staring at the picture, his eyes scrunched into narrow slits.
‘Well … I’m not sure actually. At first glance I’d have said no …’, he picked up the photo, angling it towards the light, ‘but … well, he does look a bit like someone who’s been coming in. His name isn’t Danny though. Hang on. Paul? PAUL!’
A head poked out from behind a half-open door to the rear of the reception desk.
‘What?’
‘Come here a minute, will you? Does this look like Patrick to you?’
‘The Patrick you had the hots for?’
Paul emerged fully from behind the door, grinning. He was short and muscular, biceps bulging.
‘Shut up!’ Gerry had turned pink. ‘Just look. Could that be him?’
Paul glanced at me then at the photograph. He frowned.
‘Could be,’ he said, but he sounded unsure. ‘I mean, he definitely has the look of him. But Patrick has a beard and specs and he always wears that beanie, so I’ve never seen his hair. Could be though. Why?’
‘He’s this lady’s husband.’
He gestured towards me.
‘He’s gone missing, and she wants to know if he’s been in here recently.’
‘Husband!’ Paul laughed, then looked apologetically at me.
‘Oh, sorry. I’m not laughing about him being missing, that’s shitty. Just laughing at Gerry here. He has the right hots for him.’
‘Shut up!’ hissed Gerry.
Paul hooted and headed into the back room again.
‘Hope you find him,’ he called over his shoulder.
Gerry rolled his eyes.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and tapped the photo of Danny with a manicured finger. ‘I do quite fancy him, if I’m honest. He is hot. Sorry.’
I smiled and waved a hand dismissively. I needed to get this back on track.
‘So – you do think you might have seen him? In here? I’m confused.’
Gerry looked back down at the picture, nodded slowly and then looked up again.
‘I think so. There’s a guy who started coming in about a month ago. Didn’t join as an annual member, just paid for a weekly pass and kept renewing it. His name … well, he said his name was Patrick, not Danny. Patrick Donnelly. He’s Irish?’
I nodded. ‘Danny’s Irish, yes.’
‘He said he was a freelance writer who’d just moved to Bristol and he was waiting for new office space, said it was being renovated or something. Asked if it was OK to use the gym in the morning and then hang out and do some work in the café in the afternoon. We were cool with that – as long as people pay for the pass they can use the facilities as long as they like, we’re open eighteen hours a day. And he was nice, no trouble, just got on with it. He started coming in Monday to Friday, just in the daytime. Stayed all day. Worked out for a couple of hours then had lunch and got his laptop out and sat in a corner of the café for the rest of the day. Did that for a few weeks. Then he just stopped coming. I presumed his new office was ready. Gutted.’
He smiled sheepishly. My heartbeat had been quickening as I listened. Could this Patrick be Danny? The timescale fitted. The Monday to Friday fitted. It fitted.
‘Did he seem OK? I mean, did he look like he was injured at all, when he was in the gym?’
Gerry frowned.
‘Not that I noticed. Looked fine to me.’
‘But … you said he had a beard? Danny didn’t have a beard. And glasses?’
Gerry nodded.
‘Yes. And he always wore a little black beanie, even when he was working out.’ He paused. ‘Not that I was spying on him lifting weights or anything. But, you know, we’re always running about, in and out of the gym, and you notice,’ he added hurriedly, his face flushing again.
I nodded distractedly, my mind racing. If Danny had been trying to keep a low profile, it might have made sense for him to try to disguise his appearance a bit when he was outside the house. Would it be outside the realms of possibility for him to have stuck on a hat, a pair of glasses? A false beard seemed faintly ludicrous, but maybe, if he was that desperate to avoid being recognized …
‘You know, the more I look at this the more I think it is him,’ Gerry was saying. ‘His body shape, and those eyes – you can’t disguise eyes, even in glasses. I’m pretty sure that’s Patrick. Are you saying he was wearing a stick-on beard though? Why?’
‘I don’t really know,’ I said honestly. ‘Do you know how he