by Tim Weaver
‘This is all Dad’s stuff,’ she said, placing a hand on top of one of the boxes. Both of them were big: two feet long by about a foot and a half high. ‘Obviously the furniture is still back at the house in Devon. Some clothes too. Other stuff as well: his tools are in the shed, his desktop PC in the lounge, nick-nacks, that kind of thing. But the rest is here.’
‘There was nothing on his desktop PC?’
‘It’s ancient. They used it to print off letters, and as a way to get photos off their camera. You can take a look when you head down there.’ The rest was implied: if you don’t believe me.
I flipped the lid on one of the boxes.
Inside it was like a car-boot sale: photographs, old diaries, some books, DVDs, an OS map of Dartmoor. Basically, an orderless cross-section of his life.
‘Have you been through this?’
She nodded. ‘Many times.’
I found more of the same in the second box, although there was an iPad this time – which Craw had mentioned in her notes – next to a framed photograph of Franks, in uniform, at another police ceremony. He looked much younger in this one, maybe late forties, and was standing on stage somewhere, shaking hands with a uniformed officer. On the other guy’s shoulder patch I could see his insignia: an assistant commissioner.
Next to the iPad was a mid-range SLR camera and shoebox on its side, an elastic band around it. I reached in and brought out the SLR first. As I started to scroll through the photos on its tiny digital screen – beginning with pictures of Ellie standing on their veranda – Craw said, ‘All the pictures on there are on the iPad if that makes it easier.’
‘All of them?’
‘Every single one. I’ve checked about fifty times. Of course, you’ll want to make sure, though.’ She phrased it vaguely like an insult, but I let it go, placing the camera back inside, and she gestured to the shoebox. ‘All his notebooks are in there. Before iPads and smartphones came along, Dad was a paper man – he wrote everything down.’
‘That’s good for me.’
‘The iPad’s his, but they both used it. Mum took a lot of video on it, so she could show me what they’d been up to when I went down to see them. I guess we both kind of forced him into buying it after he retired because they were down there in the middle of nowhere, and Mum worried that he’d go a bit stir-crazy after spending his life in the city.’ She pointed at the SLR. ‘But the truth was, he was fine. He really got into his photography, followed his sport, planned out hikes, kept in touch with friends.’
‘Friends like Carla Murray and Jim Paige?’
She studied me, as if she thought I was trying to play her. ‘I suppose.’
‘You don’t know either of them?’
‘I know Jim pretty well, Carla not so much.’
I plucked the iPad out of the box. Franks had synced his Gmail account to the Mail app, and although I’d already been through all the conversations he’d had with ex-colleagues in the police force, I could see more clearly now, after speaking to Ellie, why she’d described Paige and Murray as being her husband’s two closest friends at the Met.
In the email chain with Murray, there were one hundred and sixty-seven messages over the course of the two years Franks had been retired. In one, Murray even directly referenced the number of cases they’d worked together. I reckon it was one hundred and thirty-nine, she said. I could see the level of comfort they had in each other’s company, how they used the same unofficial shorthand (‘the hole’ was the commissioner’s office; the weekly stats they had to compile were ‘Dumbers’ instead of numbers), and while they both stuck to the same subjects – she: office politics, promotions, government budget cuts; he: renovations, Dartmoor, retirement – it gave a clear sense of their relationship.
The only thing that really caught my attention this time was the frequency of the emails in the five weeks before his disappearance. Before 27 January, they were in touch with each other at least once a week; sometimes second or third emails were only short replies to previous messages, but clearly both Franks and Murray felt compelled enough to reply. And yet, after 27 January, up until his disappearance on 3 March, emails dropped right off: one exchange in the first week; nothing in the second; an email from Murray that Franks didn’t reply to in the third week; another from Murray in the fourth week that Franks did reply to; and then nothing in that final week before he vanished. The tone of the emails hadn’t changed: they were still friendly, and they were both still talking about the same sort of things – so why the sudden drop-off in volume?
I wanted to speak to her, and wanted to speak to Jim Paige too. He and Franks had come up through the ranks together and been friends ever since. A friendship over that period of time forged bonds that couldn’t easily be broken, and sometimes led along roads you might not travel for anyone else. Their conversations were chummier than the ones with Murray, and less reverent: she still treated him with respect, even while they joked around, whereas Paige called him ‘Len’ and ‘General Franko’, and constantly had fun at his expense. Like those with Murray, though, Jim and Franks’s conversations had a real warmth to them. And as I moved through the emails with a fresh sense of the role Paige had played in Franks’s life before retirement, things began to crystallize further: other colleagues who had been at their pay scale, the social circles they’d moved in, their love of being out on the golf course, memorable tales from a Met skittles league they’d both played in. The emails contained fine detail too, like the name of their local pub, a place called the Hare and Badger, which they both spoke of fondly, and which Paige talked up for serving real ale. It was one of the only times the pair of them got sentimental. In a conversation from 2012, where Franks mentioned that he missed their ‘weekly chinwag at the Badger’, Paige said things weren’t the same since he’d gone.
‘I’d like to speak to them.’
‘Murray and Paige?’ Craw asked.
I nodded. ‘Murray says she worked one hundred and thirty-nine cases with your dad. That’s a lot of cases. One of those might have a connection to the file he was sent.’
‘That’s going to be hard.’
‘Why?’
‘Why do you think? As soon as I do the introductions, they’ll know I’ve hired you to find Dad. Jim’s an old family friend – but he’s also part of the Met top brass. One call to my super and I’m on disciplinary. I didn’t get into this to end up with the sack.’
‘You got into it to search for your dad.’
A flash of frustration in her face.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I get what the risks are, but if you want to find out what happened to him, you’re going to have to help me out a bit.’
She paused, annoyed that I wasn’t backing down. Then her faced softened: she’d thought of something. ‘Actually, there might be a way.’ She stopped a second time, her mind turning over. ‘There’s a Met charity event tonight at a wine bar on Millbank. It’s mostly cops, but there are some Whitehall suits, journalists – you shouldn’t look too out of place. Unless, that is, you run into one of your many friends on the force.’
I smiled. ‘Murray and Paige will be there?’
‘Paige will. I don’t know about Murray. Like I say, I don’t know her that well – only to say hello to, and only through Dad. Do you want me to get you a ticket?’
‘Can you get me two?’
She frowned, instantly suspicious. ‘Who you planning on bringing – Healy? That should liven things up a bit. I think he’s got even fewer friends in blue than you have.’
‘No. I haven’t seen Healy for over a year.’
Despite the way she’d spoken his name, a sadness lingered in her face. Colm Healy was a failed project of hers, a cop she’d tried to bring back from the hinterland, someone she’d rescued from the ignominy of suspension, but who had ultimately betrayed her trust. I’d known him even longer than Craw, but saw the same person as her: a man full of anger and bitterness, whose aggression was a way to subdue his own failings; and then th
e heartbroken soul drifting in the shadows beneath, still deeply affected by the death of his daughter, and a case that destroyed his life. I hadn’t talked with Healy for a long time; it sounded like Craw hadn’t either – but in a strange way he remained the one thing we had in common.
‘Any idea what he’s up to these days?’ she asked.
‘No.’ But then I remembered something I’d said to Annabel the previous day: I’ve found that life has a way of tethering you to certain people.
It was Healy I’d been thinking of when I told her that. We weren’t friends exactly – perhaps never would be, at least conventionally – but there was something between us: a kinship, a connection, some kind of subtle, unspoken duality. After Craw had fired him in June 2012, I’d offered to put him up at my parents’ old place in south Devon while I recovered from being stabbed. He’d had nowhere else to go, and – as he was one of the major reasons I hadn’t ended up dying that day – I felt I owed him for helping save my life. But then he’d come back to London five months later, in November, and I hadn’t heard from him in the thirteen months since. I’d tried calling him, but he’d never called back. In the end, I figured he wanted it that way.
‘So,’ she said, ‘if not Healy, then who?’
‘I’d like to bring my daughter.’
She frowned. ‘I didn’t realize you were a father.’
‘Neither did I until a year ago.’
She studied me a moment longer. ‘Fine.’
‘Thank you.’
‘For obvious reasons, though, I can’t –’
‘I get it. I’m on my own.’
Craw watched as I placed the iPad back and took out the shoebox that had been sitting next to it. I got the feeling that she was wondering what she’d signed herself up for with the charity event, but I didn’t say anything; this would probably be my only shot at Paige, and deep down, despite the reservations she had as a professional, her feelings for her father were pulling her in the opposite direction. She knew it had to be done.
I flipped the lid off the shoebox.
Inside was a series of black A6-sized diaries, spines facing up, each with a gold-foil year printed on it. At one end of the box was 1982; at the other, 1994. There were also two bigger A5 notebooks, thicker, with white covers. There were no dates on their spines. I picked one of them out and could see it had been used as much more than a diary: Franks had marked dates off, scribbled in meetings and reminders, sketched out crime scenes, listed theories and stuck in Post-its.
I held the shoebox up to Craw. ‘Have you been through these?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t find anything?’
She shook her head. ‘But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something worth finding. I worry that I’m too close – to him, to the life he led, to his career as a cop.’
‘Can I take all this stuff with me?’
‘That’s what it’s all here for.’
Briefly, something passed across her face. She’d probably spent the past twenty-four hours wondering if involving me was a good thing, not because she didn’t trust my abilities or my instincts, but because she had to accept her part in this was over. I was talking to her mother and to her. I was taking home the cardboard boxes and being given the keys to the Frankses’ house on Dartmoor. All of a sudden, this was my case, not hers.
Now all she could do was wait.
13
The steakhouse was at the northern end of Long Acre, halfway between Covent Garden and Kingsway. After I left Craw’s place in Wimbledon, I called Annabel and gave her directions to the restaurant, and then found a space in a car park close to Waterloo. The walk across the river was cold, wind rolling down the Thames like a wave, and by the time I got to the Strand, sleet was drifting out of the sky and I was chilled to the bone.
The place was called Gustavo’s, after the owner. It was at the far end of a long, narrow cul-de-sac and was wedged between a property firm and an advertising agency. Instead of the bland, silver-grey panels of the businesses that surrounded it, its front was mostly all glass, potted bay trees sitting either side of its door, a striped canvas awning pulled all the way down, protecting lunchtime smokers from the sleet.
Inside it was done out in dark wood panelling, booths lined up around its edges, tables in the middle. It was small, but it was warm and the food smelled good. I asked for a booth at the window, looking back up the alley, so I could see when Annabel arrived.
I’d grabbed a backpack from the car and thrown in some stuff from the boxes that Craw had given me, including more photos, Franks’s iPad and the two white notebooks. A lot of the contents of the boxes, even at a quick glance, I knew wouldn’t come to much – old golf trophies, dog-eared airport thrillers, comedy snowglobes – but the iPad and notebooks were different. I unzipped the bag and took everything out.
The photos were a good spread, but nothing I hadn’t seen before. This collection leaned much more towards his work life than his home life: time-bleached shots of him sitting on the edge of a desk in a Santa hat at an office Christmas party; flanked by three other cops, what looked like a CID office in the background, all striking comedy poses; a serious picture of him at his desk; in plain clothes again, arms crossed, on a stage, listening to someone off camera; and an official police photograph, in full uniform.
Midway down the pile, sandwiched between interchangeable pictures of his career, was the only photo that didn’t include him. Not him, not his work, not the police, not his family. Instead, it was a discoloured shot of Dartmoor, taken in the depths of winter, the ground covered in a blanket of frost. There were swathes of bracken rising up out of the chalk-white grass and – in the spaces between – huge moss-covered boulders, scattered as if they’d dropped from the sky. Whoever had taken the picture was elevated, maybe even on a tor, looking down a valley between two sweeping hillsides. Nestled in the cleft at the bottom was a tiny stone bridge and, behind that, the silhouette of a spire. The drop from the point at which the picture had been taken, to the bridge, must have been eight hundred feet, and a stream – silvery in the soft morning light – ran almost the entire way.
I turned the picture slightly, holding it up to the light.
On the left, built in a natural plateau on the hillside, was what remained of a tinner’s hut, a square of grey rubble embedded in the grass where the foundations of a house had once stood. My eyes drifted to the spire again, trying to imagine where the shot might have been taken. If it was a spire, it was a church. If it was a church, that probably meant a village. It wouldn’t have been Postbridge because there was no church with a spire, but it was definitely Dartmoor: the bracken, the hut, the moorland. So why would Franks place this alongside photos from his life at the Met? Or was it here by mistake?
I set the picture aside and shifted my attention to his iPad.
His applications were spread across two pages, but the desktop had changed very little from how it would have looked, box-fresh, from the factory. He hadn’t divided any of them into sub-folders or tried to order them in any way, and the few additions he’d made didn’t stand out: BBC iPlayer, 4OD, Skype, Sky Go, a rambler’s app, maps for walkers. I logged in to Skype to see what his contacts list looked like and found only two names: Craw and her brother. In Videos, he’d added nothing; in Music, there were ten songs, all classical; there were no names in his Contacts, no Reminders or Notes, no magazine subscriptions in Newsstand.
I’d already been through his email, so I moved on to Safari, tracing Franks’s web history back. His life on the Internet seemed to reflect his taste in apps: walks around Dartmoor, sport, a little TV and film – and repeat visits to an amateur photography site, specifically their tutorials on how to take better pictures with the type of SLR he had.
Tapping on Photos, I found two hundred and five pictures and twenty-one videos. There were plenty of pictures of the house before and after they’d moved in, some of them renovating it, some of Craw and her family on its veranda, one o
f Franks at the side of the property, repairing something on their Audi – but mostly they seemed to be landscapes.
Ellie stood in a number of them, framed by stark, stunning scenery: hills rolling away into the grey mist of morning; sun falling out of the sky behind her; open farmland, cows grazing, a tor rising into half-light. I took a second look at the physical photo I’d set aside, of the valley and the remains of the tinner’s hut. It was of the same ilk. He was an amateur photographer, interested enough to spend hours on the Internet finding out how to take better pictures. It made sense he’d tried to capture this part of the world.
I didn’t have any headphones with me, so I turned the volume down and started to go through the videos. They were dotted among the photos, and it was easy to establish a pattern: all the pictures had been taken on Franks’s SLR, transferred to their desktop PC at home and then across to the tablet. All the videos had been taken directly on the iPad.
The first video had been shot two months after their move to Dartmoor, Ellie on camera, Franks putting a sledgehammer through a dividing wall in the living room. I remembered what Craw had said on the video she’d shot of the house: This room used to be divided into two, but Dad knocked the wall down when they moved in.
This was the first time I’d seen him in motion, his thinning silver hair – parted to one side – soaked with sweat, his six-one frame still lean, despite a slight paunch. He moved cautiously at first, as if conscious of the limitations of his body, but then – as he began to swing the sledgehammer – he got into a rhythm and his age became irrelevant: even in his early sixties, he was still strong and powerful, returning again and again to the wall until all that was left of it was ragged plasterboard, wooden struts and dust.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ Ellie said, the microphone on the iPad distorting slightly as she strayed too close to it. Franks was clearing debris away from what little remained of the wall. He looked back over his shoulder at her and broke out into a smile. I’d seen him smile in pictures Craw had given me, but not like this: sweat glistened on his face, soaked through his clothes, and he was out of breath. But he was relaxed. The smile was real.