You Are Dead

11

Thursday 11 December

Jamie Ball sat perched on a stool at his kitchen breakfast bar, drinking beer after beer, phone in his hand, calling each of their friends in turn, his back to the rainy darkness beyond the window. He focused first on Logan’s girlfriends, then her sister, then her brother, then her parents, asking if by chance — slim chance — she had gone over to see them. As he spoke he stared either at the tropical fish in the tank or at the photograph on the bar counter of the two of them in their ski suits taken on top of the Kleine Matterhorn at Zermatt last March, with snow-capped peaks framing the horizon. They were laughing at some joke their mate John, who had taken the picture, had just cracked.

John, who had introduced them a year earlier, had a simple philosophy that they both often joked about: Get up, have a laugh, go to bed!

But Jamie wasn’t laughing at that now. With tears streaming down his face, he stared at the woman he loved more than he could ever have imagined loving anyone, who he still hoped would become his wife.

She was twenty-four, with long brown hair and an infectious smile that showed her immaculate white teeth. The first time he had seen her she had reminded him of a younger Demi Moore in one of his favourite movies, Ghost. She’d told him he reminded her of a younger Matt Damon, in an un-Matt Damon kind of way. Whatever that meant. She was like that, quirky and oblique at times.

God, he loved her.

Please be OK, my darling. Please come home. Please come home.

Every time he heard a sound out in the corridor he turned and waited, expectantly, for Logan to walk in through the door.

He turned to PC Holliday, who was sitting on a sofa making notes, and asked if there was any update.