by Tim Weaver
‘Your woman called for you again,’ he said, fiddling with the lid on his cigarette packet as wind pressed again at the walls of the pub. ‘You ever gonna call her back?’
‘You seem to be handling it pretty well.’
He smirked. ‘That’s cold.’
‘It’s not cold.’
‘What, you saying this is you all warm and fuzzy?’
‘Why are you even taking her calls?’
‘Because you’re not.’
I looked at him.
‘She started calling me when you stopped answering your phone.’ He studied me, got no answer, and finished his pint. ‘She’s desperate. What am I supposed to do?’
‘Stop taking her calls.’
‘What’s wrong with speaking to her?’
‘This is my life.’
‘I doubt she’ll call again, anyway,’ he said after a while, shrugging. He pushed the pint glass away from him. ‘I told her you were gone and you weren’t coming back.’
‘Why did you tell her that?’
‘Well, that’s pretty much what’s happened, isn’t it?’
Again, I remained silent. I’d never talked to him about the reasons Liz and I had separated, and the reasons I could never go back to her, but sometimes it felt like he’d guessed. In the days before I got stabbed, I’d started to realize she didn’t understand why I did what I did, the debt I had to the missing, and I realized I couldn’t face a future where all I did was fight with her about it. Healy got that part – because he was driven by the same kind of ghosts as me – but while sometimes I felt the two of us were getting somewhere, able to understand each other, at other times he’d say something to me or look at me in a certain way, and I’d see that he was still the same man I’d never fully got to grips with: full of anger and resentment and bitterness. We had an attachment, most of it unsaid, in the loss we’d suffered and the way we’d been drawn together in our working lives; and we had an emotional tie to one another too, however slight: I’d saved his life once, and he’d repaid the favour. But, mostly, Healy was a wall I couldn’t break down. Part of me wondered if he thought he was helping by taking Liz’s calls; the other part, perhaps the part of me that had grown to know him over the past year, thought he was doing it so he had something over me. As long as I couldn’t be sure, I couldn’t discuss it with him, and whatever it was we had – our connection; our friendship, if it was even that – carried on undefined.
‘They reckon it’s a man,’ he said.
‘The body?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded, using his thumb and forefinger to remove a sliver of tobacco from his lips. ‘No decomposition, that’s the thing. Or, at least, none that I could see.’
‘So it’s fresh.’
‘Or frozen.’
‘By the air temperature?’
‘By a refrigerator.’ He shrugged. ‘They didn’t tell me anything. I’m just going on what I saw. No sign of decomp anywhere. It was in good condition too – seriously good – so if you want my guess I’d say someone put him on ice before he gassed up.’
If you froze a body before putrefication kicked in, you could keep it indefinitely with few, if any, signs of decay. As long as it wasn’t allowed to thaw, bacteria couldn’t feed on it, and the body wouldn’t break down. No gases. No acids. I watched Healy turn his empty pint glass, deep in thought, and I could see what was going on in his head: he’d got a taste of his old life, had felt – however briefly – the buzz of a case, and now he was struggling to rein his curiosity back in. I doubted he’d be willing to watch from afar, and as that thought came to me I turned and looked back at the man he’d been studying.
‘What do you want with him?’ I asked.
He flicked a look at me. ‘Eh?’
‘The one you’ve been watching.’
‘Any idea what he does for a job?’
‘He’s the skipper on a fishing trawler. What’s your interest in him?’
‘He was the one who found the body.’
‘So?’
But he didn’t respond. Instead he grabbed his coat, scooped up his cigarettes and stood. He didn’t like the fact that I’d second-guessed him, so now came the blank. He just remained there, stock-still, any response or emotion wiped from his face. Except I knew that look. I’d seen it many times – and it was a look that couldn’t lead anywhere good.
‘Back away, Healy.’
‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.’
‘You know what happened last time.’
He glared at me, but he knew I was right. The reason he was down here in the first place was because he didn’t know where to draw the line. ‘Maybe you should take a bit more interest in the case, then,’ he said to me, removing a cigarette from its packet. ‘Keep your mind occupied; help the healing process.’ He was being factitious now, so I didn’t bother rising to the bait. He nodded in the direction of the bar. ‘I heard a couple of the locals talking about this village being cursed – so who knows what it could lead to?’
‘Cursed?’
‘Some woman and her family who used to live here.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He buttoned up his coat. ‘I’m going for a smoke.’
8
The wind was dying down by the time I left the pub, but rain still swept in off the water. Fifteen minutes had passed since Healy had gone for a cigarette, and he hadn’t returned. I looked along the front of the building, to where a group of smokers had gathered in the same place, underneath an overhang of thatch: three men, all of whom I recognized but didn’t really know. They nodded. I nodded back. Then I looked across the beach.
On the other side of it, next to the cove, were two huge lights: one faced up the beach, lighting the way to the village hall; the other was partially obscured in the cove itself, facing the direction the body had been found. Although he’d done his share of stupid things in the past, if the police were still there Healy wasn’t going to be sniffing around the crime scene. But something had got to him, which meant he probably had some sort of plan in place.
Something reckless.
‘David?’
I turned. A woman emerged from the pub – grey-haired and slightly stooped, in her late sixties or early seventies – a silhouette for a moment against the brightness of the interior. Then, as she came further out into the drizzle, I remembered seeing her at the bar: she’d been sitting on one of the stools, talking to the guy who ran the butchery in the village. I hadn’t paid much attention to her then, but now, as the light from the pub cast a glow across her face, something about her struck a chord with me.
‘David?’ she said again.
I stepped towards her. Nodded.
‘Don’t you remember me?’
I smiled as though I did, but the truth was, I couldn’t recall where I’d seen her; whether it had been in and around the village over the past few months, or before that, when I’d been here as a boy. I’d maintained a pretty low profile since moving down from London, rarely going out, healing in isolation, so it was more likely the second.
She saved me from embarrassment: ‘It’s me. Vera Kane.’
It came flooding back: she was the aunt of a girl I’d dated when I was in my mid-to-late teens. Emily. We’d gone out for almost eighteen months, and then tearfully ended it when I’d got a university place in London. I took a step towards the old woman, and we moved all the way back under the thatched overhang. ‘Mrs Kane. How are you?’
‘I’m doing okay – for an old woman. How are you?’
‘I’m well. You look good.’
‘You liar,’ she said, winking.
‘I’m surprised I haven’t seen you around.’
‘Oooh, I don’t live here,’ she said. ‘I’m down in Kingsbridge. I don’t come back very often because my bloody hips are agony and I’ve got no family here any more. But when I heard what was going on …’ She stopped; nodded to the beach. ‘Well, I’ve still got friends in the village and I was worried o
ne of them might be the person that they …’
I followed her gaze. ‘Right.’
‘How long have you been back?’
‘Four months.’
‘In your parents’ old place?’
‘That’s right.’
She nodded. ‘So, I wonder who it can be?’
I glanced down at the beach again. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I thought your policeman friend might have said.’
She meant Healy. ‘No. Unfortunately, he didn’t.’
A flicker of disappointment in her face. I understood then: she was after some fuel to take back into the pub, something fresh she could use. I didn’t blame her. Knowledge was power in a village where everybody knew everything about everybody else. There was no way she could have known Healy’s history, the fact that he was an ex-cop with a life as patched up as mine. She would have just seen him being led to the body by Prouse the fisherman – and then into the village hall by the investigating team for a cosy chat.
‘How’s Emily?’ I asked.
She took a second to tune back in. ‘Oh, she’s good, love.’
‘She still local?’
‘Totnes, yeah. I’m seeing her tomorrow.’
‘Well, say hello to her from me.’
‘I will.’
The conversation was fizzling out. ‘Nice to see you, Mrs Kane.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Nice to see you too, love.’
The cottage had been bought by my parents when they’d started to fall out of love with the farm. When I was growing up, my dad and I used to go out shooting in a belt of woodland at the back of the property, where he’d set up targets for me to hit. I made it clear early on I wasn’t interested in taking over the farm, so he started to cling to the idea of me being a marksman in the army, just like his brother had been. I didn’t want to be that either, but I loved my dad and wanted to see him happy, so we compromised: whenever I was down from London, we’d go out shooting, hitting targets just like the old days.
Then, in March 2005, Mum died.
We got back from the woods, rifles under our arms, and found her slumped on a bench at the front of the farmhouse. She’d had a stroke. Dad fell apart after that. I sold the farmhouse for him, moved him into the cottage, and for a while he started to seem a little brighter. Then, in January 2006, I got a call from one of his neighbours, who’d been around to see him. He’d died quietly in the living room, looking out at the sea.
On the approach, up a narrow, winding road that took you out of the heart of the village and into the folds of the surrounding hills, I could see that same window, sitting in shadow under a sliver of slate-grey roof. Unusually for the village, which was dense, its buildings knotted together in a clump at the edge of the beach, the cottage sat alone, hemmed in by trees about seventy feet above sea level. It was why Vera Kane and the rest of the village had rarely seen me: I’d spent the first two months trying to live again.
And the following two wondering where I went next.
9
The next morning, Healy was gone before I got up, so I put some coffee on and sat at the kitchen window, looking out at the beach. Even this early, as the sun clawed its way up behind a wall of cloud, uniforms stood along the sea wall, black marks against the grey of the concrete. Rain started to fall as a bunch of techs in white forensic suits emerged from the village hall, ducked under the cordon and headed down to the cove. I tried to spot Healy among it all but couldn’t see him, and then felt bad for assuming the worst.
After I’d showered and had some breakfast, I went back to repairing an old chair that my dad had bought a few years before his death. He’d been an amateur collector of antiques, though not a very successful one, but it had kept his mind occupied in the weeks and months after Mum had gone. The chair was worth nothing, but I was slowly working my way around the house trying to give everything, even the junk, an upgrade.
A couple of hours later, just after eleven, I was washing my hands in the kitchen sink – trying to remove grease from my skin – when I heard a car pull into the driveway. I assumed it was Healy, but when I didn’t hear him approach I dried my hands and went to the back door. It was a Suzuki Vitara, parked with its rear towards me.
The rain was heavy now, drawing the light from the day, and as I stepped further on to the porch, the security lamp sparked into life and I saw movement in the car.
‘Can I help you?’ I said above the rain.
More movement, and then the driver’s door opened and a woman got out, shoes crunching on the gravel, her back to me. Then she turned – and I realized who it was.
Emily Kane.
‘David?’
The moment she spoke, memories came alive. It wasn’t just her voice, it was the way she carried herself, the slight reticence in her. Suddenly it was so familiar, as if no time at all had passed since we’d last met. In reality, it had been twenty-four years.
‘Emily.’
A full smile bloomed. ‘Yes!’ She seemed delighted I’d recognized her, but apart from the wear and tear of time – the lines, the creases – she looked remarkably similar: five-three, slim, dark hair scraped back into a ponytail, a face full of tiny, delicate angles. She’d always been slight – build, height, the way she spoke, the way she stood – and, as I gradually recalled each little part of her, more memories came flooding back: sitting on the sea wall watching the boats rock on the waves, the late-night walks to the coves, and then everything that came after when you were teenagers and in love for the first time.
I walked over to her and immediately dwarfed her, and we stood there facing each other in a moment of awkwardness. Did we kiss? Shake hands? How did you greet a girlfriend you hadn’t seen for almost a quarter of a century? In the end I leaned in and politely kissed her on the cheek and, to prevent any more discomfort, immediately asked her inside. She thanked me and followed me through the rain to the front door. I turned back to her and smiled. ‘Let me apologize up front for the mess you’re about to witness.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ she said.
‘I’m normally pretty good at washing dishes.’
She laughed, maybe politely – I didn’t know her well enough to tell the difference any more – but, if it was put on, that was okay. She was trying to figure out how similar I was to the boy she remembered.
Inside, I put the kettle on and offered her a seat at the table overlooking the beach. Under granite skies, the lights from the crime scene were on, casting a long, bleached glow across the shingle, turning it pale and oddly beautiful. Emily sat there, bag perched in her lap, a half-smile on her face. But for the first time there was something else: a hint of sadness. It was a look I’d come to recognize easily and often in the families of people who went missing, and I knew instantly she wasn’t here to catch up on old times.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘David Raker.’
‘It’s great to see you, Emily.’
‘And you.’
‘Did your aunt tell you we bumped into each other last night?’
She coloured a little. ‘Yes. She mentioned that. That’s why I thought I’d pop by.’ But we both understood this wasn’t a social call, and as she realized I’d figured her out, her fingers started drumming nervously on her bag. I glanced at her hands. No wedding ring. No indent to suggest one had been there recently. ‘I hope you don’t mind me …’
‘Not at all. You’re living up in Totnes?’
‘Yes. I don’t come here much. Just pass through sometimes. Mum and Dad are both gone now, and the only time I’m down this way is when I see Vera in Kingsbridge.’
I told her I was sorry to hear about her parents, and she talked for a while about her house in Totnes, a town about thirty minutes inland. She had a flat, five minutes’ walk from the quay. ‘I have a studio at home,’ she said. ‘I work as a graphic designer.’
‘I remember you used to love to draw.’
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘Times are really tough – but I get by ok
ay.’
‘That’s great to hear. And what’s Carrie up to these days?’
Carrie was her sister. She was eight years older than Emily, yet – growing up – the two of them had been uncannily similar, despite the big age difference. But as I waited for her reply, I felt the change coming, and remembered what Healy had said in the pub the night before: I heard a couple of the locals talking about this village being cursed … Some woman and her family who used to live here.
‘Carrie?’ she said. ‘Oh, she’s, uh … that’s why …’ She trailed off.
In my line of work everyone was hiding something, but the road to the truth often played out the same way on their faces: a tremor of emotion followed by a composed blank. It was their need to offload, their need to get to the bottom of what had happened to the person they loved, followed by the fear that the truth might end up being worse than not knowing. It was a confession and a denial all at the same time, and it seemed obvious that, whatever she was about to tell me, it was going to be about her sister.
‘What happened to Carrie?’ I said.
She didn’t react to the question, accepting that she’d already given herself away. Her fingers played with the strap on her bag and, slowly, her eyes shimmered. When she looked up, she seemed even paler, even smaller, even more beaten down.
‘She and her family,’ she said quietly. ‘They all disappeared.’
10
‘I went to see Vera this morning and she mentioned seeing you last night,’ Emily began, both of us sitting at the table with coffees. ‘She said you were just like she remembered.’