by Tim Weaver
‘You ever answer your phone?’
I frowned, confused, then felt around in my pocket for my mobile. Rain splashed against the display as I checked it – but I could read it clearly enough.
No missed calls.
‘You never even called me,’ I said.
She looked taken aback. ‘I called you three times today.’
I looked at the phone again. ‘No.’
‘Yes. Three times.’
She dug around in her own pocket and brought out her phone, holding it up for me to see. I took a step closer. In her Recent Calls list was my name: once at two-forty this afternoon; the second time an hour later at three-thirty-one; the third time at five-ten.
I checked my phone again.
Nothing.
‘I didn’t get a single call from you,’ I said.
She studied me, a flicker of suspicion in her face, then put her phone away again and pointed to my arm. ‘What happened?’
‘What are you doing here?’ I said again.
‘I got a call from Derek Cortez at lunchtime.’
Cortez: the retired cop in the village.
‘Cortez? Why?’
‘He said he saw someone coming up to the house.’
‘Yeah. Me.’
‘Well, I know that now.’
‘So you came all the way down here, just to be sure?’
She looked at me, and it was clear that wasn’t everything. ‘He said he saw someone up here three days ago.’
Reynolds.
He’d come to set up his makeshift alarm system. But three days ago, the case had barely even started. Three days ago, I was only just arriving at the members’ club to meet Craw. Yet he already had knowledge of our meeting, even then. He’d already been a step ahead. Then I remembered something he’d said to me back at the house, less than thirty minutes ago: I’ve been watching you for a while now, and you’ve never had a clue.
‘What happened?’ Craw asked, her eyes back on my injuries.
‘Did you pass anyone on your way up here?’
She frowned. ‘No. Why?’
I glanced at the house. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’
‘What’s wrong with here?’
Maybe you should be the one that’s scared.
‘Here’s not safe any more.’
My car was battered, broken, and the engine had developed a gentle tick, but it worked – just about – so, after Craw helped me to change the tyre, I led her back into Postbridge, and then south-west towards Princetown. Staying on the moors was a risk: it was lonely and isolated here, and I could be got at again without anyone noticing. But that was also what gave it its edge: with no one else around, it would be easier to see someone coming.
My first priority was to stay off the radar until I knew Annabel and Olivia were definitely safe. Nothing mattered but their sanctuary. Once Task had them secured, then I’d think about my next move.
Given everything I’d found out about him, even if I decided backing down was the best way to survive, the reality was Reynolds wasn’t going to want a loose end. Even if Franks was still alive, even if Reynolds did to him whatever it was he was trying to do – find him, kill him – Reynolds would be back for me. I fought now or I fought later, but either way I fought. When it came down to it, Reynolds would never let me just walk away.
As the lights of Princetown emerged from the blackness of the moors, we traced its northern fringes, rain lashing at our cars, sheep scattering in the fields either side of us, and I kept returning to the same questions. Why would Reynolds let me go? Why not take me out of the equation tonight, at the house, while he’d had the chance?
Eventually, the answer came to me.
Even if I didn’t have a clear sight of his motivation yet, I realized Reynolds was in the same position as I was: he didn’t know if Franks was dead or alive. He hadn’t found him yet. All he had was a series of dead ends. What he needed was a fresh approach. Someone with new ideas.
That was where I came in.
By telling me to stop, he probably banked on me reacting. He’d expect me to do the exact opposite. He’d know enough about me to realize I wouldn’t just down tools and walk away from a case. That wasn’t how I was programmed.
So now he was going to try to use me.
Watch me.
Tail me.
He was going to let me lead him to Franks.
And then, once he had the truth, he would bury me in the ground.
54
There was a small twenty-four-hour service station on the Plymouth road, just south of Tavistock. At the smeared windows of its café was a series of moulded plastic booths, each one occupied by lorry drivers making the journey from north to south, loaded up with deliveries for a new week. I pulled into the car park and headed right to the back of it, using the shadows and the lorries as cover from the road. Craw followed. After I switched off the engine, it ticked over, rattling as if something had come loose.
We made our way around to the front. Inside it was quiet but not empty: a couple of people looked up, but most didn’t even acknowledge us, the majority with cups of tea in their hands and newspapers laid out on the table in front of them.
The decor was tatty: worn, laminated surfaces; paint-blistered walls. There was a scratched counter behind which a grey-haired man in his sixties stood, half turned towards a serving hatch. A woman of about the same age was talking to him from the other side. The whole place was like a time warp, perfectly encapsulated by the fact that the radio was playing songs from the seventies.
We ordered coffees.
In a broad Devonshire accent the guy said he’d bring them over, so I led us to the far corner of the café, as far away from the windows – and everyone else – as possible, and claimed the space against the wall. It allowed me to keep an eye on the doors.
I turned my attention to Craw. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been sleeping well. Her eyes were ringed by soft grey lines, her skin pale. She’d had the hood up on a black parka, but as we sat down she removed it and unzipped her coat, running a hand through her short, rain-slicked hair. She was wearing a charcoal jumper with a black-and-white pattern on it that looked like a shattered chessboard.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
I nodded. ‘It’s been an interesting night.’
‘Shouldn’t you see a doctor?’
My shoulder was feeling easier now, the process of changing gear on the drive down working some of the stiffness out of it. ‘I think it’s just bruising.’
‘Your car looks pretty bruised as well.’
I smiled. ‘Yeah. That’ll definitely need a doctor.’
The guy brought our coffees over. After he was gone, Craw emptied two sachets of sugar and a ton of milk into hers. In a strange way, it surprised me: if I’d had to guess, I would have had her down as black, no sugar.
‘I think you might have been trying to call my old number,’ I said, showing her my phone. ‘I sent you a text with the new number in it.’
She frowned. ‘Really? When?’
‘Yesterday.’ I checked my watch. It was one-thirty on Monday morning. ‘Or maybe it was the day before yesterday. Anyway, I had to change my phone. Reynolds was tracking my movements through my old one.’
She seemed genuinely shocked. ‘In order to do what?’
But she knew already, and – unsurprisingly – that seemed to knock her off balance. The confirmation that there was a hunt for her father. The implication of what was to come if Reynolds got to him – if he even found Franks alive.
‘What does Reynolds want with Dad?’ she asked.
My eyes moved out to the café, ensuring we weren’t being watched, and then out the front, into the night. Thick condensation had gradually taken hold at the windows.
‘There were these two cases your dad worked. The murder of an eighteen-year-old girl called Pamela Welland back in 1996, and the murder of a drug dealer called Simon Preston in 2011. I think they might be
connected to his disappearance somehow. Maybe they’re even connected to each other.’
‘How?’
I paused, thinking back to what Murray had told me: that Simon Preston had been living with someone.
A woman called Kay.
I recalled the map of Bethlehem that Franks had drawn, and the photos Reynolds had in his possession too – and then the argument Preston’s neighbour had overheard about a hospital. But what, if anything, connected all of that to Pamela Welland? Was it Preston? Was it his girlfriend? Was it the hospital? Whatever the truth was, it was clear some part of the answer lay at Bethlehem, and as that idea began to solidify, it struck me that, in four hours’ time, it would be low tide at Keel Point beach. I rolled my shoulder and felt a twinge next to my breastplate. It was easier.
But not as easy as I needed it to be.
Plus there were other, more immediate issues.
I had to ensure Annabel and Olivia were safe before I did anything else, let alone getting across to Bethlehem. But even once Tasker called me to tell me they were fine, I’d have to think through every move. Because, with every move, I had to be prepared to fight: Reynolds was going to try to follow me, try to use me as bait to draw out the truth about Franks. If he thought I’d figured him out, or even if he thought it wasn’t working in his favour, he’d put me down.
‘Raker?’
I looked back at Craw, realizing I’d drifted off. Her head was tilted slightly, some of the hardness gone from her face. Maybe it was the hour, or my lack of sleep, maybe the pain in my shoulder or the adrenalin draining away, but I thought, perhaps for the first time, how attractive she was. She’d always tried to hide it away, and I understood the reasons for that. She’d built her reputation on exactly the right qualities: talent, intellect, instinct, understanding the psychology of people, a refusal to retreat. In an environment like the Met, dominated by men, she’d beaten them at their own game.
‘Your girls,’ I said to her. ‘I never ended up speaking to them. I’m not sure you even told me their names.’
She eyed me. It was clear she hadn’t been expecting this, and it was equally clear she wanted to protect them from whatever was going on with their grandfather.
‘Maddie and Evelyn,’ she said finally.
‘How old are they?’
‘Thirteen and ten. Why?’
‘Do you ever feel like you’re putting them at risk?’
Frowning, she leaned back in her seat. ‘At risk?’
‘Doing what you do.’
Her arms were crossed, fringe in a diagonal sweep across her forehead. No make-up except for maybe a hint of mascara. No earrings, even though her ears were pierced.
‘No,’ she said.
I nodded.
‘Why, do you feel like you’re putting your daughter at risk?’
Belle says you’ve put us in danger.
‘I hoped I wouldn’t,’ I said to her. ‘But I think maybe I have.’
Craw was still eyeing me, the hardness back in her face; the mix of impassiveness and suspicion I’d got to know so well. ‘The work you do, it comes with a risk.’
‘And yours doesn’t?’
She shrugged. ‘Police work has its risks. I’ve been physically attacked. I’ve been threatened countless times, and not just by scumbags out on the street. Sometimes by my own people. But, most of the time, the rule of law helps protect you. You do things in the right way, at the right time, with the right preparation, you lessen the risk to everyone.’
I didn’t want to go over old ground with her, fighting her on the reasons why I did what I did; my justification for sometimes ignoring the rule of law. I didn’t break the law often, but when I did, it was because the law didn’t work. I broke it because it got in the way of finding innocent people. Deep down, she knew my way was just as effective as hers. Perhaps even deeper down than that, she could see the ways in which it was better. If that hadn’t been the case, she never would have asked me to find her father.
And yet I couldn’t deny its risks.
Especially now.
It had never really mattered before Annabel came along. I wasn’t unconcerned about my safety, but the pull I felt to the lost, to the families of the missing, drove me forward. Despite everything that had happened to me, all the devils I’d had to face, all the darkness in men, I’d never regretted a single moment. And yet I regretted what happened tonight. I regretted compromising my daughter.
‘What do Maddie and Evelyn think about your work?’
She shrugged. ‘That’s not who you are to your kids. When I was still going off to work in uniform at the beginning, they were too young to notice. Now they’re older, they have their own lives. I doubt they give it a second thought.’
‘And your husband?’
‘I don’t know what Bill thinks any more.’
She gave me a look that said everything: There are problems in our marriage – and I don’t want to discuss it. I nodded, looking out at the café.
When I turned back to her, she was still staring at me, obviously angry and upset about being drawn into a conversation about her personal life.
‘How are those two cases connected?’ she asked.
‘Pamela Welland and Simon Preston?’
A nod of the head.
Before I could answer, my phone started buzzing. I picked it up and looked at the display. Murray. I glanced at my watch again. One-forty-five. Either she wasn’t sleeping, or this couldn’t wait.
‘Sorry,’ I said to Craw. ‘I need to take this.’
She looked annoyed, but opened her hands out and sunk back in her seat.
‘Evening,’ I said, pushing Answer.
‘Did I wake you?’
‘No.’
‘You need to hear this.’
I glanced at Craw, who was looking down into her mug of tea, gently turning it with both hands. She gave the impression she wasn’t listening, but I knew her well enough by now: she was taking in every word.
‘What have you got?’ I asked.
‘That place you talked about. Bethlehem. Something about it rang a bell. I’ve just been back through my notes, and … it’s in there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s from a while back, May 2000, but I remember it now. The Boss must have been out of the office, I guess, maybe in a meeting, maybe on a case. Somewhere.’ She was talking quickly, frantically. ‘Anyway, he got this call, and I took a message for him. I didn’t have anything else to hand, so I took down the message in my notebook. I knew it wouldn’t get lost that way.’
She paused, making no move to continue.
I prompted her: ‘Okay. So what was the message?’
‘This guy who called, he said his name was Poulter.’
I pulled out my own notebook, wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder, and flipped to a new page. I could see Craw watching as I wrote the guy’s name down.
‘Who is he?’
‘He didn’t leave a number, but I wrote down the message he asked me to pass on: “Tell Mr Franks that I’ll be at the hospital until 7 p.m. tonight.” ’
Bethlehem.
I tried to think logically. ‘He could have been calling from any hospital.’
‘No. I, uh …’ Murray paused, her silence heavy with guilt. ‘Look, I know I betrayed the Boss’s trust, but I thought at the time he might be ill. I was concerned.’
‘Are you saying you then tracked this guy down?’
‘Yes. To the hospital. That’s why the name Bethlehem rang a bell with me.’
‘What did Franks say when you passed on the message?’
Craw had been looking out at the room, at the drivers gradually drifting out into the night to continue their journeys. But, at her father’s name, she snapped back to me.
‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ Murray said. ‘But, honestly, I don’t think he really said anything. I think he just thanked me.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s how
I remember it going.’
‘He didn’t look at you strangely?’
‘This was thirteen years ago. I don’t remember how he looked at me. It just says in my notes that this guy was called Poulter, and he’d called the Boss from that hospital.’
‘Okay.’
‘Obviously Bethlehem has closed down now, so the number I had for him there is dead. But I did a little digging and have managed to find a home number for him.’
She read it out to me.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘This is great.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe not.’
I paused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s something else you should know.’
‘What?’
Hesitation on the line.
‘Murray?’
‘You remember you asked me to check that police ID number you found at the top of Franks’s missing persons file? The one you came across at Reynolds’s place?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I got a name.’
‘So we know who passed him that file?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Who does it belong to?’
A long silence.
‘It belongs to Melanie Craw.’
55
I looked across the table at Craw, her eyes on me again.
‘Okay,’ I said to Murray. ‘I’ll give you a call in the morning.’
She could immediately sense something was up. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah. Fine. I’ll phone you later.’
Ending the call before Murray could ask me any other questions, I placed the phone down on the table and then casually closed, and pocketed, my notebook.
‘Who was that?’ Craw said.
She asked the question flatly, as if she had no investment in its answer, but there was a kind of narrowness to her face now, like she was holding her breath. Like she knows something’s changed. I paused, giving myself a moment to think.
She pushed her cup aside. ‘Raker?’
I was seeing the cracks in the wall.
She’d driven two hundred and twenty miles when she could have just sent Derek Cortez to check on the house. She’d appeared only minutes after Reynolds, telling me she hadn’t passed him on the way – and yet, given the remoteness of the house, and the single-track approach, that seemed impossible. Then there was all the crap she’d spun about me not answering my mobile. Because she’d deliberately called me on my old phone. I’d dumped that handset days ago, after I found out Reynolds was tracking it – and the first person I texted with the number for the replacement was her. Now it seemed clear: she’d chosen not to call me on the new one because she didn’t want me to answer.