by T. M. Logan
‘Hi, Ed,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Julia would like a word.’
‘Sure,’ I said, dropping my messenger bag by my desk. ‘I just need to send something quickly to the in-house team at—’
‘Now,’ she said, colouring slightly.
‘Right.’
I followed her, sensing the eyes on my back as we walked past rows of desks, an uneasy feeling gnawing at my stomach. The MD’s office was at the end of the floor, behind more glass partition walls but twice the size of mine. We had always got on pretty well, she and I – she rated me as an effective team leader. At least I thought she did.
‘Hi Julia,’ I said, trying to keep my tone upbeat. ‘You were after me?’
The air in Julia McKenna’s office was infused with expensive perfume, heady and intoxicating. She sat behind a large white desk with double monitors, iPad, notebook, paperwork stacked to one side, the long wall behind her studded with framed awards for the company she had built from the ground up.
‘Close the door, Ed.’ She spoke without looking at me. She was in her early forties with short blonde hair swept to the side and wore skinny black jeans with a cream blouse.
I pushed the door shut with a soft click, my stomach sinking further. There were two chairs in front of her desk, but if I sat down that would only prolong what was about to come. I stayed on my feet, sliding my hands into my pockets.
‘How are you doing, Ed?’ she said, putting her fountain pen down. ‘How are things going?’
‘Good. I’ve just come back from Advantix in Loughborough with the brief for their new campaign. There are some really good ideas for it that the team can get working on.’
‘Excellent.’ Her voice was quick, syllables precise like a typewriter’s keys. ‘Now, Ed, I’ve had some troubling information and I wonder if you can help me out with it?’
‘Information?’
She flicked a finger at the screen of the iPad, scrolling until she found what she was looking for.
‘Wednesday 27th May, you were unwell, correct?’
‘Yes.’ I felt a swoop of panic. ‘Stomach upset.’
‘And you were definitely at home, when Georgia rang you to ask about your feedback on the restructure?’
‘That’s right, I was—’
‘Which I never received, by the way.’
‘Yes, I was at home.’
‘Ill?’
‘Yes.’ Sweat bloomed under my arms. ‘Why are you asking me this?’
She fixed me with a stare, her unblinking pale blue eyes holding mine, and I forced myself not to look away.
‘It doesn’t matter. Georgia must have been mistaken.’
‘Mistaken about what?’
‘She got the distinct impression you were out and about somewhere in your car. You’re saying that’s not the case?’
‘That’s what I’m saying.’
She scrolled down further on the tablet with another flick of her index finger. ‘Then there was Monday last week, the first of June.’
‘Yes,’ I said finally, scrambling to remember. Every last drop of saliva in my mouth had evaporated. ‘What about it?’
She let the silence hang between us.
‘You were supposed to be with the executive team at Cognos, doing media training.’
‘I was scheduled to be there, but—’
‘You let them down at short notice, some issue with your car?’
I felt myself take an involuntary step back.
‘Flat tyre.’
‘Where did you get it fixed?’
‘What does it matter?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘It doesn’t really.’
I scratched at the stubble on my cheek. ‘A garage,’ I said, clearing my throat. ‘On Derby Road. That’s where I went.’
‘I see.’ She leaned forward, elbows on her desk. ‘Do you know Ian in the design team downstairs, by the way?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Ian was on a lieu day, at home, on the first of June. He lives in Beeston, as it happens. Leslie Road. Do you know it?’
Suddenly I knew where this was going.
‘Don’t think so,’ I said.
‘That’s strange because he says he saw you there that day, at his neighbour’s house, just about the time when you were supposed to be media training with one of our biggest clients.’
Shit.
‘He’s got me mixed up with someone else, I was never—’
‘So if I was to ask IT to pull the billing and tracking log on your work iPad, it would corroborate your version of events. Correct?’
I tried desperately to remember whether I’d taken my iPad with me to either address. Before realising that it didn’t matter – because Julia would have already checked the records before she called me into her office.
‘Correct,’ I said, swallowing.
She sat back in her chair, regarding me with a deep frown. ‘What’s going on with you, Ed? You do good work, and your guys like you. But you’re a team leader, I need you to set an example. And right now I’m struggling to figure out what your game is. Are you looking around for something else? Is that it?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got anything to tell me?’
I shook my head. ‘No, Julia.’
‘Because I’m about to restructure the management tier of the company and I can’t decide whether you’re trying to make the decision easier for me.’
‘On the basis of office gossip?’ My voice rose as the worry and frustration of the last few weeks spilled out. ‘Somebody thought they saw something? Or thought I was faking when I called in sick?’
‘Calm down, Ed.’
‘This is rubbish, it’s nothing but hearsay!’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘You can’t just assume that—’
She held up a hand. ‘Thin ice, Ed.’ She articulated each word slowly. ‘Getting thinner. I understand this is hard to hear but I can’t have you coming into my office ranting and raving in front of everyone. Why don’t you go home for the day, have a think about things and how you want to move forward from here.’
‘I’ve got lots of work to do for the—’
‘It’s not a question, Ed.’ She capped her pen with a snap. ‘Go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
*
I felt it as soon as I walked into the house.
A strangeness, an otherness, as if I was looking at the hallway in a mirror – everything flipped; everything in the same place but somehow different. The merest trace of a scent, spicy and sharp, that didn’t belong here. A presence recently gone.
I was still steaming with anger from my meeting with Julia and a headache had been building behind my eyes all the way home. But this feeling went deeper than that, much deeper. I put my car keys in the little china bowl by the front door and stood in the silence of our high-ceilinged hallway. It was early afternoon, Claire was still out at work, the house unnaturally quiet without music and TV and family chatter. It was totally, utterly still. I could hear my breath rising and falling in my throat.
The cat. Was that it? Normally she lay in wait for me when I got home, ambushing me in the hall, meowing and winding around my ankles until she was fed, no matter what time of the day it was.
Today she was nowhere to be seen.
I went to the bottom of the stairs, my shoes clicking on the Minton tiled floor, and whistled for her.
No answer.
‘Tilly?’
Still no response. She wasn’t in our bedroom or the lounge either.
In the kitchen, I went to the window and checked the back garden. Whistled her again.
What was that?
Someone was here.
Adrenaline flooded my veins.
I turned my head towards the sound. A soft rustling nearby, someone moving. Below me. Pulling the cutlery drawer open, I picked up a rolling pin, the smooth wood reassuringly solid in my palm.
The cellar door was ajar. I opened it and hit the light
switch, flooding the brick-lined stairwell with brightness.
‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Who’s there?’
The sound came again. Movement from below.
Gripping the rolling pin tighter, I moved down the cellar steps, my head bowed to avoid the low ceiling, the smell of damp bricks and earth and old cans of paint strong in my nostrils. At the bottom I turned quickly, in case someone was hiding in the—
Tilly’s small grey head emerged from behind a pile of old dustsheets.
‘There you are,’ I said, letting out a breath and lowering my makeshift weapon. ‘Come on then.’
Slowly, gingerly, she emerged from her hiding place. I climbed back up the stairs and watched her follow me into the kitchen. One pace at a time, ears back, looking left and right with every step. She was spooked.
‘What’s the matter, girl?’
I tried to pick her up but she recoiled, backing away from my grasp. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that; she always wanted to be picked up, to be fussed or to sit on a lap. She didn’t normally go down into the cellar either, not in the daytime, not when there were armchairs and sofas and beds and rugs to sleep on. I put some dry food down in her bowl and watched as she slowly approached and began wolfing it down in hasty bites. I left her to it and went back out into the hall.
That strange sense of otherness was fading to the edges now, but traces of it still lingered.
Someone had been in the house. I was sure of it.
25
WEDNESDAY
Nineteen days until the wedding
It had been easy to attach the GPS tracker.
I assumed Ryan’s work car park was probably covered by CCTV, and he was rarely at home. But an opportunity had presented itself when Ryan picked Abbie up to go to the cinema, the previous Tuesday. It was simply a matter of taking a drive out to the Showcase after their film had started, cruising up and down the car park until I found Ryan’s car. Parking my own car and walking casually up to the black Audi, bending down to tie a shoelace, and clamping the little metallic tracker inside the rear wheel well. As easy as that.
In the five seconds it took to attach the device, I focused on it being the right thing to do. Just to be sure. I loved my daughter and I was worried about her: I was protecting her.
I tried not to think too much further about the road I had embarked upon. I didn’t really like the person I was becoming, checking Ryan’s social media and following him in my car. Attaching a GPS tracker to someone’s car without their knowledge . . . that definitely felt like crossing a line. The legal disclaimers on the Amazon page had been very clear: it was the responsibility of the purchaser to comply with all relevant laws.
It was better not to think about it.
But I would just have a little look at his journeys for a week or two, then discreetly remove it and no one would ever be any the wiser. It was much safer than trying to follow a car weaving in and out of traffic. Safer for Ryan, for me, for everyone else on the road.
I gave it a few days before finally opening the tracking app on my phone and clicking on ‘Display data’.
There was Ryan’s daily commute into the city, from his house in Beeston. He was an early riser – normally out of his house by 7 a.m. and often not back until 7 p.m. There were four trips out of the city, two to a big software firm in Birmingham, one to the UK headquarters of Rolls Royce in Derby, and one to a logistics company in Leicester. Various other journeys around Beeston, to a local gym and to the police station, which presumably related to his work as a special constable.
There were three things that were interesting.
Number one: Ryan had been back, again, to 98 Neilson Road in Bestwood. Presumably another visit to the person the neighbour had never seen with the security camera over his front door.
Number two: on the Sunday just gone, the GPS showed a journey northwest of Nottingham and a return later that same day. Abbie had been with us during the day because Ryan was out somewhere, back in the evening. Back from where? Wherever this was, I supposed, this ragged GPS line heading north away from Nottingham. What did Abbie say about where he was going that day? Something about his mother?
That was it. On the second Sunday of every month, Ryan said he went to the cemetery in Manchester to take fresh flowers to his mother’s grave. I realised this was something else – other than Abbie – that I had in common with Ryan. For years after he died, I had visited Joshua’s grave every week or two. Perhaps Ryan couldn’t let go of the dead, either.
I pondered this as I studied a jagged red line on a map that showed Ryan’s monthly pilgrimage home, a sliver of guilt pricking at me for intruding on what was clearly a private ritual of remembrance. It showed a certain amount of dedication, of devotion to filial duty, to make the four-hour round trip once a month. His father was no longer in the picture, and he had no siblings, so Ryan must have taken it on himself to be the guardian of her memory, the custodian of her final resting place. Fair play to him. When there was nothing else to do, you still wanted to do something. I understood that. I got it.
And yet . . . there was something about it that wasn’t quite right. Geography had never been my strong suit but it was a strange, indirect route to take. I squinted at the screen, using my thumb and index finger to zoom into the map and bring up more detail. Zoomed out, scrolled up, then back in again. The route wasn’t long enough.
It went north, and then west towards Manchester, but stopped short about two-thirds of the way there. I zoomed in further. The GPS signal came to a halt in north Derbyshire and stayed for the best part of the day, his car stopping somewhere called Edale, a little village in the heart of the Peak District about halfway between Manchester and Sheffield.
Edale. What was there? Nothing much: scrolling the map right and left I could see a small railway station on the Sheffield to Manchester line. Lots of hills. A couple of reservoirs nearby. I googled it, pulling up the Wikipedia page.
Edale is a village and civil parish in the Peak District, Derbyshire, England, whose population was 353 at the 2011 Census. With an area of 7,030 acres (2,840 ha), in the Borough of High Peak, Edale is best known to walkers as the start (or southern end) of the Pennine Way, accessible by public transport from Sheffield or Manchester. The village is surrounded by hills: the plateau of Kinder Scout to the north, where the highest point in the parish is found, the Great Ridge to the south and east, Win Hill to the east and Dalehead to the west.
I could have sworn Abbie had said he went to Manchester that day. Or was it Ryan himself who mentioned it? That his mum was buried in the city in one of the big civic cemeteries. The cemetery was slightly famous because some minor celebrity was buried there too. Then again, maybe Ryan just liked walking in the Peaks. Being on his own. Maybe it was a place he could think about his mother, remember her, or a place they had spent time together before she got ill.
But then why did he say he’d spent the day in Manchester?
26
There was another unexplained trip recorded by the GPS tracker: number three.
On Tuesday evening, just after 9 p.m., it had recorded a visit to Radford, north of the city centre, to Forest Road West. Where he stayed for just under half an hour. That was a weird place to go if you didn’t have a good reason: from what I’d read, it was on the edge of the city’s red-light district. Or at least it used to be. I decided to check it out for myself, stuffed my squash kit into a gym bag and grabbed my coat.
Claire was in the kitchen, printed spreadsheets of figures covering half the table.
‘I’m just off out,’ I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Playing squash with Jason.’
‘Tell him I said hello,’ she said. ‘Won’t be late back, will you?’
I shook my head, wondering how much longer I would have to lie to my wife. Every lie a tiny betrayal.
‘Nine at the latest.’
‘Make sure your serve hits the side wall,’ she said, miming a shot. ‘Get it to drop
into the back corner, it’s a nightmare to return those.’
I smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Will do.’
Forest Road West was a long, straight street of three-storey Edwardian houses at one end, bordering a park and cemetery at the other. I drove through it slowly, did a U-turn into a side road, and went halfway back, pulling over in the pool of darkness between two streetlights. I killed the ignition and the radio and just sat for a minute, letting my eyes adjust to the shadows, checking my mirrors for any signs of movement. The street seemed quiet. A few cars parked, others moving past in no particular hurry. There was a high wall on my left with gates recessed into it every twenty yards or so. On the right, an iron fence bordering the darkness of Forest Rec, a thick stand of trees and a path sloping away down towards the large area of open ground where Goose Fair was held every October. I squinted into the trees, but the darkness there was impenetrable.
I checked the GPS data again, zooming in and out to compare the location against the spot that Ryan’s car had visited a few days ago. This was the place, as near as I could figure it.
I jumped at a tap on the window.
A young woman, with heavy eye makeup and dark red lipstick, stared through the passenger side window. I buzzed it down and she leaned in, filling the car with the smells of cheap flowery perfume and stale cigarettes. She was thin and looked horribly young; Abbie’s age, or maybe even younger. Barely into her early twenties, but with lines of weariness already setting in around her eyes and mouth. Someone’s daughter, I thought. Someone’s pride and joy.
She studied me briefly, slim forearms resting on the sill. ‘You lost, mate?’ Her voice was flat, toneless.
‘No, I was looking for someone.’
‘You want business?’
I showed her a picture of Ryan from his Facebook page. ‘I’m actually looking for my friend, have you seen him? He was here a few nights ago.’
‘Nah.’
‘You didn’t even look at the picture.’
She took the phone from me, angled it towards the street light, the bones of her hand prominent, her skin pale. A little frozen moment of recognition and then she shook her head, quickly. ‘No.’ She handed the mobile back to me. ‘Not seen him.’