Nothing Else Remains

by Robert Scragg

  She climbed out, grabbed her towel, stared at her crutches for a moment. Two hours’ time, all being well, the doctor would let her hand them back. Confirmation that she was almost there. Almost back to normal, or as close as anyone could be after what she’d been through. She switched her towel to the other hand, picked up her crutches, carrying instead of using. One small act of rebellion, but it made her feel good.

  She changed back into her jogging bottoms and jumper, taking her time with the hairdryer. Nowhere else to be until after lunch. The dull ache at the base of her back was still there, ever-present. She’d been assured it would fade eventually, an unfortunate side effect of the way she’d fallen when she was attacked six months ago. Damage to two of her discs, not permanent they said, but a constant reminder that she wasn’t invincible.

  Her dad’s car was outside, parked just along from the main entrance. She rolled her eyes. Even though she’d told him she wanted to get the bus home, she wasn’t altogether surprised he’d ignored her. Overprotective in the extreme, but she wouldn’t have him any other way. He reached over, popping the door open as she approached.

  ‘Alright? Thought we could grab some lunch before your appointment.’

  She saw his eyes narrow, realised he was looking at her crutches, rattling together in her right hand.

  ‘Evie,’ he said, as if she was a toddler who’d drawn on the walls. ‘What did the doctor tell you?’

  ‘What?’ she said, dropping them onto the back seat then sliding into the passenger side beside him. ‘It’s not like I need them any more after today.’

  ‘You don’t know that for sure just yet.’

  ‘Yes, I do, Dad. I’m giving them back today.’

  He huffed his disapproval but said nothing, pulling away from the kerb. They drove in silence for a minute before he spoke again.

  ‘What do you fancy for lunch, then?’

  ‘Anything really. Don’t mind.’

  She said it knowing all too well where they’d finish up. Her dad was a creature of habit. Same cafe every time he’d driven her to an afternoon appointment.

  ‘How about a sandwich from that little deli around the corner from the doctor’s?’

  ‘Yeah, why not.’

  ‘I was wondering …’ He paused, and she knew what was coming. ‘Have you given any more thought to what we talked about last night?’

  He had never wanted her to join the police in the first place. What had happened to her proved his point, in his eyes at least. Too dangerous. Why would she want to put herself in that position again? She bit down on the inside of her lip. Counted to three before she answered.

  ‘We didn’t talk about it, Dad. You did.’

  ‘I’m just worried about you, Evie.’

  ‘I’m a big girl, Dad, I can look after myself.’

  ‘Really? Tell that to men like James Bolton.’

  Bolton was the man who had slammed her head into a wall six months ago. Just the mention of his name made her clench her fists, grit her teeth, wish for something to lash out at. She stared at her dad, biting back the urge to tell him where to shove his concern. He glanced over at her.

  ‘OK, I’m sorry, that was a low blow.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘There’s just so many other things you could do. Things that don’t end up with you in a hospital.’

  ‘Yeah, things you want me to do. What about what I want?’

  He huffed out a loud breath but said nothing. Truth be told, she didn’t know what she wanted; not for sure. The thought of charging into a building like she had six months ago, no idea of who or what might be waiting for her, made her break out into a cold sweat. She loved her job, but what if she couldn’t do it any more? Quite literally, what if she froze up in the heat of the moment? She’d be no good to anyone. Worse than that, she’d be a liability. Was it selfish to put others at risk, just to see if she still had what it took?

  The uncomfortable silence lasted all the way to the cafe. She was about to get out of the car when a text pinged through. She rummaged in her bag for the phone, wondering as she had for the last few days if it might be Porter, but it was another PPI spam message.

  She had almost texted him this morning. Almost, but managed to stop herself. Even with a few days off her Friday deadline, she couldn’t help but feel annoyed. Why say he wanted to grab a coffee, and not get in touch? After everything she’d been through, life was too short to get messed around. Maybe she’d send him one first saying she’d changed her mind. Time to start taking back control of her life.

  Fletcher’s old apartment was a stone’s throw from Regent’s Park, on Oval Road, and comfortably above Porter’s price range. Pretty much what Porter had expected for a City boy, which by all accounts, Fletcher had been. Had been? Porter scolded himself for using the past tense, although even as he corrected himself, he knew it felt uncomfortably right.

  He had spoken to the agency that managed the property. The owner turned out to be a faceless company, headquartered in Dubai, where nobody, the agency assured him, would have the first clue about a man who rented a flat eight years ago. This place was just one of over two hundred, managed lock, stock and barrel by Turner Property Consultants.

  The flat was currently occupied, the third tenant since Fletcher had vanished. No chance, then, that anything in there during his time that had survived through to now would be of any use. The lady he’d spoken to did give him one glimmer of hope. A storage facility just off the North Circular Road, near Brent Reservoir, home to boxes of whatever oddments tenants left behind.

  The storage unit was just one in a row that stretched for five hundred yards or so, one dark green splodge in an otherwise grey alley of corrugated grey. A petite blonde wearing a navy trouser suit leant against the bonnet of a cream Mini Cooper. She was lost in her phone, but the sound of his car door closing snapped her head up like the click of a hypnotist’s fingers.

  ‘Miss Stanley?’ Porter fished in his pocket for his warrant card, holding it open as he walked towards her. ‘DI Porter. We spoke on the phone.’

  ‘Hello, Detective. Please call me Marissa.’ Her smile wobbled nervously as she held out her hand. That nervous edge even the most innocent of people sometimes developed when they were dealing with the police. He tried to pack as much warmth into his own to set a lighter tone.

  ‘Thanks again for meeting me here. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of other places you’d rather be, so I’ll try not to keep you.’

  ‘It’s no problem’ she said, tucking a stray wisp of hair behind an ear as it made a break for freedom. He tried to place her accent, a hint of Eastern Europe maybe. She reached into her handbag, pulling out a set of keys the size of her fist.

  ‘This way,’ she said, and he followed her towards the door to what looked to be the size of a small aircraft hangar.

  ‘Looks a fair-size place,’ said Porter as she jiggled a key in the lock.

  ‘Yes, it’s rather large. Has to be. It’s not just things that get left behind. A lot of our places come furnished, but some people prefer to have their own stuff, so we store our items here until they move out.’

  The door squeaked against the frame as it opened, and Porter followed her into the dimly lit interior. She flicked a series of switches and strip lights spluttered into life, revealing wide aisles, lined with containers, the type you see in shipping. He narrowed his eyes, squinting at the far end of the building, a hundred yards or so away. A quick look left and right showed eight aisles, and God only knows how many containers to each.

  ‘Do we know which one we need?’ he said, dreading her answer.

  ‘Not yet, but we will in a minute.’

  There was a small office to the right, ‘office’ being a flattering term for what was the size of hotel bathroom. A small wooden desk was crammed in to one side. The computer looked so old it could have been one of Steve Jobs’s first prototypes. Marissa pressed the power button and waited while it chugged into action. Two minutes later,
with something resembling a floor plan on screen, she grabbed a Post-it and scribbled something down.

  ‘Got it.’

  She held up the yellow square like a referee cautioning a player. He stepped back to let her past and followed her across to the right-most aisle. Every crate had a code stencilled on in a military-style font. They walked half the length of the aisle and she stopped abruptly, so that Porter almost walked into the back of her.

  ‘Master key,’ she said, plucking another from her bunch. The door to the container squeaked like something from a Hammer House of Horror episode, to reveal stack after stack of cardboard boxes along both sides and across the back. She flicked a switch, and a single bulb came on overhead.

  ‘Those were Mr Fletcher’s,’ she said, sweeping an arm up and down twin stacks by the left-hand wall. ‘If it’s OK with you, I’ve got a few clients I need to call to let them know I’m running a bit behind, if you’re OK to take a look by yourself?’

  ‘Sure, no problem,’ he said, stepping back to switch places with her.

  She wandered towards the front of the building, phone stuck to her ear. He looked back inside the container. Might as well start at the top and work his way down.

  The first one was all books, mainly paperbacks, and an eclectic mix at that. Everything from Penguin classics like Jane Eyre through to Sophie Kinsella. The bottom layer was autobiographies. Nelson Mandela. Stephen Fry. More his type. For the briefest moment, he wondered if anyone would miss them if they found their way into his car.

  The next box was full of clothes. Styles had mentioned that it looked as if Fletcher had packed a case before he left, but there were still plenty here. The comment his partner had made about the passport bothered him more. There’d been nothing to suggest Archer had even checked whether it had been used to leave the country. Not exactly a shining example of police work.

  Box three was a little more interesting; a mix of stationery and paperwork, as if a desk drawer had been tipped up into the box. Porter lifted out a stack of bills and card statements, stacking them neatly on the floor. Three photo frames next, one on top of another.

  The first had a picture of two men. He recognised Fletcher from a picture AMT had provided: mid-thirties, arm around an older man, who Porter guessed was around sixty-ish. A relative? A friend? There was a vague similarity between the faces. Something in the eyes. Could be Fletcher’s dad.

  Picture two was Fletcher by himself, standing on a beach, like something from a holiday brochure. Azure sky, sand so white it could be flour. Fletcher standing hands on hips in a pair of red shorts straight from an episode of Baywatch.

  The final snap was Fletcher again, this time with a younger man, more his own age. Both men had an arm draped over the other’s shoulder. Looked to be in a bar, but not one Porter recognised.

  He looked back down at the box, papers, pens and Post-its scattered like confetti. A black corner of something poked up from underneath. He brushed the top layer aside and saw it was a notebook. No, scratch that, a diary. Porter riffled through the pages, most of which had entries in.

  When had Fletcher resigned? July? Porter flicked to the beginning of the month and started reading. Mostly times and names, meetings he presumed. Lunch at Café Rouge with Glass. Session at the gym. He skipped forwards to the last week of the month. Friday 31st had been the last time anyone saw him. A run of meetings, times and names, right up to 5 p.m. There was one right at the bottom of the page.

  9 p.m. JB. Mardi Gras.

  Porter called up Google and entered ‘London’ and ‘Mardi Gras’ as the search terms. First hit was a bar not far from Fletcher’s flat. Porter frowned. Would you expect a man with health problems bad enough to make him quit his job to be out partying the night before? Maybe he’d just gotten whatever the bad news was, and needed a drink to help it sink in.

  Who or what was JB? A friend? A client? Porter set the diary aside and carefully put everything else back in the box. He made a mental note to email copies of the pictures to Glass to see if he recognised either of the men photographed with Fletcher in them.

  The last two boxes yielded nothing of interest; mainly ornaments and some kitchenware. Porter stacked the boxes back the way he’d found them and stepped out to where Marissa stood chattering away on her phone. He pointed to the diary, and she gave a thumbs up, not missing a beat on her call, and gestured for him to follow her back outside.

  Porter couldn’t help but wonder as he looked at the rows of containers, how many other people’s lives were tucked away in a box, an Aladdin’s cave of abandoned knick-knacks. How many boxes could his life be condensed into? Truth be told, he could walk away from most things he owned if he had to. Was that liberating, or just plain sad?

  Porter slung the diary across the desk towards Styles, wincing as it knocked a stack of papers off the edge, sheets falling to the floor like flower petals.

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ Styles said, kneeling down to pick them up. ‘That took me ages to sort.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Porter, moving to help him, but Styles waved him away.

  ‘It’s OK. It’ll be quicker if I do it. They were all in order.’

  ‘What’s with the half a rainforest anyway?’

  ‘Fletcher’s appointments for the four weeks before he left. Turns out that not having his access revoked has worked in our favour. They were able to pull all this from his Outlook calendar.’

  Porter watched on as Styles shuffled the scattered sheets into four piles, then parked two of them in front of him.

  ‘Here, these two are yours. One pile equals one week. Knock yourself out. I made a start on mine before you got back, but nothing’s jumped out yet.’

  Porter settled into his chair and started leafing through his first pile. Everything from reminders about gym membership renewal to clients’ CVs. Fletcher had used his email calendar to organise his personal life as well, by the looks of it. Some of his appointments outside office hours were one-liners. A name, a time, a restaurant. Porter wondered, not for the first time, if Fletcher had anyone. Girlfriend, boyfriend, someone who hadn’t quite earned a title yet? He assumed not, as the only person who’d contacted the police had been his sister.

  The second pile followed a similar pattern: work, gym, eat, repeat. Twice, he noticed an evening appointment matching a name against one of the CVs and jotted the names down to come back to later. Both CVs had contact details. Maybe they remembered Fletcher, maybe they didn’t, but if they were meeting him after work, chances are they might even be friends.

  His head started to throb like an idling engine, information overload from a rainforest’s worth of paper, so much so that he nearly missed it. Fletcher had had a series of sessions that Friday afternoon. Porter had been focused on the CVs themselves, but now he saw they were all named using the same convention.

  Will Hutton – WH27334

  Greg Smith – GS26331

  James Bannister – JB27889

  Dan Lane – DL25112

  Joseph Baxter – JB11326

  The last one made him do a double take. Porter’s mind flashed back to the diary. JB Mardi Gras 9 p.m. JB. Joseph Baxter. Too much of a leap? He scribbled Baxter’s name down next to the other two, scratched a double underline to highlight it, and set the pile back on the desk. He’d ask Baxter about that the first chance he got. He turned to Styles, who was still hunched over his printouts, spread across the desk like a messy deck of cards.

  ‘Nearly finished?’ Porter asked.

  ‘Just about,’ said Styles, not taking his eyes from the sheet in his hand. ‘Got about a day and a half left to get through.’

  ‘I meant to ask you, what did our babysitters say about Leyson and Baxter?’

  Styles let out a low moan. ‘Ahhh, sorry, guv.’

  Porter felt the first stirring of irritation. Whether it was the headache, or Styles getting distracted by whatever he had on at home, their lack of progress was frustrating him enough without Styles contributing to it.


  ‘I’ll get Benayoun to do it,’ he said, hearing the impatience in his own voice.

  Styles clearly saw it for the dressing-down that it was, opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it and turned back to his stack of papers. Porter’s phone buzzed, and he glanced down at the screen. Shit. Call from Sameera Misra. She’d been trying to return his weekend call. He sent it to voicemail for now. He was still working out how to stall her further when a text came through. Misra again, offering him a 5 p.m. slot, today of all days. What better day to talk to a stranger about his dead wife than her birthday?

  He spotted Benayoun on the far side of the office and headed over to intercept her before she disappeared. She had one hand on the door when he reached her, scrap of paper in his hand.

  ‘Need you to do something for me. Fletcher met with everyone on this list the last day he showed up for work. Track them down, see what they can remember about him.’

  ‘Will do,’ she said, looking at the paper like it was the case-cracking clue. She headed back to her desk, whatever errand she’d been about to do forgotten. Oh, to have that level of enthusiasm. He supposed he’d been like that once upon a time. Trying to remember that version of himself was like looking through a fogged-up window. The dull heartbeat of a headache picked up pace, like someone knocking at his temple, trying to get inside.

  He looked down, realised he was still holding his phone, text from Misra still on screen. Between her and Milburn they were slowly backing him into a corner, if he wasn’t already there. Ignoring her again would only delay the inevitable, Milburn coming for him like a fire-breathing dragon, ready to throw him to the IOPC. He’d seen too many TV dramas to know that all-out war with the boss man rarely ends well. Is that what he was in this story? The hero? Whatever happened next, it had to be on his terms. He clicked into Misra’s contact details, pressed call, and took a deep breath.