by Tim Weaver
He was in his mid-to-late thirties, dark brown hair, the same colour eyes and a slightly bent nose, as if it had once been broken and not reset properly. He was dressed conservatively – collared shirt, grey trousers, plain jacket – and if I’d had to take a guess, I would have said he was a City suit, burning in the fires of middle-management hell. He had a put-upon look, as if he could never quite get his head above water.
‘So what is it you do, David?’ he asked as the food arrived.
‘I find missing people.’
‘Like an investigator?’
‘Yeah, a bit like one.’ I smiled. ‘Except I don’t have a badge to flash and I don’t get to kick down doors. Much.’
Aron laughed. Jill gave a thin smile, as if I’d just offended her. I tried to work out what I’d said. Maybe the police comment.
Aron looked at her, then back at me. ‘Jill’s husband used to be a policeman. He was …’ He looked at her again and she nodded, giving him permission to tell the story. ‘He died while on duty. Shot.’ He paused. ‘And she’s still trying to find out who did it.’
‘Oh, I’m really sorry,’ I said.
She held up a hand. ‘It’s okay. It’s been nearly a year – I really should be better at hiding my emotions.’ She smiled for real this time.
The conversation moved back into more general subjects – films, sport, more on the weather – before it led to why we were all in London. Jill was in marketing, and had only recently moved to the city after her husband got a job with the Met; Aron confirmed what I’d suspected – that he was in finance – and worked for an investment bank in Canary Wharf. Eventually, things came full circle and returned to my work.
‘So do you enjoy what you do?’ Jill asked.
‘Yeah, most of the time.’ I held up my left hand and wiggled the fingers where the nails were damaged. ‘Though not always. Sometimes it just hurts.’
‘How did you do that?’
I paused, looking down at my fingers. ‘Some people just prefer to remain hidden,’ I said, trying to make light of it, trying to deflect any further questions.
It was just easier that way.
Outside, while a couple of them – including Aron – were sorting out the bill, I got talking to Jill on her own. The night was cold. Above us, the skies opened for a moment and the moon moved into view; then it was gone again behind banks of dark cloud.
‘Thank you for keeping us company tonight, David,’ she said. ‘I realize it’s probably not fun being lumbered with the new people.’
‘It was good to meet you both.’
‘I’m really glad Aron persuaded me to come along. I wasn’t sure about it, I must admit. But I think this’ll be good for me. As you know, we were fairly new to the city when Frank died; I mean, we have friends dotted all around the country, but not too many here in London. And I’ve basically spent the last year not going out.’
‘Everyone here will understand that part.’ I glanced inside at Aron and then back to Jill. ‘So did you two just bump into each other?’
‘Pretty much. Aron gets his morning coffee from the same place as me. I just said hello one day and then, after that, we gradually started chatting and, well … here we are.’ She stopped. Studied me, as if turning something over in her head. ‘Actually, we were thinking of going out for a drink Friday night. You’re quite welcome to come.’
She looked at me, her eyes dancing in the light from the restaurant. I looked inside at Aron, laughing at something Jenny had said to him, then back to Jill.
‘I don’t want to step on any toes.’
Her eyes followed mine. ‘Aron?’
I nodded.
‘Oh, no – we’re just friends. I’m not ready for anything like that.’ She glanced inside. ‘Why don’t I take your number? I can drop you a text, or give you a call, and if you decide you’d like to come along, then you can. But there’s no pressure.’
I gave her my number. As she was putting it into her phone, she looked in at Aron again. Maybe she wasn’t ready. Maybe he wasn’t either. But they definitely felt something for one another, even if it was only a kinship. And I didn’t want to get in the way, because I knew a little of how that felt; of finally finding a connection with someone in the shadows left behind.
6
My parents had been gone for three years by the time Derryn died, and I’d been an only child. No brothers. No sisters. I’d relied mostly on friends at first, and – for a while – they would drop in on rotation. But then things gradually started to change. Before Derryn died, we’d all joke around, laugh at each other, get into beer-fuelled arguments about football and films. After I buried her, none of that seemed to matter any more.
Only one person ever understood that.
When I got home just after eleven, I looked across the fence into next door’s front room and saw my neighbour Liz leaning over her laptop. Liz had been different from everyone else, despite the fact she’d never had any right to be. She’d moved in three weeks after Derryn died and didn’t know me at all. But, as we started to talk, she became the person who would sit there and listen to me – night after night, week after week – working my way back through my marriage.
About three or four months in, I started to realize she felt something for me. She never said anything, or even really acted on it. But it was there. A sense that, when I was ready, she would be waiting. When I had needed it, she’d given me practical help too. She was a brilliant solicitor, running her own firm out of offices in the city. When my case before Christmas had gone bad, she’d sat with me in a police interview room as they tried to unravel what had happened and why. In the aftermath, I’d lied to the police and, deep down, I knew Liz could tell. But she never confronted me, and never mentioned it. She understood how the loss of my wife had changed the need for me to confide in someone, and seemed willing to ride it out.
As I stepped up on to the porch, my security light kicked in. Next door, she clocked the movement. Her eyes narrowed, and then I passed into the full glow of the light. She broke out into a smile and got to her feet, waving me towards her. I nodded, moved back down the drive, and up the path to her front porch. The door was already open, framing her as she stood in the kitchen searching in a cupboard.
‘Hello, Mr Raker,’ she said, looking up as she brought down a top-of-the-range grinder. On the counter was a bag of coffee beans, wrapped in silver foil.
‘Elizabeth. How are you?’
She shook her head. She hated being called Elizabeth.
‘I’m good. You?’
‘Fine. You been in court today?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Oh – so are you sure you want me bothering you?’
‘You’re a nice distraction,’ she said, and flashed me a smile.
The house was tidy and still had that ‘just moved in’ feel, even though she had lived there for nearly two years. The living room had a gorgeous open fireplace, finished in black marble with a stone surround. Logs were piled up in alcoves either side, and a small wooden angel, its wings spread, was standing where a fire should have been. The rest of the room was minimalist: two sofas, both black, a TV in the corner, a pot plant next to that. There was a Denon sound system beneath the front window. On the only shelf, high above the sofas, were four pictures, all of Liz and her daughter. She’d married young, had her daughter shortly after, and divorced soon after that. Despite Liz only being forty-three, her daughter Katie was already in her third year of university at Warwick.
I sat in the living room. She closed the top on the grinder and set it in motion, the noise like tractor wheels on stony ground, the smell of coffee filling the house. When she came through, she pulled the kitchen door most of the way shut and perched herself opposite me.
‘So what have you been up to?’
‘It was support group night.’
‘Ah, right, of course. How was that?’
‘Pretty good. I wasn’t sat next to Roger this week.’
She
smiled. ‘He’s the Mazda RX-8 guy, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Where did you eat?’
‘Some Thai place in Kew.’
‘Oh, I know where you mean. I took a client there once. He’d been charged with receiving stolen goods.’ She paused, and broke out into another smile. ‘Shifty so-and-so, he was. Luckily, what jail time I saved him was made up for by the big fat bill I posted through his letterbox at the end of the trial.’
‘Are you expensive?’
‘If only you knew how expensive.’ She winked. ‘You find yourself in possession of any dodgy DVD players, David, you know where to come.’
She smiled again, and we looked at each other, the noise of the coffee grinder filling the silence.
‘So are you on a case at the moment?’
‘You remember Megan Carver?’
She paused for a moment. She knew the name, but couldn’t think where from. ‘Wasn’t she that girl who disappeared?’
‘Right.’
‘Wow. Big case.’
‘Big enough. I’m trying to find her.’
‘If she’s even still alive.’
‘Yeah, well, I think there’s a distinct possibility she’s not.’
She didn’t pursue it any further, although as her eyes lingered on me I knew she wanted to. It was more than a natural curiosity. There were obvious parallels between our work – the damaged clients, the unravelling of lies and half-truths, the building of a case – but, deep down, I knew her reasons were much simpler than that: she wanted to feel we were moving somewhere.
‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ she said after a while, and disappeared down the hallway.
I looked up at one of the photos on the shelf again. In it, Liz had her arm around Katie’s neck, and was dressed in a skirt and vest. She looked fantastic. Dark, playful eyes; long chocolate-coloured hair; slim, gentle curves. We’d never talked about the relationships she’d had since her daughter was born, but it seemed impossible that there wouldn’t have been some. She was beautiful without ever suggesting she knew it, which only made her more attractive.
She returned a couple of minutes later. In her hands was an envelope. ‘Here,’ she said, and handed it to me.
‘Are you charging for the coffee?’
‘Ha ha – you’re a funny man, Raker. No, one of my old clients just opened a new place. I don’t know what it’s like, but maybe you can treat a few of the guys at the group one week. Working in law, I have no real friends, so it makes more sense for you to have them.’
She was smiling.
I looked inside the envelope. There were eight vouchers with the name of a newly opened Italian restaurant in Acton at the top. Each one got you a free main course.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, absolutely.’
I glanced at her, then down at the vouchers again. Don’t think it through. Just do it. I looked up. She was watching me again, that same look on her face.
‘Are you free Friday?’
She paused. Didn’t say anything. ‘Don’t feel like you need to ask me –’
‘I’m asking you because I want to.’
She moved back to the sofa, brought her legs up under her so they were crossed, then broke out into another smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m free.’
‘Then it looks like we’re eating Italian.’
7
Megan’s plastic storage box was still on the kitchen counter when I got in. I took it through to the living room and sat down at the table, spreading the contents out in front of me in three separate piles: jewellery, letters and photographs.
I went through the jewellery first. Some gold chains. A bracelet. A couple of rings. In the middle of them all was a necklace. It was unusual, almost out of place among her other things: a shard of dark glass, possibly obsidian, on a long black cord. I held it up in front of me and, as I watched it turn slowly in my hands, realized Megan’s initials were inscribed on the back. I set the necklace down, away from the rest of the jewellery, and turned to the letters.
Handwritten letters were pretty rare now so I imagined the ones in the box would be at least a couple of years old. But I was out by another two. There were five, all unsent, all to her grandparents in Norfolk, the last written in the week after her thirteenth birthday.
Next, I headed to the spare room and fired up the computer. Megan’s camera used a standard Sony USB lead, the same as mine. I plugged it in and copied the pictures across to my desktop. Most of them mirrored the Megan in the photographs I already had of her, so I turned to the last one at the block of flats.
Everything was much clearer. Two metal doors, reinforced glass panels in them. Blobs of sunlight shining in the glass, with only the merest hint of anything else: maybe a tree reflected, and perhaps the edge of another building. There were sandy-yellow bricks behind Megan, on the right-hand side, and she was dressed in a dark pair of jeans, a black V-neck sweater, a thick bomber jacket and a red scarf.
And there was that smile.
I opened one of the other pictures of her with Leigh at the beach, and positioned them side by side. Different times. Different places. Different smiles. The smile on the beach was warm, but created. A smile for the camera, not for anyone beyond that. This one was different. There was nothing put-on about it. This smile carved across her face, filled up her eyes and brought colour to the surface of her cheeks. I needed to find out where she was in the picture.
But, more than that, I needed to find out who had taken it.
Using the password the police had given the Carvers, I accessed Megan’s email. There were forty-two messages in her inbox, most of them automatically generated newsletters from companies she must have bought from or visited in the past. Three others caught my eye: two from Kaitlin, and one from Lindsey. All of them had been sent in the aftermath of Megan’s disappearance, and – when I opened them up – they were all asking her to come home, or at least call her parents. The police had probably questioned the girls about the emails, and checked their accounts for replies.
Right at the bottom was a mail from a charity called the London Conservation Trust. It seemed slightly out of sync with the high-street stores, fast-food restaurants and cinema times that made up her other emails, so I clicked on it. It opened on to a bland-looking newsletter detailing the LCT’s concern about urban development, and the impact it was having on wildlife in the city’s parks. It thanked Megan for her donation of £10 and said the money would be put to use ensuring wildlife was protected in the face of the continued expansion of the city.
Suddenly, my phone started ringing.
‘David Raker.’
‘David, it’s Spike.’
Spike was a Russian hacker living in a tiny flat in Camden Town, whom I’d known since my paper days. Back then, I’d used him a lot. He could get you an address, a phone number, a credit card statement, even bank account details – basically anything you wanted. The riskier the job, the more you had to pay him, but back then – when the story was all that mattered – he’d helped me break some big ones. I’d only ever met him once in the flesh: he was painfully thin and pale, as if he barely saw daylight. It was probably something to do with the fact that he was five years past the expiration of his student visa and never ventured outdoors.
I’d called him earlier in the evening, before I went out to the restaurant, and asked him to get me Megan’s mobile phone records for the three months running up to her disappearance, and for the six months since.
‘Spike – thanks for calling me back.’
‘Hey, no problem – sorry it’s so late.’ I could hear him tapping something into a keyboard. ‘So I got what you wanted here. There’s a lot of calls.’
‘How many?’
‘Two hundred and seventy-four, plus four hundred and ninety-two texts.’
‘That should be a fun evening in. Any after 3 April this year?’
‘Uh …’ He paused. ‘No. None. How come?’
‘
That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ I logged out of Megan’s email account, and moved to mine. ‘Any chance you could email me that information? Can you turn it into a PDF or a JPEG or something?’
‘Yeah. I’ll PDF it. It’ll be there in a couple of minutes.’
‘Nice one, thanks.’
‘You got my new drop-off details?’
Spike was a cash-only man, for obvious reasons. He had a locker in a sports centre close to his flat, and he gave his customers the access code, which he changed every day. The locker was his bank.
‘I got it. I might need you for something in a bit, though.’
‘Yeah, no problem. You know I’m not a nine-to-five man.’
I hung up. By the time I’d put in the username and password for my Yahoo account, the email and PDF were waiting there for me. I dragged off the PDF and opened it up. Thirty entries per page. Twenty-five and a half pages.
I went back through to the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine.
Two hours later, at almost two o’clock in the morning, I’d narrowed her list of calls down to eighteen different numbers. A couple I recognized off the bat: her home number; her mum’s and dad’s mobile phones; a few others from her Book of Life. The rest I’d never seen before.
I redialled Spike’s number. ‘I’m going to email you back a list of eighteen different phone numbers,’ I said once he answered. ‘Can you get me as many details for each one as you can lay your hands on?’
‘Sure.’
‘I need names and addresses for each. Anything else you come up with, you can chuck in there too as part of the fee.’
‘This isn’t gonna be a quick job.’
‘That’s fine. Just get what you can and give me a call back. I’ll be out and about tomor–’ I stopped, looked at my watch ‘– today, so just give me a shout on my mobile, okay?’
‘You got it.’
I hung up, and looked back at Megan’s face on the monitor. I’d never failed to find a missing person. I suppose, in some ways, I had a gift for it, some sort of magnetic pull that drew them to me, even if their bodies were the only thing left to find. I studied her face, her features, and hoped she would be luckier than that, just as I hoped all of them would be when I took on their cases. Because the worst moment of all was returning to the nest, sitting down opposite the people who had hired me, and having to tell them the child they’d brought into this world had just been pulled back out again.