Free I Know Where the Bodies Are Buried by Oliver Clarke Page A

his name." He looked around the cafe and then leaned into me. "I can't even say his name." He stressed the word say. His face cracked like he might start laughing again so I pressed on. Wanting to keep him focused and most importantly quiet. He'd got us enough suspicious stares as it was. This was a pretty upmarket place and the other customers didn't want their £4 cappuccinos ruined by a random lunatic.
"Where are they?" I said. "The bodies."
"Out of the city." He paused and then his eyes lit up. "I can show you. Yes. I'll show you."
I was starting to think that this was all a waste of time. That the guy was simply deranged and then he said something that hooked me again.
"Joan Mabey is there."
"How do you know about her?"
"Because..." he started and then shook his head and stopped. "I'll tell you tomorrow. "
"Tomorrow?"
"When I show you the graves." Then he got up and walked out. I wanted to run after him, grab him and shake him until he answered my questions. All my questions. That'd really piss off the politely chattering coffee house crowd. Instead I found I couldn’t move, hearing that name again after all these years had brought back too much. Too much pain and shit that I’d thought I’d buried.
So I sat there and finished my own coffee then went straight from the cafe to a pub and spent lunchtime and the afternoon there, slowly but steadily drinking myself into a pleasant oblivion that blotted out the memory of all the things I’d lost.
I kept expecting my mobile to ring and the jittery voice at the other end to tell me what was going to happen next. It didn't though, it just sat silently on the table in front of me as I sunk pint after pint. He hadn't left me a number of course, hadn't even told me his name, so all I could do was wait.
Joan Mabey was the person who had ruined my career, even if she hadn’t meant to. Five years ago she had disappeared from her home in South London. One day she had been there, living her life quite happily and the next she was nowhere to be found. Missing people weren't necessarily news, not when they were adults who weren't celebrities anyway. But there were things about Joan and her disappearance though that made me think it was worth my time. She was happy, successful, recently married. She worked at a hospital, a newly qualified junior doctor and that gave the story an edge. Maybe she’d flipped from the long hours and stress. Maybe one of her colleagues had and had bumped her off.
I'd spent two weeks of my life on the damn story, interviewing friends and relatives and people who worked at the same hospital as she did. No matter who I spoke to though I found nothing, no leads, no suggestions of foul play, no reason she might have run away not a damn thing.
And then one day my editor had called me and told me to come into the office. When I got there he fired me. He didn’t need to tell me why, I knew. I’d spent two weeks on a story and had nothing to show for it. That wasn’t how he ran his paper.
At first I wasn't too concerned. My reputation was well known in the business and I was sure I'd find something else. I didn't though. What I found was that no-one else wanted me to work for them either. I was suddenly a pariah. I started working freelance, getting jobs here and there, jobs that only paid when I actually wrote something. They didn’t pay well and within six months my fiancée had walked out the door.
And now five years later I’d heard her name again. Joan Mabey. The one that got away. The story that had snared me and which I’d never found the truth behind.
I left the pub as night started to fall, much to the relief of the barman who'd started to give me worried looks. I caught a cab home and fell into bed fully clothed. My phone was next to me on the pillow and it woke me early the next morning but not before I'd dreamt.
The dream was vivid, a stark contrast from the drunken dreamless oblivion I was used to. I was alone in it, at first at