In several of these images, Melanie looked exhausted. Typically, she had a slight smile on her face, and she was holding a cigarette between her fingers. She dressed for comfort—T-shirts and jeans—and her hair was loose over her shoulders. She allowed the gray to show in among the brown. She was tall and strong, born to carry a camera. In one photograph she wore a sleeveless shirt, and the muscles on her arms were defined and powerful.
I flicked through the collection, and it occurred to me how very many photographs there were and how sympathetic they were, catching her in different lights, in different moods, her eyes always distant, watching, full of knowledge.
That night I went back to the videotapes, and I went straight to the Afghanistan film, fast-forwarding, stopping only to check faces. At last I found it, a nighttime scene in a narrow street of mud houses, four men who had adopted local dress, gathering together. I recognized Mike Darling, his face partially swathed in a scarf.
I froze the image.
I had discounted Afghanistan after reading the account of Sean Howie’s death. The whole story there was something and nothing, Melanie’s involvement so minimal that I couldn’t believe it had anything to do with her death. But now I knew something else had happened in Afghanistan.
I gazed at the screen, and slowly, out of context, I thought I recognized two other faces. There was Alan Hudder, whom I hadn’t seen since we’d met in Cambodia. In Afghanistan he had looked less fleshy, more focused. The other face I recognized was that of Kes. He stood talking with the group in a low voice, apparently giving instructions. He was gesturing with his hands. The fourth face was so heavily swathed in cloth I could not see it. The screen went blank. I frowned, suspecting mischief, then I glanced at the digital readout, which had stopped at forty-two minutes, and I realized that this at least was not a mystery. Melanie had simply run out of tape.
Chapter Eleven
THE next morning, before I left for work, I dug out the business card that Alan Hudder had given me shortly before Justin stepped on a mine and blew his leg off. I rang his number, and a woman answered.
“Yes, yes, I’m Alan’s wife, Kay,” she introduced herself cheerfully. “I’m afraid he’s abroad still, who is this?”
I introduced myself then told her that I’d filmed an interview with her husband in Pursat and that I just wanted to follow up on a couple of things he’d said. She did not appear to have heard of me.
“I’m sure he’d be delighted to speak to you,” she said, “but he is actually in Saudi, and will be for some time.”
“Would it be possible for me to speak to him on the phone, do you think?”
“Well . . .” There was the first indication of hesitation.
“Or, I don’t know if you could help me with this. I know that Alan was in Afghanistan with Kes Laver and Mike Darling, and there was one other man, and I wonder if you know how I can get in touch with him.”
For a moment there was complete silence on the line.
“Oh dear, no, that would be Ray Jackson,” she told me. “He died out there.”
“Oh. I see.” Soldiers die in wartime, of course, and now that she had said it I remembered Justin saying something about Ray Jackson and how his death had galvanized his father to leave the army. “What happened?”
“Well, it was sniper fire, I think. Alan’s never really said what sort of mission they were on.” In the background, I heard a door bell. “I’m sorry, I have people coming round, so I’ll have to get off the phone now. But let me give you the number for Ray’s wife. Her name’s Alice, and she lives in London. She’ll be able to tell you more than I can.”
Alice Jackson sounded harried and unenthusiastic about meeting with me.
“Look,” she said, “I work in Boots at Piccadilly Circus. Come to the pharmacy counter at twelve-thirty, and I’ll try to take my lunch then.”
I thanked her and at half-past twelve made my way through aisles of shampoo and toothpaste and found a small, solid blond woman with shoulder-length hair clipped back behind her ears, wearing a badge on her chest that identified her as Alice Jackson. She had a wide mouth, large eyes, and a polite but weary look about her that was tried to its limit as she attempted to answer a series of questions from an obese woman who was asking for a tonic for her daughter.
Eventually the woman heaved herself off to look at the shelves of alternative medicines, and Alice turned to me with a sigh.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ve got an hour for you.”
“Can I take you to lunch?”
Alice looked me up and down. I was wearing a skirt, and for once my T-shirt was of the tailored, expensive kind rather than the baggy, food-stained kind.
“You know,” she said, “I really don’t want to sit in some crowded restaurant, and if it’s not crowded, then I’m not dressed for it. Would it be all right if we bought some sandwiches and took them to the park?”
She went to take off her white coat and pick up her bag, and we went to the food section and waited on line to pay for sandwiches and bottles of water. We headed out of the store and into throngs of shoppers. Eros balanced on top of his plinth. With the best will in the world, he’d have hit the wrong man and woman if he’d tried to take aim on a pair of lovers in that crowd. We elbowed our way toward Green Park.
“You must get tired of hearing everyone’s problems,” I said.
“Oh, it’s all right,” she said. “It takes my mind off my own problems. And it makes me thankful for my good health, and for Olivia’s.”
“Olivia’s your daughter?”
“Yes, she’s ten now. She was seven when her father died. Look, I don’t know what you want to know. I try not to dwell on Ray’s death; it upsets me too much, and I don’t have time to be upset.”
Ahead of us, a Japanese couple vacated a park bench, and as we sat down, a fat gray squirrel immediately approached to sniff around us. We unwrapped our sandwiches.
“Did you hear about Melanie Jacobs, the camerawoman who disappeared?” I asked.
She didn’t remember the details, but anyway they weren’t the most important thing. I explained that I was tracing Melanie’s life back through the film that she’d taken and that I’d seen her husband’s face on the tape from Afghanistan, along with the faces of Alan, Mike and Kes. I described the scene to her, the small group of men in local dress, about to enter a small town of earthen dwellings at night. She asked me about the date on the tape, and I told her October three years earlier.
Alice went pale. She placed the sandwich on its plastic wrapper and stared down at it.
“I think the film was taken in a village somewhere south of Mazar-e-Sharif,” I said, “and that small special forces patrols like Ray’s were being sent on missions to make contact with local militia chiefs.”
“So that was her, then, the camerawoman who was with them that night. She’s the one who’s disappeared?” She frowned. “The film must have been taken the night Ray died.”
I didn’t want to press her, so I sat and waited, sipping from my water bottle. The sun beat down on us.
“The night Ray died,” she repeated her own words slowly, “well, it’s all supposed to be secret, but I can’t see how it matters now. I don’t know all the details myself. But from what I’ve been told, the men were going behind enemy lines on a routine reconnaissance patrol. That’s one of the things they were trained to do, to go in small groups behind enemy lines and see what’s there, so everyone knows what they’re getting themselves into. Anyway, the way I know that it must be the night Ray died is because I know there was a camerawoman there when he died. And that was the only time they had a journalist with them. I know it was a bit controversial.” She glanced at me, as though I would object to her describing Melanie’s presence as controversial.
“Of course they never recovered his body; he was officially missing in action. So there was a lot of investigation into what went wrong. They couldn’t get it straight for a long time, at least, they couldn’t tell me ex
actly how he died, or why. In the end, I was told they were ambushed, and Ray was shot in the eye at short range by a sniper, and he died instantly. End,” she said slowly and deliberately, “of story. I’m sorry, I know that sounds heartless, but it nearly destroyed me to have everything picked over. I have Olivia. I have to move on. I told—”
She stopped short, picked up her sandwich, and took a bite.
“Who did you tell?”
She gave me a look, chewed, and swallowed. “I told the others, Mike and Kes and Alan.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I can’t keep going over it. I have to move on. The men were all so close, and Sheryl and Anita and Kay, they were so supportive. Sheryl and Kes took such good care of me after Ray’s death. Sheryl especially, she used to bring me food, and help with Olivia’s homework, and oh, she was so kind. Kes too. So kind.”
She chewed her lip, her eyes fixed on some distant point in the past, then shook her head.
“I know they were only trying to help, but it wasn’t helpful to have any of them going over everything time and time again. What had gone wrong, and so on, reliving that night, how so and so shouldn’t have done this and that and maybe this, and if only that, on and on and on. I dropped a few hints that we couldn’t keep living in the past, and . . . Anyway, after a while, I suppose we really did move on, because I haven’t seen much of anyone recently. I mean, we all keep in contact, we speak on the phone now and again.”
We sat and ate in silence.
“How about Anita?” I asked eventually.
“I used to talk to Anita all the time”—she nodded—“and we used to meet up sometimes and go for a meal. But I haven’t spoken to her for months. Well, it must be nearly a year now because the last time I saw her she was about six months gone, and the baby must be nine months.”
“Ten,” I told her, and she smiled.
“Anita’s got a lot on her plate,” she said. “When the husbands are gone, when you’ve got a baby, it’s just awful, such hard work, and no one to back you up. Anita never coped well. She was always so eaten up with anxiety about Mike, it was like she lived on another planet. She just lived for word from him. She used to paint beautifully in the early days, but she let that slide. She didn’t join in with us. We used to joke about it, but if she didn’t have a nervous breakdown, she came very close to it. Still, look at her. She’s got her husband, and it’s me who lost mine. Maybe I should have worried more.” She shook her head. “I don’t mean to be unsympathetic. And Anita’s mum and sisters are in Sri Lanka, so she’s got no support network except her daughter, who’s got her own life to lead.”
She looked at her watch. “Look,” she said, “I don’t know if I’ve been any help, but I’ve got to go.”
I walked back with her to Boots, and when I said good-bye, I gave her one of my cards and asked her to call me if I could help her with anything. She nodded and smiled briefly and said she doubted that she would need anything. I watched her make her way through the sea of customers. I did not expect to see her or hear from her again.
Later that night, when I had put the children to bed, Alice rang me in tears.
“I just had a phone call from Mike Darling,” she said. “He’s just got back from abroad, and he was ringing to tell me not to speak to you. And when I said I already had, he told me that was stupid, and that you just wanted to make trouble.”
“That’s not true.”
“He said you couldn’t be trusted, that you just wanted to stir up rumors.”
“No,” I repeated, “that’s not true.”
“Are you sure? Because I’ve had enough.” Her voice was still wavering, but her warning was delivered clearly enough. “Do you understand that? I can’t take any more, I’m just beginning to put things back together. If you make trouble for me, I will make sure you pay for it. Do I make myself clear? I don’t know what you’re up to, but just leave me out of it.”
I tried again to reassure her that I was not intending to make trouble for her. But she wasn’t in a mood to be convinced. She had, after all, known Mike much longer than she had known me; he had been her husband’s friend, and she had no reason to think he would mislead her. I put down the receiver, worried and uncomfortable. I had almost nothing to go on. I was just following my nose, digging around to see what turned up. But I was playing with people’s lives. I didn’t want to do Alice any harm.
This was the first I had heard that Mike had returned from Pursat. Alan’s wife, I thought, must have told him that I had been asking about Ray. One way or another, fresh off the plane from the other side of the world, Mike Darling had made it his priority to warn his friends not to speak to me. The battle lines were drawn.
Chapter Twelve
I went to Durham on the train in a child-free carriage. It was unnaturally silent, except for the drumming of fingers on laptop keyboards and the hiss of the automatic door every time a shame-faced commuter took a call out in the corridor. I’d come on my own, without Dave, because with Ivor Collins’s ban ringing in my ears, it would have been a tad antagonistic to go traveling the country with a film crew. Nor could I raise the hopes of Melanie’s parents by telling them I was making a documentary on their daughter’s disappearance if I was not at all sure that I would be allowed to.
Melanie’s mother, Beatrice, had telephoned me.
“We’d like it if you’d come to see us in the next couple of days if it’s at all possible,” she’d said. It had sounded more like a command than an invitation. Her own pursuit of her vanished daughter had been efficient and energetic, if limited by her situation. But Beatrice’s determination that I should visit did not mean there was news. It might just be that they wanted to hear about my visit to HazPrep. I had reported back briefly by e-mail before my trip to Cambodia but had not since had time to follow up.
Both Beatrice and Elliott Jacobs received me at the door of their house, as though they had both been waiting for my arrival. Of course, I had met them once before, at King’s Cross station with Melanie, but this time, without her, I was struck by the echoes of her face in theirs.
“So good of you to come,” Elliott said as he shook my hand, and in an instant I was seated in a sun-bathed sitting room, a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits at my elbow. The room was a jungle of flora, nurtured and allowed to roam, as far as I could see, pretty much at will. Potted ivy had trained itself up over the mantelpiece, and vast ferns filtered the sunlight that shone through the bay window. Here and there, there were flowers and buds, but the blooms seemed incidental in among the foliage.
“We call this our greenhouse,” Elliott said. “We’ve never been much into home decorating, but we love our plants.”
I saw, through the leaves, a piano, and on top of it a selection of photographs, including a large one of Melanie standing in a graveyard.
“One of her friends, a young man called Edwin Rochester, sent us that a few weeks ago,” Beatrice said, following my eyes. She picked up the photograph and handed it to me. “It was a lovely gesture,” she said, “very thoughtful. And I think he’s a very good photographer. He’s captured Melanie perfectly.”
Melanie was smiling into the lens more cheerfully than I had seen in others of Edwin’s photographs, as though she knew this one was destined for her parents’ piano. She was, I would have said, putting on a good face.
“She was filming in Bucharest, where Elliott was born, and where his parents are buried,” Beatrice explained, standing next to me, “so it was very special for us. She was so dedicated to her job.” Beatrice gazed down at the photograph. “And we are very proud of her, so we can’t understand why—”
“You’ve heard that someone’s seen her in Cumbria?” Elliott interrupted his wife.
“We can’t be sure, Elliott,” Beatrice warned him.
“It sounds exactly like her,” Elliott told me. “She loved to camp when she was little. Loved to be outdoors. We went camping two years ago, just Melanie and me, and she said t
he peace and quiet was like water to her, and she was so thirsty for it.”
“Where did you camp? Did she know the Lake District?”
“She knew it,” Beatrice allowed, but her voice carried more doubt than Elliott’s.
“We camped at Coniston Water. And for once it didn’t rain. Well, there were showers, but no downpours. It was out of season; we took it very easy, we had nothing to rush for. That’s what she needs now, after all the things she’s seen, peace and quiet. We should leave her be until she’s had her fill, and then she’ll come back to us.”
I looked up at Beatrice and saw such agony on her face that the platitude I had been about to voice was silenced. Into the quiet came the ring of the front-door bell. Beatrice hurried out and came back leading by the hand a woman of about my age whom she introduced as Stella Smith.
“Stella is Melanie’s school friend,” Beatrice said. “She lives in Germany, but she’s back for a couple of weeks to visit her parents, and I wanted you to meet her.” She turned to Elliott. “We’re just going to nip out for a girls’ cup of coffee,” she told her husband. He looked surprised and mildly hurt at this abandonment, and I felt embarrassed to leave like that, but Beatrice explained as we got into her car.
“I simply can’t talk about Melanie in front of him.” She sounded almost angry at her husband’s continued hopefulness. “He won’t let himself see things as they are, and if I forced it on him, it would break his heart.”
She drove us into town, pushing the speed limit and paying little attention to other drivers. Instead she explained to Stella who I was, at which Stella fell silent and sat looking stonily out the window.
Inside a tearoom near the castle, Beatrice leaned conspiratorially across the table and explained to me that Stella and she had already talked and that she wanted me to hear what Stella had to say.
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