by Tim Weaver
I put the money back, closed the lid and moved on to the next box. It was the same; so was the next one, and the next one. The only difference was that, in the last of the boxes, one of the bundles had been ripped open and about half the notes were missing. I looked back along the shelf, at all the metal containers, at the money inside them.
That meant there was close to a million in here.
Originally there could have been more, though: on the next shelf down, almost cast aside, were two other, matching metal containers, both lids open, both empty. It suggested that Pierce – or someone else – had already been through both of them. They’d already spent a quarter of a million pounds.
Where did all the money come from?
I thought of Chris Gibbs, of the profit he and Laura had made from the sale of the houses at Black Gale. That had been nearly a million, but according to their financials, everything they’d spent had been accounted for. I clamped the penlight between my teeth and pushed on, dragging the first of the large cardboard boxes on to the floor. Dust mushroomed up into the spaces around me. As I removed the lid and set it aside, it took me a second to work out what I was looking at.
Muddied clothes.
Running leggings. A training top.
An old pair of Asics.
Ensuring my gloves were still on properly and intact, I reached in and took out the trainers. Women’s running shoes, size five. Even without knowing exactly what was going on, I felt every nerve ending fire, a charge scattering along my spine. The trainers looked like they’d clocked a lot of miles, the pattern on the soles worn along the edges. When I took the leggings out, I could see mud caked to one leg, spattered in a line from ankle to hip; on the training top, there was mud on the same side, from hem to armpit. It was all on the left, not on the right.
The woman had hit the ground on that side.
I checked the pockets of the training top, found nothing, and then returned to the box. There were more clothes underneath, male and female, these much smarter: a jacket, two pairs of tailored trousers, a dress, a skirt, tracksuit bottoms, a selection of shoes. There was an iPad and a series of leads. I pulled the iPad out but it didn’t work; the back had been separated from the screen, smashed, levered apart in order to neutralize it. There was a phone too, reduced to pieces – the casing splintered, its battery and its SIM both gone – and a power bank, but again it had been destroyed.
Uncertain if these things belonged to two people or ten, I pushed it all aside and – conscious of time – switched my attention to the second cardboard box.
Inside were even more clothes.
New jeans. A collared shirt.
Size eleven boots.
I found more men’s clothing under that: a shirt, a pair of tailored trousers, a second pair of jeans, and then a woman’s dress, red with blue trim, a pair of heels, some brown cords and polished brogues, a man’s checked shirt, another dress – this one floral – and a green V-neck sweater. And, as I looked at them all, at even more shoes stowed underneath, my heart dropped. I knew who these clothes belonged to. I’d seen them in the photographs that Chris Gibbs had taken the night of the dinner party.
And I recognized what was lying underneath them too.
Five wallets.
Four purses.
Nine phones.
Martina: Part 2
1985
Los Angeles | Monday 5 August
Adrian Vale sat down opposite Jo.
He was in a suit that he was a fraction too big for, the sleeves not long enough, the waistcoat struggling to deal with the width of him. It looked like it had been worn a lot, perhaps by his father before he’d died. As he shrugged off the blue jacket, he seemed to become aware of what Jo was thinking. ‘This was Dad’s,’ he said quietly, looking down at himself. ‘It was probably a nice suit twenty years ago.’
Jo nodded, her eyes taking in the Vales’ living room, the things that surrounded them: things that he could make use of if it went south, if she cornered him and he started to feel trapped. Ornaments. Paperweights. Potential weapons. Or maybe even actual ones: maybe a blade somewhere close by, maybe a concealed gun.
Maybe nothing.
Even if things went well, there was every possibility that it might get back to Hayesfield. Vale might call the station and one of the other detectives might pick up Jo’s phone. Or, perhaps innocently, and for whatever reason, his mother might. Valeria was in the kitchen, she was listening to them, she’d been here when Jo had arrived; by extension, she’d already become a part of this. Or it could go really badly and Vale might start throwing around accusations of harassment, citing circumstantial evidence and the word of a single, anonymous caller. Jo had gone back into old school records, had phoned the Kmart in Temple City that the caller claimed she and Martina Lopez – Vale’s ex-girlfriend – had passed through at the same time in 1982, in an effort to try and find out who the caller was and if Jo could trust a word she was saying. But it was another dead end: there was such a high turnover of staff, no one remembered people who’d worked at the store three months ago, let alone three years, and the managers kept no records of former employees. Jo could have called the Department of Labor or the IRS and tried to trace the woman via them, but that meant official paperwork, and that definitely risked Hayesfield finding out. So here she was, feeling vulnerable and undercooked.
I could already be home by now.
I could be with Ethan.
Valeria brought out two tall glasses of home-made lemonade, ice cubes clinking. Jo hadn’t asked for anything else but she let Mrs Vale busy herself, watched her return to the kitchen to collect some cookies and then bring them back out on a plate. Jo said she was fine, and then Valeria placed two on the arm of the couch, next to her son, without asking.
‘I’ll wait for dinner, Ma.’
‘You’ve had a long day,’ Valeria replied. ‘You need the energy.’
Vale glanced at Jo, a half-smile on his face. But it wasn’t a smile of embarrassment, it was one of clear and undeniable love for his mom.
‘Okay, Ma,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘Thank you.’
And then Jo felt the panic set in again. This wasn’t what she thought her first impressions of Adrian Vale would be like. It wasn’t as if she’d expected him to be some snarling animal either; if he was even half as devious as the anonymous caller had made out – if he’d abandoned his girlfriend in the darkness at the top of a mountain trail, if he’d watched from the shadows as she dragged her shattered ankle for a mile and a half back down the slope, if he’d killed a man and left him to liquefy in a tub full of acid, and he’d got away with all three – he was good at hiding who he was: a liar, a killer. So she’d been prepared for some sort of act.
It was more that he carried it off so well.
It was that his display of love appeared so real.
Jo shifted in the armchair and felt her holster move against the top of her right thigh, the weight of the gun against her body. But that was just the thing. It didn’t feel like she’d need it. This situation felt the total opposite of that.
‘You said on the phone that this was about Martina?’ Vale asked, laying his tie next to his jacket, loosening the top button on his shirt and then taking off his waistcoat. It felt even hotter in the living room than when Jo had first arrived.
‘Martina Lopez,’ Jo said, looking down at her notebook. She’d placed it on the coffee table between them, her notes small and difficult to read from where Vale was sitting. Not that he was looking at what she’d written: he was looking at her, his expression completely neutral. His voice had been the same when she’d called him at work earlier. Jo had phoned the house first, because that was the only number she had for him, and then Valeria had given her the number of the law firm in Pico Rivera. Jo looked at Vale. ‘You dated Martina in high school, correct?’
‘Right,’ he responded. ‘For seven months.’
Valeria sat down at the living-room table behind her son.
> ‘Is Martina okay?’ Vale asked.
Jo studied him, searching for minor giveaways and, when she failed to find anything, looked down at her notes again. In the corner of one of the pages, under Martina’s name, she’d written, DOD 10/13/84. Jo had gone looking for Vale’s ex in the time since the anonymous call and had found her almost instantly: on 13 October 1984, Martina and a friend had been smoking crack in a house the two of them had shared in Boyle Heights, when Martina started to develop breathing problems. She then went into cardiac arrest. Her friend called 911, and Martina was rushed to the ER – but she died before she got to the operating table.
‘Detective Kader?’
‘No,’ Jo replied. ‘No, unfortunately, Martina died.’
She watched Vale, but the only response she saw was shock. He just stared at her for a moment, as if struggling to process what she was telling him, and then he glanced at his mother, whose fingers had strayed to a necklace she was wearing: a tiny gold crucifix.
‘She’s dead?’ he said. ‘How?’
‘A drug overdose. Crack cocaine.’
There was a sharp intake of breath from Valeria.
‘An overdose?’ he muttered quietly. ‘I can’t believe this.’
‘She was such a sweet girl,’ Valeria said, and worked the crucifix between her fingers. ‘Adrian used to bring her over for dinner, and she was always polite, always so respectful … I never would have thought … Oh, this is awful.’
‘When was the last time you saw Martina?’ Jo asked Vale.
It took a moment for him to find his voice again.
‘When we split up, I guess.’
‘Which was when?’
‘Late spring of ’82.’ He paused again, staring off into a space between Jo and the mantel. For a moment, she wondered if he was trying to formulate a plan, a route out of this, a lie, but – just like before, when she’d seen him interacting with his mom – it was hard to detect any deceit, if it was even there. His eyes came back to her. He was handsome, olive-skinned, muscular, but for a second he seemed pale and small. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m having a real hard time with the idea that …’ He faded out again.
‘The idea that what?’
He shrugged. ‘That she’s dead.’
‘Was it her anxiety?’ Valeria said from the table.
Jo glanced at her. ‘What do you mean?’
Valeria looked guilty, as if she’d been caught gossiping.
‘It’s okay, Ma,’ Vale said, holding up a hand to his mother. ‘Mom just means, was it the drugs that killed her or did she develop breathing problems because of her anxiety stuff?’
‘What anxiety stuff?’
‘The panic attacks.’
Jo eyed him.
He frowned, looking confused, uncertain of what Jo’s silence meant. ‘She never took drugs when we were together – not stuff like crack, anyway – but Martina used to suffer these … I don’t know, I guess you would call them “episodes”.’ He frowned again. ‘She’d get real panicky all of a sudden, irrational, impossible to calm down, and it got so bad that the doctor had to prescribe her these pills to take. Stuff like Xanax.’
Anxiety, panic attacks: Jo could see exactly where this was going, she just wasn’t certain if Vale was deliberately guiding her there or not. The caller claimed that, according to Martina, Vale had left his former girlfriend at the top of the mountain and stalked her from the dark on the way down. Now it seemed obvious what Vale’s version of that night would be if Jo actually asked him: they’d hiked to the peak, they’d watched the sunset, then, for whatever reason, Martina had freaked out. She’d had one of her episodes. She’d become irrational, mixed up, had spun out of control. What she thought she remembered was all wrong.
Jo made a note to chase down a medical history for Martina Lopez, to check for a detailed history of benzodiazepine use, including during the period she dated Adrian Vale, because that would be the easiest way to prove or dismiss Vale’s claims. But, even without that information, she could feel things starting to shift: in Martina’s autopsy report, the coroner had noted that there were faint traces of Valium in her blood. Jo hadn’t placed much importance on that detail when she’d read it the first time – half the city was using tranquillizers – but now it seemed like a major bridge back to this moment. And, again, it framed Adrian Vale in a different light.
‘Why did the two of you split up?’ Jo asked him.
‘I just found it hard to deal with her.’
‘Her illness, you mean?’
‘Yeah, exactly.’ He pushed his lips together, a look of regret and of guilt. ‘I know that sounds terrible. But she would just lose her mind for no reason, and it got more and more difficult to calm her down.’ He stopped again, taking a breath, wiping at an eye. He wasn’t in tears, but he was emotional – or appeared to be. ‘Her parents weren’t around, and she just wouldn’t listen to me. I kept telling her she needed to go seek help: not pills – not more medication – but real help. A psychologist, or someone who could actually get inside her head. But I was seventeen, man. I didn’t know anything about the world, so I was telling her to do this stuff, but didn’t really have a clue what I was talking about. All I knew was that I wanted her to get better.’
‘Did you split up after what happened at Big Bear Lake?’
Jo watched for a reaction.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Did you split up after Big Bear?’ she repeated.
He seemed disorientated by the change of direction – but then, slowly, he understood and his expression began to fill with remorse again, contrition. The starkness of his face, the almost complete lack of opacity, sent the panic charging through Jo’s bloodstream again. He was going to tell her exactly what she’d predicted: Martina had freaked out at the top of the trail; he didn’t abandon her, he helped her down. Maybe there was no ankle injury at all. Maybe he was there the entire time and the account the caller had given Jo was an account that Martina, confused and scared, had imagined, or embellished, or misremembered. Jo was here based on the word of a woman she didn’t know, had never met and, ultimately, couldn’t trust.
What the hell am I doing?
‘Yeah, I guess that night was the beginning of the end,’ Vale said, his big frame shuffling to the edge of the couch. ‘She just went totally nuts up there – accused me of leaving her alone when I was standing right beside her the whole time. I was literally looking at her, had my hands on her shoulders trying to calm her down, and she was screaming at me, calling my name like I wasn’t even there. It was weird, but mostly it was just really upsetting. In the days after that, when she’d calmed down, we tried to talk about it, but she started bringing up stuff that never even happened. She said I was watching her from inside the treeline, which was ridiculous, because why would I go hide inside the forest when she had the only torch and that place is full of bears?’ He paused, picking up his lemonade. ‘I don’t know,’ he said softly. ‘It was just sad, that’s all. I loved Martina. She was my first proper girlfriend. She was funny, sweet.’ He drank from the glass. ‘I managed to talk her around in the days after that, assure her that what she thought had happened hadn’t happened at all, but I guess it was beyond rescue by then.’ He looked up at Jo, a pained smile on his face. ‘At least, it was for me. I just … I didn’t know how to handle her.’
‘So, once you split up, you never saw her again?’
‘I saw her a bunch of times at the Kmart in Temple City. She got a job there after she dropped out of school, and I was working part-time in a supplies yard in Industry, which was three miles away. Sometimes I’d drop in. But she’d changed a lot by then.’
‘Changed how?’
‘Thinner, I guess. Gaunt. I figured that she wasn’t sleeping properly – that she was on different, stronger pills – but I never knew for sure.’ He drew a finger down the condensation on his glass, and then looked at Jo again. ‘I started to worry that maybe she’d got in with the wrong crowd. There were
a bunch of kids working there who’d dropped out at the same time as Martina did, and not all of them were …’ He stopped, grimaced, looked at his mom. ‘I’m starting to sound real preachy.’
‘You’re saying they were a bad influence on her?’
‘All I know is some of those kids, they were pretty wild at high school, and not always in a fun way. So I remember being surprised.’
‘Surprised she would hang out with them?’
‘Sure, yeah. They would never have hung out together at high school.’
‘You got names?’
‘I think one of them was called Jessie.’ Vale frowned. ‘There was another guy who worked there who was in our year. Clark maybe – or that could have been his surname. I’m sorry. I never talked to those guys. I didn’t talk to anyone, really.’
‘How come?’
He opened out his hands, palms facing up.
‘You’d have to ask all the kids who would call me names and never want a single thing to do with me.’ It was said without rancour, but it was obvious it still hurt. ‘But, you know, I understood. I was a nerd. I wanted to do well at school, I wanted to be a lawyer. I was interested in things like politics and history. Without sounding conceited, I could have got on to the football team if I’d really wanted it; I was a pretty good centre, I could have been a jock – I mean, look at the size of me – but none of that interested me. I think the fact that I actively shunned sports set other kids against me. I was the loner. I never had anyone to hang around with.’ He glanced at his mother, who looked more pained at this admission than he did. ‘I’ve always wanted to go and study abroad somewhere,’ he said, ‘even for a short time. I’d love to see London, Paris, the Italian cities, but you say those things out loud at high school and you get called a fag; and not just once – over and over again, on repeat. You paint a target on your back. So I kept myself to myself.’
Jo took a moment, spinning back to what Vale had said about the people Martina had worked with. If Jo could cross-reference the names Jessie or Jessica with girls who’d been in the same school year as Vale, it might be enough to zero in on who the caller was. Yet it was hard not to feel conflicted already: either Vale was one of the most frightening and confident liars she’d ever sat in front of, or the love he’d shown for his mom, the love he talked of having for his ex, the explanation he’d given for that night at Big Bear Lake, was all exactly as it looked and sounded.