Just Another Missing Person

by Gillian McAllister

There are things you don’t just know because you’re police: you know them because you’re a woman.

Julia Day. It is now your job to convict Matthew James for the murder of Olivia Johnson. Enclosed are your forensics to plant. They contain his DNA. He resides at 1 Glasgow Place, Portishead.

She feels her mind close off to what she is about to do. She is revulsed. Like somebody forced to make a cruel decision in the name of kindness, snapping the neck of something suffering.

Nobody takes risks with things that are too precious to them.

It’s the part of you that other people don’t see, beneath the bashfulness, beneath the sometimes awkward demeanor.

You will only have some idea, if you have a child of your own one day, of the things you will do to protect them, of how deep and pure your love for them will feel, like, if somebody said, “Jump in front of this train, right now, to save them,” you would: you just would. No hesitation.

ABC: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, Challenge everything. One of the most important rules of being a detective.

That’s the thing when you feel something emotionally. When you notice body language. When you know it, but you can’t prove it.

You learn so much by looking uninterested while listening.

This is what happens when you grow up poor: whenever you let your guard down, you think everything is going to be taken from you.

You can’t hide from everyone if you don’t go far, but you can hide from people googling you when you go for a job interview, or when you first meet somebody. You could tell those close to you the truth, but otherwise hide under cover.

Nobody knows that Matthew James was once known as Andrew Zamos: Emma has told only Julia. Nobody knows Julia was blackmailed, and especially, nobody knows that it was Lewis, father of Sadie Owen, who was behind it.

Sympathy, maybe, but also revulsion, the way some people feel upon seeing tragedies, and the things humans do to deal with a catastrophic hand played to them by the universe.

Parenthood is beautiful, but hard, too. It’s tough to exist in the world when there is someone going about their business who you would die for.

Nobody ever regrets knowing something, no matter how tough. The worst thing in life is to be bullshitted.