The Driver by Mark Dawson

streaked with grey and his small eyes had retreated deep into their sockets. He was unshaven and, despite his height, he was overweight and bore his extra pounds in a well-rounded potbelly. He was wearing a fuchsia-coloured windbreaker, a mesh cap and a pair of wading boots that were slicked with dried mud up to just below his knees.
    “My name is John Smith. This is Trip Macklemore.”
    “I’m sorry, fellas,” he said. “I was just going out. Fishing.” He indicated the waders and a fishing rod that was propped against the wall behind him.
    “Could we speak to you? It would just take a moment.”
    He glared out from the doorway at them with what Milton thought looked like an arrogant sneer. “Depends on what about.”
    “The commotion around here the other night.”
    “What commotion?”
    “There was a girl. You didn’t hear?”
    “The girl––oh, yes.”
    “I understand you spoke to her?”
    Brady’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who told you that?”
    Milton turned and angled his face towards the house diagonally opposite. “Mr. Leonard. I spoke to him earlier. Is it true?”
    “No,” Brady said. “It isn’t.”
    “Do you think we could have ten minutes of your time? It’s important.”
    “What do you both have to do with her?”
    “I’m her boyfriend,” Trip explained.
    “And you, Mr. Smith?”
    “I’m a taxi driver. I drove her up here the night she went missing. I’d like to see that she gets home safely again.”
    “How honourable,” he said with a half-smile that could have been derisory or amused, it was difficult to tell. “A knight of the road.” The bluster was dismissed abruptly and Brady’s face broke out into a welcoming smile. “Of course, of course––come inside.”
    Milton got the impression that this was a man who, if not exactly keen to help, liked people to think that he was. Perhaps it was a doctor’s self-regard. He bent down to tug off his boots and left them against the wall amidst the pile of shoes. As he led the way further into the house Milton noticed a small, almost imperceptible limp. He guessed he was in his early fifties but he might have been older; the greasy skin made it difficult to make an accurate guess.
    He led them both into the main room of the house, a double-height living room that captured the light from large slanted windows. There was a galley kitchen in the far corner, a breakfast bar with barstools arranged around it. There was a large television tuned to CNN, a shelf of medical textbooks and, on the wall, a picture of a younger Brady––perhaps ten years younger––posing in army uniform with a group of soldiers. The photograph was taken in a desert; it looked like Iraq. He cleared the sofa of discarded remnants of the newspaper so that they could sit down.
    “Could I get you something to drink?”
    “No thanks,” Trip said, struggling with his impatience.
    Milton smiled encouragingly at the boy. “No,” he repeated. “That’s alright. We’re fine.”
    Brady lowered himself to the sofa. “So what did Victor have to say about me?”
    “Just what he said that you’ve been saying.”
    “Which was––”
    “That she––the girl, Madison––was here. That she knocked on the door and you took her in. He says you used to specialise in getting kids off drugs and that you run a retreat here. Kids with problems come up here and you help them get clean. That true?”
    “Yes, that’s true.”
    “And Madison?”
    “No, that isn’t true. And I don’t know why he’d say that.”
    “It didn’t happen?”
    “I heard the clamour––my God, the noise she was making, it’d be impossible not to hear her. She must’ve clambered over the wall at the bottom of the garden and went straight across, screaming for help at the top of her lungs. I was up working.”
    “At that hour?”
    “I was an Army doctor, Mr. Smith. Served my country in the Gulf, both times.” He indicated the photograph on the wall. “Second time, one