by Tim Weaver
Inside, I ordered a sandwich, some fries and a coffee, and then got an access code from the woman serving behind the counter. Choosing the Mac furthest away from the door, I sat down and logged in using the code, then went to Google.
I put in a search for ‘Casey Bullock’.
Results were mixed: I got hits for the name, but mostly for Facebook profiles of women in other countries. At the bottom of the first page of results was a Twitter account that had Devon as its location, but when I went to the page, it was a shell: the default egg icon for its profile pic, following no one, followed by no one, not a single tweet.
I clicked through to the next page of results.
Halfway down, I found her.
A small story in a local newspaper, dated 26 September 2011.
At the top was a photograph of a woman. It was her thirtieth birthday. She was standing in front of a silver, heart-shaped balloon with ‘30’ printed on it, one hand on its string, one on the back of a chair, a smile on her face. There was no indication of the year the picture had been taken, so I concentrated on her.
There was a kind of quiet beauty to her, almost a sadness, even as she smiled for the camera. Her auburn hair fell against her shoulders, but there was a clear view of her face. It was one that had aged before its time, blue eyes like a fading sky, wrinkles marking the hollowness of her cheeks. I started reading the story beneath.
Three lines in, my heart dropped.
I’d found her.
But I was two years too late.
LOCAL WOMAN GOES MISSING
A woman from Kingsbridge has gone missing in what Devon and Cornwall Police are describing as ‘worrying’ circumstances. Thirty-six-year-old Casey Bullock hasn’t been seen for 48 hours, which police describe as ‘highly unusual’. Ms Bullock, an outpatient at Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital, was last seen talking to a man on Keel Point beach.
A police spokesman was keen to downplay the significance of her psychiatric care in relation to her disappearance: ‘According to her doctor, and to the people responsible for her well-being, Ms Bullock was healthy, very lucid and absolutely aware of her actions. The care she was receiving at BPH had been ongoing for a number of years, and she had – prior to her disappearance – been extremely well. We are not currently exploring her hospital care as an angle of investigation. However, we would be keen to speak to anyone who saw her in the hours before she went missing on 23 September. In particular, a man in his late thirties, with a shaved head, who was seen in conversation with her on Keel Point beach.’
As Ms Bullock is an only child and both parents are deceased, police have been seeking the help of her ex-husband, Robert Collinson, who they are hoping will give them some personal insight into her disappearance. In a tragic twist, Collinson and Bullock’s two-year-old son, Lucas, died in a drowning accident at a London park in 1999. When we contacted him, Mr Collinson cited it as being the reason the two of them had separated. ‘I always tried to keep in touch with Casey, even after we split up,’ he said, ‘but she became increasingly isolated. I couldn’t even tell you how long it’s been since I last spoke to her. However, I’ll do whatever I can to help the police, even if I sincerely doubt the Casey that I knew back then is the same as the Casey she is now.’
A spokesman for Bethlehem Psychiatric Hospital said they were fully cooperating with police. In July, local health authorities took the decision to close BPH because of spiralling costs and inadequate facilities, controversially not revealing the details of the closure to staff until last week.
As I returned to Google, my food and coffee arrived, but suddenly I wasn’t feeling hungry any more. My stomach was a knot, a slow, crawling dread taking hold.
Casey Bullock had disappeared and never resurfaced.
Franks was missing.
All the things that might help paint a picture of what was going on were being put to bed one by one by Reynolds. The worst thing was, he was right there in the police description – age, appearance – and yet he may as well have been a ghost. Even the closure of Bethlehem worked in his favour.
And then there was Craw.
Franks had chosen not to reveal the identity of Simon Preston in his investigation of the drug murder – a wrong decision, although one he was likely to have taken for what he thought were the right reasons. It seemed certain from everything I’d heard and read since that he believed Reynolds to be involved in the actual murder of Preston, as an accessory, perhaps even as the man who had wielded the knife. And, if that was what had been firing him – a thirst to see Reynolds brought to justice – maybe he’d tried to track down Bullock, in order to find out more about Preston and his relationship to Reynolds.
Except Reynolds had got there first.
Yet there were still so many other questions, not least what Craw’s motivation was here. So, instead of trying to figure it out, I set it to one side and did a fresh search – this time for ‘Casey Bullock disappearance’.
I got the same story I’d just read, and a few other basic reprises in the days after, confirming she’d never been found. The truth was, at thirty-six, worn and weathered, and with a history of mental illness, Bullock wasn’t the Broadway show newspapers wanted. They wanted Pamela Welland: a beautiful teenage girl, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, from a decent middle-class family, with her whole life ahead of her.
That sold newspapers, not Casey Bullock.
I’d seen it play out time and time again, over and over. A week after Bullock went missing – a week after the papers essentially alluded to the fact that she may have been taken by someone – her candle burned out and the story disappeared into the ether. I felt a pang of sadness for her, a measure of guilt too, at having once been a part of an industry that could so easily forget. And then my resolve hardened.
She’d been abandoned back then.
But she wasn’t going to be abandoned now.
58
Before I left the café, I checked my emails. There was one new message.
It was from Melanie Craw.
I think you need to call me.
M
I sat there for a moment, staring at the screen, trying to second-guess her. It was clear she’d emailed because she hadn’t been able to get me on the phone. That probably also meant she’d been unable to triangulate any calls I’d made since the last time we met. I logged out, my thoughts returning to the previous night when I’d found out that it was her police ID number at the top of her father’s missing persons report.
I remembered, clearly, what she’d said to me at the end.
This is only going to lead to more trouble, David.
A lot of the rest of it was a blur.
The back of my head throbbed as I tried to dig out more memories. When I turned in my seat and looked across at the counter, I caught the woman who’d served me staring at the stitches.
I got to my feet, thanked her and headed outside.
Across the road from the café, right on the quay, was a phone box. I returned to the darkness, rain spitting, the wind bitter as it rolled down the estuary. The water was black, squares of light dotting the banks on either side, houses and pubs perched on its banks. Somewhere, four miles down, the estuary hit the English Channel.
In the channel was Bethlehem.
I stepped into the booth, fed some coins into the call box, then dialled the number Poulter had given me for John Garrick, the doctor who had treated Bullock in the years after Poulter had retired. It was for a mobile. After seven rings, the call switched to voicemail: ‘Hello, this is John Garrick. Do leave me a message, and I’ll call you back.’
‘Dr Garrick, my name’s David Raker. I’d like to speak to you about a woman called Casey Bullock.’ I left it there, gave him my mobile number and ended the call.
Next, I dialled Craw’s phone.
After the fourth ring, she picked up.
‘Melanie Craw.’
‘There’s a café at Kingsbridge quay called the Coffee House,’ I said to her. �
��I’ll meet you outside there in thirty minutes. Come alone and don’t try to screw me over.’
‘Raker?’
I hung up.
59
Twenty-five minutes later, I saw her Mini coming in from the western edges of the town. I was on the other side of the water, looking across the estuary to the car park and café. From my position, it was initially hard to tell if she was alone or not, but once she hit the lights of the parking lot, the orange glow filled the vehicle, and I couldn’t see anyone else with her. She switched off the engine, looked around her and got out. The night was cold, her breath forming in the spaces above her head. She locked up and headed along the fringes of the water to the coffee shop. It was closed now, its tables and chairs inside.
Outside the café, she paused, scanning her surroundings. The town was quiet, out of season and dormant. Cars passed steadily, otherwise there was no one around.
After a couple of minutes, she checked her watch. A couple of minutes after that, she got out her phone and checked that too. I wondered if she might be about to contact someone, but after the phone briefly illuminated her, she put it away.
I reassembled my mobile, waited another sixty seconds, then called her. As the phone buzzed in her hand, a muted white light blinking on and off inside her coat pocket, she lifted it out and checked the display. A second later, as she saw it was me, she looked around herself: to the parking lot, along the edges of the water, across the road to where shopfronts were just dark squares. Eventually, she lifted the phone up and answered.
‘Raker?’
‘Are you alone?’
‘We need to talk.’
‘Are you alone?’
I waited for anything that suggested she wasn’t, an automatic reaction to knowing someone had followed separately. A look. A movement of the eyes. Instead she remained still, staring out to where a twelve-foot boat was moored against the walls of the estuary, rocking gently on the water.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m alone.’
‘Look to your right.’ I watched her look further along the promenade, a road that ran parallel to the estuary. ‘There’s a sheltered area about half a mile along. It’s got a set of benches in it. You see it?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Do you realize what you’ve –’
I ended the call and headed for the shelter.
It was a hexagonal block, with a triangular roof, that looked out to the mouth of the estuary as it widened further down. During the day, people used it as a viewpoint.
But not at night.
Not in the middle of winter.
Craw arrived three minutes later, a mixture of anger and caution in her face. She stopped at a short flight of steps down, eyeing it, then me, then the shelter a second time. She was dressed in the same black parka, her hands in her pockets. Her short hair was clipped back from her face. Beneath the parka, she had a pair of black denims on, and black leather boots. She came down the steps, under the shelter. We both stood there, looking at each other, rain in the air around us.
Then she said, ‘What the hell’s going on?’
I stepped past her and looked back along the road. No one was following us. No one was watching. There were no cars for the moment.
We were alone.
‘Is that some kind of joke?’ I said to her.
She didn’t reply for a moment, her gaze fixed on me. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty far from all right.’
She looked me up and down. ‘Do you even remember last night?’
‘I remember.’
‘Because it looks like you’ve got a pretty serious head injury –’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Don’t bullshit me, Craw –’
‘I’m not bullshitting you, Raker. I’m trying to figure out what the hell’s going on here. I mean, look at this place.’ She waved her arms at the shelter. ‘We’re standing at the end of a promenade in the pissing rain, in a place that stinks of puke and booze.’
For the first time I felt a flicker of uncertainty.
Was this all an act?
‘Why did you lie to me?’
‘Lie to you? What are you talking abo –’
‘I know you passed on your father’s missing persons file to Reynolds. What I can’t figure out is why. So now you’re going to tell me.’
‘What? Are you insane?’
I didn’t reply.
‘Why the fuck would I give that scumbag anything?’
I took a sidestep out from under the roof of the shelter, trying to get some distance between us. ‘Reynolds had a printout of the file among his things. It had your ID number at the top of it. I heard him talking to you on the bloody phone.’
That seemed to throw her.
She didn’t say anything, eyes moving from me out to the water. The rain began getting heavier, beating a tempo on the roof of the shelter, disturbing the stillness of the water. Finally, she looked back at me. ‘I’m not working with Reynolds.’
‘Really? So how did that file magically end up in his possession?’
‘Someone must have …’
‘What? Used your ID?’
‘Yes.’
I studied her. ‘I asked you last night if it was hard to gain access to the database, and you told me it was. I asked you if anyone knew your login details – and you know what else you said to me?’ I paused. She was trying to recall. ‘You changed the subject.’
‘So?’
‘So you didn’t want to answer me.’
‘That doesn’t mean –’
‘You’re lying to me.’
She shot me a look. ‘Are you even hearing yourself?’
‘You’re denying you said that?’
‘Why would I lie to you?’
‘I don’t know. Why would you?’
‘I’m not lying to you. If someone’s got hold of Dad’s file, it’s on the QT. I haven’t given my login details to anyone – at least, not knowingly.’
I tried to see the deceit in her face. The previous night, it had seemed so clear to me. The way she’d looked. The way she’d spoken. Now there was no hint of anything. She was stoic, unreadable. If she was lying, I couldn’t see the lie.
Or she’d never lied in the first place.
I checked the spaces beyond the shelter: the pavements, the path running along the banks of the estuary, the parking lot across the water. When I turned back to Craw, she was still studying me, eyes narrowed.
‘Do you remember anything about last night?’ she said.
‘Enough.’
She took a step closer to me. ‘I thought you were going to black out at one point. You told me something had popped in your head.’
I frowned. ‘What are you trying to –’
‘Listen to me: whatever you think’s going on isn’t going on. You honestly believe, in the cold light of day, that I’d pal up with an arsehole like Neil Reynolds?’
‘You said –’
‘I don’t give a shit what you think I said. You know what you called me at one point last night?’
She stopped.
My head was swimming.
‘You called me Derryn.’
I looked at her. ‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t mess with me, Craw.’
‘You’ve got stitches in the back of your head. You were virtually incoherent last night. Your vehicle looked like it had been rescued from the scrapyard. You were in a car accident …’ She paused. ‘I told you that you needed to see a doctor.’
I rubbed an eye, trying to recall last night.
Had I called her Derryn?
Was I really that mixed up?
She took another step towards me, a sudden, confusing sympathy in her face. ‘This is why I hired you,’ she said quietly.
Initially I was thrown by the change in her voice, but then I began to like the sof
tness in it. For a moment, for the first time tonight, she was a different person.
‘You care about your cases,’ she continued.
She touched a hand to my elbow.
‘But you’re not fighting me. I’m not your enemy, David. Any energy you waste on me is energy you don’t have for the real fight.’
I looked from my elbow to her face. She was a couple of feet from me now. I could smell her perfume beyond the freshness of the rain.
I studied her for a long time.
‘David?’
As a smile passed across her face, I felt a strange sense of relief take hold. I didn’t want her, of all people, to betray me. Despite our history, despite our differences and our run-ins, whatever else she’d been to me before, she’d been honourable.
‘Look,’ I said to her, the beginnings of an apology.
‘It’s fine,’ she replied, hand dropping away from my elbow. ‘The only thing I care about is finding out what happened to Dad.’
I nodded, contemplating my next move – and then my phone started buzzing.
Shit. I’d forgotten to switch it off.
Removing it from my pocket, I looked at the display.
A blocked number.
I went to switch it off, then stopped. What if it’s Garrick returning my call? I held up a finger to Craw, asking her to give me a moment, and retreated further from the shelter, into the rain.
‘David Raker,’ I said, answering.
‘I don’t know what you want or who you are,’ a man’s voice said, reduced to little more than a whisper. It sounded taut, threatening. ‘But let me give you a piece of advice, okay? Forget Casey Bullock. For your own sake, just … forget her.’
I waited, his breath crackling down the line at me.
‘Hello?’ he said after a couple of seconds.
Hesitation now, and for the first time I realized he wasn’t on the attack. He wasn’t threatening me. He was warning me off. He was trying to help me.
He’s terrified.
‘Hello?’ he said again.
I backed away from Craw, so she was out of earshot. ‘Dr Garrick?’
Another hesitation, words forming and disappearing, as if he was speaking a sentence he wasn’t sure he should commit to. And then finally, feebly, he said, ‘Please. Please don’t hurt me. I haven’t told anyone, I promise.’