Dire Straits by Helen Harper

response letter.
    I spent a day tramping around Alice’s former neighbourhood and knocking on doors, trying to find anyone who knew anything useful. People were polite but they were exhausted. The police had covered the area and spoken to everyone more than once. So had the journalists. The residents had had enough. After several hours, I sat down on the edge of a pavement, utterly defeated.
    My gloom was interrupted by a small high-pitched voice. ‘Are you here for Alice?’
    When I turned round, I saw a scruffy little boy holding a skateboard and looking down at me.
    ‘Yes,’ I answered.
    ‘You won’t find her.’
    ‘I know.’ To this day I don’t know why I continued talking to him. I guess I just needed someone to be on my side, even if it was a kid. ‘But I need to find something that’ll prove she didn’t give herself up to one of the Families.’
    ‘The bloodguzzlers? That’s stupid. Everyone knows they don’t take kids.’
    Yeah, I thought sadly, everyone does know that. But it doesn’t matter.
    ‘You’re not police,’ he said, assessing me.
    ‘No. I work for an insurance company.’
    He sat down beside me, carefully propping up his board. He kept touching it as we talked, as if he needed to check it was still there.
    ‘They won’t pay, will they?’ he said, understanding more than I would have given him credit for.
    ‘No. No, they won’t.’
    A group of kids on bikes passed us. A few of them yelled obscenities at my new companion. He ignored them. ‘I can go speak to them if you want. Stop them from bothering you,’ I said.
    ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘They don’t bother me. They’re just a bunch of losers.’
    I dug into my pockets, found a crumpled pack of chewing gum and held it out to him. ‘Want one?’
    He suddenly grinned at me. ‘Sure.’ He shoved the gum into his mouth and chewed furiously. ‘I can help you.’
    I’m not sure if it was because of his chewing or because I was surprised by his words, but I had to ask him to repeat what he’d said said.
    ‘I can help you. I can get you the evidence you need.’
    Of course I didn’t believe him. But rather than hurt his feelings, I tried a different tack. ‘Why would you do that?’
    He shrugged. ‘Cause you seem nice. And Alice was my friend. She came round sometimes when her mum was working.’
    He stood up, picked up his skateboard and started to walk away. When he was several feet in front of me, he turned. ‘Well, are you coming or not?’
    I came. I’m sure it was highly inappropriate, following a child back to his house and going into his garage alone with him, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
    His garage didn’t contain a car or a lawnmower or half-dried-up tins of paint like most people’s. This kid’s garage was covered wall to ceiling in flashing state-of-the-art computers. I stared, open-mouthed.
    ‘I built most of this myself,’ the boy said proudly, closing the heavy door and plunging us into near darkness. ‘I started out with an old system of my dad’s then went from there.’
    This was a nice neighbourhood but it didn’t seem like the kind of place where the inhabitants had this kind of money to throw around. I felt as though I’d inadvertently walked into the Batcave.
    ‘How do you pay for all this?’ I asked suspiciously. If all this stuff turned out to belong to his father who worked for some government division, then I could get myself into a lot of trouble just by seeing it.
    He gave me a cheeky wink. ‘I’ve got skills. And don’t worry – my parents never come in here.’
    I wasn’t sure whether to feel reassured or nervous at that comment. He pointed at a dusty chair well away from the gleaming screens.
    ‘Sit there,’ he instructed.
    I did as I was told. He turned his back on me and began tapping furiously into one of several keyboards. He didn’t even bother to sit down. All I could see on the screens were lines of undulating green code.
    ‘How