by Weaver, Tim
‘He was insinuating you shouldn’t be seeing her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Later, I found out that she worked for a tech firm that was in direct competition with one of the guys in the high-rollers group.’
‘So he’s mopping up for them?’
‘That’s what Cornell’s job is: he uncovers things, and he shuts things down.’
As I tried to figure out how to loop the conversation back round to the Lings, I remembered something he’d said to me earlier: After I saw you, that’s when it hit home. He meant that night in the Mandalay Bay, when we’d run into each other. I think bumping into you was some kind of sign, one I should have taken more notice of.
‘What happened that night at the Mandalay Bay?’
A long pause. ‘Meeting you there was the first time I realized what I’d got myself into. I went to the toilet, I was washing my hands, I looked up …’ He glanced at me, the colour draining from his face. ‘And Cornell was standing there. It wasn’t one of the high-roller get-togethers, so I never expected to see him. I hadn’t seen him at the casino that night. I never even heard him follow me into the bathroom.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That’s the thing. He didn’t say anything. All he did was stand there. When I tried to talk to him, he refused to even speak. He just stared me down, that same look on his face. Everything about him …’ He glanced at me again, unable to articulate what he felt. But he didn’t need to. I understood. Men like Cornell rarely had to say a word, because everything they were was already written in their eyes. ‘Eventually, when I got nothing from him, I went to leave the bathroom – and that was when he asked me who you were.’
‘You told him?’
‘I told him you were a journalist. I had to.’
‘And then?’
‘And then he said there was a cab waiting for me out front.’ His face filled with a mix of dread and fear. ‘It wasn’t a negotiation, believe me.’
He didn’t need to fill in the blanks. As a hush settled in the room, I recalled that night at the Mandalay Bay – and then the man who had come up to me at the bar after Lee had failed to return. You’re just flesh and bones like everyone else.
Cornell.
‘Tell me how all this connects to the Lings.’
He eyed me, teetering on the brink of committing, but it felt like he was most of the way there already. The knowledge of what had happened to the family was starting to weigh heavy, and with secrets, most often, came guilt. The high-rollers group, its protector Cornell, the deaths of Ray Muire and Barry Rew, they were all orbiting the family; I could sense it even if I didn’t have a clear sight of the links. And I could see it in Lee’s face too: a subtle recognition that this confession had to come. Innocence soon turned into collusion when you found yourself chained to men you were scared of.
‘After Annabel had her accident in 2010,’ he started, almost in a whisper, ‘the pain Paul was in, it was just there in his face the whole time. So, in February 2011, I offered to pay for them. I didn’t think anything of it. All I’d be doing is helping Annabel.’ As the wind picked up again, the loft hatch started swinging in the shadows. He glanced at it and then back to me. ‘Even so, I was careful. So careful. There was this orthopaedic surgeon I’d met through the group. He’d come up from Palm Springs and gambled a ton of money. I’d heard from a couple of the high rollers how brilliant this guy was, but Carter especially sang his praises. He told me they were old, old friends, that he, Ray and this guy had known each other since they were kids. He said he trusted this guy like he trusted Ray, and that was good enough for me. That was the kind of doctor Annabel needed. So I called this guy up and asked him if he’d see her. He told me it would be his pleasure. All I had to do was get Annabel out to Schiltz.’
‘The doctor’s name was Schiltz?’
‘Yeah. Eric Schiltz.’
‘Schiltz was English?’
‘Yes. But he’d spent most of his life in the States. He moved there to study when he was in his early twenties, and just stayed. He helped Carter set up his first international office in LA – put him in touch with builders, planners, all that kind of thing. Then, later on, he moved from LA to Palm Springs, to work at a hospital in Cathedral City.’
Parker. Cathedral. Dicloflex. I had two out of three now.
‘Schiltz became this massively celebrated surgeon,’ Lee continued. ‘Did all the sports stars and celebrities, and then retired early with a mountain of money. Like, really early, at fifty-three or fifty-four. He’d been on the golf course for ten years at that point. He did some consultation, lectured a little, but he didn’t run his own practice. He agreed to see Annabel, though. It probably helped he knew me through the group. If Cornell did one good thing, it was introducing me to Eric.’
‘What happened next?’
I could see a memory form in his eyes. ‘I flew the Lings into LAX, organized for them to be picked up at the airport and driven down to Palm Springs, and then met them down there. I put them up in this amazing two-bedroom villa at the Parker.’
And now I had all three names.
Paul must have written the list while speaking to Lee over the phone or on Skype – Lee passing on the message about Dicloflex from Schiltz – and I suspected the police would have come to the same conclusion. But without Lee and the connection to the high-rollers group, it would have been hard for the cops to piece it all together: the Parker was a hotel one hundred and thirty miles away from LAX, Cathedral City was another four miles away, and the whole family had returned safely in May 2011 and remained that way until their disappearance. It must have been the reason police kept hold of Paul’s wallet for so long – because they were never able to narrow down the names he’d left inside. Most likely, eventually, they wrote the US trip off as an irrelevant side-note.
‘Okay,’ I said to him. ‘Go on.’
Lee shrugged. ‘Carter and Eric were both members of that group, and I knew Cornell wouldn’t approve of me using them, of bringing a bunch of outsiders into contact with them like that. So I told Paul not to mention anything to anyone. I wanted the whole trip contained. Paul and Carrie probably thought I was losing it. Sometimes I thought I might be losing it myself. I was paranoid, I knew that. But I didn’t want to have Cornell turn up on my doorstep, and I didn’t want the Lings involved with him. All I cared about was getting Annabel there, getting her fixed and then getting them back home again.’
I recalled how Emily had known nothing about the trip: no details, nothing of the clinic, nothing of the doctor that had operated on Annabel. It made sense now.
‘Paul agreed to keep things quiet?’
‘He was happy to oblige me – I was paying for everything, after all. Even so, I was cautious: I booked the Parker under my name, gave them cash and pre-paid mobiles.’
‘But it didn’t work?’
‘No,’ he said, and his voice tremored. ‘Everything was going fine: Annabel went in for two consultations, she had the operation, she was doing brilliant things in recovery and the four of them were having an amazing time in Palm Springs. After a month in the States, Paul and Olivia had to get back to the UK, so I stuck them on a plane and after they were gone there was no blowback. No contact from Cornell. I gave Schiltz a call and asked him how long he needed Carrie and Annabel to remain in Palm Springs, and he was relaxed about it too. A few weeks, he told me, so I extended their stay at the Parker, and a week before they were due to go home, Schiltz invites them both to his home. He lived in this suburb where all the Hollywood stars used to stay. This beautiful old place. It was a two-birds-with-one-stone thing for him, I guess: Annabel was due a final consultation and needed sign-off from Schiltz to travel back home, and Schiltz had really grown to like them and wanted to have them both around to dinner – see his home, get to know them away from the hospital. Eric … he was always a nice guy.’
He stopped, his eyes just briefly straying to the doorway, as if recal
ling the life he’d led before this; before this room. But then reality seemed to hit, and he was back in a decaying farmhouse in the middle of winter and there was nowhere else to go.
‘When Carrie and Annabel turned up at Schiltz’s place, he must have taken them to his study.’ He looked at me. ‘And that was when it all went wrong.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘That’s why I had to leave the States.’
‘What are you talking about?’
His head dropped and he stared into his hands – and when he raised his eyes to me again, they shimmered in the subdued light. ‘Carrie …’
‘What about her?’
‘She saw something she shouldn’t have.’
35
The rain stopped and a pregnant lull settled around the house: dark, swollen clouds yet to tear themselves apart above us; silence inside; Lee small and frightened and half covered by darkness. He shifted against the bed, then just looked down at the floor.
Carrie saw something she shouldn’t have.
‘What did she see?’
‘A photograph.’
‘Of what?’
He eyed me. ‘A man.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘But he’s someone bad. If I had to guess, I’d say someone bad enough to bring down Cornell and whatever he’s involved in.’
‘How’d you figure that?’
‘We had a get-together at the Bellagio in the August, three months after the Lings went home. The next morning, a few of the guys said they were staying in town, so we all went for breakfast. One of the guys was Eric Schiltz. Me and him sat at one end of the table, and he started telling me about how his room had been broken into the night before; some woman had stolen his room key and then taken his laptop.’
‘The photograph was on the laptop?’
‘Yes. Schiltz had scanned a load of old pictures in.’
‘And what happened when Cornell found out?’
‘You can assume he got the laptop back.’
‘Why can you assume that?’
‘Because he’s Cornell. That’s what he does.’
I watched Lee. He was scared of Cornell. ‘So,’ I said softly, and he stirred, like he was climbing out of a deep, dark hole, ‘Cornell got the laptop back – but what about the original photograph?’
‘That was at Schiltz’s house in Palm Springs. Cornell told him to burn it.’
‘And did he?’
‘Yes,’ Lee said. ‘As soon as he got back. But it was too late. Because what Cornell didn’t realize was that, three months before, Carrie had been in Schiltz’s study.’
Then it hit home. ‘She saw the original.’
Lee nodded.
‘And, what, Carrie recognized the guy in the photo?’
‘Yes.’
‘From where?’
‘From her MA.’
I paused, momentarily confused – and then I realized Lee was talking about the History course Carrie was taking at Exeter University. ‘Her History MA?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the guy in the picture got to do with her MA?’
‘I don’t know.’
I remembered the folder on Paul Ling’s PC, the one with her notes in. It had been all about the Soviet Union in the years after the Second World War. ‘She didn’t tell you?’
‘I never spoke to her about it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I only spoke to Paul.’
‘But Carrie must have told Paul who this guy was. They were married. If she recognized this guy, they would have had that conversation at some point, surely?’
‘No. Carrie instantly recognized the guy in the picture, but she never mentioned anything to Paul. Six months passed before Paul found out, and that was by chance.’
‘Why didn’t she tell him before that?’
Lee shrugged. ‘He always thought her MA was a waste of time. He would have preferred that, if she’d wanted to study again, she’d done something more useful, to her, to him, to the girls. I don’t know. This was what he kept saying – that it was a pointless qualification. The type of person Carrie was, that would have just made her all the more determined to see it through. Don’t get me wrong, they were happily married, they got on and agreed about most things – but that MA, that created some conflict.’
‘Which is why she never bothered bringing it up with him.’
‘Right.’
‘So how did he find out about the photo?’
‘He’d got home and she’d left her notebook open with this picture in it. It was a photograph of a photograph; she’d taken a picture of the original in Schiltz’s office with her camera phone. Got really close in, so she made sure the guy came out clearly. Paul saw the notebook, was curious, and they started discussing her MA over dinner. She ended up telling him about how she’d taken it at Schiltz’s place.’
‘Did he ask why she’d taken it?’
‘She lied to him and said Schiltz was helping with research into the history of orthopaedics.’
‘But Schiltz didn’t know anything about it?’
‘No.’
‘And Paul? Didn’t he realize she was lying?’
‘No.’
‘So, if he didn’t know it was a lie, why did he mention it to you?’
Lee took a long, deep breath. ‘Like I said to you earlier, before I flew them out for Annabel’s operation, I’d told them to keep the trip on the quiet, keep a low profile. I’d asked for that one favour. Carrie was a good person – I doubt she would have deliberately gone against my wishes – but I think maybe she’d decided I was being overly cautious. Maybe paranoid. Maybe weird. That’s why she didn’t think for a moment that taking that photo could hurt. Paul, though, he could see I meant it. He didn’t know why, he didn’t know about Cornell, but he could see I was serious. I think that’s why he chose to tell me about what he saw in the notebook.’
‘So did he scan it in and send it to you?’
He nodded. ‘And in the middle of November, when we had our next get-together at the Bellagio, I got talking to Schiltz and tried to persuade him to tell me what was so damaging about the photo – but he refused. He kept telling me that he was done talking about it, that I should keep my voice down in case Cornell heard. But by that time it was already too late. I looked across the room, and Cornell was just standing there, watching us.’ Then he stopped. He gave me a sideways glance, fear in his eyes. ‘He just stood there. Staring. I swear to you, it was like he could hear everything we were saying. I know it sounds crazy, but it was like he was reading my mind. I just knew. I just knew from that moment I was in deep, deep shit.’
‘So what happened after that?’
‘I spent the whole night trying to keep out of his way, and the next morning, when everyone started to leave, I found a back entrance and headed out to my car. He was waiting for me outside. He didn’t say anything, just stood there, and I basically fell apart on the spot.’ A pause. A smile. But there was nothing in it, just remorse. ‘You don’t know what Cornell is like, David. The second he looks at you, you see what he is capable of. He’s like … I don’t know, like a vessel or something, carrying around all this violence and misery. When he looked at me, I just started talking and the next minute I was showing him the scan I had of Carrie’s notebook, and trying to cut some sort of deal.’
‘Deal?’
‘The Lings for Schiltz.’ He eyed me like I’d accused him of something. But it wasn’t me attacking, it was him. He was hanging himself with his own culpability. ‘I told Cornell that Schiltz was the reason this had all gone to hell. I tried to play on Eric’s carelessness, on the fact that he should never have had that photograph just lying around.’
‘But you didn’t even know who the guy in the photograph was.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I just tried to sound convincing. I said to Cornell, “Do whatever you want to Schiltz, but don’t do anything to the family. They’re my res
ponsibility. I’ll take care of Carrie’s copy.” I tried to play on their innocence: they didn’t know what they were doing, it wasn’t their fault, don’t blame them. The reality was, I never even knew what was so important about that picture. Still don’t. I just knew it could hurt Cornell.’
‘So did Cornell take the deal?’
‘No.’ A tremble passed through him. ‘All I ended up doing was committing us both to the ground – Schiltz and me. Cornell said the original copy of the photograph was gone, and everything would have been okay if Schiltz and I hadn’t brought the Lings in to this. If Carrie had never been in that study, she never would have seen the picture.’
‘You’re still alive. What happened to Schiltz?’
Lee looked at me and said nothing, but it was written all over his face; as tears blurred in his eyes he was remembering how Schiltz had saved the life of someone he had cared deeply about – and in return Lee had sent him to his death.
‘I just ran,’ he said. ‘I booked the first flight home, I came straight here and I lay low for a couple of weeks. But it was playing on my mind the whole time. Twenty-four hours a day. What if Cornell gets to the Lings? What if he sends people after them? So I called Paul, trying to persuade him to take Carrie and the girls somewhere; book a flight, do anything, just get them all out of the country. I spoke to him three times. Eventually I got so frustrated, I even told him to come here – I compromised my safety so I could plead with him face to face.’
‘Why didn’t he listen to you?’
‘Something changed. He drove up here on, I don’t know, I think it was 3 January, and I swear he left believing everything I was telling him. He could see in my face I wasn’t messing around. But by the time he got home, something had changed.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. But he’d changed his mind.’
And then a thought came to me: the spoof call.
It was made on the night of 3 January. I’d always assumed it must have been a phone call threatening the Lings because the next day Paul had called the travel agent, albeit for only nine seconds. But maybe it was the exact opposite: maybe it was a call to set Paul’s mind at rest somehow, to tell him everything was going to be fine. That would explain the short call to the travel agency. A call of that duration spoke of a man battling with uncertainty: Lee, his best friend, on the one side, telling him he needed to make a break for it; the anonymous caller, assured, convincing, telling him everything was fine. I wondered briefly how the anonymous call the police received fitted in: it had come two days after the Lings went missing, directing the cops to Miln Cross. Was it the same person? Were they just trying to throw the case team off the scent … or was the caller trying to help in some way? Were both calls trying to help the Lings in some way? My head was buzzing with static, so I let it go and moved on: ‘So, you think Cornell took the family?’