by T. M. Logan
Exactly.
He smiled across at his wife as he led her up the path that would take them onto the moors. From the side she looked even more like his mom – his real mom – the resemblance was so strong it sometimes gave him shivers. She was a sweet, sweet girl.
She was perfect.
She was the one. The one to save him, maybe; an antidote to the darkness, just like Mom was supposed to be. His mom had tried, but she was weak. In the end, she was too weak.
Because when Ryan decided on something, when he set his mind to a task, he didn’t let anything get in his way. He had discovered this ability young. If you knew what you wanted, exactly what you wanted, there was nothing that could stand in your way if you were willing to do whatever it took to win. Whether it was your interfering father-in-law, or a potential rival who thought he could buy his way back into her affections by throwing money at her favourite charity. Whether it was your mother, your sister, or your father. There was nothing that could stop you if you were willing to do things that others didn’t have the stomach for.
Nothing.
71
Abbie
Finally, Abbie felt herself coming out of it.
Emerging from the shock like a ship nosing its way out of thick fog.
They had started out on the little road leading out of Edale, north towards the moors, past the pub and the cemetery and the little white cottage. Keeping up a good pace until it turned into a track and then a path through the meadow, curving up towards the shelf of dark gritstone above them. Ryan handing out posters as they went, stopping to talk to everyone they passed, giving it every ounce of smiling charm and charismatic concern.
Keeping her hand tightly in his.
Abbie had walked in a daze, unable to focus or talk or do anything other than put one foot in front of the other as Ryan led her up the valley side, as if it were terrain he knew well. Higher and higher. The best part of an hour of walking, up and up, traversing the slope and then rising again, cutting across bleak moorland as low cloud rolled in from the west.
The best part of an hour before the shock started to loosen its grip.
No husband anymore.
No life together.
No future.
It was as if she’d jumped off a merry-go-round, dizzy and disoriented, staggering to stay upright while the whole world continued to spin around her. The moment she’d opened that email, the whole carefully constructed edifice of the last year had come crashing down.
Think.
Think.
There was a fork in the path ahead. Off to the right, about 250 metres distant, there was a tall outcropping of rocks on one of the peaks.
‘Which way?’ Abbie said, panting slightly now. The climb was brutal and her thighs burned with the exertion.
‘Straight on for us,’ Ryan said, pointing directly up the hill, higher onto the moors.
Abbie gestured to the weathered green sign on their right, indicating the rocky outcrop.
‘What’s that over there?’
‘Those piled up rocks? That’s Ringing Roger, supposedly got its name from the sound the wind makes when it blows over it.’
‘Could we put a poster up there?’
‘It’s not really on our way.’
‘But lots of people pass by it, right? How about we go over that way instead?’
Ryan looked back at her. Smiled. ‘Tell you what – let me run over there and put a poster up. You wait here and have a breather, you look a bit puffed out.’ He shrugged off his rucksack and propped it on the ground beside her. ‘I’ll only be a couple of minutes, then we can keep going.’
‘OK. Thanks.’ She sank down onto a rock and watched him jog quickly across the slope of the hill, bounding with an athletic confidence as if he knew the best route without thinking.
As soon as his back was turned, she pulled out her phone.
One bar of signal, flickering in and out.
She called her mum.
The call spooled into electronic silence, then a dismissive beep.
Call failed.
Her heart was a block of lead in her chest.
She dialled 999.
Call failed.
Ryan was almost there, almost at the sign. Still with his back to her.
Shit shit shit.
She shoved her useless mobile into a pocket and scrambled to undo the straps of Ryan’s backpack, fingers fumbling with the clips, pulling it open, because maybe if his phone was in there he might have a signal; they were on different networks after all.
Ryan was attaching a poster to the wooden signpost with drawing pins.
She opened the top of his rucksack and thrust her hand inside. Clothes, water, plastic bags, energy bars, some sort of box. Her hand came to rest on something small and solid. She grasped it and pulled it out—
Froze.
Sat staring at the object in the palm of her hand. Not wanting to acknowledge what it meant.
Not a phone. Something else. Something at once both familiar and strange in this place. She felt all of the blood in her body turning to ice. She wanted to cry, to scream, to curl up in a ball and cover her face. The mire of shock and numb disbelief threatening to pull her back into its depths.
No.
Stay calm.
Stay with it. Think.
She closed her fist around the object and shoved it into her jacket pocket, rapidly re-fastening the top of Ryan’s rucksack just as he turned and started coming back.
She watched him as he jogged over to where she was sitting.
‘Done,’ he said, hardly out of breath at all.
‘Great,’ she said.
He took her hand firmly in his. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep going.’
*
‘You know, I’ve been thinking,’ Ryan said, after they’d walked further onto the moor. ‘I know we want to get the best venue for the happy ever after party, I know you’ve got your heart set on Risley Hall and it’s nice and local, but how about Chatsworth House?’
‘You don’t like Risley?’ Abbie heard herself say.
‘No it’s not that, I love it, but Chatsworth is kind of half way between our two home towns, isn’t it?’ He squeezed her hand tighter. ‘Between Nottingham and Manchester. It’s not too far from here, we could go and look on the way back.’
She paused before answering. ‘I want everyone to be there.’
‘And they will be – it would be such an amazing venue for the party, wouldn’t it?’ He held his hand out to her, as if inviting her to dance. ‘What do you think, Mrs Wilson?’
‘I don’t know, Ryan.’
He grinned at her. ‘I’ll go down on one knee again, if you like?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t get my head around party stuff, not at the moment.’
‘Why not? It would be perfect. That’s what we both want, isn’t it?’
Abbie ignored the question. ‘I want my dad to be there.’ She swallowed hard on a dry throat. ‘I want him back before we do anything else.’
‘That’s totally understandable, Abs.’ Ryan’s voice softened immediately. ‘I get it, I really do.’
She finally managed to disengage her hand from his, shoving it quickly into her pocket. They walked in silence for a few moments. Out of nowhere, out of nothing, she thought of a TV series she and her dad had binge-watched on Netflix a few years ago. 13 Reasons Why, about a high-school student who killed herself and left audio tapes for the thirteen people she blamed. Her dad not really approving, liking the story but not the underlying message, increasingly bothered by the subtext that there could be reasons to justify the ultimate act of self-destruction. They had talked about it after the final episode. What was it he had said? Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Heartfelt and passionate and worried that his teenage daughter would get the wrong message, worried that she would think suicide could ever be the right answer.
Abbie knew, then.
Maybe she’d known a
ll along.
When the words came they were not planned or calculated, they were not thought through. They just came out.
‘What do you think happened to him, Ryan?’ she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘To my dad?’
‘Honestly, love? I don’t know. But you have to stay positive, we have to keep looking, keep believing that he’ll come back to us. That’s what he’d want.’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve tried to picture it but I can’t. I just don’t believe that he’d hurt himself. I also can’t accept that he’d leave without saying goodbye.’
‘Who knows what he was thinking when—’
‘Why did he ask me whether I’d ever gone with you, when you visited your mum’s grave in Manchester on one of those Sundays?’
Ryan blinked, frowned slightly. She’d seen that expression a lot these past four days, but now it looked contrived, artificial, like a daytime soap actor reaching for the emotion required by the script.
‘I guess he liked to keep tabs on you.’
Abbie shook her head. ‘It was more than that. It was like he wasn’t sure you were even going to Manchester.’
‘He’s a protective guy, he just wanted to know where you were. I’m sure I’ll be the same when I’m a dad.’
‘No, no,’ Abbie said. ‘It wasn’t about me, it was about you. About where you went.’
Ryan began to say something, then stopped.
‘What?’ Abbie said, after a moment. ‘What is it?’
Ryan rubbed a hand over his mouth, frowning, as if wrestling with a question that defied an answer.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he said, his voice soft and low. ‘It’s about your dad.’
Abbie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She stopped walking. Faced him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s really hard for me to tell you, and I wish more than anything I’d come clean about it sooner.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘Last Sunday, I came here,’ Ryan said, taking her hand in his again. ‘And I saw your dad.’
72
Abbie
Abbie stared at her husband.
‘What?’
‘Or at least,’ Ryan said, ‘I thought I saw him.’
‘You were in Manchester last weekend. That’s what you said.’
‘I came here first.’
‘Why?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘What were you doing here?’
‘I like to come here sometimes to clear my—’
‘And why the hell didn’t you tell the police?’
‘Because . . . I feel terrible about it. I didn’t think it was relevant, and I didn’t want you and your mum to think about him that way.’
‘What are you talking about? I can’t believe you didn’t mention this before.’
‘He was with a woman.’
‘What?’ she said again, her expression hardening.
‘He was over there, higher up,’ he gestured towards a low rise, some way distant from the path. ‘I followed him for a bit, was going to say hello. They were holding hands and kissing. At first I thought he was with your mum. Then I got closer and realised it was someone else.’
She shook her head. Resolute. ‘No.’
‘I hate that you have to find out this way, it was—’
‘No,’ she said again, louder this time. ‘That’s absolute crap, Ryan. I don’t believe you.’
‘Why would I lie?’
She snorted. ‘Really? You’re asking that question now, after everything?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, love.’
‘Because you’ve lied about everything, haven’t you!’ she found herself shouting. ‘About being an army officer, about uni, about your family.’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘And your mum didn’t have cancer, did she? Because she died when you were ten years old. My dad got an investigator onto you! And all this stuff about going to visit your mum’s grave on the second Sunday of every month? Pretty sure you can’t fly to Canada and back in a day.’
‘It was my foster mother who—’
‘Your foster mother disappeared, just like your first wife! Just like my dad! Just like George!’ She held up her phone. ‘I’ve seen it for myself.’
Ryan shook his head as if he was disappointed. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know it’s a standard tactic, don’t you?’
She frowned. ‘What is?’
‘These so-called investigators.’ He sighed. ‘Trust me, we’ve used them now and then to look into candidates for senior roles – and for every good investigator, there’s ten bad ones charging desperate, gullible people an awful lot of money for a whole lot of nothing. They pad out their reports with all kinds of crazy nonsense to justify their ridiculous fees. I’ve seen it before.’
It was Abbie’s turn to shake her head. ‘There were photographs, Ryan. Pictures of you.’ She stared up at him. ‘The mugshot of you when you went to jail for attacking your first wife. The picture of you and your family – your real family – from that newspaper report.’
Ryan looked at her. ‘I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, and I’ve had my share of tough times in life. But I’m not that man anymore.’
‘You can’t stop yourself, can you?’ She shook her head. ‘It’s just one lie after another.’
His face crumpled in defeat. ‘I love you, Abbie Wilson. You’ve showed me what real love is, for the first time in my life. I want to help you find your dad, and I want to show you the last place that I saw him, just like I said. It’s not much further.’ He beckoned to her. ‘Come on.’
73
Ryan
Ryan set off up the path, towards the low rise a few hundred metres distant, knowing she would follow him. They always followed, sooner or later. It was like dancing: for all the tedious sermonising about feminism and gender equality, deep down women still wanted to be led.
As he skirted around the first outcrop of rock, he slowed and turned to beckon her forward, to take her hand and reassure her.
She wasn’t there.
She was still standing where he’d left her, perhaps twenty-five metres below him on the path.
‘Abbie, come on. Please.’
‘What happened last Sunday, Ryan?’ Her voice echoed dully across the bleak expanse of moorland. ‘What happened to my dad?’
He held out his hand, willing her to start walking towards him. ‘That’s what I’m trying to help you find out. It’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not going up there with you,’ she said. ‘I’m not going any further. I’m going back.’
‘Back where?’
‘Anywhere but here!’ she shouted, her voice cracking with a sob. ‘Anywhere away from you.’ She began to walk away.
Ryan started back towards her, his pulse thumping in his ears. ‘Abbie, wait.’
‘Don’t follow me!’
He stopped again. ‘I promise I won’t,’ he said. ‘I just want to be sure you’re all right, that’s all.’
‘I’ll be fine!’ she shouted back. ‘And I’m going to find my dad on my own!’
She kept going, head up, shoulders back, striding so fast she was almost stumbling. He watched her go, waiting to see the direction she chose, scanning the surrounding countryside for walkers but seeing no one. Just heather and gorse, dark gritstone and low clouds rolling across the moors almost close enough to touch.
‘OK,’ he called finally, to her retreating back. ‘I won’t follow you. But just so you know, you’re going the wrong way.’
74
Ryan
Ed wasn’t in the reservoir, of course.
There had not been enough time to address all the challenges posed by water: proper weighting, gaseous expansion of tissue, animal activity, degradation of ropes and bindings over time caused by immersion. Water was fine – it could be fine, done right – but most inland bodie
s of water didn’t have the depth to guarantee a good long-term solution. Ladybower Reservoir was 120 feet at its deepest, which was not too bad – but it had still virtually disappeared during the scorching summer of 2018.
So, water disposals could be tricky.
The old-fashioned way was what Ryan knew best, and having a site prepared saved a lot of hassle when time was tight. He had developed his own method which solved the various logistical problems posed by a moorland burial. There was always excess earth, for one thing, which needed to be got rid of in advance in one of the nearby gullies. To avoid the surface sinking by the commensurate amount, the space to be occupied by the body needed to be kept clear in advance of disposal day. Ryan had experimented with various options but a cheap swimming pool lilo worked pretty well: cut out square sods of earth with your spade for setting aside, remove the excess earth beneath for disposal, and fill the gap with the semi-inflated lilo. Replace the sods of earth to disguise the location, and your site was ready to use whenever you needed it, with a void maintained by the inflatable that could simply be replaced with a body when the time was right. Plus, the lilo was fully portable and easy to dispose of.
He’d known from the start – right from the first time they’d met – that Ed was a potential problem to be solved one way or the other. It wasn’t just the usual father-and-daughter crap, it was more than that. Ryan had got rid of the first GPS tracker (some cheap piece of shit from Amazon that would have failed after a few days anyway) and made a daily check in case a replacement appeared. So he wasn’t too surprised to see another tracker a few days later, a decent piece of kit this time, commercial grade. He’d decided to let this one stay, see what happened.
He’d had a plan ready to go for a few weeks, just in case. The need to act on it arrived when Ed had contracted the private investigator, signing his own death warrant in the process. And the opportunity, the second time Ed let himself into the house in Beeston – before he’d even set foot inside – when the Google Nest doorbell system sent pictures of him ringing the bell straight to Ryan’s phone. It amused him that Ed had thought he was bossing the whole thing, drawing Ryan in, predicting his next move, eavesdropping, when all the while it was the other way around.
