by Tim Weaver
I shook my head.
‘That car looked like it had been through a crusher. The whole thing was folded in on itself. Old model like that: no airbag, no side impact bars…’ He paused again. ‘I just hope it was quick.’
We stood silent for a moment. His eyes drifted to the space where the car must have landed, and then – eventually – back to me.
‘He’d been drinking,’ I said. ‘Is that right?’
He nodded. ‘Toxicology put him at four times over the legal limit.’
‘Did you see the autopsy report?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It was definitely him?’
He looked at me like I was from another planet. ‘What do you think?’
I paused for a moment.
‘What are the chances of me getting hold of some of the paperwork?’
‘What about unofficially?’
‘Still low. I go into the system, it gets logged. I print something out, it gets logged. And why would I anyway? You’re about as qualified to be running around, chasing down leads, as Coco the fucking clown.’
He shook his head, astonished into silence. I didn’t say anything more, just nodded to show that I took his point, but didn’t necessarily agree.
‘Strange he should end up dying so close to home.’
Cary looked at me. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean, he disappears – completely disappears – for all that time… I would have expected him to have turned up somewhere further afield. Instead he dies on your doorstep. Maybe he even stayed nearby the whole, time he was gone.’
‘He didn’t stay around here.’
‘But he died around here.’
‘He was on his way through to somewhere.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘If he’d been staying around here, I would’ve known about it. Sooner or later, someone somewhere would’ve seen him. It would’ve got back to me.’
I nodded – but didn’t agree. Cary was just one man in a local area of thirty or forty square miles. If you wanted to, you could easily disappear in that kind of space and never be found.
‘So, where do you think he went?’
Cary frowned. ‘Didn’t I just answer that?’
He shook his head and then shrugged.
‘Do you think there was any connection with your other friend’s disappearance?’
‘Simon?’
‘Yeah. Simon –’ I glanced at my notepad ‘– Mitchell.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘How come?’
‘Jeff tell you about him?’
‘He said he had a drug problem.’
He nodded.
‘He said he hit out at Kathy.’
He nodded again. ‘That night, we were all there. Simon didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, but when he tried to hit her, he crossed the line. Especially in Alex’s mind. That night was when we realized he had a serious problem. But by then he was too far gone. He promised to stop, but that was why eventually he left. He couldn’t stop. I don’t think he could face us any more – the way we used to look at him. Even after Alex left, things were never the same. So one day he just packed his bags and was gone. We only ever heard from him once after that.’
‘When?’
‘A long time after Alex disappeared. In fact, probably after he died. Simon had been in London all that time, in and out of whatever place would put a roof over his head.’
‘You tell him Alex was dead?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t register with him. He sounded strung
‘Did he say who the guy was?’
‘No. Just said he’d met him on the streets and they’d got talking. Sounded like this guy was trying to straighten him out.’
‘Do you think Simon followed Alex?’
His expression told me that it was the least likely thing he could imagine happening.
‘You’ve no idea where Simon lives these days?’
‘London.’
‘That narrows it down to about seven million people.’
Cary shrugged. ‘Playing detective ain’t easy.’
‘You ever tried to find him?’
‘I tried once. Didn’t get far. The one thing Simon and Alex did have in common was that neither of them wanted to be found.’
Cary raised his eyes to the skies. The first spots of rain were starting to fall. He pulled his jacket close to his body and zipped it up. Rain spattered off the shoulders, making a sound like pebbles caught in a tide.
We walked back to the car, and got in.
‘I did some asking around at the beginning,’ he said as we drove off, the field sliding away behind us. ‘I think you’ll struggle to find anyone who can give you a reason for Alex’s disappearance. It wasn’t like him to just leave everything behind. Not unless something was seriously wrong. That wasn’t how he was programmed.’
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
*
‘I’m willing to take a risk with this,’ he said. ‘But if anyone finds out I’ve given these to you, I’ll be taking early retirement.’
‘I understand.’
‘I hope you do.’
He got up and went to the printer, then came back with a stack of paper and slid it into a Manila folder he already had open on the desk. I took the file, keeping it low and in front of my body. He sat down at his desk again, looked around, then removed an unmarked DVD from his top drawer.
‘You might want to take a look at that too,’ he said, tossing it across the desk.
‘What is it?’
‘A video one of the fire crew shot of the crash site.’
I took the DVD and slipped it into the file, then held up the printouts. ‘Is there anything in here?’
He shrugged. ‘What do you think?’
‘You reckon it’s open and shut?’
He frowned. ‘Alex was drink-driving. Of course it’s open and shut.’
I nodded, and scanned the first page of the printout. When I looked up, he was staring at me, eyes narrowed.
I nodded. ‘I wasn’t passing judge–’
‘And since then? Take a drive down the street. I’ve got guys out there on PCP who think they’re the fucking Terminator. I’ve got seventeen-year-old kids from the council estates with knives the size of your arm.’ He paused, looked at me. ‘So, no, I haven’t spent a lot of time with that file over the last year. I put in my fair share of time when he first went missing, and I got the support of some of the people in here. But as soon as he put his car through the side of a lorry, it became a zero priority case. And you know what? It’s even less than that now.’
I nodded again then decided to move the conversation on.
I removed the Polaroid of Alex I’d taken from the box. Cary eyed me, wondering what I was looking at. I put the picture down on the desk in front him. He glanced at it, then sat forward.
‘Is that Alex?’
‘I think so.’
Cary picked up the picture, holding it in front of him. ‘Who took this?’
He went quiet again. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘It was in among Kathy’s stuff.’
‘She took it?’
‘No.’
‘So, how did it get there?’
‘I’m not sure.’
He looked like he didn’t believe me.
‘All I know is what I found. I’ve no idea how it got there – but I can take a guess.’
‘So take a guess.’
‘Alex put it there.’
‘After he disappeared?’
I nodded.
‘Why?’
‘They had an arrangement.’
He frowned. ‘An arrangement?’
‘A spot they liked going to together. A place where they used to hide personal stuff.’
He looked at me for a moment, his eyes narrowing a little. Then his expression changed. He opened up the top drawer of his desk and started shuffling around inside. He brought out a notebook,
in tatters, the cover falling off, the pages missing their edges. He laid it down, opened it up and studied it. Words, diagrams and reconstructions of crime scenes were crammed into every space. He flicked through it, got halfway, then looked up.
‘You might want to write this down,’ he said.
I took out my notepad.
‘But he didn’t take his card with him.’
‘He didn’t take his debit card, no.’
He looked at his notebook. At the top of the page, written in black and circled in red, was a number.
‘He left his debit card behind, but he took his credit card with him,’ Cary said, prodding the number with his finger. ‘It was valid for another five years after he went missing, so I figured it was worth keeping an eye on. I arranged with Mary and the bank to have all his credit card statements redirected to me. And they kept coming, and coming, and coming, and every time the statements arrived on my desk, I’d open them up and they’d be blank.’
‘He never used the card – not even once?’
Cary shook his head. ‘Every month there’d be nothing in them. I spent four and a half years looking through his statements, and four years and a half years putting them straight in the bin.’
He ran a finger along the number in the notebook.
‘Then, about six months before he died…’ He paused, glanced at me. ‘The statements stopped coming.’
‘Because the card had expired?’
‘No. The card had about six months left to run.’
‘So, why’d they stop?’
pretended it was part of an investigation. They accessed the account for me and said the statements were still being sent out, and would only stop once the card had expired.’
‘But it hadn’t expired.’
‘No. The obvious assumption was that the last statement got lost in the post, so I asked them to send out a duplicate. The guy said he’d put it in the post overnight.’ He paused, sat back. ‘But that never arrived either.’
‘How come?’
‘I called the bank again, told them the duplicate hadn’t turned up, and they asked me to confirm my address. So, I gave it to them–’
‘But it wasn’t the address they had.’
He looked at me, nodded. ‘Right. Four and a half years after he disappears, and suddenly he changes his address.’
‘Alex changed it?’
He shrugged. ‘I spoke to the bank a third time, pushed the whole investigation angle, and they made the new statements available to me. Same as always – the card remained unused. But it wasn’t registered to Alex any more. It was registered as a business account.’
‘A business account?’
‘The Calvary Project.’
‘That was the name of the business?’
‘Who the fuck knows? I had their name and address from the bank and I still couldn’t find any trace of them. There’s no Inland Revenue records, no website,
‘You mean some sort of front?’
He shrugged again. I looked at him, trying to figure out why he wasn’t more determined to dig deeper. He pushed the notebook towards me and leaned over his desk, jabbing a finger at the number.
‘Treat yourself,’ he said.
‘That’s part of the credit card number?’
‘No. That’s the telephone number for the Calvary Project.’
It was a landline, but there was no area code in front, which was why I hadn’t worked out what it was.
‘You tried calling it?’
‘About a hundred thousand times.’
‘No answer?’
He shook his head.
‘Where’s the street address?’
‘London.’
‘You went up there?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying? The whole case is a lockdown. The card’s expired, and a year ago I spent three hours picking up bits of Alex’s skull from a fucking field.’
‘Did you tell Mary?’
‘About what?’
‘About what you’d found.’
‘No. What’s the point?’
‘A right to know what exactly?’ he said. ‘That she should take a long, hard look at another dead end? Forget it. I didn’t tell her anything because nothing leads anywhere. The case – if it even was a case – is over. It’s done.’
Suddenly it came to me. I saw why the case had never been taken further: Cary didn’t want to expose himself to new, corrupting information about Alex. He loved his friend. He was disappointed by the way he’d died. He didn’t want to taint any more of his memories of him.
Yet I could see something else too. Just a flicker. A part Cary had always tried to bury. A part desperate for answers.
‘So, where in London is it based?’
‘Some place in Brixton. I gave the details to a guy I know who works for the Met and he pissed himself laughing. Apparently the only businesses being run out of there are from suitcases full of crack.’
Cary laid a thick hand across the notebook and pulled it back towards him, dropping it into his top drawer. When he looked up, his eyes narrowed again as if he’d seen something in my face.
‘What?’ he said.
‘I’ve got one more question.’
He didn’t move.
‘Well, more of a favour, to be honest.’
‘That file not enough for you?’
‘Basically, I was hoping you might be able to give me some…technical help.’
I held up the picture. ‘With the photograph.’
‘What about it?’
‘It must have been taken by someone Alex met after he disappeared, and the picture’s a Polaroid, which means that person probably handled it as it was develop–’
‘No.’
He’d second-guessed me.
‘I just need it checked for prints.’
‘Just need it? Just need it? You realize what you’re asking me to do? Get forensics involved, log it into the system, start a paper trail. What do you think would happen if people find out I’ve been pushing personal work through?’
‘I know it’s diff–’
‘I’m fucked, that’s what.’
‘Okay.’
‘No way. Forget it.’
‘I felt I should ask.’
‘No way,’ he said again.
But I could see the conflict in his face. The embers of Alex’s memory hadn’t died out yet. Something still burnt in him. And I still had a shot at getting the picture looked at.
As I travelled east, I could see sunlight up ahead, breaking through the clouds. But by the time I got to Mary’s, it was gone. Evening was moving in.
After she answered the door, I followed her through to the kitchen and then down a steep flight of stairs into the basement. It was huge, much bigger than I’d expected, but it was a mess as well: boxes stacked ceiling-high like pillars in a foyer; pieces of wood and metal perched against the walls; an electrical box, covered in thick, opaque cobwebs.
‘I come down here sometimes,’ she said. ‘It’s quiet.’
I nodded that I understood.
‘Sorry about the mess.’
I smiled at her. ‘You want to see a mess, you should come to my place.’
Then, from upstairs: ‘Where am I?’
We looked at each other. It was Malcolm. Mary turned towards the stairs, then back to me. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
After she was gone, I looked around the basement. On the other side, half-hidden behind boxes, was an old writing desk, an open photo album on it. Dusty. Worn. I walked over and turned some of the pages. A young Alex playing in the snow, paddling in the sea,
Right at the back was a photograph of Alex, Malcolm and Mary, and someone else. The guy was in his thirties, good-looking, smiling from ear to ear. He had one arm on Alex’s shoulder and one around Malcolm. Mary was out to the side of the shot, detached from the group. Most of the tim
e you couldn’t read much into pictures: people put on smiles, put arms around those next to them, posed even if they didn’t want to. Pictures could paper over even the most significant of cracks. But this one said everything: Mary was the odd one out.
Quietly, she came down the stairs.
I turned to her and held up the photo. ‘Who’s this guy?’
‘Wow,’ she said, coming across the basement towards me. ‘I haven’t seen him in a while. I thought we’d managed to burn all the photographs of him.’ But she was smiling. She studied it for a while. ‘Al. Uncle Al. He was a friend of Malc’s.’
‘But not a friend of yours?’
She shrugged. ‘I think the feeling was mutual, to be honest. Al was a wealthy guy. We weren’t. He bought his way into their affection, and the only way I could counter that was by staying close to them. He wasn’t so keen to spend money on me.’
‘He wasn’t Alex’s real uncle?’
‘No. Malcolm used to work for him.’
‘So, is he still around?
I put the photo back into the album. ‘Did Alex ever go to church?’
‘Church?’ She frowned, as if the question had taken her by surprise. ‘Not at the end, no. But when he was younger he used to come to our church in town. He was part of the youth group there. He made some good friends.’
‘Anyone he kept in regular contact with?’
‘He was friendly with one guy there…’ She stopped. ‘I’m trying to remember his name. He used to lead worship, take the occasional service, that kind of thing. He went travelling for a while, and never came back to us. I think Alex still kept in touch with him though.’ She stopped a second time. ‘Gosh, I must be getting old.’
‘It’s probably worth following up, so if you remember him, drop me a line.’ I thought of the birthday card. ‘What about the name Angela Routledge – does that ring any bells?’
She thought about it, but it obviously didn’t. I hadn’t expected it to get me far. Angela Routledge was probably just an old woman raising funds for the church.