No One Home

by Tim Weaver

I doubted that he’d told her the actual truth, though.

  I stopped, level with the end of the back garden, using the gathering shadows as a way to take in the property. Because it had been warm this afternoon – or, at least, a lot warmer than previous days – the kitchen window was open, and so was the window of one of the bedrooms on the second floor, and in both I could see movement: Melia was standing at the sink, and her son was in his room, playing video games.

  I waited some more, watching.

  She was leaning against one of the kitchen units now, her body side-on to me, her head bowed, her face painted a soft, pale grey.

  It looked like she was texting.

  Upstairs, a second light came on and I saw the daughter enter the next room along from her brother’s, still doing something on her mobile. Below her, Melia had exited the kitchen and was heading into the living room. I couldn’t see much of it, but I could see enough: the television was on in there and she’d collapsed into the sofa, curling her legs up and under her.

  A side gate opened on to the back garden. It wasn’t locked, just latched, so I pushed at it, left it ajar, and then stopped short of the ground-floor window. When I peered in, looking through the kitchen into the living room, Melia was still where I’d last seen her.

  But she’d left her phone on the kitchen counter.

  Maybe I didn’t need to find a way to speak to her after all.

  I glanced around me, along the row of terraces, making sure there were no eyes on me, but I was at too tight an angle for anyone to see. The only danger came from people walking along the alleyway that connected Melia’s street to the next.

  I looked at her phone again.

  Using the open window, I reached in and grabbed it.

  As soon as I had it, I hurried back to the car – but then, almost instantly, it started chirping as a series of texts came through, their sound catching me totally unaware, resonant in the stillness of the evening. I tried to suppress the noise by closing my fist around the handset, but then it beeped again, and again, WhatsApp alerts blinking on the display, and as I got to the Audi, I looked back at the windows of the property, at the homes adjacent to it, expecting to see Melia looking out at me, or one of the neighbours, or both. But there was no one.

  The street was still quiet.

  I unlocked the car and slid in at the wheel, knowing what a risk it was taking the phone. I had no sight of Melia or her movements. She might already be looking for the mobile. That meant I needed to go through it as fast as possible.

  There was a numbered passcode but, by tilting the phone to the light, I could see tiny clusters of fingerprints where – over a long period of time – she’d repeatedly put her password in. I tried entering the code, following the pattern of prints.

  It didn’t work the first two times.

  But on the third I got it.

  As soon as I was in, I went to her texts, looking for Isaac Mills. His was the fourth name down. When I tapped on the thread, I saw that the last conversation between the two of them had taken place the evening before. I swiped up, trying to get to the beginning of it. For the most part, it had been pretty low-key, the two of them talking about the lunch they’d had at the mill the day before, Melia joking that seeing Mills had saved her from the ritual boredom of another Inset day, which was why the kids hadn’t been at school.

  And then I got to the end – and the reason Mills wasn’t there.

  I’ve got to go away for a couple

  of days with work. Sorry. I

  should be back by the w/end.

  The old “work trip”, eh? ☺

  Ha ha. Yep, that old excuse. If

  it’s any consolation, it’ll be

  exceptionally boring.

  Doesn’t sound boring to me!

  Where are you going?

  I’ve got to go and see someone

  in London. Highgate. It’s a bit

  posh there, just like me ☺

  I stared at the screen.

  He’d made light of it, but it wasn’t a joke.

  Highgate was where Robert Zaid lived.

  50

  By the time I arrived home the next day, London was fading into dusk, my house consumed by the dark. I pulled on to the drive and paused for a moment, looking at the SOLD sign in the front garden, blown to an angle by the wind. After the case I’d had at Christmas, something had changed here: a psychological rot had begun to infect the rooms I’d once shared with my wife, and now it was hard for me to look at it, let alone live in it. This building was no longer a home, it was just a place I’d come back to, a space I slept in and left as soon as I could. I knew that, deep down, the connection I felt to missing people was most of why I’d agreed to go to Yorkshire. I wanted answers to what had happened out at Black Gale. I wanted to help the families. I wanted the truth. But there had been another reason as well.

  A more selfish one.

  I didn’t want to be inside these walls any more.

  I unlocked the house and jumped straight in the shower. I felt the water run off me, turned the temperature up and let the heat scorch my skin, and – afterwards, as I sat on the edge of the bed, surrounded by the gathering darkness – I looked at the inky bruises Isaac Mills had left me with.

  I texted Annabel to tell her I was back in London and that I’d give her a call in the morning as I had a meeting over in Highgate and probably wouldn’t be back until late, and then – just as I was getting dressed – my phone started to buzz on the bed.

  It was the number of a hotel just outside Luton.

  ‘Shame you’re not earning loyalty points for all these rooms you’re paying for,’ Healy said when I answered. That made me smile, despite myself. ‘I’m checking in.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yeah, everything seems fine.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Stay where you are until I call.’

  ‘And when’ll that be?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just sit tight.’

  He didn’t respond to that.

  ‘You all set for Zaid?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘His PA called an hour ago to confirm everything.’

  ‘So what time are you seeing him?’

  I glanced at the clock. It was just after 6 p.m.

  ‘I have to be at his house in an hour.’

  As I was locking up, someone entered the driveway.

  ‘Mr Raker?’

  I spun around, immediately on the defensive.

  It was a man in his thirties, thinning on top and dressed in a suit that didn’t fit. I vaguely recognized him, but my head was so full of noise about the meeting with Robert Zaid, I couldn’t place where from. He’d stopped on the other side of my car, his eyes shifting to the damage at its front. ‘You’re a hard man to pin down,’ he said, ‘you know that?’ He dug around in his pocket for something and brought out a business card. ‘It’s great to finally meet you in the flesh.’

  I felt a rush of blood to the head: suddenly, I remembered who he was – and, as I did, my throat closed.

  He held out the card to me.

  Connor McCaskell. Reporter, Daily Tribune.

  ‘I expect you remember me now.’

  ‘What the hell do you want?’

  I almost spat the words at him.

  ‘I thought we could discuss my story.’

  ‘Yeah? What story’s that?’

  He smiled. ‘The story I’m going to write about you.’

  I brushed past him and unlocked my car.

  ‘I’d really like us to work together.’

  I smirked. ‘I bet you would.’

  He didn’t seem surprised by the response; in fact, from his expression, it looked like he’d been expecting it. ‘You just keep fighting me, David.’

  I almost laughed. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘You don’t answer my calls –’

  ‘Are you actually serious? I don’t owe you anything. We’re not in a relationship, I don’t have to
answer your calls, I don’t have to spend one second of my life acknowledging you exist. I told you last time I made the mistake of picking up the phone to you that I had no interest in appearing in your story or your worthless fucking newspaper, and nothing’s changed.’ I stopped, realizing that my voice had become loud. Out on the street, a man and his wife turned and looked at me. I leaned towards McCaskell. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, what story you think the world needs to hear, or what you think I have that’s worth following me around like this, but the one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that I’ll never – never – choose to work with you.’

  He nodded. ‘That’s unfortunate.’

  ‘For you maybe.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘For both of us.’

  I eyed him.

  He’d come with a plan.

  ‘That case you had before Christmas …’ His teeth pressed into his bottom lip and he winced, as if he felt something genuine for me; as if, by osmosis, he too could feel the way that case had turned me inside out, the way all my cases had carved out deep troughs in my life. ‘That was when I realized that this had the potential to be big. People would want to read about this hero, this man who had suffered so much in his personal life but who still had the drive and the desire to help others. Roll in these other, huge investigations – some of which Joe Public doesn’t even realize you were involved in, let alone single-handedly solved – the fact that the Met hate you, basically see you as an enemy of the state, and, well …’ He whistled gently. ‘That’s a spicy story.’

  I felt my guts twist but tried not to show it, getting into my car and pulling the door shut. As I started up the engine, he gestured to the crushed bonnet and shouted through the glass: ‘I know you’ve got secrets, David, and not the kind that are going to paint you in a flattering light. I mean, let’s take your mystery pal Bryan Kennedy as an example. He has no bank account, he’s not on the records of the utility companies, he has no National Insurance number, so he’s never been treated at a hospital anywhere, ever – and he doesn’t have a driving licence or an official passport. He’s a ghost. Your ghost.’

  I shook my head, as if all of this were ludicrous.

  He came forward, putting a hand on the wrinkled bonnet, on the roof, trying to get in the way of me – trying to stop me – even as I began to reverse off the driveway.

  ‘One way or another,’ he said, pointing at my window now, pressing a finger to it, ‘your secrets are going to come out, and they’re going to be a part of this story, but how they’re a part of it is up to you.’ I had to slow down, unsure if the gates were even wide enough for me to get the car past him. McCaskell pounced on the opportunity, coming at me again: ‘So you can give them all up to me voluntarily, you can talk about them, justify them and defend yourself, and I’ll quote you directly on everything. Or you can keep hiding from me, you can keep running and I can keep chasing, and when I find out what those secrets are – and I will, David; I always do – I’ll put in absolutely everything I have. And it’ll hurt you, I promise you that. What I write, it’ll rip your life apart.’

  I accelerated away.

  Empty

  2002

  Los Angeles | Thursday 15 August

  They left the house before the sun was up. The car was quiet. Neither of them had slept well the previous night, but for different reasons: Ethan, because he was so excited about starting the next chapter of his life; Jo, because her son was leaving for college and, secretly, without ever having shown him for a single second, it was tearing her heart in two.

  ‘Are you going to be all right, Mom?’ he asked when they stopped to pick up coffee in Santa Clarita, both of them lit by the red-and-yellow glow from a Carl’s Jr. sign.

  She smiled at him and squeezed his arm. ‘I’ll be fine, baby. I’ll get to do all the things I always dreamed of, like gardening and yoga.’ She winked at him, and he returned her smile, and when they got back to the car he’d already moved on, talking breathlessly about how the computer science portion of his degree could lead to all sorts of things, including designing video games.

  Back on the interstate, she just let him talk, loving the sound of his voice. He’d always been like this, as far back as she could remember: at eight and nine, he’d sit at the breakfast table before school and tell her everything he’d learned the day before; at fifteen and sixteen, he seemed to bypass the sullen teenage years entirely, never hiding away in his room, never cutting her down with a comment, or fighting her over homework, or girls, or going out. They’d definitely had their moments, times when they’d irritated one another, when Ethan snapped, when Jo did, but they were rare, certainly in comparison to other parents she’d talked to. She didn’t know if she’d just struck lucky with Ethan or whether his good nature, his relative calm, was somehow tethered to what had happened to his father. He claimed not to remember much of that night, of clawing at Ira’s body in the hours before Jo got home late from another shift, but she often worried – irrationally, like parents so often did – that the memory had lodged somewhere deep and was just waiting for the right moment to come out.

  They stopped again after about three hours and had breakfast in a dust-blown diner at the side of the freeway. Ethan ordered a three-egg omelette with bell peppers and Swiss cheese, Jo the corned-beef hash, and as they waited, they talked some more about the year ahead, about Ethan living on campus, about his plans for the holidays.

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it back home for Thanksgiving, Mom,’ he said, a mouth full of food. ‘That sort of round trip, it’s just too much hassle for a weekend.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  He gave her an apologetic look and then searched her face for signs he’d upset her. She gave him nothing, not wanting him to feel in any way bad. If being a cop for twenty-seven years had taught her anything, it was how to sustain a good poker face.

  ‘Save the turkey for Christmas, okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, and winked at him again, her standard response when she was hurting. She didn’t blame him for not wanting to come home on Thanksgiving, it was simply that, for the first time since Ira had died, she’d be spending it alone. Ethan ducked his head slightly, as if trying to read her again, a movement that reminded Jo of Ira, of moments when Ethan was still a kid and Ira would give Jo pep talks before work. You’re a pioneer, honey. You’re out there in your wagon, crossing those plains by yourself, having to deal with all the dangers of unexplored territory. She always remembered that one. He’d called her Davy Crockett, just with better hair.

  ‘What’s up?’ Ethan asked.

  Jo realized she was smiling.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied. ‘I was just thinking about your dad.’

  ‘Do you think he would have been proud of me?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Of the two of us, he’d have been the one sitting here in tears.’ She took one of her son’s hands and squeezed it gently. ‘He loved you so much, Eth.’

  Ethan nodded. ‘I know he did.’

  ‘I wish he was here to see the person you’ve become.’

  ‘Thanks, Mom.’

  They went back to their food for a while and, when they were done, asked for some fresh coffee and just sat there in the booth talking about the news, about books and movies, about stuff that had nothing to do with Ethan leaving home or Jo’s work. But then, just as Jo asked for the cheque, her son glanced at her across the table, that same echo of Ira in his face, and said, ‘So what are you going to do about your job?’

  Jo looked out the window: between the diner and the edge of the blacktop, a dusty haze had kicked up, whorled and churned by the passing traffic.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said finally.

  ‘You’ve fallen out of love with it.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘That’s what you said.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘Admittedly, you’d had a couple of glasses of wine at the time.’

&nbs
p; Jo laughed and he smiled back at her, but she was only pretending. That was what she’d said, and it had been fuelled by a bottle of wine: Ethan had been out somewhere with a bunch of friends and, when he’d got home, she was watching reruns of some old show she’d long forgotten and on the table in front of her had been her notebook.

  Old cases from her time at the Sheriff’s Department.

  And, in the middle of it, the case.

  ‘Mom?’

  She looked at Ethan. ‘I don’t know if I’ve fallen out of love with it exactly – it’s more that, over the years, it’s just …’ She stopped again, trying to articulate what she felt, conscious of dousing the excitement of Ethan’s day. ‘I guess what I’m saying is, I struck lucky when I took that job at the LAPD because it came at a time when I had more leeway in dictating terms – they wanted more women, they were trying to change, and I wanted to spend more time with you; all of it worked out for the best.’

  Ethan frowned. ‘So you’ve fallen out of love with it because …?’

  The waitress brought the cheque to the table.

  ‘Mom?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She waved him away. ‘It’s boring, Eth.’

  ‘It’s not. I want to hear.’

  ‘Today isn’t about me being a cop.’

  ‘Tell me, Mom.’

  She looked at him for a moment, his eyes on hers, his big frame in the booth, acne scattered at the tops of his cheeks: there were only hints left behind now of the one-year-old she’d watched sleep in his crib, of the boy she’d found banging his fists against the dead body of his father five years later, who’d told her stories about lost wolf pups at nine. He’d always be her son, she’d always love him, but this was a man.

  He deserved to hear what she carried.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and pushed aside the tray with the cheque on it. ‘Okay, so fast-forward nine years and I’m now a captain, and what that means is that I get to spend most of my day behind a desk looking at stats, dealing with petty politics and breaking up arguments between grown men about which of them has the biggest dick.’ She smiled. Ethan gave her a Men, huh? look. ‘My point is, I’m not even really out there on the front lines. The cases, they’re my concern, I have ultimate responsibility for everything, but it’s not me walking the scene these days – or very rarely – it’s not me in the room with the witnesses, it’s not me having to do the hard graft in order to take it all to the DA, packaged up, and get it over the line. And yet I still feel exactly the same as the very first day I started as a detective. I can’t let it go. I’m pulling my detectives in and asking them where we’re at with cases, not because I give a single damn about how it’s going to look in a spreadsheet, but because I’ve still got this crushing sense of debt.’