by Tim Weaver
‘So where did he go?’
She shrugged.
‘Did his wife go out and look for him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she didn’t find him?’
‘It wasn’t dark, so she could see clearly in all directions. There were no cars. No people. They were up there on their own. It was like he’d just vanished into thin air.’
My eyes dropped to the picture of Franks and, as I studied his face, for the first time something registered with me. A physical similarity.
‘So who is he?’ I asked.
‘His name’s Leonard Franks.’
‘No. I mean, who is he to you?’
She paused for a moment, eyes still on the picture of Franks, hands flat to the table. ‘He’s my father,’ she said quietly.
3
Craw was utterly still.
‘Dad should have retired at fifty-five, just like he’d wanted to, but they offered him a lot of money to stay on, and I think, deep down, he worried about being bored in retirement. He didn’t know anything else except the Met. It had been his entire life. So he took the offer, and committed to five more years.’ She looked at me, impassive at first, but then shrugged and I could see from her face that, in her opinion, Franks’s decision had been a bad one. ‘Eighteen months in, he started to regret it. He wouldn’t back out – that wasn’t the type of person he was; he didn’t let people down – but, slowly, he grew to hate London. In those last years, he used to complain about everything: the constant noise, having to live on top of people, the crush on the Tube, city politics. So he counted down the time until he turned sixty, then he and Mum upped sticks and were gone.’
‘Why Devon?’
She shrugged. ‘They’d just always loved it.’
‘You don’t have any other family down there?’
‘No.’ She ran a finger along the edge of her laptop, briefly caught in a memory. Her expression softened for a moment, presumably recalling her father, but then there was a flicker of pain. ‘About a year ago, Dad gets chatting to this guy who recently moved to their village with his wife. Derek Cortez. They get friendly and it turns out that Cortez used to be a cop too: he ran CID at Plymouth for a long time. He tells Dad that he’s also retired, but that he’s doing some consultation work for the CCRU.’
She could see I was familiar with it: the Criminal Case Review Unit. Their official remit: unresolved cases of homicide.
Cold cases.
‘Cortez went through files,’ she continued, ‘gave the police his take on things and then made a little money on the side. All perfectly legit – we do the same at the Met.’ Her hands moved to her glass of water. She pulled it towards her but didn’t take a drink. ‘So you can probably guess what happens next. Cortez says, if Dad wants, he can speak to his guy at Devon and Cornwall Police and get Dad involved too. Dad probably would have said no on the spot, because he was two years out of the force and pretty happy in retirement – but he and Mum had this big kitchen renovation they needed to do, and they weren’t going to turn away a little extra money to help pay for it. And, at the end of the day, it was cold-case work, so there was no pressure on him. Anything he dug up was a bonus and he knew the veranda was the only office he had to commute to. So he tells Cortez he’ll take a few cases. If it goes well, he’ll do more. If not, no hard feelings.’
I leaned forward and made a couple of notes.
It had been cold in the room when I’d entered, but now it was beginning to thaw, an air-conditioning unit on the wall humming gently in the silence.
‘So what happened next?’
She didn’t respond, eyes fixed on a space between us. A memory flashed in my head, of us sitting together in the house of a killer eighteen months before. This was that moment repeated, a point in time relived, just with the two of us on opposite sides. People connected, lives were bound to one another; if this proved anything, it was that.
‘He’d been at the Met for thirty-five years by the time he retired,’ she said, fingers knitted together on the table in front of her. ‘I’ve been there nineteen this year. But the weird thing is, we never really talked about work. It suited us both: Dad didn’t ever bring any of his cases home because he wanted a clear division between his life with Mum and his life in the office; and I didn’t want anyone at the Met accusing me of getting special treatment from him. It’s why I didn’t use the Franks surname when I started as a uniform. Craw was Mum’s maiden name. It was better that way. I never expected any favours, and I never wanted them. Everything I’ve achieved, I’ve achieved without a single second of help from Dad, or from the family name.’ She paused, looking at me. The muscles in her face tensed, as if she was trying to subdue her emotions. ‘But then something changed. On his sixty-second birthday – this was 23 February – my husband and I took the kids down there to see him, and he started talking to me about this case he’d taken on.’
‘What was the case?’
‘He mentioned this consultation work that Cortez had put him forward for. We were on our own, just the two of us – Bill, my husband, was upstairs; Mum and the kids were already in bed. I remember thinking I was surprised that he’d considered taking on the work, but I was more surprised that he’d even brought it up in the first place. Like I said, we’d never talked about his job before he retired, ever, and yet two minutes later he’s telling me about this case he was working.’ Her eyes flicked to the picture of her father. ‘For whatever reason, it had really got to him.’
I saw the subtext immediately: he’d worked at the Met for thirty-five years, he’d run the entire Homicide command, he’d seen everything there was to see, all the misery people wrought, all the darkness – and yet, at the end, there had been one case he couldn’t get on top of. All cops had them, and not always because they were the most horrific, or engendered the most anger. Sometimes the case stuck for other reasons.
‘In what way had it got to him?’
She started at the sound of my voice, my question catching her deep in thought. When she finally regained her composure, a little of the steel returned. ‘That’s just the problem,’ she said. ‘I never got those details out of him. He didn’t mention a victim, if there even was one. He never talked about specifics, never named names. He just said the case had been preying on his mind. In total, he probably only spent a minute telling me about it, but that was a minute more than he’d ever spent talking about anything else he’d ever done at the Met.’
‘So he didn’t give you any details at all?’
She shook her head.
‘You don’t remember anything he said?’
She grimaced. ‘Look, what you have to understand is that Dad opening up isn’t like other people opening up. Dad opening up is him telling me he was working a case; it’s him looking at me the way he did when he talked about it. It isn’t him spilling all the details about every investigation he worked in thirty-five years at the Met.’
She paused, frustrated. For a brief moment, I thought she might be about to tell me that maybe this was a bad idea – but, instead, she crossed her arms and leaned back.
‘The only thing I can tell you is that, the way he talked about it – or, rather, talked around it – made it sound like it had some connection to a case he’d already worked at the Met. He didn’t tell me that outright, but that’s what it felt like. He talked about it like he was already familiar with it. But when I tried to probe, he redirected the conversation, as if it didn’t matter. It wasn’t the content of the conversation, it was more …’ She stopped, head rocking from side to side, trying to pull the words into focus. She ran a hand through her hair. ‘It was more his tone, this … sadness he had. In the nine months he’s been gone, it’s never what he said that night that’s stuck with me. It’s the way he looked.’
‘So you went down to see him on 23 February for his birthday – then, eight days later, on 3 March, he was gone?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you have a copy of the
case he was working?’
‘No.’
‘It wasn’t at the house?’
‘No. That was the first thing I looked for after Mum called me up and told me he was gone. I headed down there, and turned that place over trying to find out where it was.’
‘Could he have kept it somewhere else?’
‘It’s a possibility. But why?’
Except she knew why; we both did. It was just a part of her didn’t want to have to think about it: the realization that whatever was in that file might have been enough for Franks to head out to the woodshed and never return. There were all sorts of reasons he might have kept the file somewhere else, away from the house: his wife, his sanity, his protection. Maybe the file had put him in danger. Or maybe he felt so burdened by its contents, so distressed by whatever he’d learned, that he’d been unable to get past it.
But had that been enough for him to walk out of the door, turn his back on his life, leave his wife, daughter and grandkids behind? Given his thirty-five years at the Met, I found the idea difficult to swallow – but I didn’t know him, so I couldn’t discount it yet.
Everyone had a tipping point.
I looked at her. ‘Otherwise, did your dad generally seem okay? You didn’t have any other worries about him? Your mum never mentioned him acting differently?’
‘You mean was he suicidal?’
She wasn’t on the attack exactly, but it was clear what she was telling me: I’ve already been down this road, already considered this – and the answer is no.
‘People who instigate their own disappearance aren’t necessarily suicidal,’ I said. ‘Sometimes they do it so they can start again; escape one life for another.’
‘That wasn’t Dad.’
‘Sometimes they do it for the good of their family.’
‘What good was he doing Mum?’
‘That’s just the point, though: we don’t know what was in the file. Maybe it was a selfless act. Maybe he felt that, by walking away, he was lessening the risk to you all.’
She didn’t say anything, but it was clear she wasn’t convinced. I understood her frustration, the doubts she had about him leaving voluntarily – but she, more than anyone, knew everything needed to be considered.
‘Financially they were okay?’
‘They were fine. He’d taken on the consultation work to help pay for the kitchen renovation – but they could have got by without it. He had a thirty-five-year pension.’
‘No problems between the two of them?’
‘They were fine.’
‘Would they have told you if there were?’
‘They were fine,’ she said, placing her hands flat to the table, fingers spread, her wedding ring making a soft ping against the veneer.
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But would they have told you if there were?’
A fleeting smile broke out at the fact that she was the one being questioned now. ‘Mum would. Dad was much more private. He internalized everything.’
That sounds familiar, I thought. That sounds like Craw.
‘Have you got any brothers or sisters?’
‘One brother. Carl.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘He met an Aussie girl eight years ago and emigrated to Sydney in 2010. I can arrange something over Skype,’ she added, but we both knew him being on the other side of the world cut down on the likelihood he knew anything or, worse, was involved. As if to confirm as much, she said, ‘He hasn’t been back to the UK since he moved.’
‘Okay. So who set up the missing persons file for you?’
‘After Mum called me and I headed down there, I drove her to Newton Abbot. The local copper was a guy called Reed. Iain Reed.’ She stopped, watching me make a note of the name, the room so quiet now I could hear the nib of the pen against the paper. ‘He seemed pretty bright, and said he’d speak to everyone. But then a couple of weeks later, he called me up and it was obvious the search was already hitting the skids. They’d taken prints from the house, a DNA sample, checked Dad’s car, spoken to his friends, to Derek Cortez, to anyone who might be even vaguely relevant – and they’d come up with nothing. So I started calling a few people myself, and I began with Cortez.’
‘What did you make of him?’
‘I was off the clock, so it wasn’t like I could drag him into an interview room and beat it out of him. All I had to go on was my gut. But, for me, Cortez checked out. He was a straight arrow; the sort of old-fashioned copper who probably didn’t take a risk in the entire time he was on the force. I seriously doubt he was involved in anything, beyond being the one who put Dad forward to Devon and Cornwall Police in the first place.’
‘Did Cortez know what was in the file?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Cortez said he would never have been shown the cold-case files Dad was being sent. That’s not how the process worked. Only Dad would see them.’
‘Does that seem likely to you?’
‘It checks out. His part was to pass on Dad’s address and a recommendation to his contact at the CCRU – and it was up to the CCRU to engage with Dad individually.’
‘So who was your dad’s contact at the CCRU?’
‘His name was DCI Gavin Clark.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Yes. He was different from Cortez, more officious – I guess because he was still on the force. I didn’t tell him what I did for a living to start with, but when he blanked me, I gave it the whole “blue blood” thing. “Show some solidarity. We’re all in this together.” Eventually, he went for it.’ For a moment it looked like some of the fight had left her. ‘Thing is, Clark said he never ended up mailing Dad a single case.’
That stopped me. ‘What?’
‘Cortez had passed on a recommendation to Clark; Clark had spoken to Dad on the phone and got a good reference from the Met. He said he was keen to use Dad’s experience, but he was still waiting on paperwork to be signed off before he could mail anything out.’
‘So, wait: your dad wasn’t working a CCRU case at the end?’
‘No.’
‘Do you think Clark was lying?’
‘No. I don’t think he was lying, I don’t think Cortez was lying, and I don’t think Dad would lie to me either. However this case had got to him, it was real.’
‘So you think another cold case just happened to land in his lap at the exact point in time he’d agreed to help the CCRU? That he was sent another file by another cop, who had somehow found out about his availability – and all under Clark’s nose?’
She must have seen the incredulity in my face, but it didn’t knock her off balance: ‘I don’t believe that file was sent to him by someone else from the CCRU. I don’t think it was even a CCRU file. In fact, I’m not sure it was a cop who mailed it to him.’
‘Then who?’
‘I think it might have been a civilian.’
I frowned. ‘A civilian who had a police file?’
‘Maybe it wasn’t an official police file.’
She’d never mentioned Franks looking at a police file, only that he’d been looking into a cold case. It still felt like a stretch, though. If it wasn’t Clark who had sent it, it was someone who knew Franks was open to consultation work, who’d come to him at the same time and who had enough authority to entice him out of retirement. Even leaving aside the coincidence of the timing, what civilian had that kind of clout?
I let it go for now and looped things back around to Franks’s missing persons file. ‘So when this local cop, Reed, hit a dead end, why not go searching yourself?’
A moment of defeat flashed in her face. ‘I did. But every database search is monitored and audited. When I got back to the office after Dad went missing, my super called me in. I’d told him what had happened to Dad, and he’d been good about giving me time off, but the first thing he said was, “Print off your dad’s file, if you haven’t already; keep a copy of it – but don’t use any more police resources to find him.” I didn’t
blame him. I would have done the same. A distracted cop with a separate agenda is dangerous.’
‘So you just stopped the search?’
‘No. I spoke to everyone Sergeant Reed spoke to, canvassed the village in case anyone saw anything, I went through Mum and Dad’s house, their finances, their entire life – but I had to do most of it remotely. I tried to get down to Devon, but it depended what shifts I was working and what cases were landing in my lap. When I couldn’t get down there, I checked in with Reed, and that went on until about a month ago when it became apparent that the search for Dad was dead in the water. I remember getting down to Devon three weeks ago and seeing Mum’s face, and it suddenly dawned on me: we’d be a year, two years, five years, ten years down the line and we’d still be in the same place.’ She looked from the file to me. ‘I’d searched that database top to bottom before I got told to back off, and I’d found nothing. Nothing. I’d reached the end of the road and didn’t have any more options. So I collected up everything I had – which didn’t amount to a hell of a lot, as you can see from what I’ve given you – and I called you.’
‘Why me?’
‘What do you mean?’
I smiled, because she knew what I meant. ‘A year and a half ago, you were telling me you’d make it your life’s work to put me behind bars.’
She nodded. ‘Look, there’s a bunch of ex-cops who are doing the private thing now. I could have asked them. But it’s too incestuous at the Met. I need someone on the outside, with no connections to the force, who I know …’ She paused, choosing her words carefully. But I saw where this was headed: up until now, the search for Leonard Franks had been played entirely by the book – now it was time for something else. ‘I don’t necessarily agree with the way you work, and I can’t condone it as a police officer. But, as a civilian, as a daughter, I’ve got to the point where I couldn’t care less. You know how to find missing people, you know the Devon area well, and – whatever your methods – you’re effective, and you care about people. And that’s what I need now.’
I started leafing through the file again. The missing persons report was the only official paperwork; everything else Craw had collated herself. As I came across Franks’s phone bills, I said, ‘What happened to your father’s mobile?’