interests, that sort of thing.”
“I can get that.”
“I’ll give you a phone number. You pay this man enough, he’ll find anyone for you. He’ll find ghosts. He’ll track down your imaginary friend from childhood. But obviously, it did not come from me.”
“Of course.”
This was the perfect response. Eduardo was not willing to break the law. But it seemed he would not judge Ruby if she did. After all, he still had a long way to climb before he reached any moral high ground. Though he seemed not to like the idea of her falling too far.
“If you did make contact with this individual,” he said, “would there be any repercussions? For you, I mean.”
She smiled again. His concern was for her, not the ethics involved.
This was a factor. Alfie might not like Ruby turning up on his doorstep. So, she would have to lie to him. And if he was worth investigating, the ends would justify the means. If not, if those ends were dead, then what was the harm? What was the risk? There was none.
“No,” she said, definitively.
“And when it’s over, when you’re finished there, what are you going to do?”
Ruby laughed. “I’m going to sprint to the airport.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
At 4am, just a few short hours into day twelve’s dark morning, Ruby was in the spare room, somewhere between awake and asleep, metres from the school photograph that Alfie took all those years ago. And her phone, on the carpet by the leg of the bed, lit up silently with a message from an unknown number. She looked down, squinted and saw an address.
Chapter Thirteen
Ruby parked at the edge of a large square courtyard walled on every side by tall blocks of flats – the one up ahead casting its shadow over patches of grass and tarmac paths. At the car’s side, some old play equipment with a green rail fence – the metal gate clunked in its frame, in the breeze that swayed the empty swings beyond, their chains dangerous and cold, twisting ghostly and slow.
Ruby looked up, out of the driver’s window, past a fizzing streetlight that had mistaken this day for night, up to the blackening clouds above. She had simply forgotten to bring a jacket. But, she thought, yeah, she remembered seeing one in the boot of Will’s car.
As she climbed out, a child cycled past on a BMX bike – pedalling hard, he disappeared into the amber mouth of the closest underpass. At the back of the car, Ruby tried the boot. Locked. Reaching into her pocket for the key, she glanced around this place again, surveyed the community Alfie called home. Those graffitied tunnels that scurried like hollow roots beneath the identical monoliths. The train clattering along nearby, hot and screeching high on a bridge at her side as litter swirled, little dust devils made of ribboned plastic and torn paper.
It had all happened faster than Ruby expected. Eduardo was right. Time elapsed meant Alfie had let his guard down. His online presence was low-key and could be considered careful, aside from a profile on a dating site that included a headshot and his screenname “Alfred77”. The scraper, a relatively simple piece of software, returned a facial match within hours. Alfred77 had a keen interest in photography, literature, poetry and film and was hoping to meet a like-minded woman with a good sense of humour – someone who enjoyed the finer things in life. Someone unique, like everyone else.
Although ethically dubious, the expertise Ruby had employed was affordable and, she was told, “not particularly sophisticated”. Considering how easy he’d been to find, Alfie was lucky she did not have malicious intent. The worst she was going to do was arrest him. Though, given that she’d had to drive for hours to reach this address, that seemed unlikely. But it was the photo that settled her fear or perhaps dashed her hope. Alfie was underweight to the point of disorder. Whether or not he had the mind to kill someone with a blunt instrument was up for debate. But he absolutely lacked the body.
Still, Ruby felt compelled to speak to him. On the drive, she’d indulged her imagination and wondered how his departure from Missbrook Bay could be connected. All that ugliness. All those rumours and disgrace. Was there a thread here, something to tug, something to trace?
Perhaps she’d been bolstered by his evident shortfall in physical strength. Or maybe she was simply falling for the sunk cost fallacy. It might even have been her unfounded obsession with the school year photograph. Either way, she was here.
Keys clinked in her hand, she slid one into the boot lock and turned, thinking that, at worst, Alfie was a unique window into the past. A former teacher who’d fled with nothing but scandal and unsated menace in his wake. His memories of Missbrook Heights were, like hers, untainted by recency or presence. They shared the underrated clarity that only absence can provide. Yes, this felt right.
The boot hatch hissed up and away and she looked down into—
Ruby froze. A sudden statue. She stood in the rain and cold staring down at a sawn-off shotgun, just lying there in the boot. Like some piece of modern street art, an unmoving figure, Ruby might as well have been made of bronze.
But then she regained her motor skills, checking over her shoulder, left, up at those countless windows, right – even more on that side. Instinctively, she reached down and hid it, sliding a car jack against the barrel, covering the gun with the coat she’d hoped to wear. Then she slammed the boot closed and took a breath, thought for a moment, be cool, calm, trying to hide her confusion, her panic. She got her phone out, stared down – all a casual performance. Someone might be watching. Specks of water appearing on the glowing glass, bubbled light refracting like tiny blisters.
It took a good few seconds to actually form the thought. The words. The explanation. She’d been driving around with a loaded gun for days. Frank Enfield’s shotgun had been in the boot of Will’s car all this time.
“Yeah, no, I’ve processed everything.” That’s what Ruby said to Jay. All those crimes they could have charged Frank with: false imprisonment, threats to kill and, of course, possession of a firearm.
Regret and fear came on strong. The sheer unprofessionalism of this. Ruby felt her cheeks redden, toying with the humiliation she’d feel if she did what she should have already done and locked the gun in the evidence room. She’d be tempted to lie – say she held on to it deliberately. For protection. A straight-faced admission of a serious offence, a very serious offence she’d still be committing even if she confessed the far more embarrassing truth.
Why, Ruby, why haven’t you processed this piece of evidence? This loaded gun.
“I forgot.” Even imagining that response felt absurd. It was literally unbelievable. She closed her eyes, her heart shifting gears up to a new tempo as she considered the implications of her fading memory once more. It’s just the drugs. The Adderall. She was taking too much, burning too brightly, shining like those lyrical stars. Fall on your knees, she thought, oh hear the angel voices – they were yelling at her now. Not about the dear saviour’s birth. No, no. They were screaming about shame.
Her shoulders were wet. The sleeves of her jumper speckled and damp enough to stick. But still, she was hot. The irony was not lost on her. Driving here to Alfie’s flat was a criminal act in itself. But this? And what if the dust settled and then they realised there was no gun? Her claim that Frank abducted her at gunpoint would fall flat. No.
She calmed herself as she locked the car, checking twice that it was definitely locked. If police picked Frank Enfield up, he’d be back in a cell and facing charges. Then, and only then, would she come clean. A simple oversight. It could happen to anyone. She took painkillers for her hand. That’s what she’d say. She was drowsy. And she’d just take the ridicule on the chin. No one was going to charge her with anything. But they would laugh. In her face, behind her back, yeah, they’d laugh.
A deep breath in through her nose and, jaw clenched, she buried it. Then, with a new resolve, she flicked her hood up and strode off towards the block of flats on her left. Problems. Solutions. Progress. Yet another layer of pressure added to this deadly situation. Ruby really did need to solve this. Ideally soon. If nothing else, every frayed fibre of her threadbare self-esteem depended on it.
Inside the building, she went straight to the lift. No mirror, just dented silver panels. Black pen scrawled on every wall. She pressed the button for the fifth floor with her knuckle and rose up through the block’s spinal column. The pale light from each storey fell down the slit in the metal, she counted: three, four and, slowly to a stop, five. Doors beeped, spread open and the taut cable above seemed relieved to be rid of her.
A long corridor. She walked. Bare concrete and alien cuisine cooking behind closed doors. Boiled things, like school dinners. Steam. She turned a corner. Heard a television, loud music from another flat up ahead. Down the narrow passage, somehow colder than outside, the wind finding its way in through a window at the end, whistling wire-lattice glass smashed with year-round frosting.
And she stopped. Here it was. Flat 313. Alfie Rogers.
She knocked and, while waiting, experienced another wave of anxiety. Doubt. Maybe she was making a—
The door opened. Alfie, dressed in a long-sleeved, black t-shirt and a pair of beige cargo shorts, didn’t say a word. He just leant out and looked down the hallway, as though checking she was alone. She saw his collarbone, the tendons in his neck. His skull. Ruby was right – he must be ill. Health hides your skeleton. Alfie’s was plain to see.
“That was quick,” he said, stepping back, inviting her in like she was a guest he’d been expecting.
