I Am Missing: David Raker Missing Persons #8

by Tim Weaver

  ‘Oh.’

  Just oh. He wasn’t upset. He didn’t know his father enough to be upset.

  So that was the point at which Carla changed her mind. That was when she understood that, even if she did end up telling Richard the truth about his memories, maybe it was better if Parsons was present as well.

  A month later, I set something up.

  Carla flew over to the UK and I met her, Richard and Reverend Parsons at the church in Dorset. We sat in the room that Richard and I had used during our first ever conversation, and Carla told her son everything: who he was, where he came from, what he loved doing as a kid, who he’d become as an adult. She told him the truth about his father, and though I could see the conflict in her, the echo of the confession we’d heard on the audio tape, she was fair to Bill Presley.

  To start with, the conversation was stilted, often awkward, and I just sat, slightly removed from the others, and listened. Parsons was the glue that bound it, redirecting it and threading it together, and I knew that it had been the correct decision to involve him. And, after a while, things began to loosen up a little. There were jokes between them, light-hearted comments, and Carla was natural and engaging when she talked about Richard’s childhood.

  ‘We used to have a Labrador called Wolf,’ she told her son at one point. ‘It was ironic because he was the soppiest dog ever. You used to love him.’

  ‘Did I take him for walks?’

  ‘All the time,’ she said. ‘All the time.’

  Her fingers were pressed flat to the table and I could see that she wanted to touch her son’s hand – but she didn’t. She said, ‘You had so much fun with that dog.’

  ‘Did he sleep on my bed?’

  ‘When we let him.’ She smiled. ‘You had this old Action Man – one of his arms was missing and you’d drawn a beard on him with marker pen – and you used to bury him in the garden, a different place each time, and Wolf would have to find him.’ Carla smiled again, but this time there was a hint of sadness to it. ‘When Wolf wasn’t around, you’d make your dad find the Action Man instead. You’d literally make him get down on his hands and knees and bark, and he would do it. You’d ride around on his back, and he’d do it. He’d always do it. The two of you …’ Her voice trailed off, and she lifted her hand off the table and wiped at an eye. ‘Your father loved you, that’s all,’ she said softly. ‘We both loved you so much.’

  The emotion vibrated in her throat and it took a moment for her to gather herself, but then she did and she went on to talk more about what they used to do as a family, what Richard liked and what he didn’t.

  It was polite and pleasant, often quite tame.

  It was respectful, and gentle, and quiet.

  But, for now, for a mother trying to make sense of everything and the son she thought she’d lost, all of those things were enough.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a novel is only ever the start of the publishing process and, as always, this book would never have been possible without the brilliant team at Michael Joseph – they really are some of the most talented, most creative and plain nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. Thank you to everyone there who has had a hand in bringing I Am Missing to life, both within MJ and across Penguin as a whole.

  An extra special shout-out to my former editor, Emad Akhtar, who had been trying to persuade me for a while to write a book where the missing person wasn’t physically missing but had actually suffered memory loss. It all seems a bit silly now, but back then I genuinely couldn’t see how that one tiny idea would sustain an entire novel, so kept telling him no. Not only, then, am I enormously grateful to him for his persistence, but also hugely appreciative of everything he did for me during his time at Penguin, including his hard work on the first draft of I Am Missing.

  A giant-sized thank you is also due to Maxine Hitchcock, who picked up the reins once Emad left, who delved into subsequent drafts and helped improve them immeasurably, and who has been an absolutely amazing advocate for the book ever since. Finally, thank you to Caroline Pretty, my eagle-eyed copy-editor on all eight books, and supreme unraveller of timelines that make no sense.

  My agent, Camilla Wray, is officially The Best. In fact, there isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t feel grateful for her advice, patience, ability to deal with mid-manuscript meltdowns, and random stories about dogs and guinea pigs. She’s a brilliant agent, a lovely person and a great friend. Thank you to the ladies at Darley Anderson as well, particularly Mary, Emma and Kristina in foreign rights, Sheila in film and TV, and Rosanna in the bank vault.

  To Mum, Dad, Lucy and the rest of my amazing family: thank you so much for everything you do for me. To Erin, who makes me so proud, and to Sharlé, who gets to experience the whole gamut of emotions from word one to word last (and always pretends not to mind) – I couldn’t do this without either of you.

  And, finally, the biggest thank you of all goes out to my wonderful readers. Without your support, there would be no I Am Missing, no Raker books at all in fact, and I wouldn’t be spending my days dreaming up new and exciting ways to make people disappear.

  Reading Group Discussion Points

  Discuss how you think technology has changed the work of the police. Is it ultimately a help or a hindrance to finding criminals and victims?

  Richard Kite is in some ways a victim of bureaucracy as well as of his own amnesia. Discuss the unexpected ways loss of identity could make an impact on someone.

  The police tell Jacob Howson that ‘a person has the right to disappear’. Do you agree with this?

  Do you think the inhabitants of Sophia were foolish to believe the rumours about the Brink? Or is it human nature to fear the unknown?

  Bill Presley tells Raker that Richard is better off not remembering his past. Is this true, and do you think it could ever be right for a parent to hide the truth from their child?

  Which characters do you think are victims in this story, and which do you think are in control of their fates?

  Is greed at the root of all the crimes in this story? Or are there other factors at play?

  Are Roland, Jack, Anthony and Bill all equally guilty for what happened at the cabin? Why, or why not?

  Discuss the role of place in this story. How do the various locations shape the characters and the action?

  Is it dangerous to trust in the people who are closest to you? Or is this ultimately what could have saved Penny?

  David Raker succeeds in solving the mystery, but do you think the outcome of the case is a good one for Richard?

  How does the case affect David Raker? What parallels can you detect between his life and those of the people he works with?

  Read on for an exclusive extract from Tim Weaver’s next David Raker novel

  Coming summer 2018

  1

  After it was all over, they let me watch the footage of her entering the police station. She seemed small, almost curved, as if her spine was arched or she might be in pain, and she was wearing a green raincoat and a pair of black court shoes. The quality of the surveillance film was poor, the frame rate set low, so that it made it disorientating, a series of jerky movements played out against the stillness of the station’s front desk.

  She paused at the entrance to start with, holding the main door ajar so that light leaked in across the tiled floor and seemed to bleach the one side of her face. The faded colours of the film didn’t help, reducing blacks to greys and everything else to pastels, and even when she let the door go again and it snapped shut behind her, her features didn’t quite articulate. Her gaze was a dark blob, her blonde hair appeared grey. I couldn’t see anything of the slight freckling that passed from one cheek to the other, crossing the bridge of her nose; not the blue and green flash of her eyes. Under the hard glare of the camera, she may as well have been just another visitor to a police station.

  A stranger, nothing else.

  Once she let the door go, she headed across the room to t
he front desk. On the timecode in the corner I could see it was just before 8 a.m. An officer in her mid-forties was standing behind the counter, engaged in conversation with someone else, a kid in his late teens with a black eye and bloodied cheek. The woman waited patiently behind the teenager until the front desk officer told her to go and take a seat. She did so, almost reluctantly, her head down, her feet barely seeming to carry her to where there was a bank of chairs.

  Ten minutes passed. The angle of the camera made it hard to see her, her head bowed, her hands knotted together in her lap, but then, after the desk officer finished with the teenager and told him to take a seat, she beckoned the woman back across to the counter. I met the desk officer when I turned up at the station in the hours after: she had short black hair flecked with grey and a scar high on her left cheek, but on the film I couldn’t see the detail in either, just a vague impression of who she was.

  The woman stopped at the counter.

  The desk officer bent slightly, so that her head was level with the woman’s and even though the film’s frame rate was low and it didn’t record her lip movements in real-time, I could still tell what she’d asked the woman.

  You all right, love?

  The woman didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she reached into the pocket of her coat and started looking for something. It began as a slow movement, but then became more frantic when she couldn’t find what she was looking for. She checked one pocket, then another, and in the third she found what she was after: a piece of paper.

  As she unfolded it, she finally responded to the officer.

  Hello.

  I couldn’t tell what the woman said after that, the frame rate making it all but impossible to follow the patterns of her mouth, but she shifted position and, because the camera was fixed to the wall about a foot and a half above her, I could see more of her, could see there was just a single line on the piece of paper. Under the pale rinse of the room’s strip lights, her hair definitely looked blonde now, not grey, and it had been tied into a loose ponytail. Despite that, it was messy and unkempt, stray strands everywhere, at her collar, across her face, and even within the confines of the film, the way it twitched and jarred between frames, it was easy to tell that she was agitated.

  Finally, her eyes met the officer’s and the woman held up the piece of paper and started to talk. I could see the teenager – seated close to her – look up from his lap, as if sparked into life by what the woman was saying. They told me afterwards that the woman had been crying, that it was difficult to understand what she was talking about, that her voice, the things that she was saying, were hard to process; she was rambling, or distressed, or both. I watched the desk officer lean in towards her, a hand up in front of her, telling the woman to calm down. I watched the woman pause for a moment, her breathing – even through the surveillance footage – appearing to slow, her body swaying slightly, her shoulders moving up and down and up and down, like a piston.

  She gestured to the piece of paper again.

  And this time I could read her lips clearly.

  Find him.

  2

  The call came on 28 December.

  I’d spent Christmas with my daughter, Annabel, in her house in south Devon. She lived at the end of a cul-desac, within sight of a lake, on the edges of Buckfastleigh. Annabel was twenty-seven, her sister Olivia – who wasn’t mine, but who I looked out for just the same – was twelve, and although Liv was past the point of believing that someone came down the chimney with a sackful of presents, she was still a kid, and kids always made Christmas more fun. We opened gifts, we watched old movies and played even older board games, we ate and drank and chased Annabel’s dog across a Dartmoor flecked in frost, and then I curled up with them in the evenings on the sofa and realized how little I missed London. It was where I lived, where my work was, but it was also where my home stood, empty even when I was inside it. It had been that way, and felt like that, every day for eight years, ever since my wife Derryn had died.

  The morning of the call, I woke early and went for a run, following the lanes to the west of the house as they gently rose towards the heart of the moors. It was cold, the trees skeletal, the hedgerows thinned out by winter, ice gathered in slim sheets – like panes of glass – on the country roads. After four miles, I hit a reservoir, a bridge crossing it from one side to the other. Close by, cows grazed in the grass, hemmed in by wire fences, and I could see a farmer and his dog, way off into the distance, the early morning light winking in the windows of a tractor. I carried on for a while longer until I reached a narrow road set upon a hill with views across a valley of green and brown fields, all perfectly stitched together. Breathless, I paused there and took in the view.

  That was when my phone started ringing.

  I had it strapped to my arm, the mobile mapping my route, and I awkwardly tried to release it, first from the headphones I had plugged in, then from the pouch it was secured inside. When I finally got it out, I could see it was a central London number, and guessed it would probably be someone who needed my help, somebody whose loved one had gone missing. Very briefly, I toyed with the idea of not answering it at all, of protecting my time off, this time alone with a daughter I’d only known for five years, and was still getting to know. But then reality hit. The missing were my ballast. In the time since Derryn had died, they’d been my lifeblood, the only way I could breathe properly. This break would have to end and, sooner or later, I’d have to return to London and, when I did, my work would become my anchor again.

  ‘David Raker.’

  ‘Mr Raker, my name’s Detective Sergeant Catherine Field.’

  Thrown for a moment, I tried to recall if I’d come across Field before, or if I’d ever heard anyone mention her name.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘It’s, uh, it’s a bit of a weird one, really,’ Field responded then paused. ‘We’ve had someone walk into the station here at Charing Cross this morning. She seems quite confused.’ Another pause. ‘Or maybe she’s not confused. I don’t know, to be honest.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, unsure where this was going.

  ‘She doesn’t have anything on her – no phone, no ID. The only thing she brought along with her is a scrap of paper. It’s got your telephone number on it.’

  I looked out at the view, my body beginning to cool down, the sweat freezing against my skin. My website was only basic, little more than an overview and a contact form, but it listed my email address and a phone number.

  ‘I expect she found my number online,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Field replied.

  ‘You don’t think that’s it?’

  ‘I, uh … I don’t know.’ Field cleared her throat, the line drifting a little. ‘This woman, she’s telling us that she’s been missing since 2009.’ She went quiet again.

  ‘So are you saying she wants my help?’

  ‘I’m not sure what she wants.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, she says she knows you.’

  ‘Knows me how?’

  Field cleared her throat for a second time.

  ‘She says she’s your wife.’

  I frowned. ‘My wife?’

  ‘That’s what she says.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, my wife has been dead for eight years.’

  ‘Since 2009,’ Field replied. ‘I know, I just read that online.’

  I waited for her to continue, to say something else, to tell me this was a joke at my expense, some bad taste prank. But she didn’t. Instead, she said something worse.

  ‘This woman, she says her name’s Derryn Raker.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Derryn Alexandra Raker.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No way. She’s lying.’

  ‘She told us you’d say that.’

  ‘Because it’s not Derryn. Derryn’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s the other thing she told us,’ Field said, her voice even, hard to intepret or analyse
. ‘She says that everything you believed about her death was a lie.’

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  The Sunday Times bestselling David Raker Missing Persons Series

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  Big mistake.

  For as he digs deeper, he discovers that Alex’s life was not the innocent one his mother believed. Buried in his past are secrets that were never meant to be found – and dark, dangerous men willing to kill to protect them.

  Soon Raker will discover that there are things far worse than death …

  The Dead Tracks

  Seventeen-year-old Megan Carver was an unlikely runaway. A straight-A student from a happy home, she studied hard and rarely got into trouble. Six months on, she’s never been found.

  Missing persons investigator David Raker knows what it’s like to grieve. He knows the shadowy world of the lost too. So, when he’s hired by Megan’s parents to find out what happened, he recognizes their pain – but knows that the darkest secrets can be buried deep.

  And Megan’s secrets could cost him his life.

  Because as Raker investigates her disappearance, he realizes everything is a lie. People close to her are dead. Others are too terrified to talk. And soon the conspiracy of silence leads Raker towards a forest on the edge of the city. A place with a horrifying history – which was once the hunting ground for a brutal, twisted serial killer.