Macy

Saturday, 2 June

Aaron Pope looks like his father.

I wonder if he’s like his father in other ways? If he can look at you and make you feel insignificant, unclean, unworthy? If he relishes that moment when something he says breaks you down enough to cause tears? Nell never cried. Not that I witnessed, anyway. She stood up to him and I could see, even when I was sobbing and falling apart, he hated that. I wonder if this man is like the one whose face he almost shares.

‘Can I help you?’ he asks when he opens the door to us. He doesn’t sound like his father. He sounds softer, nicer. But that means nothing, really. He keeps looking at me, puzzled, wondering if he knows me. I’m enough like my sister to trigger that in him.

‘Are you Aaron Pope?’ Zach asks.

The man at the door nods slowly.

‘My name is Detective Sergeant Zach Searle. I need your help.’

‘I don’t know how I can help you, officer.’ He is still looking at me, his eyes slightly squinted, his mind obviously whirring.

‘I’m looking for Nell Okorie.’

‘Nell?’ he says, seizing on that word like it is a precious jewel. Another man clearly in love with my sister. ‘She’s not here. I don’t know where she is.’

‘No, I didn’t think she was,’ Zach says. ‘I think she’s in trouble. She told me you help her with computer stuff. I need you to trace a phone number for me to see if I can find her.’

The man in the doorway looks wary. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Of course you can,’ I say. I point to Zach. ‘He’s not working with the police right now, you won’t get in trouble. He just wants to find my sister before someone hurts her.’

‘You’re Macy?’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re Zach?’ he asks. ‘The guy Nell was seeing?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right, then. I’ll help you, but I haven’t traced a phone in ages. It might take me a while.’

‘I hope not,’ Zach says, obviously forgetting what he was telling me before. ‘I don’t think Nell has much time left.’