Captured

by Neil Cross

  So he drove to a campsite on the outskirts of town. According to its website, it had free Wifi, a bar and an award-winning toilet block – although what award wasn’t specified.

  By the time he’d parked and paid his deposit, it was dusk. He sat near the camp bar, alone on a bench alongside a trout stream. He was annoyed by a swirl of midges. Around him sat foreign students, dressed like Kenny in cargo shorts and walking sandals. There were families on camping trips, and elderly tourists with hired Winnebagos.

  Kenny sipped from a pint of lager with a lemonade top, browsing the internet on his iPhone.

  The Jonathan Reese he was looking for didn’t have a page on any social networking site of which Kenny was aware. There were other Jonathan Reeses out there, other faces. But none of them was the Jonathan Reese he was looking for.

  By Googling the name, however, Kenny stumbled across a website dedicated to Callie Reese.

  He’d avoided looking for her – she wasn’t the point of this search. But there she was anyway. Jonathan’s name had brought her to him.

  The sun was going down, the voices around him grew low and intimate and the rich smell of England rose from the land; grass and soil and oak and ash and lager.

  On the website – whereiscallie.com – there were posted perhaps a dozen portraits. Jonathan, it appeared, was a talented photographer.

  Here she was, captured at the breakfast table, laughing. And here she was, at the front door, in some kind of business suit. Here she was on holiday, a garland of flowers around her neck, her skin glistening. And here she was, in pensive close-up, gazing out of a rainy window.

  Zooming in on this image, Kenny could see the laugh-lines at the corners of her mouth: the lighting had made them more pronounced. It had done the same to the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

  To him, these wrinkles were like cracks in the varnish of an old painting; he could see only the flawlessness beneath.

  Zooming out again, he saw that in the bottom corner of the frame was a spray of wild flowers. They were reflected in the curve of her cornea.

  She was no longer the snatched, blurry snapshot he’d seen in the newspaper reports. Here, her image was crisp and unfaded because on the internet there was no time, just infinite, discontinuous moments like fragments of a reflected face in shards of a broken mirror.

  The site had been set up by Jonathan Reese. Its purpose was to request information that might lead to Callie’s return.

  The likelihood of her death was not so much as hinted at, although its unspoken possibility had lent a strange gravity to every page and every image.

  The website requested information, but gave little away. It could be contacted via an impersonal email address. Comments were disabled. Kenny didn’t like to imagine what kind of mind visited websites like this, what terrible things they would type and leave for ever, if permitted.

  Returning to the home page, he noted that the site hadn’t been updated for more than a year.

  Something opened in his chest. It was grief and anger that this should be Callie Barton’s marker - just an internet page which said: here she is, laughing. And here she is, looking out of a rainy window. And here she is on holiday.

  It never said: this is the position she slept in; or this is how she stood when she cleaned her teeth; or this is how she laughed when she was watching her favourite TV show, or this was her brand of tampons. It just said: this is her face. And here was that face, like an unvisited and untended grave. She was an effigy. Not even a portrait.

  Kenny recalled her playing elastics, how she and Isabel would be breathless and dishevelled as they folded the rope of knotted elastic bands away and hurried back to class.

  He recalled how she’d hook her ankle round his under the desk, and how the tip of her tongue peeped from the corner of her mouth when she concentrated on long division or grammar, her weakest subjects.

  Kenny wondered if there was anyone left in the world who knew and cared what Callie Barton’s weakest subjects had been.

  He paid a visit to the award-winning toilet block. It was very clean, well lit and bracingly tangy with pine-scented chemical cleaner. Then he wandered back to the Combi.

  He took off his shorts and socks and slithered into a sleeping bag. With a bedroll beneath him, it wasn’t a bad way to sleep. He could hear the people outside, coming and going.

  Shortly before 10 p.m., Pat called. ‘Where are you, Sunny Jim?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘No, I’m not. How’d you know?’

  ‘Because I’m at your house.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I came to see you. I’m there now, looking in the window. It’s all dark.’

  ‘I might’ve been asleep.’

  ‘I’m a trained detective. So I instantly noted the absence of your huge, bright orange Volkswagen van.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So where are you?’

  ‘Stonehenge.’

  ‘Stonehenge? Why?’

  ‘I wanted to see it. Y’know. Have a look, while I had the chance. I had a few beers, so I settled down for the night.’

  ‘In the van?’

  ‘It’s been a long time since I did that. I miss it. Mary and me, we used to drive to the beach, down in Devon, on a Friday night. We’d wake up early on Saturday morning and smell the sea. And nobody else would be up yet. We’d be all bleary and hot. So we’d run into the sea, starkers. Naked as the day.’

  ‘I bet that woke you up.’

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe. We’d run back to the van, all goosebumpy. And no matter how hard you tried, there’d always be sand in the towels. We’d make breakfast on this little Primus stove we had. And the first oldies would start to come along.’

  ‘Because the old don’t sleep.’

  ‘Yep. They’d be walking their dogs on the beach. Golden retrievers and what have you.’

  He shut up for a minute, thinking about it.

  Pat said: ‘Have you spoken to Mary?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s worried about you.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by “spoken”?’

  ‘I mean, did you tell her? About me.’

  ‘It’s not my place. But she knows something’s wrong.’

  ‘I know she does.’

  ‘So tell her.’

  ‘When the time’s right.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  There was a pause, then Pat said: ‘When you’re gone, she’ll still be here. Don’t leave her thinking she let you down. Because it’s not a nice thing – to think you weren’t there when you were needed by someone you love.’

  Kenny was going to say: ‘Okay’, but Pat had hung up on him.

  He began tapping out a text to Mary. Then he deleted it and turned off the phone and plugged it into the cigarette lighter to recharge. He swallowed a number of pills, curled up on the bedroll and went to sleep.

  In the stillness of the campsite not long after dawn, as mist rose from the trout stream, Kenny scuttled to the toilet block to have a shower. He shaved barefoot with a towel round his waist, then wandered back to the Combi in flip-flops.

  He put on some deodorant and his cargo shorts, his walking sandals and a clean T-shirt, and was the first for breakfast.

  He accessed the internet while he waited.

  According to the online satellite photographs, the Kennet and Avon Canal ran round the back of Coney Lane. A footpath followed the canal. A small area of urban woodland acted as a screen between garden fences and towpath.

  After breakfast, he packed his rucksack with a bottle of water and a crowbar he took from the Combi’s wheel-changing kit.

  He put on his baseball cap and sunglasses, slapped on some factor 15 – as much to smell right, as anything else – and went to do it.

  15

  As he set off, the campsite was waking all around him. Th
e smell of bacon, sounds of unzipping tents, people in flip-flops carrying washbags to the toilet block.

  He found the tree-shaded canal path and followed it for two miles. He was ignored by the fishermen – transfixed, retired men.

  It wasn’t yet 9 a.m. when he found the point where the canal path backed on to Coney Lane.

  He reversed, headed back the way he’d come, turned on to a brambly path. At length, it became an alley between high-walled gardens. Finally, it gave on to the streets of suburban Bath.

  The area was made up of four-storey Victorian terraces in Bath stone, most of them converted into flats lived in by young professional couples, house-sharers, some students.

  Larger, detached houses backed on to the canal. They were no longer grand; weeds grew from cracks in the walls and garden paths. Number 25 Coney Lane was typical of them, right down to its small, untidy front garden.

  Callie Barton had lived here.

  Kenny tried to imagine her standing in that window, looking out.

  He wanted to walk to the door. But he didn’t.

  Instead, he stood in view of the house and dialled the mobile phone number of Bath Garden Landscapes.

  It rang six times. Then he heard: ‘Landscapes. Jonathan speaking.’

  Kenny almost let out a noise, but held it in and said: ‘Hi there. I’m calling from Churchill Drive.’

  ‘I know Churchill Drive, yeah. Out by the Feeder.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘So what can I do you for?’

  ‘I’m looking for a quote. We’ve had some plans drawn up. If I dropped them round, could you maybe have a look at the size of the job . . .?’

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t give quotes from plans.’

  ‘I’m just talking ballpark. Trying to get my budget worked out.’

  ‘Well, yeah. I could certainly have a look, get back to you. View the actual property next week?’

  ‘That would be perfect,’ said Kenny. ‘Where can I drop the plans?’

  ‘You could pop them in the post. But if you’re in town, I’m on site for the rest of the day. You could drop them round, if you like.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to make it until, say, four thirty.’

  ‘That’s fine. We’ll be here all day.’

  ‘Give me the address,’ said Kenny. ‘I’ll jot it down.’

  Kenny almost wished he really did have some plans for a house on Churchill Drive; he’d have liked to meet Jonathan Reese while strengthened by this fantasy of being someone else, another man with another life.

  But there were no architectural plans and there was no house out by the Feeder. And now Kenny knew that Jonathan wouldn’t be home for the rest of the day.

  He returned to the canal path, sure of his bearings now, and counted houses again. The garden fences were just visible through a copse of spindly silver birch and hazel which formed a barrier between gardens walls and the public footway.

  When Kenny had counted to the correct house he stopped, removed his rucksack and took out the bottle of mineral water. He used the few seconds it took to slake his thirst to check out the towpath, left and right. No one was around.

  He stepped into the undergrowth, moving through the low, whipping branches. It made him recall being a child – what it had been like to know secret places.

  The rear garden of Number 25 had a wooden gate. Its brick wall stood higher than Kenny’s head, tumbling with loops of an ancient creeping vine. Nettles overflowed in the purple shadows.

  Kenny knew from the online map that behind this wall a long, narrow garden gave on to what looked like a conservatory. The conservatory gave access to the house.

  The gate was secured with a tarnished brass padlock, but the hasp to which the padlock attached was rusted, set into wood that was halfway to rot.

  Kenny applied the crowbar to the hasp. The old damp wood gave with little effort and all but silently.

  Even so, Kenny decided to wait, squatting in the shadow of the wall. Should he be seen now, there was no lie that could be told about what he was going to do next.

  A cold part of him – this new part, the avenger of Callie Barton – didn’t care. He opened the garden gate and stepped through.

  It took some self-control, but he ambled along the mature, unkempt garden as if it were a public footpath until he reached a paved sun-deck.

  There was no point trying the kitchen door, so he went to the sash windows that looked into the long sitting room. He peeked inside.

  The way the sun reflected on the glass, he could barely see anything, not until he had his nose pressed to the pane. He was so close his quick breath made blooms of condensation, quickly fading.

  He was seeing the room through the darkness cast by the outline of his own face.

  He saw furniture that perhaps a decade ago might have been considered chic but was now scuffed and scratched.

  Then he heard a noise.

  It might have been one of the old hazel trees groaning in the rising heat of the day, or it might have been a curious neighbour.

  Kenny jammed the crowbar into the window frame and levered.

  Nothing happened, so he tried again, pushing harder. And the brass bolt holding the window shut began to give.

  Kenny levered again, as hard as he could. The bolt creaked and finally gave. Kenny raised the window.

  Doing that set off the burglar alarm.

  It was shocking in the fly-buzzed silence, in this long, mature back garden halfway between a canal and a suburban road; a sudden, terrified shrieking, as if the house itself were calling out in terror.

  Kenny knew he could run away, and probably would not be caught. But he also knew that, if he ran away now, he’d never have the courage to come back.

  So he raised the window another few inches and clambered into the house. Here, the shrieking was even louder and more hysterical.

  He stood in the hallway, breathing heavily – the crowbar in his fist – estimating how quickly he could expect the police to respond.

  Because Jonathan Reese’s alarm had been tripped in the morning, they’d probably consider it accidental – set off by a rat or a magpie.

  If not, the house could have been penetrated by a wandering, opportunistic junkie who’d have scarpered the moment the alarm went off, having stuffed a couple of medium-value items into a sports bag.

  More likely still: the neighbours would sit round bleating about the noise until one of them cracked and called Jonathan to come home and sort it out.

  Kenny reckoned he had some time.

  He went upstairs, only half-conscious of the alarm now.

  He looked in the upstairs rooms.

  The first bedroom he tried was set up to be a home office – a library, really, complete with a leather and chrome chair, much used. On the shelves were illustrated books on home movie making, local history, gardening and design; cook books by Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey and Nigella Lawson.

  A Hewlett Packard computer sat on a smoked glass desk, surrounded by piled-up paper invoices and stock orders. Jonathan used interesting pebbles as paperweights; first polished to a high shine, now left to grow dusty.

  A smaller bedroom was empty. Kenny stood in the doorway for a long time, looking at it. Pale walls, bare floorboards, a sash window overlooking the garden.

  Its emptiness spooked him. He closed the door on it.

  In one corner of the landing was propped a length of dowelling topped with a brass hook. Kenny lifted and examined it, wondered what it was. Then he put it back in the corner and took a look at the main bedroom.

  There was a double bed in there. A double wardrobe.

  Kenny went to the wardrobe. It was full of men’s clothing. Kenny thought about the empty room next door, and realized what the brass hook on the end of the dowelling was for.

  He stepped on to the landing, looking up. There, in the ceiling, was a metal eyelet. It had been painted to match its surroundings.

  Kenny took the length of dowel
ling and worked the brass hook into the eyelet. Then he yanked downwards – and the hatch that gave on to the attic opened with a squeal of angle brackets and a shudder of paint flakes.

  Kenny returned the dowelling to its corner, pulled down the folding ladder and climbed into the attic.

  It was hot and airless. Narrow sunbeams, twisting with dust, shone at acute angles through tiny fissures in the woodwork. Kenny sneezed three times.

  The attic was half full with a random-looking collection of stuff – a blue suitcase with scuffed corners, a lava lamp on its side, a tea chest, a box of books, an exercise bike.

  In the far corner, piled into a wide-based pyramid, were stacked perhaps a dozen identical cardboard boxes, each sealed with parcel tape.

  Kenny knew the kind of boxes – they hadn’t been blagged from a corner shop or a supermarket; they’d been bought, flat-packed, at an out-of-town stationers, and assembled downstairs.

  They’d been packed and sealed on the same day, then moved to the attic.

  Kenny used his car keys to slit the tape and opened one of the boxes.

  It contained a woman’s clothing.

  He took out a blouse – white, diaphanous and summery. It had no human smell, no trace of perfume, but rather the stale biscuity scent of cardboard box and hot attic. He lay it down. From the box he took some T-shirts and two fleeces in dark green and luminous pink.

  Another box was full of shoes: high-heels, flip-flops, strappy sandals, court shoes. Most of the inner soles were darkened with the imprint of a woman’s heel.

  A third box was full of trinkets. He removed a velveteen jewellery box, inside which were some thin silver chains, some rings. One of them was a Victorian mourning ring: an amber lozenge set in silver. Between the amber lozenge and the blackening silver was pressed a curl of human hair.

  Kenny wondered at the ring, knowing the hair had been snipped from a corpse, then worn on a pale finger as a reminder of lost love.

  But how had it come through time to be here, in a cardboard box, in this attic?