by Tom Weaver
'How did he take it?'
'He was upset. He really, really liked her. But he seemed to be okay.'
'Was he still working in the video store when Megan disappeared?'
'I think so.'
'So they still spoke?'
'Yeah.'
'And got on pretty well?'
'Yeah, I'd say so…' Lindsey glanced at Kaitlin. Wouldn't you, Kay?'
Kaitlin looked at me and nodded. I underlined Charles Bryant's name. 'Does the name A. J. Grant mean anything to either of you?' The blank expressions told me everything I needed to know. I changed tack. 'Did you have any favourite pubs or clubs you used to go to?'
'Tiko's,' Lindsey said immediately.
'That's a club?'
'Yeah. In the West End.'
I made a note of it. 'Any others?'
They looked at each other. 'Not really,' Lindsey continued. 'I mean, we go to lots of places, but Tiko's is the place with the best music.'
I took out Megan's digital camera and scrolled through to the picture of her standing in front of the block of flats. 'Did either of you take this?'
They studied it, Lindsey holding the camera.
'Where is she?'
I shrugged. 'I don't know. You don't recognize it?'
'No,' Lindsey said, shaking her head.
'Kaitlin?'
'No,' she said.
I nodded, took the camera back and briefly glanced at Kaitlin. Her eyes had left mine, and she'd gone cold again. Shut down.
Something was definitely up.
Bothwick wasn't there when I got back. I glanced at the reception where one of the secretaries was taking a phone call, and then quickly moved inside his office, pushing the door shut behind me. I didn't have much time.
Two files were perched on the edge of the desk, where he'd left them. Kaitlin and Lindsey. I left Lindsey's where it was and picked up Kaitlin's. A school photograph of her, probably a couple of years younger. Below that, a list of the subjects she was taking and an attendance record. At a quick glance, it looked pretty good. No long absences, no comments in the spaces provided. On the next page was her home address in Tufnell Park, and on the final one her last school report. At the bottom: A for Drama.
So she definitely wasn't shy.
I snapped the file closed, placed it back on the desk and opened up the top drawer of the filing cabinet. The Bryant file was about eight in. Inside was a photo of him. He was a handsome kid; dark hair, bright eyes. Underneath was a top sheet with his address on. He lived with his father near Highgate Wood.
Then, outside, I could hear footsteps.
Bothwick.
I closed the file, dropped it back into the cabinet drawer and closed it as quietly as I could. A second later, he appeared in the doorway. Ah!' he said. 'Sorry about that.'
'No problem.'
'Did you get everything you needed?'
I smiled, briefly eyeing the files again to see they were definitely where he'd left them. Then I shook his hand and told him I did.
Lindsey was right: the video store Megan used to work in was shut. Not just shut for the day. Shut for good. I drove past it and headed along Holloway Road to the Bryant home in Highgate, a three-storey townhouse with a double garage and a wrought-iron porch.
There wasn't a single light on anywhere inside.
I rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing. No movement. No sound from inside. As rain started to fall, spitting at first, then coming harder, I stepped down from the porch and wandered around to the side. A path led parallel to the property, behind a locked gate. I could see a sliver of garden but not much else. Walking back to the front door, I rang the doorbell again — but when no one answered for a second time, I headed back to the car in the rain.
* * *
Chapter Five
Three weeks after Christmas, a leaflet got posted through my door. It was advertising a support group for widows and widowers under forty-five. I wasn't a great believer in fate. In fact, I hardly believed in it at all. But I understood why people might when that leaflet landed on my doormat. At the time I was fresh off a case that had almost killed me, and I'd spent Christmas alone watching old home movies of Derryn. Physically and emotionally, I was low. So in the second week of January, I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go along, not expecting it to make much of a difference. Nine months later, it was still part of my weekly routine.
Most Tuesdays we met in a community college in Acton, in a room that smelt of stale coffee. But once a month, we all chipped in and went for a meal somewhere. If I hadn't already agreed to go, I might have cancelled it to concentrate on the Carver case, but it was too late to back out now. Instead, I headed from the Bryant house to my office in Ealing, picked up a change of clothes and some deodorant, and then drove to the restaurant. It was a Thai place in Kew, close to the river.
Something sizzled in the kitchen as I entered, the smell of coconut and soy sauce filling the air. There were fourteen of them sitting at a big table by one of the windows. The woman who ran the group was a short, dumpy 32-year-old called Jenny. Her husband had suffered a heart attack running for a train at King's Cross. She saw me, came over and pecked me on the cheek. I'd liked Jenny pretty much from the first time I'd talked to her. She was lively, quick-witted and fun, but she had an understanding of people; an ability to read and connect with them. We walked to the table together, and I apologized to everyone for being late, shaking hands and saying hellos to some of the regulars. There were two spaces left: one was in the middle next to an accountant called Roger, who, after a couple of glasses of red wine, always started talking about the brake horsepower of his Mazda RX-8; the other was right at the end, next to two faces I hadn't seen before.
'David, we've got a couple of new arrivals tonight,' Jenny said. She leaned in to me as we walked towards them. 'I was hoping you could keep them entertained for me.'
Jenny introduced them as Aron Crane and Jill White. They'd both lost their partners, and had got to know each other by sharing a morning coffee-shop routine. I wondered whether they'd since got together, but they sat apart from one another at the table, and — as we got talking — reminisced about their partners in a way that made it obvious they weren't a couple.
We ordered, and spent the next half an hour drifting through polite conversation: the weather, the traffic, a local MP who had been caught with a rent boy and his trousers round his ankles in a toilet in Bayswater. Both of them seemed pleasant enough. She was closer to my age, maybe just the wrong side of forty, and had deep blue eyes — how you imagined the sea would look in places you couldn't afford to go — slight imperfections in her skin, like acne scars, and a small mark just above the bump of her chin. Both she was acutely aware of. When she talked, her hands automatically went to her face, the fingers of one hand resting against the curve of her jaw, the other tucking her blonde hair behind her ears. It was an appealing quality: a kind of underlying shyness.
He was in his mid-to-late thirties, dark brown hair, the same colour eyes and a slightly bent nose, as if it had once been broken and not reset properly. He was dressed conservatively — collared shirt, grey trousers, plain jacket - and if I'd had to take a guess, I would have said he was a City suit, burning in the fires of middle-management hell. He had a put-upon look, as if he could never quite get his head above water.
'So what is it you do, David?' he asked as the food arrived.
'I find missing people.'
'Like an investigator?'
'Yeah, a bit like one.' I smiled. 'Except I don't have a badge to flash and I don't get to kick down doors. Much.'
Aron laughed. Jill gave a thin smile, as if I'd just offended her. I tried to work out what I'd said. Maybe the police comment.
Aron looked at her, then back at me. 'Jill's husband used to be a policeman. He was…' He looked at her again and she nodded, giving him permission to tell the story. 'He died while on duty. Shot.' He paused. 'And she's still trying to find out who did it.'
/> 'Oh, I'm really sorry,' I said.
She held up a hand. 'It's okay. It's been nearly a year — I really should be better at hiding my emotions.' She smiled for real this time.
The conversation moved back into more general subjects — films, sport, more on the weather — before it led to why we were all in London. Jill was in marketing, and had only recently moved to the city after her husband got a job with the Met; Aron confirmed what I'd suspected — that he was in finance — and worked for an investment bank in Canary Wharf. Eventually, things came full circle and returned to my work.
'So do you enjoy what you do?' Jill asked.
'Yeah, most of the time.' I held up my left hand and wiggled the fingers where the nails were damaged. Though not always. Sometimes it just hurts.'
'How did you do that?'
I paused, looking down at my fingers. 'Some people just prefer to remain hidden,' I said, trying to make light of it, trying to deflect any further questions.
It was just easier that way.
Outside, while a couple of them — including Aron - were sorting out the bill, I got talking to Jill on her own. The night was cold. Above us, the skies opened for a moment and the moon moved into view; then it was gone again behind banks of dark cloud.
'Thank you for keeping us company tonight, David,' she said. 'I realize it's probably not fun being lumbered with the new people.'
'It was good to meet you both.'
'I'm really glad Aron persuaded me to come along. I wasn't sure about it, I must admit. But I think this'll be good for me. As you know, we were fairly new to the city when Frank died; I mean, we have friends dotted all around the country, but not too many here in London. And I've basically spent the last year not going out.'
'Everyone here will understand that part.' I glanced inside at Aron and then back to Jill. 'So did you two just bump into each other?'
'Pretty much. Aron gets his morning coffee from the same place as me. I just said hello one day and then, after that, we gradually started chatting and, well… here we are.' She stopped. Studied me, as if turning something over in her head. 'Actually, we were thinking of going out for a drink Friday night. You're quite welcome to come.'
She looked at me, her eyes dancing in the light from the restaurant. I looked inside at Aron, laughing at something Jenny had said to him, then back to Jill.
'I don't want to step on any toes.'
Her eyes followed mine. 'Aron?'
I nodded.
'Oh, no - we're just friends. I'm not ready for anything like that.' She glanced inside. Why don't I take your number? I can drop you a text, or give you a call, and if you decide you'd like to come along, then you can. But there's no pressure.'
I gave her my number. As she was putting it into her phone, she looked in at Aron again. Maybe she wasn't ready. Maybe he wasn't either. But they definitely felt something for one another, even if it was only a kinship. And I didn't want to get in the way, because I knew a little of how that felt; of finally finding a connection with someone in the shadows left behind.
* * *
Chapter Six
My parents had been gone for three years by the time Derryn died, and I'd been an only child. No brothers. No sisters. I'd relied mostly on friends at first, and — for a while - they would drop in on rotation. But then things gradually started to change. Before Derryn died, we'd all joke around, laugh at each other, get into beer-fuelled arguments about football and films. After I buried her, none of that seemed to matter any more.
Only one person ever understood that.
When I got home just after eleven, I looked across the fence into next door's front room and saw my neighbour Liz leaning over her laptop. Liz had been different from everyone else, despite the fact she'd never had any right to be. She'd moved in three weeks after Derryn died and didn't know me at all. But, as we started to talk, she became the person who would sit there and listen to me - night after night, week after week — working my way back through my marriage.
About three or four months in, I started to realize she felt something for me. She never said anything, or even really acted on it. But it was there. A sense that, when I was ready, she would be waiting. When I had needed it, she'd given me practical help too. She was a brilliant solicitor, running her own firm out of offices in the city. When my case before Christmas had gone bad, she'd sat with me in a police interview room as they tried to unravel what had happened and why. In the aftermath, I'd lied to the police and, deep down, I knew Liz could tell. But she never confronted me, and never mentioned it. She understood how the loss of my wife had changed the need for me to confide in someone, and seemed willing to ride it out.
As I stepped up on to the porch, my security light kicked in. Next door, she clocked the movement. Her eyes narrowed, and then I passed into the full glow of the light. She broke out into a smile and got to her feet, waving me towards her. I nodded, moved back down the drive, and up the path to her front porch. The door was already open, framing her as she stood in the kitchen searching in a cupboard.
'Hello, Mr Raker,' she said, looking up as she brought down a top-of-the-range grinder. On the counter was a bag of coffee beans, wrapped in silver foil.
'Elizabeth. How are you?'
She shook her head. She hated being called Elizabeth.
'I'm good. You?'
'Fine. You been in court today?'
'Tomorrow.'
'Oh — so are you sure you want me bothering you?'
You're a nice distraction,' she said, and flashed me a smile.
The house was tidy and still had that 'just moved in' feel, even though she had lived there for nearly two years. The living room had a gorgeous open fireplace, finished in black marble with a stone surround. Logs were piled up in alcoves either side, and a small wooden angel, its wings spread, was standing where a fire should have been. The rest of the room was minimalist: two sofas, both black, a TV in the corner, a pot plant next to that. There was a Denon sound system beneath the front window. On the only shelf, high above the sofas, were four pictures, all of Liz and her daughter. She'd married young, had her daughter shortly after, and divorced soon after that. Despite Liz only being forty-three, her daughter Katie was already in her third year of university at Warwick.
I sat in the living room. She closed the top on the grinder and set it in motion, the noise like tractor wheels on stony ground, the smell of coffee filling the house. When she came through, she pulled the kitchen door most of the way shut and perched herself opposite me.
'So what have you been up to?'
'It was support group night.'
'Ah, right, of course. How was that?'
'Pretty good. I wasn't sat next to Roger this week.'
She smiled. 'He's the Mazda RX-8 guy, right?' 'Right.'
'Where did you eat?'
'Some Thai place in Kew.'
'Oh, I know where you mean. I took a client there once. He'd been charged with receiving stolen goods.' She paused, and broke out into another smile. 'Shifty so-and- so, he was. Luckily, what jail time I saved him was made up for by the big fat bill I posted through his letterbox at the end of the trial.'
'Are you expensive?'
'If only you knew how expensive.' She winked. 'You find yourself in possession of any dodgy DVD players, David, you know where to come.'
She smiled again, and we looked at each other, the noise of the coffee grinder filling the silence.
'So are you on a case at the moment?'
'You remember Megan Carver?'
She paused for a moment. She knew the name, but couldn't think where from. "Wasn't she that girl who disappeared?' 'Right.'
'Wow. Big case.'
'Big enough. I'm trying to find her.'
'If she's even still alive.'
'Yeah, well, I think there's a distinct possibility she's not.'
She didn't pursue it any further, although as her eyes lingered on me I knew she wanted to. It was more than a natural curiosity. Th
ere were obvious parallels between our work — the damaged clients, the unravelling of lies and half-truths, the building of a case — but, deep down, I knew her reasons were much simpler than that: she wanted to feel we were moving somewhere.
'Oh, I almost forgot,' she said after a while, and disappeared down the hallway.
I looked up at one of the photos on the shelf again. In it, Liz had her arm around Katie's neck, and was dressed in a skirt and vest. She looked fantastic. Dark, playful eyes; long chocolate-coloured hair; slim, gentle curves. We'd never talked about the relationships she'd had since her daughter was born, but it seemed impossible that there wouldn't have been some. She was beautiful without ever suggesting she knew it, which only made her more attractive.