No One Home

by Tim Weaver

  So was he both?

  Or was one of them an act?

  I saved all the pictures of him to the desktop and then went back to Google. There were no more answers when I used both ‘Isaac Mills’ and ‘Seiger and Sten’ as keywords, but on the law firm’s own website I discovered that their one and only office was in the heart of York, at an address off the Shambles. I’d only been to York once, but I remembered the Shambles: narrow and cobbled, it was one of the city’s most famous streets, a tourist trap packed with beautifully preserved, uneven timber-framed buildings that dated back to Elizabethan times. When I switched to Street View, trying to seek out an actual image of the company’s unit, I quickly hit a dead end: the firm was based in a doorway-sized lane, between a sweet shop and a café, and the lane wasn’t mapped. All I could see of it on my screen was a slender, gloomy artery, an overhanging upper floor, and a pale green sign with gold lettering.

  I stayed on their website for a moment, flicking between three tabs at the top: Home, Who Are We? and Contact. The home page was in the same green as the sign hanging above their door in York, and the company name was in the same gold seriffed font. Below that, it said: LEGAL AFFAIRS | EST. 1896. On the Who Are We? page there was a short description of their recent history, with no specifics about what ‘legal affairs’ meant, just an invitation to call them. I knew, though, at least based on what Ross had told me, that they dealt with the complexities of house moves, and if they were looking after the interests of Randolph Solomon and Emiline Wilson – if their will was on file somewhere inside the walls of the firm – then the company obviously handled areas like probate, inheritance tax and distribution of estate.

  I thought about Randolph and Emiline. There were bugs in their house, the same as the others’, but they were the only ones in Black Gale with an actual connection to Seiger and Sten, their vehicle was the only one unaccounted for, and something that Tori Gibbs had said to me the previous night had lodged in my mind and was tricky to shake off.

  No one knows anything about them.

  The bugs made me think of someone else too: Ross. He had keys to all the houses, knew all the alarm codes, and was directly associated with Seiger and Sten through his business. The question was how and why that association had come about. York was an hour’s drive from Leeds, so it wasn’t even close to his estate agency, and there were twenty law firms in Leeds – and twenty more in the areas surrounding it – that would have been a much more convenient recommendation to his customers.

  I grabbed my phone and dialled his number.

  ‘David,’ he said once he’d answered. ‘How are you?’

  He sounded optimistic, as if he were expecting good news, a break in the case, something fresh and positive. If he’d told me the truth the day before, I didn’t want to crush him inside the first ten seconds, because I needed him candid and clear-headed. But if he was lying to me, I needed to be able to hear that plainly too, so I said I was calling to check on a couple of things and then gave him a very broad overview of what I’d found out so far. It didn’t amount to much – certainly, nothing about the bugs – just enough to assure him things were moving.

  ‘I wanted to ask you about Seiger and Sten,’ I said.

  ‘The law firm?’

  ‘I’ve just got a few things I need to get straightened out.’ My eyes went to the laptop, where their pale green home page was still showing. ‘You said to me yesterday that you’d often recommend Seiger and Sten to homebuyers looking for a solicitor?’

  ‘Well, we don’t officially recommend anyone …’

  ‘Unofficially, then?’

  ‘Some people come in, especially first-time buyers, and they have absolutely no idea about how the process works. In those circumstances we might give them a list of solicitors that we’ve worked with before. Whether they actually choose to pick from the list or go through someone they’ve found themselves is entirely up to them.’ He paused, as if he couldn’t understand the relevance of the question. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Seiger and Sten are in York, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So how did they make it on to your list?’

  ‘Well, we have a satellite office in Harrogate. It’s only small – a poky first-floor unit in the middle of town – and we only have one person manning it, but it allows us to sell property in North Yorkshire: Harrogate itself, the whole of the borough, the western edge of York – basically, a lot of high-priced homes. Most of those enquiries won’t be drop-ins, they’ll be people who find us through the web, so as a small operation it’s actually been quite profitable.’ He stopped, realizing he’d strayed from my original question, but if what he was saying was true it explained his connection. ‘Anyway, whenever we sell a property inside the A1237, it qualifies as York, and that’s when we might suggest a solicitor that’s based in the city. Seiger and Sten are just one name.’

  ‘So there are others you recommend?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got five or six York firms on our list.’

  I relaxed a little.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘so have you ever been to see them?’

  ‘Seiger and Sten? Not at their offices, no.’

  ‘What about the member of staff who works for you in Harrogate?’

  ‘I seriously doubt it. I can give you the details of Karen, our manager there, and you’re welcome to call her, but I’d be surprised if she’s driven all the way into York just to ask them a question about a house move. She’d generally talk to them on the phone.’

  ‘Who is it you talk to when do speak to them?’

  ‘The guy who runs the place, Jacob Pierce. He’s been there years. You remember I told you that they were looking after Randolph and Emiline’s estate? Well, Randolph told me one time, when I was up seeing Mum and Dad, that he remembered using Seiger and Sten when his father died – this was in the eighties – and Jacob Pierce was already working there then.’

  ‘So Randolph used Seiger and Sten for his dad’s estate?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Any idea what made him choose them?’

  ‘I think he lived in York until he moved to Black Gale.’

  It was hard to know what to make of any of that because it was all so utterly perfunctory. I considered again what Tori Gibbs had told me.

  ‘What did you make of Randolph and Emiline?’

  He didn’t respond immediately, as if he didn’t understand the question, and then: ‘Randolph and Emiline? They seemed like nice people.’

  ‘Did you talk to them a lot?’

  ‘About as much as all the others at Black Gale, I guess.’

  I flicked back through my notes again.

  ‘And you said Randolph used to live in York?’

  ‘I think so,’ Ross said, ‘although I’m not one hundred per cent sure.’

  Tori was right: people didn’t seem to know as much about Randolph and Emiline as the other villagers, but being represented by Seiger and Sten didn’t mean a thing unless I could prove that it did. At the moment, their ties to the law firm were there, but – if Ross was right – they were pretty overt. However, I made a note to confirm where Randolph had lived before moving to Black Gale.

  And there was still the missing camper van.

  ‘What about the name Isaac Mills?’ I asked him.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of him before?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘never.’

  And yet Mills had claimed he talked to Ross frequently about Randolph and Emiline’s property. That meant one of them was lying to me – and, for now, I was more inclined to believe it was Mills.

  ‘He never called you on behalf of Seiger and Sten?’

  ‘Not that I ever remember, no.’

  ‘Maybe Jacob Pierce mentioned him to you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Jacob and I just talk about houses.’

  I’d idly written Mills’s name down on the top sheet of my notebook, circling it so many times the paper had
begun to wear thin. I didn’t want to cold-call Seiger and Sten or turn up at their doorstep asking questions until I figured out what Mills’s interest in Black Gale was, and if he even worked for the law firm. I was having a hard time reconciling the genial hero cop in the papers with the man I’d talked to at the farmhouse – the same man who might have bugged the homes of nine missing people – so if part, or all, of his persona was an act, it was just as possible that he’d lied about his employer. Perhaps the only way to be certain of who he was, and what he might be hiding, was to see him in his own environment, when his guard was down: his home in Keighley was eleven miles south; from here, that was an easy twenty-minute drive.

  I changed tack.

  ‘Your dad was a keen photographer, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ross said, ‘he enjoyed taking pictures.’

  ‘When did that start?’

  ‘Late on, I guess; definitely after he left journalism.’

  I thought about Patrick Perry heading out on to the moors, and always when Francesca was on shift at the hospital. I thought about Laura Gibbs seeing him, and telling Tori all about it – and I thought about the idea that it was some kind of affair.

  ‘Did he say why he started taking photos?’

  ‘Not really, no. I guess it was just something that interested him.’

  ‘Ever hear him talk to your mum about it?’

  ‘Not that I remember,’ he said, ‘but Mum was the one who mentioned it to me. I had no idea he’d got into photography until she brought it up.’

  ‘So she was one who told you, not your dad?’

  ‘Yes. She said he’d become obsessed with taking pictures.’

  Ross laughed. He’d interpreted it innocently, as a light-hearted comment that Francesca had made to him. And maybe it was.

  Or maybe it wasn’t.

  ‘Your mum used the word “obsessed”?’

  ‘She was joking,’ Ross assured me. ‘He wasn’t obsessed. It was just a hobby for him. He started off using his phone, and then he picked up this cheap camera from a charity shop in order to practise with the real thing.’ He laughed again. ‘Dad wasn’t serious about photography, he just enjoyed trying. I mean, how can you be serious about photography when your only camera is broken?’

  I frowned. ‘What do you mean, “broken”?’

  ‘I mean, the camera he bought was a dud.’

  I thought of what Tori had said, about how Patrick had shown Laura Gibbs the camera – how he’d carried it on him – before he’d headed out on to the moors.

  ‘It was only some cheap thing from a charity shop,’ Ross continued. ‘Actually, thinking about it, I don’t know if Mum ever realized that it was busted.’

  ‘But, presumably, your dad then got the camera fixed?’

  ‘No,’ Ross responded, still amused by the story. ‘Not as far as I know. That’s probably why he kept it quiet from Mum. That’s just the sort of thing that she would have found hilarious and then absolutely roasted him about for weeks.’

  ‘So the camera never worked?’

  ‘No. In the end, it just sat on a shelf in his office. I’m not sure he ever took a single picture with it.’

  22

  The camera had just been a prop.

  Patrick Perry had pretended to Laura Gibbs that it worked, even showed her the camera before he headed out into the valley. So did that prove he was having some kind of affair? There were certainly easier meeting places than the moors, much simpler routes for him to take to the main roads – if a car was waiting somewhere for him – but the fact that he hadn’t dressed for a hike did seem to play into it. Laura had told Tori that Patrick would go out without a coat. No backpack. No food or map. Not even hiking shoes. So if he had been going out there to meet someone, who? And if it was someone else from the village – if it was Freda or Emiline – why hadn’t Laura seen them heading out the same way?

  I finished with Ross and went to some of the pictures I had logged of Emiline Wilson and Freda Davey. The one of Emiline was from the trip she and Randolph had made to California five or six years ago, and was a shot of her under a street sign on Rodeo Drive. She was in her late fifties, attractive, in good shape, a half-smile on her face that seemed almost playful. I looked at her, trying to imagine how an affair might have started between her and Patrick and how long it might have been going on. The fact that she and Randolph were the least known of the villagers – and that their vehicle was missing – fed into the idea of something illicit, even if there was no proof, and between her and Freda, Emiline seemed a more likely fit for something like this. In a picture of Freda Davey close to me, she was in a running vest, a number pinned to her top, at the start of a half-marathon. It had been taken seven or eight years before she was diagnosed with cancer for the first time, her face fuller, unburdened by the fear and dread that would come for her later. Even in remission, though, Freda had been struggling with ongoing complaints, niggling illnesses, and when she was diagnosed with it a second time, such a profound and life-changing event made it hard to imagine that she’d gone looking for, let alone been open to, something as consuming and emotionally complex as an affair.

  I tabbed between photos of Patrick and Emiline, trying to seek out the tethers between them, and then a moment later my phone started humming.

  I thought about not answering, still trying to unravel the lie that Patrick had told, and who else was a part of the fiction, but when I looked at the display, I saw Spike’s number. I remembered that I’d asked him to get me two months of phone records for all nine residents of Black Gale.

  If I was trying to untangle a lie, phones were a good place to start.

  We spoke for a few minutes as he filled me in on what he’d done and how he’d structured the file, and then I switched to my inbox and saw a PDF already waiting.

  I dragged it on to the desktop.

  The document ran to 102 pages and was divided into nine sections. I kept my pad next to me, and a pen, and methodically worked through it all, looking for anomalies – numbers that didn’t fit, activity that didn’t make sense, red flags, unexplained calls, irregular numbers, anything. Spike had done me a big favour by listing the name of the person who had received or made the call from or to the individual Black Gale resident, or at least who the phone number was registered to. Sometimes the name listed was only a business. Sometimes the number was for a helpline at a huge company that bore no relevance to the case. Even so, they helped me to dismiss a lot of the calls that had been made out of and into the nine mobile phones, as well as the landlines at all four of the homes. It was slow work. There were so many calls listed in the document that I had to work hard to stay focused – one line blurring into the next – as I went through all nine itemized bills.

  In the end, it took me almost ninety minutes, but once I finished I had a list on my notepad of thirteen numbers that either didn’t tally up or felt anomalous.

  Again, I worked through them in the same way, cross-checking them against the other numbers in the document that Spike had sent me, as well as against a long list of names I’d already compiled of friends and relatives that the residents had had.

  By the time I was done, I’d whittled it down to one.

  I’d found the number buried among almost nine hundred calls that one of the villagers had made. It was repeated eleven times: nine calls from the villager to the number, and two calls from the number to the villager.

  The number had a central London area code.

  The villager was Patrick Perry.

  As I looked at the PDF, I thought about Patrick going out on to the moors, the broken camera he pretended was working, the idea he was having an affair.

  And now there was this.

  I spent a moment double-checking, just to make sure, but the London number didn’t tally with the numbers of any existing contacts of his that I knew about, and anyway, as far as I could tell, Patrick had done almost no work in the capital during either of his careers. His PR clients were most
ly based in Manchester and Liverpool, with a couple in Birmingham, and while he did do some PR work on a DVD release for a small independent film company in Soho, the number for them wasn’t a match. There was something else too, the reason that the police hadn’t picked up on this: the conversations between Patrick and the number – one of them lasting over sixteen minutes – had stopped three weeks before the Black Gale disappearances.

  The police had only searched as far back as a fortnight.

  I googled the number, but it failed to provide me with anything coherent, just a clump of sites where people could log cold-callers and scam artists in an effort to help others avoid them. The London landline that was listed in Patrick’s phone records didn’t match any number recorded as a nuisance call, and it didn’t tally with any bona fide company listed in the search results further down. That meant it was probably for a home or a work extension. I punched in the number and pressed Dial.

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting.

  But it hadn’t been this.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Kevin Quinn. I’m afraid that I can’t get to the phone at the moment – but if you leave your details, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.’