No One Home

by Tim Weaver

  ‘Much harder to what? To find out I’m actually alive?’ He shrugged to himself. ‘All this bullshit should have been secondary, you know that? We should have been coming up here to find out why nine people vanished into thin air and why this prick has planted bugs in their homes, not worrying about how much he knows about me.’

  His face was turned away from me now, the reflection of him in the window as pale as a phantom. ‘All the cold cases I looked into,’ he said softly, ‘all the months down in Devon I spent researching them at the library …’ He glanced at me. ‘I mean, I had to do something to maintain my sanity. I was working on a trawler with a moron and his son, I had zero access to the Internet at home, I couldn’t talk to other people, and I either started trying to do something useful, something I was actually good at, or I went home and stared into the void and felt like topping myself. So you know something? When I told you about this case, when I said we should look into it, when you actually arrived here yesterday, for a brief moment I allowed myself to think that things might be different.’ His gaze returned to the window, to the scenery passing in a blur at the side of us, his reflection blinking in and out on the glass. ‘For a second there, I actually thought my life might be worth something more than this; that for a few days, it might not be the same monumental fuck-up.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so we didn’t speak again until we were almost in Skipton – the emptiness of the moors gradually giving way to the outskirts of the town – and, when we did, it was simply a repeat of the arrangements for the next few days. We went over them again as I idled outside the station – and then Healy headed inside the building.

  He didn’t look back.

  He simply vanished behind the windows.

  A ghost, once again.

  Pioneer

  1985

  Los Angeles | Wednesday 24 July

  The next day, Jo woke early, before the sun was up, and – as had become her routine – ate breakfast standing in the doorway of Ethan’s bedroom. After she was done, she wandered back through to the kitchen. Ira was catching a flight out to New York for a lunchtime meeting and wouldn’t be back until the next day, which was why he’d reluctantly crawled out of bed so early. He still had to eat, shower, pack, drop Ethan at the day care in Van Nuys and then get down to LAX.

  ‘You know where it is, right?’ Jo asked him.

  ‘LAX? Yeah, I think I can find it.’

  She rolled her eyes.

  He smiled. ‘This ain’t my first rodeo, cowgirl.’

  He meant he’d dropped Ethan off at the same day care the last time he’d had to go out of town on business. Ira was a graphic designer, so usually worked from home, and the two of them generally stuck to the same routine: if she was on a day shift, he would work evenings – and vice versa – and whoever was off would look after Ethan.

  ‘So what has Detective Kader got on today?’ he said, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table. He sat down, toast in one hand, coffee in the other. He’d left a second cup on the side for Jo. She clipped her holster to her belt and started drinking.

  ‘There was a body in a motel off Santa Monica Boulevard yesterday,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting a guy this morning in the Hills. He reckons he knows who my killer is.’

  ‘That’s good, right?’

  ‘It could be.’

  ‘So why don’t you sound convinced?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess I prefer to err on the side of pessimistic.’

  He laughed. ‘That’s the spirit.’

  She took another mouthful of coffee.

  ‘How’s your headache today?’

  Ira shrugged. ‘Better, but still there.’

  ‘You taken something for it?’

  ‘It’s fine. I’m just stressed about this meeting.’

  ‘You’ll nail it, like you always do.’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about. This pitch, if it’s successful, it’ll pay for a nice vacation next year – but it’ll also mean a ton of hours between now and the deadline.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘we’ll make it work.’

  She finished her coffee and placed the mug in the sink next to the bowl, then paused for a second, looking along the hallway at Ethan’s bedroom door. Ira noticed.

  ‘Something on your mind, Kader?’ he asked.

  ‘He’ll be all right in Van Nuys, won’t he?’

  ‘Ethan? He’ll be fine.’

  ‘It’s just, he hasn’t been to day care for a while.’

  ‘He’ll be fine, Jo. Honestly.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, although it didn’t sound convincing and now Ira was studying her, his jaw working as he ate. She tried to alter the direction of the conversation and switched on the radio, hoping to hear some song the two of them liked, but everyone was still talking about the Night Stalker. More details were emerging about his latest attacks on 20 July: in Glendale, he’d shot and killed a couple in their late sixties, mutilated their bodies with a machete and then raided their home for valuables; in the hours after that, at around 4.15 a.m., he broke into another home in Sun Valley, where a family of four were sleeping. His first act was to shoot and kill the husband, and then he repeatedly raped the wife while their eight-year-old son lay bound and gagged in the next room and the two-year-old daughter slept. As she listened to the part about the woman and the kids, Jo pictured Ethan in the day-care centre and she felt a short, irrational flutter of panic at the idea of leaving his safety in the hands of people they barely knew; when a city was being laid siege to like this, when a man was so depraved he would sodomize a mother while her children were in an adjacent room, nothing was sacred.

  ‘Jo?’ Ira said. ‘You all right?’

  She looked at her husband but didn’t really take him in. Ethan had been to day care before and he’d been fine every time he’d gone. He’d loved it, in fact – all the toys they had out for the kids; the kindness of the staff – and it was, in theory, extremely safe, with locked gates at the front and the back of the building. They took the children’s security seriously, and if there were any problems, Jo knew they had her pager number, her work number too.

  ‘Jo?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘I was miles away.’

  But Ira wasn’t buying that.

  ‘Don’t let them grind you down,’ he said, and abandoned his breakfast, coming across to her, pulling her in. ‘Don’t doubt yourself. You can do this.’

  ‘It’s not that –’

  ‘It is that,’ he said softly. ‘It’s exactly that.’

  She sighed gently against him.

  ‘You’ve been a cop for ten years already.’

  ‘And there are still as many assholes as there were at the start.’

  ‘What can I say? It’s a gift men have.’

  She squeezed him.

  ‘You’re a pioneer, honey,’ Ira said. ‘Remember that. You’re out there in your wagon, crossing those plains by yourself, having to deal with all the dangers of unexplored territory. You’re Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone – just with better hair.’

  Jo squeezed him again and broke away.

  ‘You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Detective Kader.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m strong or not.’

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘I worry about Ethan all the time,’ she said, looking back along the hallway to his room. ‘I’m worried about him going to the day-care centre. I’m worried about this damn cold of his. I’m worried that all of this …’ She stopped.

  Ira frowned. ‘All of this what?’

  ‘I’m worried all of this makes me weaker, not stronger.’

  ‘What, you mean being a mom makes you weaker?’

  She looked down at her holster, at the gun clipped into it. ‘No one else walks into that squad room worrying about their kids. The men in there, they don’t spend one single second worrying about whether the people at day care are going to take proper care of their child
ren. They don’t worry about the sleeping routines, or the allergies, or rashes, or vaccinations, or any of it. Their wives do it all.’ She glanced at Ira, winced. ‘That came out wrong. I don’t mean you’re not an amazing father. I don’t mean you don’t help me and aren’t with me every step of the way. I’m so lucky you do the job that you do, that you run your business from here, support me and fit around my hours. I just … I just …’ She stopped again. ‘I just love Ethan so much. That’s all.’

  ‘And that’s exactly why you’re a great cop.’

  ‘Because I love my son?’

  Ira sat again, picking up his toast.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Because you care so much about someone that isn’t you.’

  She went over and kissed her husband, hugging him, staying like that for a long time. Afterwards, she washed her bowl, went in and saw Ethan again – pausing beside his bed, taking him in, his size, his vulnerability; the fan not directly on him but moving his hair nonetheless – and then, finally, she left.

  The Hollywood Freeway was already busy as she wound her way south, a blur of grey concrete and bright headlights. A cassette played music, the a/c was cranked all the way up to polar, and for a while it kept her focused. But then the monotony of the journey began to kick in and her mind began to loop back again, to Ira, to Ethan.

  Was it normal to worry this much about your kids?

  Or was her experience exacerbated by being a cop? Was it worse because she turned up at crime scenes and read reports every day of every week that made her skin crawl?

  She didn’t know for sure, but she knew something: Ethan was only eighteen months old, and he’d barely even scratched the surface in terms of what was to come. Jo wasn’t even close yet to the kind of worry that buries itself in your bones, the throb of pain when your kid was really sick, the frustration of loving them and watching them make bad decisions, the impotence of knowing they were grown up, maybe many miles from you, and there was nothing you could do to protect them. Maybe it got easier over time or maybe it got harder, but she knew, eventually, it was up to the kids to keep themselves safe. It was up to them to lock their doors at night when a monster was terrorizing their city.

  Because, in the end, it didn’t matter how much you loved a person.

  Eventually, you had to let them go.

  Part Three

  * * *

  THE STUDENT

  I used to think I knew what silence was.

  But now I realize I never had a clue.

  In this place, it feels like I’m outside of time. I don’t know where I am because all I can see is blackness. I can’t make out an exit. Sometimes I think I can hear what might be the hum of a generator, and sometimes, on the edges of my sleep, the sound of it seems to hang in the air: this low, long buzz, like an insect. But mostly it’s just this.

  This place.

  This darkness.

  This silence.

  I don’t know where I am or how long I’ve been here. I tried to count it out at the beginning, tried to chart the passage of time, but I eventually lost track. The only thing I know is that it can’t possibly be days any more. It must be weeks. A fortnight. In my most unguarded moments, I even start to worry it might be worse than that.

  What if it’s been a month?

  What if it’s been two?

  When I woke up here the first time, I no longer had a phone on me. My watch and bank cards had been taken as well. It didn’t register with me at first that the clothes and the shoes that I was wearing weren’t mine – that they were different; that I’d been changed into someone else’s property while I’d been unconscious. But after my voice started to become hoarse from constantly shouting for help, it hit home how uncomfortably tight my shoes were, and how badly the clothes fitted. When I touched them, I realized I was wearing a pair of trainers, not the boots that actually belonged to me. I had on tracksuit trousers, not jeans; a hooded top, not a sweater and a T-shirt. Everything I was wearing smelled of mildew and felt old.

  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve got to my feet and, in order to keep warm, tried to build some sort of picture of this room in my head, using my hands to touch and my steps to pace it out. At the start, I would do it often, sometimes consecutively, one exploration after the next, trying to recreate the same route in order to map everything out. But there’s no furniture in here, nothing to even bump into. There are no landmarks. I know there must be a way in and a way out because food is left for me in the same place every day, on a paper plate, alongside a bottle of water, but I can’t feel any doors. I can’t feel the ridges of a frame anywhere. I hear no breeze escaping in, and see no chink of light – not even a single, solitary pinprick.

  There’s just blackness.

  When I first found the food and water, I didn’t eat and drink any of it, wary of what I might be taking down. Now, though, I’m less fussy and I try not to think too hard about it. I accept the clothes and the blanket that have been left for me because, if I didn’t, it would be even worse than this. I’d be weak. I’d be sick.

  Or I’d already be dead.

  The longer it goes on like this, the more frightened I become – not just about dying here, not about what might happen to me in this place, although both of those things do scare me. They scare me so deep into my bones, I can feel the fear vibrating inside my skin. No, hard as those things are to face down, they aren’t the reason I feel like I can’t breathe sometimes. They aren’t why tears fill my eyes, and my heart thumps in my ears, and my blood runs cold. What scares me is simpler.

  I’m frightened I won’t ever get to speak again to the people I love.

  I’m frightened I’ll never hear their voices, or see their smiles, or even be in the same place as them. I’ll never hug them, or laugh with them, or listen as they ask my opinion. I don’t want to become so disorientated that I lose sight of who I was, or forget simple things like the way my family made me feel, the images of them that are burned behind my eyes, the emotion of knowing them, even of losing them. Maybe once I would have chosen to forget that last part completely – erased it in its entirety. Maybe once I would have traded everything in my life to delete the memories I have of standing next to their graves. But not now. I want to remember. Remembering doesn’t frighten me in here.

  Forgetting does.

  The more time that passes, the more I exist within the permanence of these shadows, the more I worry that I will relinquish my history. It will begin to vanish from my head. Everything I did, the places I went to; any joy I’ve managed to bring and any comfort I could give; any sadness I’ve caused and regretted; any mistakes I made and vowed never to make again; all the things that became a part of who I am, the love, the grief, the agony and the beauty – deep down, it’s that which frightens me.

  I don’t want to lose my moorings and begin to drift.

  I don’t want to surrender my identity.

  Please don’t let me forget who I am.

  21

  There was a garage on the south side of Skipton, about a mile from the train station, its workshop concealed inside a tatty brick building with corrugated-iron gates at the front. Inside, a couple of cars were being worked on, but it didn’t look like they were rushed off their feet, and when one of the mechanics came out, he told me to bring the Audi straight in. I parked it up next to a Mondeo on blocks, and explained to the guy what had happened. For now, all I needed was for it to look less conspicuous and be safe to drive.

  I headed into the centre of town, following a path that fringed the old shipping canals. In an arcade off the high street, I found a coffee shop, grabbed a table, removed my laptop and put in a search for Isaac Mills. I quickly found him online – but what there was amounted to very little.

  He had no social media presence at all – no Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn; not even the shell of a profile that he’d set up but never filled out. There were no photographs of him, certainly nothing as crude as a selfie, and all of that fed in
to the description of Mills that Ewan Tasker had given me over the phone: when you weren’t much of a socializer, someone who preferred not to go to the sort of get-togethers that led to pictures and postings, social media was never going to be a priority. I was surprised, though, not to find a mention of his name in relation to Seiger and Sten, the law firm he told me he worked for.

  Instead, the only results of any significance were three newspaper stories, all different accounts of the same event. I clicked on the first. It was uploaded to the Mail Online in October 2009, and had the headline: OFF-DUTY COP HAILED A HERO FOR STOPPING ARMED ROBBERY ON HIS DAY OFF. Underneath that was a series of pictures, all taken in what appeared to be the same street in Keighley, the town in which Mills lived. He was smiling broadly for the camera as he shook the hand of the store owner whose shop had been targeted.

  An off-duty police officer was hailed a hero on Tuesday after disarming a gunman who held up a convenience store in West Yorkshire.

  Detective Sergeant Isaac Mills, 42, was out walking his dog when he decided to stop for milk at a corner shop run by Mirat Pridesh, 66, in his hometown of Keighley. What Mills didn’t know was that, inside the shop, 22-year-old Anthony Snead had a pistol pointed at Mr Pridesh’s head.

  ‘I didn’t realize what was going on to start with,’ Mills admitted. ‘The first thing I remember seeing was Mirat emptying out the till, which I thought was odd, and then I came further in and looked around the end of one of the shelves, and I could see a young lad in a hoodie pointing a gun at him.’

  Because Snead was wearing a hooded top, he failed to see Mills enter the store – a stroke of luck that Mills used to his advantage: ‘I looped around one of the rows of shelves and came up behind him. I don’t mind admitting my heart was beating fast, but I managed to grab the gun, get it out of his hand and get the kid on to the floor.’

  The story went on for another couple of paragraphs and included quotes from the store owner about how thankful he was for Mills’s help, as well as from two senior officers – one from West Yorkshire Police, where the crime had taken place, and the other from the Lancashire Constabulary, where Mills worked in an MIT – who said they were putting Mills forward for an award. I read the story again, and then a third time, and by the end I was still unsure exactly what to make of it. This wasn’t what I’d expected to find on Isaac Mills, and neither the picture of him in the paper or the quotes he’d given quite tallied with the man I’d met at Black Gale, or the man Tasker had described to me over the phone. Outside the farmhouse he’d been cold, withdrawn and guarded; Tasker had suggested he might have been introverted. In the article, in the photograph of him smiling broadly for the camera, he wasn’t that man at all. He was a courageous off-duty cop, a gallant community hero, warm and apparently sociable.