No One Home
Page 44
To her, he wasn’t real, he was just someone built from things the police told her as a relative, and ideas she’d read, heard and researched herself.
If he’d been real to her, she wouldn’t be writing about him.
If he’d been real to her, she wouldn’t have ever slept again.
72
Beatrix Steards’s body was recovered from the Chiltern Hills. It was left in a small but dense wooded area, close to a river, and when I saw shots of the grave site, it was hard not to see the similarities between the place that Adrian Vale had put Beatrix thirty-one years ago, and the place in which he’d put everyone else in the time since.
There was no one left to mourn for her.
Not properly.
Dave and Mira Steards, the couple who’d brought her up, died three years after she vanished, killed in a car accident on the road between their home in Woking and the nature reserve where they used to take Beatrix when she was a little girl. Her gravestone was placed next to theirs, in a cemetery on the edge of the town, but it was an ending much less than she deserved, much less than any of them deserved, and it had come three decades too late. It had come too late for Freda Davey too, the person – along with Patrick Perry – who had begun splintering the foundations of Beatrix’s disappearance, the structure that Adrian Vale had built and kept intact from the night he drove Beatrix out of London, deep into woodland, and found a grave for her in a tree.
The funerals for the villagers took place within two weeks of one another, the Perrys first, then the Gibbses, then Randolph Solomon and Emiline Wilson, and then finally Freda and John. A memorial – the money donated by Ross Perry’s firm – was built next to the Black Gale sign, with the names of all nine of the residents on it, and then a line underneath describing the thing they loved most about living there. As lovely a gesture as it was, as important as all four funerals were to the families left behind, it was hard to know, in the end, if any of it was better than the simple, unmourned gravestone that marked the conclusion of Beatrix Steards’s story. I didn’t get the sense that Ross, or Rina Blake, or Tori Gibbs, felt any better after the ceremonies were over. There was no sense of relief, release or closure. If anything, the huge and domineering level of media coverage directed at them proved overwhelming, turning everything into a performance full of cameras and questions.
Five thousand miles away there was a memorial for Donald Klein too, although as he had no family left, and it had been so long since his death, it was undertaken at a local church, close to where he’d lived with his mother, and was only attended by a small number of people. And the man everybody had, incorrectly, always thought of as Gabriel Wilzon had long since been buried in an unmarked grave, in a cemetery in East LA, and – despite all the revelations that came to light in the weeks and months after I got home – something didn’t change: Jo had never known what his real name was in 1985, and over three decades on, no one knew now. Isaac Mills had said it was Pablo, but that was as much of a christening as he would ever get.
And then there was Joline Kader.
When I eventually got back to London, I managed to find a few papers she’d written and had talked to me about, and a video from a speaking tour that she’d mentioned. It had been at Cambridge University, on the subject of equality and discrimination, and at the end of it she answered a question from someone in the audience about what it was like to be a female detective at a time when it was a male-dominated environment. She’d smiled before responding: ‘I always remember something my husband said to me one morning, when I was having a meltdown in the kitchen before work. He said, “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. You’re Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone – just with better hair.”’
A ripple of laughter had passed across the hall.
She’d told me about her husband when we were walking through the forest, trying to find a way out. She’d told me about him again when I finally found help for her, ten kilometres along the road from where I’d left her. In the back of the car I’d flagged down, as the driver desperately asked me questions in broken English, she’d clung on to her life by telling me about a photograph album Ira had made for her. I think that was part of the reason I’d connected so easily with her: the way she’d talked about Ira, the way she’d felt about him, had clear echoes in my own life.
She was strong, and independent, and successful.
She’d constructed a life in the aftermath of his death.
But when you missed someone, when you hung on to them, there was a small part of you that was always trying to find your way home.
Author’s Note
For the purposes of the story, I’ve very carefully altered some of the working practices of police forces in both the UK and US. I’ve also made some minor changes to the history of the LA Sheriff’s Department in relation to its female detectives as well as the organization’s real-life pursuit of the Night Stalker. Anything I’ve swapped out or adapted, I hope I’ve done with enough subtlety and care for it not to be noticed.
For anyone interested in the Night Stalker case, I highly recommend Philip Carlo’s book The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez, which was incredibly useful in helping me paint a picture of what LA was like in the mid eighties. As well as visiting the city during my research, I also used Ghettoside by Jill Leovy and The Killing Season by Miles Corwin – great pieces of journalism that showcase the work of real-life LA detectives – to help answer any questions I forgot to ask while I was out there.
Acknowledgements
As with all my books, No One Home has been made possible by the brilliance of my publishing team at Michael Joseph (and Penguin as a whole), chief among them Maxine Hitchcock, who worked so hard with me on editing the novel. Her calm guidance, endless ideas and laser-focused attention to detail have immeasurably improved the story and this book simply wouldn’t have been possible without her. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Tilda McDonald, Laura Nicol, Jennifer Porter, Christina Ellicott, Bea McIntyre, Liz Smith, Clare Parker, Louise Blakemore, James Keyte, Beth O’Rafferty, Jon Kennedy and David Ettridge for all their hard work, creativity, dedication and patience. Finally, a massive thank you, as always, to my copy-editor, Caroline Pretty, who does a peerless job of ironing out my terrible errors and fixing my equally terrible timelines.
Another huge, huge thank you goes to my agent, Camilla Bolton, who has been an absolute rock since before I even got a book contract. Not only is she brilliant at her job, she’s a black belt in calming my nerves and a great friend. Thank you to everyone at Darley Anderson too, who work so hard on my behalf, particularly Mary, Kristina and Georgia in Rights, Sheila in Film and TV, and Roya and Rosanna behind the scenes.
So much love is owed to my family, both here and in South Africa. In particular, Mum and Dad, who are wonderfully, endlessly supportive; Lucy, who I still owe for doing my French homework in Years 10 and 11; Sharlé, who – for ten years – has shown a remarkable tolerance for writerly meltdowns every night over dinner; and Erin, for whom my books come a very distant second to YouTube videos about guinea pigs.
And, finally, the biggest thank you of all goes to you, my amazing readers, for buying, borrowing, talking about and recommending my books. Without your support, I wouldn’t get to do what I love every day – and I promise that never, ever gets taken for granted.
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MICHAEL JOS
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Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2019
Copyright © Tim Weaver, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover images © Arcangel Images and © Alamy
ISBN: 978-1-405-93950-8
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