Never Coming Back

by Tim Weaver

  ‘Spike, I need a full background on someone. Two people, actually. A couple.’ I gave him as much as Emily had passed across on Paul and Carrie. ‘Absolutely everything you can dig up, stick it in the file. Work, credit histories, repayments, bank accounts …’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘I’ll need their mobile phone records, and their landline – the last six months of 2011 and January this year for both financials and phones. Actually, you can throw a third name into the mix as well. Annabel Ling.’ I thought for a moment about including Olivia. But she was eight. She didn’t have a phone, a bank account, wouldn’t own or pay into anything. It seemed pointless. ‘One other thing: when you source the phone records, if you can also get street addresses for the incoming and outgoing calls, that’d be great.’

  ‘Consider it done.’

  ‘Actually, I lied: that wasn’t the last thing.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I need access to their emails too.’ Unsurprisingly, Emily didn’t have the login details for any of the Lings’ email accounts – Paul, Carrie and Annabel all had their own – but she was able to give me the addresses, which would be more than enough for Spike. I read them out to him. ‘Passwords for those accounts would be useful.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Thanks, Spike.’

  ‘By the way, I’ve shifted my bank account.’

  Spike’s bank account was a locker at the local sports centre. He gave me the pin number for it and, when we were done, I’d leave the cash there for him to collect. For obvious reasons he wanted to stay out of the banks and off the taxman’s radar.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m not in London at the moment, but give me the details and, once I’m back, I’ll deposit whatever it is I owe you. You know I’ll be good for it.’

  ‘I do. It’s great to have you back, David.’

  ‘Thanks, Spike.’

  I hung up just as Healy pulled off the A38 into a narrow lane with signposts for Harbourne Lake. Two minutes further on, we found a cluster of five houses, obscured by trees, all of them old fishermen’s cottages but renovated beautifully in the same style: thatched roofs, gleaming whitewashed walls, coloured doors and matching window shutters, immaculate gardens with driveways leading up to recently added extensions, all of it finished in a patchwork of sandy brick. The lake itself was about a mile long by about half a mile wide, unfurling beyond the houses, and the views were stunning, even as autumn slowly gave way to winter: reedbeds and marshes; red berries dotted like perfect drops of blood along the banks; gulls, terns and warblers drifting across the surface of the water, which, with no wind, was like glass.

  The houses were roughly laid out in a triangle, the Lings’ house furthest back from the road, at the apex. Both cars – a blue BMW X3 and a black Golf GTI – were still on the drive, presumably where they’d been since the family went missing on 7 January. Emily hadn’t arrived yet, so Healy bumped on to the pavement and I made the second call.

  This one was to another old contact.

  Ewan Tasker was a semi-retired former police officer who’d gone on to work for the National Criminal Intelligence Agency, its successor SOCA, and then as an advisor at SOCA’s replacement, the National Crime Agency. Our relationship had originally been built on mutual understanding: he fed me stories on organized crime that he wanted out in the open, and I was always the one that got to break them first. But, over time, we began to become more friendly and, after I left journalism to nurse Derryn through her last year, it had solidified into friendship. These days I had no way to repay him for his help, other than money, which he would never accept. So my penance was a charity golf day once a year at his club. It was double the fun for him: he raised money and got to laugh at me.

  ‘Raker!’ he said, as he answered the phone.

  ‘Task – how’s things?’

  ‘Good. I can still go to the toilet by myself, so obviously that’s a massive bonus.’ He laughed, but – even at sixty-three – he was in great condition. ‘How’s the stomach?’

  He’d come to visit me in the days after I’d been stabbed.

  ‘It’s getting there.’

  ‘It takes time.’

  ‘Yeah. I need some of whatever you’re taking.’

  He laughed again. ‘So, you back on the job?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Sounds mysterious.’

  ‘Not really. I’m just helping out a friend, said I’d do a bit of hunting around for her. I was wondering whether you might be able to get hold of a couple of things for me.’

  ‘As long as you don’t forget your debts.’

  ‘18 December, right?’

  ‘Right. Injuries or not, you’re playing.’

  It was the date of the next charity golf day. I was paired with Tasker’s wife, who – like him – played off a single-figure handicap. I was going to get annihilated.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said to him.

  ‘Good. So how can I help?’

  I gave him some background on the disappearance of the Lings, and then cut to the chase: ‘First off, I’d like to take a look at the original missing persons report.’

  ‘That’s easy enough.’

  ‘I was also hoping you could run their names, their home address and their car registrations through the PNC, the PND and HOLMES. To be honest, I’m pretty sure all you’ll find is that original missing persons report, but it’s an avenue I want to close off.’

  All three were databases: PNC held convictions, cautions and arrests, individuals who were wanted or missing, vehicles registered in the UK, and stolen property; PND allowed regional police forces to access each other’s data immediately, rather than having to wait for the information request to filter through weeks later; while HOLMES was the system forces used to cross-check major crimes. The family’s prints – and any other prints found at the house – would also be in NAFIS, the national fingerprint database. But, as it synced up with PNC, if the police had lifted anything from the house that led to anyone or anything, we’d probably already know.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ he said.

  ‘I appreciate it, old man.’

  I killed the call just as Emily’s Suzuki emerged from the lane. Healy looked out to where the vehicle was approaching, and then back to me. ‘I could have got you that.’

  ‘Got me what?’

  ‘That information.’

  ‘The missing persons file?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve got guys right there.’

  ‘You don’t work for the police any more, Healy.’

  The mood changed instantly. ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ I said, trying to head him off. If I looked at him sometimes and caught a glimpse of another man, the one I liked, the one who had saved my life, I looked at him just as often and saw this version: angry and unwilling to cede any kind of control to anyone. ‘Number one rule is to insulate yourself. You know that. You don’t need me to tell you that. Task can get us the information we need on the Lings – but the most important thing is he can get it without raising any flags.’

  ‘Don’t patronize me.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘I’m not patronizing you.’

  ‘These are people I’ve known for years.’

  ‘You know we’d still be taking a risk.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Involving them is a risk, Healy.’

  He turned to me. ‘How’s it risk? Because this Task you speak to used to work for SOCA and my guys are just regular cops? That makes him better somehow? Give me a fucking break. My guys are there at the coalface, they’ve got the computers right there. They’re not sitting in semi-retirement with the cigars out and their feet up on the desk.’

  ‘Task still advises three days a week at–’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Look, Healy–’

  ‘No, you look, you self-important little prick. I’ve been doing this for twenty-six years. I was a cop while you were still getting a hard-on
for your English teacher.’

  Silence settled between us.

  As Emily got out of her car, Healy started to do the same. But then I grabbed his arm and pulled him back in. ‘Listen to me,’ I said, ignoring the look on his face, and leaned in. ‘You’d better not screw this up for me.’

  ‘Let go of my fucking arm.’

  He tried to wrestle free of my grip but I held on. ‘Listen. You got fired from the police. Those people there you call friends, colleagues, whatever they were to you – they aren’t going to go out to bat for you, because they don’t want to end up like you. I know, one hundred per cent, I can rely on Tasker. No mistakes. No trails. Can you say that about the men you know? Can you say it with absolute certainty?’ I paused. He just looked at me. ‘I asked you along because I thought you could help. But if this is how it’s going to be, if this is what I’m going to have to deal with, you can pack your bags and go home.’

  We stayed like that for a moment.

  And then I let go, got out of the car, and went and met Emily.

  14

  Immediately inside the front door, the house opened up into an entrance hall. High ceilings angled in towards a glass dome, light pouring through from above. Off to the left was the staircase. Ahead of us, expensive oak floors ran the length of the property, branching out into a kitchen and a living room. To our right was a door through to a study, which, as I moved further in, I could see connected with the living room through an open archway.

  The house had been cleaned and cleared up, and looked immaculate. But it wouldn’t have looked like this the day the family went missing. It would have been a mess then. Food on the stove. TV and computer on. Toys on the floor. I headed for the kitchen, a big, airy room with portholes running across one wall that looked out over the lake, and a black high gloss and brushed steel finish. Marble counters. Expensive wall mosaics. Built-in fridge, freezer, dishwasher and washer-dryer.

  Behind me, I felt Emily move in, Healy drifting off into the study.

  I stood at the sink and looked out over the garden. Compared to the size of the house, it was relatively understated. A square of lawn, a terraced area, a series of patio slabs with pot plants on them and then, right at the bottom, a black and red kennel.

  ‘What happened to the dog?’

  She fell in beside me. ‘I’m looking after her.’

  ‘And she was just wandering around the house when you got here?’

  ‘I opened the front door,’ she said, nodding along the hallway, ‘and she came out of the kitchen towards me. Her bowl was full, so they must’ve only just fed her.’

  As I tried to imagine what the kitchen might have looked like the night Emily turned up, my eyes drifted to the fridge. It was pushed in under a marble counter, next to the freezer. Somewhere on the floor in front of it had been a bottle of spilled milk.

  There were two possibilities: it had fallen out accidentally when Carrie or Paul or one of the girls had opened the fridge door; or one of them had been holding it and then dropped it – maybe out of surprise. Ultimately, they both led in the same direction: why was the bottle just left there, on the floor, untouched? The only logical explanation was that, moments after the milk spilled all over the kitchen, the family had left the house.

  Either by choice.

  Or by force.

  A second door led out of the kitchen and into the living room, which then looped back around to the study. Healy was in the living room, on his haunches in front of a bookshelf full of DVDs and ornaments. I wandered through, casting a glance over the room, then moved on to the study. It was compact and nicely furnished: oak desk, top-of-the-range PC sitting in the centre surrounded by a wireless printer, external hard drive and CD tower. Cut into alcoves in the wall behind it were bookshelves. I stepped in closer. Most of the contents seemed to be related to Paul’s work – medical encyclopedias, journals, countless books on paediatrics – but on the top shelf was a small selection of Chinese books in plain black covers, symbols running the length of the spines.

  Emily was standing in the doorway through to the living room.

  ‘You said Paul’s parents were from Hong Kong?’

  She nodded at me.

  ‘So, did he speak Cantonese?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘But not much?’

  She wandered through and followed my eyes to the books. ‘He was born here, but he was always interested in where his family came from. He took Carrie and the girls back to Hong Kong a couple of times, to see some of his parents’ family. He always said his Cantonese was bad.’ She smiled. ‘But it sounded pretty good to me.’

  My eyes drifted back to a picture of the family on the shelf in front of the books. The four of them seemed happy enough, appeared to be pretty close-knit, and normally I wouldn’t have read into it anything more than that. Pictures were just doors that returned me to certain points in time – to how the missing had looked, physically, before they left. Beyond that, more often than not they were lies: smiles that only lasted the blink of a shutter; a frown as someone was caught off-guard; the blank, emotionless gaze of the unaware. Yet this photograph was, in its own way, quite revealing: Annabel was standing to the side of her father, arm around his waist, and the difference between them was starker than ever; more even than in the picture I’d seen of them the previous day. There was nothing, not even a tiny hint of him, in her. No physical traits. No sign of his heritage.

  ‘Mind if I ask you something?’

  Emily shook her head. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why was it Paul and Carrie had to go the IVF route?’

  She frowned as if she didn’t understand the relevance.

  ‘In this photo’ – I held it up to her – ‘in pretty much every photo I’ve looked at of the four of them, I’m not seeing a lot of Paul in Annabel.’

  She got it then. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Did they use a sperm donor?’

  Her eyes moved across the room to where Healy had wandered in. He’d finished his run-through of the living room. He looked between us, saw that we were in the middle of something, and backed out of the study. A couple of seconds later, he was opening and closing kitchen drawers.

  ‘Yes,’ she said finally.

  ‘They used a sperm donor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Both times?’

  She understood where this was going: I’m not seeing a lot of Paul in Annabel, but Olivia … ‘The two of them wanted kids, pretty much from the off, but they found out inside six months that Paul had a low sperm count. Carrie was never that … ambitious. She never wanted a career, she was never concerned with money, particularly. What she wanted, above all else, was to start a family. He came from a big family – two brothers, who are back in Hong Kong now, and a ton of cousins – so I suppose it felt pretty natural for him too. He was twenty-eight, she was only twenty-five, but they were ready by then.’

  ‘So, after he got the news–’

  ‘They were referred to an IVF clinic down in Plymouth. The specialist there said their best – probably only – option was a donor. They didn’t think about it for very long.’

  ‘Why didn’t they try to find an Asian donor?’

  ‘They did, but …’ She looked around the study and then out of a square of window in the corner of the room. ‘In the ’80s, Devon wasn’t what you would call “multicultural”.’

  ‘They didn’t think about going elsewhere?’

  ‘To another clinic?’

  ‘Right. Somewhere with more options.’

  ‘I’m not sure. I guess they probably talked about it, but after the disappointment of finding out about Paul, and then all the consultations and the paperwork, I think they just wanted to get on with it. Plus, I’m not sure it bothered Paul, really. It wasn’t like Asian culture was massively ingrained in him; his background was important to him, but he was born here, he’d lived here all his life, this was his home. I don’t think he saw himself as English, or British, or Chinese. He jus
t saw himself as Paul Ling. This was the country he was in; Carrie was the woman he married. In the end, all that mattered to him – to both of them – was to have a baby, to have a family, and to start something special.’ There was a tremor in her voice towards the end, but there were no tears. Maybe, almost a year down the line, she’d cried herself out. ‘In any case,’ she went on, ‘I don’t imagine any parent loves their child for the way it looks. None of that matters once they’re born.’

  ‘So, what changed the second time around?’

  She looked at me. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did it suddenly matter to Paul that his child looked like him?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. But there was a seventeen-year gap between Belle and Liv, and in seventeen years the clinic had managed to attract a wider range of donors. So, this time, the option was there for them and they decided to go for it.’

  I nodded, got out a new notebook I’d bought that morning, and took down some of what she’d said. ‘Why wait seventeen years?’

  ‘To have Olivia?’

  ‘Carrie would have been – what? – forty-two?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Why wait until her forties?’

  ‘Why not?’

  I shrugged. ‘Higher risks, lower success rate. Plus, you said she wasn’t career-orientated, so it wasn’t like she was invested in whatever job it was she was doing.’