A Person of Interest
Short Fiction

Every town has its ghost. In our town, it’s a petite woman in her fifties called Sheila Edwards. I saw her last week, coming out of the local shop with a loaf of bread. It was a vision that left me cold. There was only one reason she would be back in the area and it’s a bad omen for me.
She didn’t see me, or if she did, she didn’t recognise me. I suppose it’s possible. It’s been five years since she was last here and none of us are getting any younger. I went home and waited for the inevitable. Sure enough, the phone call came a couple of days later.
This time the journalist is from The Framling Herald — her name is Natalie — she sounds young and painfully upbeat.
“Am I speaking to Mr. Baxter?”
“You’re the reporter — you tell me.”
“Mr. Baxter, I understand you have spoken to a lot of journalists over the years, but I would really appreciate some of your time.”
“Oh yes, what’s this regarding?” There’s no reason for me to be difficult, other than frustration that I’ll be forever linked to this one event. Nothing I have achieved in the last two decades has done anything to change this.
Her answer is candid, “It’s regarding the disappearance of Tommy Edwards.”
I say nothing, leaving her to marinate in the silence for a while. She’ll have my name as the last person stupid enough to admit seeing Tommy on the day he disappeared. She would have seen the news footage of me at twelve years old, all braces and curly hair, explaining how I’d seen Tommy walking towards the park at about three in the afternoon. She’ll want to meet and hear my story again, in person, which I can reel off pat. Then she’ll see what she can divine from these dusty old anecdotes that the local police force and two private investigators must have missed.
Of course, I agree to meet her, how could I not?
It’s been twenty years since Tommy disappeared. Initially, each anniversary brought flyers, candlelight vigils, and renewed pressure on the local police to solve the case. The case that all, but the most bloody-minded, now admitted was a murder investigation. Eventually, it became limited to the big anniversaries five, ten, fifteen years. I should have realised what the twenty-year mark would mean. I slowly replace the receiver.
“Who was that John?” asks my wife as she wanders in from the hallway, flicking through the post.
It’s not like I spend my time waiting for these calls. I married a local girl and had a son of my own.
“It’s twenty years since Tommy Edwards went missing.”
We’ve been married for ten years, so she knows what this means. “Are you going to meet them?”
“Yes, I’ll meet her.” I can’t keep the resentment out of my voice. “God I hope she doesn’t bring Shelia like the last one did.”
I feel my neck get hot, the same way it had done under Shelia’s scrutiny. I was a twelve-year-old kid out on a bike ride, what was I going to do to her seventeen-year-old son, who stood a foot taller than me? Except, I can’t include the bike in the version of the story I tell. It wasn’t in my original statement.
I meet Natalie at the local pub. She’s tall and neatly dressed. Her dark hair is pulled back into a severe bun and she looks as young as she sounds. She’s friendly and likes to reassure me of my importance by saying things like, “I want you to get a chance to have your story heard. It could jog someone’s memory.”
She looks decidedly out of place, perched on a threadbare sofa, which probably contained more real ale than my glass.
What are her first impressions? She’ll see a guy who was often called ‘nice looking’ in his youth, going a bit thin on top and thick around the middle. There’s a hint of ink around the collar and cuffs, which will let her know I wasn’t always on track to build my own hire car business.
I tell my story. Her friendly chatter is an obvious front, I’m not trusted. She likes to interrupt, to clarify details, making me go back, and looking for inconsistencies.
She won’t find any, it’s a story I’ve been telling for so long now, it’s as familiar to me as any nursery rhyme. Although, now I think about it, it’s worrying that even I’ve forgotten which details are real and which are imagined. Was the day really cold, or have I just substituted a grey sky as its backdrop? Still, I remember the key points not to mention. I was not on my bike and I did not go out again after four o’clock in the afternoon.
Paul’s name comes up: it had to.
“Was it just you and your mum?”
“No, my mum remarried, a man called Paul Scholer.”
She checks her notes. I imagine it says something along the lines of ‘Paul Scholer: Civil servant, forty years old at the time of Tommy’s disappearance, no criminal record.’
There will be some key information missing, including ‘control freak and strict disciplinarian, who resented the presence of a young and at times difficult stepson’.
I was actually grounded on the day in question, and that was why the police were never told about my bike ride that afternoon.
“Looks like you have more information than me.” I ask, “Why do you need me to go through this again?”
She seems taken aback. Natalie’s a woman on a quest, and I guess it makes no sense to her there are people looking to forget.
“Like I say, you’d be surprised what can jog people’s memories. So you last saw Tommy heading to the park as you walked home from school at three o’clock?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you speak?” This is the third time she has asked me this.
“No.” That’s another lie.
“Did you know each other well?”
“We knew each other. I went to school with his younger brother, Russel.” I think this is the closest I have come to being honest so far.
It’s not like I’m lying for sinister reasons. When I left Tommy for the second time that day, outside the local cafe, he was very much alive and looking fairly chipper. Initially, my lies were the lies of a frightened boy, who did not want to face an angry stepfather. Then they became the lies of necessity, for an adult who realised that admitting lying to police was going to cause problems.
I have the additional complication that my reason for going out again that day was not going to cover me in glory. I don’t want my son to hear his dad was a wannabe punk — the kind of kid who would hold onto a package for a friend’s older brother. I was returning the package that day.
Natalie’s voice breaks into my reverie, “What then, Mr. Baxter?”
“I went home.”
“To your mum and dad?”
“To Mum and Paul, yes.”
“And you all stayed in for the rest of the evening.”
“Yes.” Except we didn’t.
I still remember my relief when Paul went out to his allotment later that evening; I came out of my room and watched TV with Mum. I think it was the first time I’d ever got away with disobeying him without punishment. I wish it was a happier memory.
Looking down at her notes, I recognise Paul’s meticulously neat writing. He’d given a statement to the police saying he had been home all evening. Natalie realises I’m no longer listening and thanks me for my time. She slides a DVD case across the table. It’s labelled ‘News Footage — Tom Edwards.’ I hesitate before tucking it into my jacket and shunting my chair back.
Natalie’s parting shot to me is, “We’ll speak soon.”
I grunt a response; I have to go home and make a call.
“Mum, it’s John.”
“John? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Are you by yourself?”
This draws a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, you know it’s Paul’s bowling night.”
I clear my throat. “Mum, it’s twenty years since Tom Edwards disappeared. Shelia’s back in town with a journalist.”
“That poor woman, she still thinks she raised a choir boy.”
“That’s not fair, Tommy was alright.”
“He was a drug dealer! Everyone knew it, everyone except Shelia. He used to sell up at the allotments. Paul had to speak to him about it a couple of times.”
“Did he?” This was news to me.
“He did, not that he was listened to. Paul always knew it was Tommy who vandalised his car.”
I remembered the incident with the car. Someone had spray painted something onto the bonnet. I wasn’t allowed to see it before Paul took it somewhere to be resprayed.
“Russell always said it wasn’t him.”
“I dare say he did. You know Paul never liked you hanging around with Tommy’s brother.”
“Listen, Mum, I saw some of the police reports. Paul said he was at home with us all evening.”
“Well?”
“Well, he wasn’t was he?”
“For goodness sake, John, why do you spend so much time dredging up the past? Paul was at the allotment with no witnesses and no CCTV. Why should he have to be put through the wringer just because Tommy’s lifestyle caught up with him and he was killed by some drug dealer?”
“Who says he was?” I’m pretty sure I know.
“Well, it’s obvious isn’t it?” I hear, what sounds like, the front door closing on my mum’s end of the line and I cut the conversation short.
As I settle into my chair with a lukewarm beer, I finally get round to shrugging off my jacket. Something clatters to the floor. It’s the DVD of the news footage I’d grudgingly taken with me from the pub. I stare angrily at it for some time before I capitulate, slipping it into the player and perching back on the sofa. It starts with a blue screen simply including Tommy’s name and the date of his disappearance. Then suddenly Sheila’s ghostly visage rears up from the screen.
She’s standing outside her house, hands fiddling with the simple chain around her neck as she continually looks towards someone off-camera. A journalist struggles to secure his tie from the gusty winds, as he runs through the usual questions.
‘Tell us about your son? What happened on the day he disappeared? Do you have any idea where he might be?’
My name comes up and I realise I’m not prepared for this. I mute the TV, but I can’t look away from the picture. For the first time, I notice Russel in the background, hunched over by the fence with a couple of cousins. He’s tall, like his brother, but he’s not shed his puppy fat. He removes his glasses with the thick plastic rims and rubs at his eyes. He’s crying. Sheila looks stunned and disbelieving, but Russel just looks lost. Oblivious to the crowds or the camera — he’s alone in a fog of misery.
I never saw him cry at the time, but no one could say the incident didn’t change him. He was rudderless. He stopped going to school and picked up some bad habits from some questionable people. He moved away around the time I met my wife. I hadn’t thought about him for a long time.
Looking at the clock, it’s not too late. I have time to make another call.
“Hi Natalie, when can we meet up again? I think I’ve remembered something about that day, involving Paul Scholer. Like you said, it’s funny what jogs your memory.”

