The Night They Vanished, page 9
But hopefully, hopefully… It’s Seren’s party this weekend. Hopefully there’ll be enough drama there so everyone will forget about what I did at school and be too busy talking about that. I’m good at being invisible and it’s not even for two more years anymore, is it? We’re moving after Christmas, so it’s only a couple more months. Maybe I can fake a really bad illness, something non-life-threatening but bad enough to keep me off school until Christmas.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. If I had a phone, I could google something: how to fake a temperature, how to fake an illness without your parents dragging you to the doctor or the emergency room. Maybe I should run away, do a Hanna, follow the family tradition. I could turn up on her doorstep and get her to Teach-Me-The-Ways to be a troublemaking rebel.
I sigh and sit up. It could be worse. At least the school didn’t call home. They didn’t even give me a detention. In light of my “exemplary school record,” they let me off with a warning and talked to me about academic pressure and stress, like me scrapping with Seren Kent was the result of some tricky algebra. Miss Jennings even talked about moving me up to the top-set math class, so maybe I should have meltdowns more often.
I hear the sound of the lawnmower starting up and jump out of bed. From the window I can see Ethan on the other side of the path, weaving in and out of the trees with the rusty old lawnmower, wrestling the scrappy grass into submission. It’s barely grown since the last time it was cut and I wonder if he’s just making up stuff to do to fill the day. I didn’t know they were working today—normally I hear Owen’s van rattling past my window. Now this place is going to be sold, I wonder how long they’ll still be working here. What’s the point in the owners paying to keep the grounds looking all neat when they’re selling it?
Ethan glances up at my window then. I leap away but he smiles, so I know he’s seen me spying on him, still in my jammies, hair like a bird’s nest. Damn it.
Mum and Dad have gone out shopping by the time I’ve showered and dressed. I usually go with them, but I couldn’t face it today. I’m not hungry, so I don’t bother with breakfast. I hover for a while outside Dad’s office, the temptation to go and look for more messages huge. But… I don’t know a great deal about computers, but I do know it would be too easy for Dad to find all my previous sneaky visits in his internet history if he ever felt the need—or if someone (tut tut—what would your daddy say?) suggested he look… I wonder if there’s a way to delete the recent history? I look toward the kitchen. I can still glimpse Ethan slowly weaving in and out of sight with his lawnmower. I bet he knows.
Before I can chicken out, I shove my feet in shoes and slip out of the back door. I check for any sign of my parents’ car returning before I call his name. He switches off the lawnmower as I approach, looking more than happy to take a break.
“Is Owen not here today?” I try to sound casual, but I don’t think it works because Ethan smiles and shakes his head.
“Nah—he’s taken his van to the garage for some repairs. You shouldn’t let him get to you, though, Sasha—his bark’s worse than his bite. He’s just a grumpy sod sometimes.”
Just a grumpy sod? He looks at us sometimes like he would murder us in our sleep given half the chance. Mum and Dad never seem to see it. Mum actually called him “such a polite young man” the other day. I guess Ethan could be right. I could be paranoid. Maybe he just hates teenagers. Can’t say I blame him—I hate teenagers too. Still, I’m glad he’s not here today.
“Do you know how to delete your internet search history?” I blurt it out without any other preamble.
Ethan looks surprised then laughs. “Oh dear—what have you been looking at? I never would have thought it of you, Sasha.”
I frown. “Do you know how?”
He shrugs. “Course. It’s easy. Hand us your phone and I’ll show you.”
“I haven’t got a phone.”
He raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything. I glance back toward the house. “It’s on my dad’s computer.”
He hesitates and stares at me. “Um… no. I don’t think your dad will be too impressed if he comes home and finds me in his house with his teenage daughter, fiddling with his computer. That might be taking his liberal tolerance for ex-cons a bit far.”
“Please. There’s time.”
He shakes his head and reaches for the lawnmower again.
“Please, Ethan. I don’t know who else to ask and I could get in so much trouble with my dad.”
“You mean you don’t know any other ex-cons who know their way round a computer,” he says, but he doesn’t start the lawnmower back up.
“Please?” I say again and he sighs but moves as if to follow me back to the house.
I do have the sense to pause at the back door. Yes, I want this done, but I am inviting a convicted criminal into my empty house in our deserted holiday park. My hesitation is only momentary, though. Mum and Dad have been gone an hour and he’s known I’m here alone. If he had any nefarious thoughts about me, he’s had plenty of time to act on them.
But my heart is still beating too fast as I lead him through the quiet house. I don’t even know what he was sent to prison for. It can’t be anything too bad. Dad wouldn’t have him working here if he were violent or had done anything that would put his home or family at risk.
It becomes more of a thrill than fear as I open the door to Dad’s office. Something so forbidden for me and here I am leading a strange man, a criminal, into Dad’s inner sanctum. For a moment, I feel like Hanna, the big sister I don’t know at all, the runaway, the bad seed, She Who Shall Not Be Named.
I kind of like it.
It takes Ethan about five minutes to delete the search history. He assures me Dad won’t find that stupid Facebook account, that it would take a proper computer whiz to dig out my midnight internet feasts, but that I should change my password anyway, just in case. I stand behind him as he brings up Facebook and I tell him my login details. He hovers over it for a second and I can feel myself blushing as I read the last couple of things I posted through a stranger’s eyes, as he brings up the anonymous threatening messages.
“Nice fake photo” is all he says, though, as he changes the security details and clicks off it. He smells of wet grass and damp earth, like he brought the outside into the house, clashing with the usual house smells of lavender air freshener and Mr. Sheen.
“All done,” he says, closing down the computer and standing up.
“Thank you so much,” I say as he heads back outside and I stand in the doorway, itching for him to be gone, so I can whip round with the polish and the vacuum, eradicating fingerprints and his smell, making sure there’s no sign of mud and cut grass on the floors. Will Dad come in and sense someone’s been in here?
“You should make sure the webcam’s disabled before you use the computer again,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“The messages—about you in your pajamas. How did they know what pajamas you were wearing?”
I look at him, open-mouthed. I freaked out when I got the messages, but I didn’t think… I didn’t stop to think… I feel ill. Full-on ready-to-vomit-at-his-feet ill. What I’m picturing now is the idiots from school not only sending me vaguely threatening messages but actually watching me as I used the computer. Oh God.
He stares at me and sighs. “Do you not know anything about internet safety? I thought they taught that stuff in school these days?”
Maybe they did. But as I’ve never been allowed a phone or internet access, I always tuned those assemblies out.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he mutters, shaking his head. “Look—I might be able to find out who’s sending the messages.”
“You can do that?”
“Might be able to, I said, but I do know someone who’s good at tracing IP addresses on computers.”
He means someone he was in prison with. I hesitate. Haven’t I already taken too many risks?
“I don’t need to,” he continues. “Your dad’s not going to find anything on his computer now. But it’s obviously scared you.”
I could say no. I’m safe from Dad finding out I used his computer, but whoever sent those messages is still out there. I can lie and deny, but if they have taken screenshots of my posts… yes, it’s all fake details, but Dad would recognize the photo of Hanna. I was stupid to use it.
“Yes—please. Could you find out for me?”
He gets a phone out of his pocket. “Remind me of the login details to your account and I’ll see what I can find out for you.”
I don’t know what I’ll do when he does give me the details, how I’ll scare off whoever is sending the messages, how I’ll stop them going to Dad.
Maybe Ethan will have some ideas about that too.
Chapter 12
Thedarktourist.com
HANNA—Saturday 8 p.m.
I’m tempted to keep driving but Adam has seen me. And besides—that news report… I park and get out of the car, leaving the door open.
“Who’s Katie Bentley?” I call, not walking any closer to Adam or my house. “What the hell is going on?”
He gets a piece of paper from his pocket and holds it out. I hesitate, then walk over and snatch it off him, before retreating back to the car. It’s a printout of a webpage—from Adam’s website, I recognize that right away. But it’s not the listing about my family; it’s the new listing I tried to find before.
About the murder of a thirty-one-year-old woman, the address given as Meadow Close, whose sister had been tragically mown down three months earlier. My chest gets tight and there’s a roaring in my ears as I continue reading down as far as the date given for the murder—yesterday’s date.
Adam is speaking and it takes me a moment to understand what he’s saying.
“Katie Bentley was found murdered in her home late last night. It looked at first like a violent break-in gone wrong. Her door was kicked in, the place trashed. It looked like a break-in until it turned up on my website. The press weren’t told until this afternoon—there’s no way anyone not involved in this would have known these details.”
My panic has escalated to the point where I want to scream at Adam sitting so damned calmly on the wall. A woman has been murdered and then details of that murder posted on his website. This is not a malicious prank, not a sick hacker making shit up. That woman was murdered for real. I have to find my family—the police have to find them. I look up from the printout at Adam. I was wrong to think he was calm. He looks ghostly pale under the streetlight and he’s shivering. How long has he been sitting there?
“Were there really photos? On your website?” Jesus, no wonder they were so quick to take that one down.
He shakes his head. “It’s a dead link. It doesn’t go anywhere. There’s nothing more than this.”
“And what about the woman’s sister? The hit-and-run? Are they saying it’s a coincidence? Two violent deaths within three months of each other?” I’m remembering what Dee told me about the hit-and-run—how it looked deliberate, how the car mounted the pavement…
“They’re not saying anything to me—but it can’t be, can it?”
Wait… what did he say before? That there was no way anyone not involved in this would have known the details… Jesus. Jesus. They can’t really think he had anything to do with this, can they? And me—they asked me about Gemma and Katie Bentley.
But no—they wouldn’t have let him go; he wouldn’t be sitting outside my house if they really thought he’d done anything. Maybe it’s stupid, but I’m reassured by the fact that they let him go—they haven’t arrested him for anything and surely, if they thought he had anything to do with all this, they would have kept him there?
“They haven’t arrested you for murder, then?”
He looks up at me, his face pale, hair all over the place. “They took my computer and my car,” he says. “They took fingerprints and DNA samples. My God.” He shakes his head. “I’ve never even been in a police station before.”
“Lucky you,” I mutter, but under my breath. I hover, not sure what I’m supposed to do now. The detective said to wait for news, that someone would call as soon as they’d traced my family, but am I supposed to just sit at home, staring at my phone? I’ve been back to the village, been chased out of town—what now?
“There was CCTV,” Adam says, and I frown.
“What?”
“On the street—where I took you to that house last night. There was a building opposite that had CCTV. That’s why they let us—me—go. Because I couldn’t have been murdering a woman over the other side of town at the same time as showing you that house.”
I can’t help the tinge of relief. They won’t have any reason to look closer at me now, no reason to go digging into any juvenile police records.
“What are you going to do now?” Adam asks, and he looks lost.
“I don’t know, I really don’t. I went home,” I say. “To my family home. But they weren’t there. They moved, apparently, months ago.” I sound stupid, but I don’t know what to say to him. Is he expecting me to invite him in? I live on a busy street, but right now, there’s no one around and I don’t want to have to go past him, don’t want to turn my back on him to unlock my door.
Something occurs to me as I stand there. “Your website,” I say. “When you look at the listings—you clicked through to another page with my family’s listing, didn’t you? It wasn’t like this Bentley one… The hacker, could they have put all the details on that first page?”
He shakes his head. “It’s a preview image—you have to login to see the details. There’s only space for a couple of lines of text and one image on the listings page.”
“But my family moved months ago—I would never have recognized their new house, because I have no idea where they moved to. God, even if I had the new address, I wouldn’t recognize a picture of it.”
He frowns as I run the idea past him, trying to figure it out. “So, whoever did this also knew you weren’t aware they’d moved? Or at least knew you hadn’t been to the new place—how?”
“No idea. But everyone else they knew would have known they’d moved.”
“What about Dee and Seb?”
“They… Wait, you’re right. Anyone who knows my family would have known they’d moved, but anyone who knows me wouldn’t.” I shake my head. “Dee’s parents moved away years ago, and they were never friends with my dad and stepmother. So, whoever did this… did they actually murder those women? Or are they just some sick hacker who found out somehow and put it up on your site?”
“To be honest, I’d rather that than the alternative.”
“But if it is a murderer and they somehow got that address from me or Dee or Seb and went there with the intention of murdering my family…”
“Didn’t you say there was no sign of an intruder there?”
“But if they’re working based on my bloody ignorance, they might still be lurking around the village, they might have been asking questions, trying to figure out where they’ve moved to.” I stop to take a breath. “I’m going to have to go back there again. If I don’t find out their new address, I’m going to go back to the village. I can’t just sit around waiting for the police to contact me.”
“Can I come with you?”
I stare at him, the silence stretching out, at his ruffled hair and beautiful arms, that smile now missing. I enjoyed our date so much—I would have said yes if he’d asked me out again.
But.
“I don’t know.”
But—he’s a stranger. A stranger whose website, hacked or not, is now forcing me to look for the family I ran away from. A stranger who doesn’t know me at all and has no idea what I ran away from. It’s not Adam I need beside me if I’m going to do this.
“I’ll call you, okay?”
“Tell your flatmate I’m sorry if I freaked him out,” Adam calls after me as I walk past him to the front door.
I stop and turn back to look at him. “I’m sorry?”
“I saw him in the window when I knocked. But he just turned the light off and disappeared. I wanted to see you, so I waited… I didn’t think. I’m sorry. He probably thinks I… Shit. He probably called the police, didn’t he? Seeing me lurking outside.” He stands up. “I’d better go.”
“Wait,” I say. “Flatmate? I don’t have a flatmate.”
Adam looks back at the house and points to my living-room window. “That’s yours, isn’t it?”
I nod and step away from the house. “I don’t have a flatmate,” I repeat in a whisper. “Are you sure it was my window?” I point to Ben’s window next door, the identical half-house, separated only by our two front doors. “Could it have been that one you saw the light in? My neighbor’s window?”
Adam hesitates. “It could have been, I guess…”
There’s no sign of lights from either window now. No sounds, nothing. I bite my lip.
“Should I call the police?” Adam asks, stepping up next to me and getting his phone out of his pocket.
“No,” I say. “Do you really want to see the police again today?”
“Hanna—there was someone in your flat!”
“But you don’t know that for sure.” I take a step forward. “I’ll just unlock the door and poke my head in.”
“Are you kidding me? It could be whoever’s hacked my site—it could be whoever killed those women.”
I glance back at him. “Keep your phone handy—call 999 if I scream.”
He shakes his head. “You’re not going in there on your own.”
