Loved Her Wrong

Five Months Missing

Rosalind Vale arrived at Elias's office on a Tuesday morning carrying a photograph of a piano.

He did not recognise her immediately.

She stood just inside the reception area, holding a large handbag against her side. Her coat was buttoned incorrectly at the neck, and her grey hair had escaped its pins in several places. She looked as though she had travelled a considerable distance without deciding what she would say when she arrived.

The receptionist called Elias.

"There's a Mrs Vale here to see you. She says it's personal."

Elias glanced at the clock.

He had a meeting in twenty minutes and a report waiting for approval.

"Did she say what it was about?"

"She said you knew her son."

Elias stood.

For a moment, he could not remember how to move.

He went to reception.

Rosalind turned when she heard his footsteps.

"Elias?"

"Yes."

She studied him with the searching attention of a woman comparing a living person with the version she had carried in her head for months.

"You've grown a beard," she said.

Elias touched his chin.

"Not much of one."

"No. I suppose not."

She gave a small, uncertain smile.

"I'm Rosalind Vale. Jonah's mother."

"I know."

The answer came out too quickly.

Rosalind looked down at the photograph in her hand.

"I'm sorry to come without an appointment. I didn't know whether you'd be willing to see me."

"Of course I will."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes."

She nodded, but did not seem reassured.

Elias led her to a small meeting room and offered her tea. She accepted, then sat with her handbag on her lap and the photograph resting against its side.

He closed the door.

"When did you last hear from Jonah?" he asked.

Rosalind looked at him.

"That is why I've come."

Elias sat opposite her.

"I'm listening."

She took a breath.

"I haven't heard from him for five months."

He had known the number, of course. Five months since the flood. Five months since the reports about the bodies, the closed workshop, and the telephone calls that went unanswered.

Hearing it from his mother made the passage of time feel less like a sequence of dates and more like something that had been happening to a person.

"Have you reported him missing?" Elias asked.

"Yes. I reported him missing shortly after he disappeared. The police took his details and asked questions about his friends, his work, and whether he'd ever left without telling me before."

"What did you tell them?"

"That he sometimes needed a few days to himself. That he'd travelled for work. That he wasn't always good at answering his telephone."

She looked down at her hands.

"But he always came back."

Elias did not speak.

Rosalind continued.

"They asked whether he might have decided to start again somewhere else. I told them he wouldn't leave me without a word."

"Did they give you any reason to believe he was connected to the flood?"

"They couldn't establish that he was. They asked me about his whereabouts, and I told them what I knew. He hadn't been home when I expected him. I hadn't seen him. He hadn't called."

She paused.

"I don't know whether he was there, Elias. I don't want to pretend I know something I don't."

It was the most careful thing she had said, and it made Elias trust her more than a confident answer would have.

"What do you want me to do?"

Rosalind looked at the photograph.

"I want you to help me find him."

She placed it on the table between them.

It showed an upright piano in a modest room. The wood was dark, the finish worn around the edges. A vase stood on top, beside a small stack of music books.

Elias studied it.

"Is this Jonah's piano?"

"No. It belonged to a woman he knew. He sent me the photograph a few years ago, when he was helping her move it."

"Do you know where she lived?"

"Not from the photograph. I asked Jonah about it at the time, but he said it was a long story."

Elias looked at the image again.

"Why bring this one?"

"Because it reminds me of what he does. He spends his life going into other people's homes and making things work again. He remembers the smallest details about people. He'll remember how they take their tea, whether they have children, whether they prefer the front room to be quiet while he tunes."

She smiled faintly.

"When I was younger, I used to tell him that he would remember the name of every piano in the country before he remembered to buy bread."

Elias could almost hear Jonah's laugh.

Rosalind's smile faded.

"He remembers things, Elias. He doesn't simply vanish."

Elias looked at the photograph.

He wanted to tell her that he agreed. He wanted to tell her that Jonah would answer the telephone eventually, that there would be an explanation, that the silence was a misunderstanding waiting to be corrected.

But he could not say any of those things honestly.

Instead, he asked, "Do you have anything else that might help?"

Rosalind opened her handbag.

She took out a small notebook, a bundle of receipts, and a sheet of paper folded into quarters.

"This is his tuning ledger. I found it among his things after the police had finished asking questions. They said I could keep it."

Elias accepted the notebook.

It was blue, with a cracked spine and several pages marked by the pressure of a pencil. Jonah's handwriting filled the columns: dates, addresses, names, brief notes about instruments, and amounts charged.

Elias turned the pages slowly.

The handwriting was unmistakable. The letters leaned forward, the numbers varied in size, and the occasional note in the margins seemed to have been written while Jonah was talking to someone.

Loose pedal. Return with felt.

Client has new granddaughter. Ask how she's sleeping.

Do not let Mr Hargreaves touch the tuning pins.

Elias almost smiled.

Then he came to a page with a set of initials he did not recognise.

M.A.

They appeared beside a date and a brief entry concerning a piano.

He turned back a page.

The initials appeared again.

He checked the following entries.

There were two more references, each separated by several weeks.

"Who is M.A.?" he asked.

Rosalind leaned forward.

"I don't know."

"Did Jonah ever mention the name?"

"Not to me."

Elias examined the entries.

The dates were spread over several months. The notes were brief, as if the work had been ordinary enough not to require explanation.

One entry included a small mark beside the initials, perhaps a reminder to return to the same address. Another had a number written in the margin.

He could not yet tell whether the initials referred to a client, a friend, or a business.

"May I keep the ledger for a few days?" he asked.

"Please."

"I'll make copies of the relevant pages and return it."

Rosalind nodded.

"Thank you."

Elias placed the notebook on the table.

"I need to be clear about something. I can look into his work, speak to people who knew him, and follow any leads that emerge. But I can't promise I'll find him."

"I know."

"And if I discover information that suggests he may have been involved in the deaths near the mill, I won't be able to ignore it."

Rosalind's fingers tightened around the handle of her handbag.

"I know that, too."

She looked at him for a long moment.

"Jonah isn't always easy, Elias. I won't pretend he is. He can be stubborn, and when he's frightened, he sometimes makes a joke instead of telling you what's wrong. He can be very kind and very foolish in the same afternoon."

Elias thought of the yellow raincoat and the unfinished conversation.

"But he's my son," she continued. "I need to know what happened to him. Whatever the answer is, I need to know."

Elias nodded.

"I'll help."

Rosalind closed her eyes briefly.

"Thank you."

When she left, Elias remained in the meeting room with the ledger and the photograph.

He had a report waiting for approval. His meeting had already started without him. His supervisor would want an explanation.

For several minutes, none of that seemed important.

He opened the ledger again.

The initials were still there.

M.A.

He copied the dates into his notebook and made a list of the addresses Jonah had recorded. Most were ordinary residential streets around Calder. One was incomplete. Another belonged to a church hall.

He began with the simplest possibility: that M.A. was a client.

He searched the addresses against the public records available to him, then checked the dates against the entries in the ledger.

The first address led nowhere useful. The property had changed hands, and the current owners had no knowledge of Jonah or the previous occupants.

The second address belonged to a small block of flats. The resident listed in the old directory had moved away years earlier.

Elias returned to the ledger.

He was not yet investigating the flood. He was trying to identify a person Jonah had visited several times.

That distinction mattered.

He did not want to begin with the assumption that every unexplained detail pointed towards a crime. He had seen too many claims distorted by people who decided what had happened before examining the evidence.

He would follow the records in order.

At half past four, Colm appeared in the doorway.

"You missed your meeting."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Colm glanced at the notebook.

"Everything all right?"

Elias hesitated.

"An old friend has gone missing. His mother has asked me to help find him."

Colm's expression changed.

"Is this something the police are handling?"

"Yes."

"Then be careful not to let it interfere with your work."

"I will."

Colm nodded.

"If you need time, tell me. But keep your records separate from company files."

"I will."

When Colm left, Elias returned to the ledger.

He was not doing this as a claims adjuster. He had no authority to investigate a missing person, and he would not use his employer's resources to do so.

He was doing it because Jonah had once sat in his flat and asked whether Elias would listen before deciding what he thought.

Because Elias had promised that he would.

Because five months had passed, and Jonah had not called.

He closed the ledger and placed it beside the photograph.

Outside the office window, the afternoon was fading into rain.

Elias took out his telephone.

He called Jonah's number one more time.

The line rang.

Voicemail answered.

He ended the call.

Then he opened his notebook and wrote a heading across a fresh page.

FINDING JONAH VALE

Beneath it, he wrote the first question.

Who is M.A.?