by Emily Elgar
“Are you getting divorced?”
“No, mate!” I say it like it’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. “We’re just going through a rough patch. Remember when you and Fred fell out for a bit? Well, it’s just like that.”
“I’m not friends with Fred anymore.”
“OK, well, it’s not just like that. Look, let me speak to your mum and I’ll pick you up around six and we can have a proper chat—sound good?”
“Yeah, sounds good, Dad.”
I know there’s more he needs to say.
“Dad . . . are you getting close to finding that girl, Grace?”
“I think so, Jakey. I hope so.”
There’s the slightest tremor in his voice as he asks, “But you will find her, won’t you?”
“Eventually, yes, we’ll find her.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” I regret it as soon as I’ve said it.
Jakey breathes out, relieved.
“Good.”
“I’ll see you later then, mate. Love you.”
“Love you too, Dad,” he says and my heart aches with each word.
I’ve just got back to the flat when Cara calls. I haven’t heard from her since she ran away from me on Goat Beach, so it’s a surprise.
“I need to speak to you,” she says, her voice taut as a wire. “I’m coming over.”
Something’s happened. She doesn’t sound angry with me anymore. She sounds terrified. It’s still probably not a good idea for her to come here, in case anyone sees, but I can tell she’s not in a mood to be told anything and, besides, I still feel jumpy from my meeting with Dr. Rossi. I need to offload, to ask Cara if she saw anything to confirm my suspicion that Meg was giving Grace extra drugs, drugs she didn’t need.
Five minutes later the buzzer echoes through the flat. It’s been so long since anyone came over it takes me a moment to find the receiver behind the old coats hanging in the hall. She walks into the flat like she’s been here a hundred times. She barely looks around. I start talking as soon as she’s through the door, eager to tell her everything I’ve learned from Dr. Rossi.
“Cara, I’m glad you called: you won’t believe what I’ve found out. I was right about Grace’s name and age. I was watching that video—you know the one, where Grace shows the camera the drugs cabinet—when I saw a name on one of the prescriptions . . . Jesus, Cara, what’s wrong?”
She’s standing in the middle of the tiny hall, her whole body rattling. Only now I notice that her raincoat and the knees of her jeans are covered in mud. There’s a smear across her face as well. Her skin is a strange color, almost blue, like the veins beneath have frozen. She looks even worse than she did at the beach. My first thought is that she’s rowed with her mum, and Cara, being Cara, slept outside to prove a point. I usher her into the sitting room and clear piles of old newspapers from the brown cord sofa that came with the flat. I make her sit while I put the kettle on. I don’t have any blankets or shawls—soft things were Ruth’s department—and it feels weird bringing her my unchanged duvet, so instead I dig out my sleeping bag and wrap it around her on the sofa. I hand her a mug of sweet tea and am pleased to see as she sips that the rattling has become more of a shiver.
I grab a chair from the kitchen and sit opposite her. She closes her eyes and lets the tea warm her hands and face. I give her as long as I can bear before asking, “Cara, can you tell me what happened?”
“We need to stop, Jon.” Her dry lips quiver around her words. “We have to stop all of it, it’s too dangerous, we don’t know what we’re getting into. We just need to stop.” She keeps her eyes fixed on her tea. “I met GoodSam,” she says quietly, addressing the mug in her hands.
“You did what?” I wasn’t expecting this.
“I saw Grace, Jon, I saw Grace and I couldn’t just do nothing, pretend I hadn’t seen her. I had to do something.”
How fucking stupid of me. I should have guessed she would do something like this. If I’m honest, I’d probably have done the same if it had occurred to me to contact GoodSam, but I’m still livid with her for putting herself at risk.
“So you met up with a possible lead, someone we know nothing about, on your own and without even telling me? He could be a fucking kidnapper for all we know, Cara!” Simon has been transferred to a secure psychiatric unit, and Upton and others are trying to press him for information as much as they can. I still think Simon knows more than he’s admitting but, having met him, my instinct is he’s telling the truth—he doesn’t know where Grace is, and I remember how clear his voice was: “I could never hurt Meg.” That means the killer is still out there, it means GoodSam could know where Grace is, he could be dangerous, and I’m livid with Cara for being so stupid.
“That’s just it. I don’t think he kidnapped her. I don’t think anyone did.”
I stare at Cara. Her face is pinched. She looks like I feel. Is she, like me, starting to question the authenticity of Grace’s illnesses? If I’m right and Grace wasn’t as sick as we thought, then it is possible Grace could walk, or even run. It is possible that Cara saw her in the graveyard.
At last Cara pulls her eyes away from mine. She lowers her head and starts sobbing into her chest.
“Oh shit, Cara,” I say clumsily. I sit down on the sofa next to her. “God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
Cara starts shaking her head to show that’s not why she’s crying. “We have to stop now. This, this person I met, he said stuff about my mum, about what he would do if we didn’t stop . . .” Her voice trails away. She looks up at me and I see the fear, bright and alive behind her eyes. “And he said if we went to the police he’d hurt Mum. So we just . . . we just have to stop everything, OK?”
Her eyes seek reassurance. I look away, because I know I’m going to have to lie.
“OK, if that’s what you want, OK.”
“I mean it, Jon.”
“I know you do,” I say but I sound angry, frustrated, so I repeat, softer this time, “I know.”
I pat her shoulder and she takes a sip of tea.
“Are you sure the person you met was GoodSam?”
“I don’t know, but whoever he was, he knows Grace.”
“Can you tell me a bit about him, what he was like?”
Cara rubs the heel of her hand over her eyes, like she’s trying to wipe the shock of the last few hours away. She keeps her eyes closed as she says, “He was probably about thirty, white, tall, and really skinny.”
“That’s good, Cara. You remember what he was wearing?”
“Black, all black. He had a tattoo on his neck but I couldn’t see what it was because he had his coat zipped up high like he was trying to hide it, but it was long and black, right here.” She shows me on her thin neck.
“On the left?”
She thinks for a moment. “Yeah, on the left.”
She opens her eyes, turns to look at me as she says, “Whoever he is, he’s dangerous, violent. We have to stay away from him, Jon.”
“Cara, if we don’t do anything an innocent man might go to prison, and if we can’t go to the police then, what choice do we have?”
“That’s what I’m saying: we don’t have a choice. We just have to stop everything. You promised.” Her voice rises, her anxiety quickly escalating; she’s terrified.
“OK, OK.” I make myself sound calm, not wanting to upset her again. I want to point out I haven’t promised anything, but I’d sound like a pedant and she’s too exhausted, too traumatized to hear any more now.
“Do you want anything to eat? I could make you some toast,” I say, forgetting I don’t have any bread, or any food for that matter, but she shakes her head.
“No thanks. Would it be OK if I stay here for a few hours, just lie here and try to sleep for a bit? I can’t face going home right now.”
It’s not ideal. I want to call Dave straight away, offer him money I don’t have, and see what he can tell me about this bloke with the neck tattoo, but Cara�
��s already snuggling down into the sleeping bag, yawning.
“I may have to go out for a bit,” I say and the sleeping bag shrugs and mumbles, “I can let myself out,” before it seems to sigh and then still.
I close the sitting-room door gently behind me and text Dave in the kitchen.
I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.
Dave, most likely excited by the thought of another all-expenses-paid trip to the pub so soon after the last one, calls me back after just a few minutes. His voice is echoey; he sounds like he’s in the toilet or a changing room, like he’s gone somewhere private to speak with me.
“Dave, thanks for calling, mate.”
“Yeah, you said it was urgent so I’m guessing you want to meet for a pint later?” He lets out a laddish snort of laughter. I feel unspeakably sad suddenly. I’ve duped this lonely man into confusing work with friendship.
“No, well, yeah, maybe. Look, I need some help. I’ll pay—a hundred quid?” I stop myself from calling him mate.
“I’m listening.”
“I need you to ID someone for me. Someone local, white male, anywhere up to midthirties I’d say, tall, slender build, with a tattoo on the left side of his neck. Someone who’s been in trouble before.”
The pause stretches, awkward, even across the phone line.
“I don’t know, Jon, that’s not really—”
“Just run a few searches, ask around a bit. He’s local and most likely well known to you lot.”
Dave pauses again. It makes me uneasy so I say, “OK, two hundred. I’ll give you two hundred quid just to ask a couple of questions.”
“Two hundred and a few pints when I finish at five?”
“OK. Done. I’ll meet you at half past.”
I spend most of the afternoon at the kitchen table, rereading old articles I find online about Danny’s death and scouring a few photos Ben sent through from the Chronicle’s archive. The articles are old, sparse on detail. They mention the family from Plymouth staying for the weekend in Port Raynor Caravan Park, but mostly they’re interested in what the council is going to do to stop any more accidents in the future. The photos are more helpful. There are a few of a much younger, healthier-looking Simon, his arm protectively around Meg’s shoulders. It must have been a hot day. Meg’s wearing a flowing caftan; her body is well hidden in most of the photos, but in one her right arm is curled around the dome of her lower belly, as though she’s giving herself a hug. Grace was born that September so she would have been around six months pregnant when the photo was taken. I try to remember how big Ruth was at six months, but I can’t, not really. I stare at her belly until my eyes start to blur, and at some point I must drop my head onto the table because I wake two hours later with a crick in my neck and my glasses squashed across my face. I stand and move slowly into the sitting room but Cara’s already left, the sleeping bag carefully rolled up at the end of the sofa. I understand why she’s terrified, but if I’m right and Meg was giving Grace drugs, then that changes everything. If she wasn’t kidnapped but ran away from Meg herself, she doesn’t need to be rescued, she needs to be found for questioning, to find out what happened that night. Her own father’s future is on the line—and so is mine. There’s no way I can stop now.
The Red Dragon is quiet at half past five; the few lone drinkers stare dull-eyed into their fast-emptying pints like fortune-tellers searching for answers in tea leaves. The bank only let me take out a hundred quid. I’ll just have to convince Dave I’m good for the rest. He’s already sitting at a round table, his legs curled under the small stool like a fat jockey. I wish I could ask him straightaway about the envelope sitting on the table in front of him, but Dave needs a chat first and I need to keep him on my side.
“All right, Dave. Pint?”
I get the drinks and let Dave talk about football while the envelope burns between us. He catches me looking.
“OK, mate, I can take a hint,” he says, “but first . . .” He rubs his fingers and thumb together a few times and I hand him the hundred quid.
“I’ll get the rest to you tomorrow.”
Dave looks at the notes in his hand, raises an eyebrow. “And there’s me thinking all you city lot were loaded.”
“I’ll get the rest to you, Dave, I promise.”
“To be honest, mate, I feel like I’m robbing you for the hundred, never mind two. Let’s call it quits.”
I nod dumbly. Acts of kindness always take me by surprise. Ruth would call me a cynic, say it’s the Londoner in me, but I prefer to be surprised by kindness rather than anticipate it.
“So, anyone in the records match the description I gave you?”
Dave’s stool wails beneath him as he leans across the table towards me and says, “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”
“OK, so no one matches the description. No young man with a tattoo on his neck.”
My heart sinks. I realize how much I was hoping he’d find him. But Dave raises a finger.
“However,” he says, “one of my colleagues reminded me of the Craigs.”
Dave takes a pull on his pint, savoring the moment.
“The Craigs?”
Dave wipes a bit of foam from his top lip with the back of his meaty hand. “The Craig family have been known to Ashford police since well before my time. They’ve been petty criminals—shoplifting, that sort of thing—probably since shoplifting was invented. They travel around a bit, always keeping in the South West, mostly Cornwall but sometimes as far north as Taunton. It can be hard keeping tabs on where they’re living. They’ve given us the runaround a few times.”
“OK, so the guy with the tattoo is known to you, then? He’s one of these Craigs?”
“Not exactly, Jon. Stop rushing me.”
I feel my phone buzz in my pocket but it’s easy to ignore. The only important thing is happening right here, right now. Dave takes another lazy pull on his pint and slowly slides a thick finger under the flap on the envelope, pulls out a mugshot, and hands it to me. The photo is of a young man, wide-eyed but vacant-looking. He looks like he’s in his late twenties but could be older, his neck skinny and long as a cormorant’s, with a pronounced Adam’s apple and sharp cheekbones. His eyes are wide but full of regret, like a schoolboy after a telling-off.
“So he got the tattoo after this arrest?” I ask, bored by Dave moving so slowly, but he smiles at me and shakes his head.
“This is Anthony Craig, who’s been arrested by us twelve times since he was sixteen—drink, drugs, fighting. Arrested him myself once, found him a bit of a softie actually. That last time was for grievous bodily harm—beat some poor bloke to a pulp outside a pub. He pleaded guilty and got six months but was out in four.” Dave scrunches up his face before he glances over his shoulder, as though he thinks one of the old drunks propped up on the bar might be listening in, and says, “I don’t have a photo of Robert, or Robbie, Craig”—he pushes a finger into the bony chest of the kid in the photo—“Anthony Craig’s identical twin brother.”
That one little word is like a triple espresso straight into my veins.
The twins.
I thought Simon’s ramblings were just a part of his psychosis. I never thought he could be trying to give me a clue.
Dave keeps talking. “Robbie Craig used to work at that tattoo place in town and, according to a couple of the boys at work, Robbie’s the type who thinks getting tattoos is some kind of hobby.” Dave stabs the photo of Robbie with his forefinger again. “I’ve never met him, but apparently he’s the one we need to keep our eye on. A couple of them even reckon it was Robbie, not Tony, who beat up that bloke, but, for whatever reason, it was Tony who took the flak.”
It must be them. I take a gulp of my pint to try to hide my excitement.
“So they’re from Ashford, are they?”
Dave shakes his head. “Couple of hours north, near Rainstead. Their folks used to work in tourism, a hostel or something, before their mum died o
f cancer when the boys were still nippers. The dad couldn’t cope, ran the business into the ground, got into debt, and moved to Spain when the boys weren’t even ten years old. They were in and out of the care system after that, which is when they started getting into trouble.”
Was Simon in touch with these Craig twins all along? Maybe it was through them that Grace communicated with her dad—asked him to try to call her. I take another gulp of beer to try to hide the smile I feel creeping across my face. But it’s too late. Dave’s eyes narrow at me and he looks guilty, like he’s just told someone else’s secret.
“What’s this about, then, Jon? Nothing we should be involved in, I hope?”
I shake my head like Dave’s being crazy. In my pocket my phone starts vibrating again. Again I ignore it.
“Just about old Mr. Leeson up at Franton Farm. He reckons he saw a skinny bloke with tattoos out with a couple of big dogs in one of his fields. He thinks they could be the ones killing his sheep.”
Dave chuckles, amused I’m wasting my time on Mr. Leeson. He shakes his head at me and says through his laughter, “Rather you than me, mate. Rather you than me.”
“So is this Robbie still working at the tattoo place?”
Dave wipes an invisible tear of laughter from his eye and shakes his head. “Apparently not. One of the boys reckons Robbie’s been trying his luck with long-distance truck driving, says he got his license sometime last year. I had a quick look and it turns out he’s registered with some place out near Rainstead, up on the north coast. JPH Haulage, or something like that. Why all this trouble for old Leeson anyway, Jon?”
I shrug, trying to make myself seem casual as my mind cartwheels with the new information. “Someone had to start taking him seriously.”
My phone rings a third time. I’m sure Dave’s told me all he knows and I’m ready to go now. The phone call is perfectly timed. My heart freezes as I see the number for New Barn Cottage.
“Where the fuck are you?” Ruth sounds dangerous. She’s not shouting, but her voice is thick with rage. I imagine the muscle in her neck twitching. I search around my head for somewhere other than here that I should be. I thought our meetings with Dr. Bunce were over. I look at Dave, point at my phone as I move away towards the toilets. Ruth starts laughing, joylessly, down the line.