by Tim Weaver
‘Well, we’ve got some good news,’ Field said. ‘Evan Willis is in custody.’
I let out a breath, the relief like a flood.
‘Has he said anything?’
‘He says he’s not talking without a lawyer.’
That was a good sign. It spoke of someone who knew it was the end of the road.
I fell into line behind Field and Kent and we headed between the houses and down towards the gate. As we got closer, I realized Field must have called ahead, because one of the security guards was coming towards us on the other side of the fence, weaving his way through the remnants of the old sanatorium.
He greeted us, unlocked the gate and let us in.
As he locked up again, I looked around. The ground under my feet was a mix of mangled concrete and rampant weeds and, around me, everything seemed to sprawl, the layout of the nature reserve hard to gauge: the path the security guard had walked on ran vaguely through the middle, towards a huge, ruined building; off to the right there was a knot of much smaller structures, identical in size but different in terms of damage. Paths zigzagged between corroded walls, past trees and thorns and vines, routes snaking off at angles, like minor capillaries, into alleys created intentionally when this site was still being used, and accidentally in the years since its closure, as foundations and roofs imploded, and bricks toppled.
‘Follow me,’ the guard said.
Our footsteps soon became drowned out by birdsong, the squawk of geese, the chirp of starlings. The wind came, muting everything for a second, and then it all faded in again. A bird broke from a tree to my left. Another took flight much further along, where the path became darker, the overgrowth denser, trees leaning in at one another, their canopies merging. Sleet continued dotting my face.
Eventually, we got to another fence, an almost exact replica of the one we’d passed through on the other side of the reserve, and then we walked up a grass bank into the hospital itself.
Inside, we took the lift up.
Built in a half-circle around the lift shaft was the rest of St Augustine’s, contemporary and striking, constructed in the grey and white tiers I’d seen the first time; off to the far left was an even clearer view of the nature reserve, a labyrinth of half-broken buildings, consumed in a sea of green. There were birds everywhere, nesting on the damp, overgrown banks of the river, in what remained of roofs, in the ragged teeth of smashed windows. Despite it all, there was something weirdly beautiful about the decay, especially in the subdued light, the natural, primitive sweep of the reserve so at odds with the hospital’s sharp, modern angles.
The lift opened, and we were immediately opposite the doors to the admin block. This was the west entrance – the one Field had mentioned to me this morning.
A man in his late thirties was waiting inside, as if expecting us. He introduced himself as Jerry Wragg. He spoke quietly as we headed to the corner office, trying to prevent himself from being heard by the rest of the floor, and said they’d been so shocked to read about the death of Erik McMillan in the newspapers. Field responded blandly and then we filed into McMillan’s office, Wragg disappeared again, and she asked me to start running through my recollection of the night I came to see McMillan here.
They made the occasional note, but mostly the two of them just watched and listened. I told them what I could remember of the conversation that had taken place, talked about him making me a coffee – the machine, I saw, had already been dusted for prints at some point over the past day, the powder still evident on it – and then looked out of McMillan’s office, to where the rest of the staff were.
‘I thought I saw someone out there,’ I said.
I’d already told Field this over the phone, but she nodded as if it were the first time she’d heard it.
‘Had you drunk the coffee by then?’ Kent asked.
‘Yes.’
‘So do you think anyone was actually there?’
‘I don’t think I was hallucinating.’
‘So someone was there?’
‘Yes,’ I said to him. ‘I think it was Bennik.’
‘But you didn’t see him?’ Field asked.
‘No. I heard a door open and close – the one at the south entrance – and I swear I saw movement out there.’
‘So he came in through the south?’
‘Yes.’
‘To deliberately avoid any cameras?’
‘That seems likely.’
‘And what happened then?’
I shrugged. ‘I went out and checked, and I couldn’t find anyone.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then I passed out.’
Both of them stared at me. It was difficult to say what they were thinking. Field said, ‘And then, when you woke up, you were at home?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t remember how you got back?’
‘No.’
Field frowned. ‘I don’t understand why he would go to the trouble of drugging you and then put you in the back of his car and take you home. That makes no sense.’
She was wrong. It actually made a lot of sense, it’s just neither of them had the full context because I hadn’t ever told anyone about Melody being in my house when I woke up. At the time, when I was still under a cloud of suspicion, I chose to remain silent because I knew I was the last person to see her alive, and if I admitted we were together, even if I didn’t understand how or why, it looked bad for me. Now, it was hard simply because I’d left it so long. But those couple of hours definitely made sense: they’d been an attempt to box me in. Bennik knew how it would play with the police if I told them about Melody, and how it would eventually play if the truth came out and I’d chosen not to. He also knew how it would look if I admitted that I had no idea why I was waiting outside the gates of the hospital, how I’d got there, or why I seemed so upset. I was upset because of those disconcerting moments alone with Melody earlier that day, and I was confused because McMillan’s drugs were still in my system.
Mostly, though, that time with Melody was his attempt to unbalance me, to have me questioning my own state of mind, and make me believe I really was sick. It had almost worked. I was willing to bet he’d been the one who’d drawn the heart on the window two nights before that, and the one who’d taken Derryn’s sign from the fence and put it in the garage. And then there was the face in the darkness at the back of my house. It hadn’t been a trick of the light, or a delusion. It was him. He’d been toying with me: haunting me, stalking me.
He’d been using my emotional vulnerability against me.
Field walked over to one of the walls where there was a framed map of the facility. I’d noticed it the first time I’d been here. She started looking it over, perhaps trying to understand John Bennik’s movements, and how he and McMillan had got me out – and why they would bring me back here.
‘When did you wake up at home?’ Kent asked.
‘Around midday.’
‘And what happened then?’
I looked at them both, but didn’t hold their gaze.
‘It’s, uh …’ I stopped. ‘It’s hard to remember.’
‘We need you to try,’ Field said, turning to face me again.
‘I’ve been trying for days,’ I replied, too quickly, and while there was some truth to it, and a lot of that thirty-five hours was still a blank, I remembered enough – I remembered Melody – and Field seemed to pick up on it; a minor giveaway, a flash of something in my face. I knew, then, that if I sustained the lie much longer, if I kept her in the dark, whatever goodwill I’d built up would immediately go south.
‘Anything?’ Kent said.
I looked at him. ‘Can I have some water?’
Both of them immediately looked cautious. He glanced from me to Field, who nodded at him, and then Kent headed to the door and went out to a water cooler. The people on the floor looked up and watched, as if Kent were about to deliver some news. I got up quickly, went to the windows and stared out at the view, s
o my back was to the door. Field was two feet away. She looked at me, eyes narrowing as if she sensed something was up.
‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
She glanced towards Kent.
I followed her gaze, to make sure he was still out of earshot, and then said: ‘When I woke up at home …’ I stopped again, swallowed. My mouth felt completely dry. ‘She was there.’
‘Who?’
‘Melody.’
‘Melody was in your house?’
I nodded.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘She was in my house, cooking me dinner. I don’t know what …’ I stopped, knowing how it must have sounded to Field. ‘I don’t even know how to explain it. She was there, and then she wasn’t. I woke up and she had set the table. She’d bought me a present, a copy of No One Can See the Crows at Night. But it was Bennik. He was behind it, trying to make me feel sick – seem sick – unreliable, unstable. He knew I was having doubts about myself, and I …’
My words fell away.
‘You what?’ Field asked.
I looked off towards the other side of the hospital, to the withered remains in the nature reserve, to the echoes of the old sanatorium – its wards, its untold stories.
‘David,’ Field said, ‘you what?’
‘I was starting to think I might really be sick.’
‘Do you still think that?’
Just then, Kent returned with a cup of water.
‘David, do you still think that?’
I shook my head, rubbed at my brow and looked at the map on the wall, trying to understand that night, the practicalities of taking me out while I was drugged, transporting me, and doing it without raising any alarms. Had they pretended that I was a patient? Did anyone bother questioning the motives of the Clinical Director as he walked an apparently unconscious man out? The facility was quiet, anyway, because of Christmas, but the trust that people had in McMillan, the respect he’d built up over so many years, would have gone a long way.
‘David?’
This time, Field’s voice came through, but only at the very edge of what I was hearing. Something had caught my eye on the map. It was actually two maps, I realized now, one laid on top of the other – the hospital as it was now, and the hospital when it opened in 1901.
‘David?’
I stepped in closer to it, concentrating my attention on the older version. This was before the nature reserve, when the buildings were all still in use on both sides. Each building had a name, and pathways had been drawn where now there was only undergrowth and broken concrete.
‘David?’
‘Look,’ I said, pointing at the map.
‘Look at what?’
‘This.’
They both came in closer and I pointed to the right-hand side. Back in 1901, there had been no fencing around the hospital site; instead, there had been walls, their measurements marked out – two and a half feet thick, eight feet high.
‘What am I looking at?’ Field asked.
‘This wall here.’
I tapped a finger to the one on the right. It was where we’d come from today, what had existed there before it was knocked down and replaced by modern security fencing. Back at the turn of the century, there had been no Mountford Road and no housing estate. There were no houses at all.
There was just the wall.
‘Raker?’
‘Ease war,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘That’s what McMillan said to me before he died.’
‘So?’
I drew a finger around each of the four walls that had surrounded the hospital site. The walls were no longer up, but the map still marked their positions.
North wall. South wall. West wall.
East wall.
‘He was giving us a direction,’ I said.
73
As we exited through the gate, the same way we’d come in, a wind suddenly ripped in off the river. Birds took flight behind us, sleet spattered against our jackets, and then we left the skein of old brickwork and trees, the grass and wild flowers, and broke back into suburbia. Once I got to Mountford Road, I stopped.
‘What now?’ Field said, drawing level with me.
I looked both ways, the street quiet, and then at Field and Kent. In their faces, the doubts had already started to gather like storm clouds.
‘What now, Raker?’ she said again.
I headed to my left, in a northerly direction, towards the end of the cul-de-sac, studying the houses as I passed them. They were all identical. Bay windows on the bottom floor, two windows at the top.
‘You said Evan Willis lives in Forest Hill?’
‘Yes,’ Field said, walking beside me. ‘He’s got a flat there.’
‘Does he own or rent anywhere else?’
‘No.’
‘What about his parents? Brothers? Sisters?’
‘One sister, in North Wales.’
‘No parents?’
‘Look,’ she said, glancing at one of the houses closest to her, ‘I know where you’re going with this, but Willis doesn’t own a house here.’
That didn’t meant he wasn’t here. He’d already used and abandoned one ID – who was to say he hadn’t used another in order to buy or rent here? This could have been where McMillan had come to treat Melody whenever she was ill. This could be where Melody was at this very moment, hidden behind the walls of one of these homes.
‘Raker,’ Field said, struggling to keep up now. ‘Raker, stop.’
But I didn’t. I kept going, looking in at the bay windows, at what I could see of the interiors. I saw shapes moving around inside some of them, nothing in others. I didn’t know what the hell I was even looking for – Melody at one of the windows? My face became frozen, my hands rigid with cold, my skin like ice. The sleet was starting to turn to snow, getting thicker and thicker, swirling in front of me like gauze, and the effect was disorientating: I felt like I was losing balance.
Suddenly, I felt Field grab my arm.
‘Raker.’
I stopped.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘She might be in one of these houses. We need to find her.’
We were almost at the top of the road. At the end was a row of trees; in front of them was another fence, this one much lower. On the other side of the trees was the Thames Path, but there was no access to it from here.
‘We could knock on some doors,’ Kent suggested.
Field shook her head, keeping her eyes on me.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re not knocking on any doors.’
I hated how she was looking at me now – like she pitied me, like I was collapsing in on myself. I looked up and down the street again.
Come on, Melody, where are you?
‘Why don’t we go back to the hospital?’ she said.
‘I’m not going back there.’
‘You’d rather stay out in this shitty weather?’
‘I want to find Melody.’
‘I know,’ she said, taking a step closer to me, looking like she might be about to squeeze my arm in an effort to comfort me, or talk me down. ‘So do we.’
‘Then we should do what Kent said and knock on some doors.’
Field glanced at Kent, and he seemed to shrivel under her glare. She was telling him to keep his mouth shut next time.
‘David.’ She said my name like she was trying to shake me out of a trance. ‘Listen to me: you need to get your head straight.’
I turned to her. ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking child, Field. I know I’m right about this. I know it.’ I tried to sound confident, even though I wasn’t. Where did I begin looking? Which house? Was it even this road? ‘This is what McMillan meant,’ I said. ‘East wall.’
‘He could have meant anything. He was dying.’
‘This is what he meant,’ I repeated, my voice harder. ‘It’s pretty much
where the wall used to be. It’s the name McMillan saw every day on that map beside his desk. I’m telling you: this is where he came to visit Melody whenever she needed a doctor. Bennik, Willis – whatever he’s calling himself here – lives in one of these houses.’
I stared her down, my expression unmoved, but all I could think was, what if my hunch was wrong? How would I look then? What would happen to Melody?
I began walking again, and this time neither Field nor Kent followed me. I looked back over my shoulder at them, and they watched me go like a fractious child they couldn’t control. I saw Field dig into her pocket for her phone and then bark instructions at Kent that I couldn’t hear above the wind, and he started trudging back towards the Volvo, parked further down the street.
The closer I got to the end of the road, the more the dread started to build in me. Where the hell is Melody? How was I ever going to find her? In the next round of police interviews, in the court case I’d eventually have to attend, I’d get ripped apart. Field and Kent would have to recount these moments, the moments when I marched off into a snowstorm trying to find a woman who wasn’t here, and then it would all come full circle again, an echo of those hours in the station at Charing Cross: my state of mind, my choices, whether anything I said could be trusted.
I stopped, my feet sliding in the slush.
Ahead of me, a hundred feet down on the left, was a turning at the end of the street, beyond the last house. I hadn’t seen it until now – until I was almost on top of it. It was big enough for a car – but only just – and as I realized that, I realized something else: it wasn’t a turning, it was the start of a driveway. There were no other driveways on the street: every other resident had to leave their vehicle parked on the road. So why did only the last house have a driveway?
I started moving, more of the driveway coming into view, and as it did, I could see that it went past the last house, around towards the back of it, in the direction of the nature reserve. On the wall, at the entrance to the driveway, was a sign.
THE OLD CHECKPOINT