by Tim Weaver
‘Morning,’ Harry said.
I nodded at both of them, then turned to Jade. ‘Is Alex Towne alive?’
For a second I thought I saw something in her face, before she moved to the back of the bar and picked up two empty pint glasses.
‘Jade?’
The two men looked between us.
She started filling one of the glasses, pulling on the pump and looking straight at me – as if proving she had nothing to hide. When she was done with the first beer, she duplicated the movement for the second.
‘You okay, Jade?’ Harry said.
She nodded.
The old men looked between us again, trying to figure out if I was bothering her. They probably already knew what I’d found out in the ten minutes I’d been talking to her: Jade couldn’t be pushed around, and wouldn’t be intimidated – at least not while she was inside the safety of the pub.
I scooped up the notepad and the photo and left. But that wasn’t the end of it. I’d be back at seven when she came off her shift – and this time she wouldn’t see me coming.
17
St John the Baptist church was in Redbridge, a depressing pocket of London close to the North Circular. Ugly, fading tower blocks cast shadows across the streets; melting snow ran from holes in the flyover; black exhaust fumes disappeared into the sky. As I parked the car, half-hidden behind an Indian takeaway, the church’s triangular roof rose out of the grey.
Despite the setting, it was an attractive, modern building: all cream walls and exposed beams. A huge crucifix hung above the door, beautifully carved from wood. Christ looked down from the centre of the cross, a glimmer of hope in his face.
The main doors were locked, so I walked around to the back. A door marked office was partly open. Through the gap, I could see an empty room, with a series of desks and a bookcase at the back. I glanced along the side of the church. Further down was a small annexe. The door to that was open too.
I headed for it.
The structure was about fifteen feet by twenty feet; really just a glorified shed. There were no windows, and its exterior hadn’t been treated properly, so the wood was still a raw orange colour. Inside it was sparse: a couple of posters, a desk, a power lead for a laptop that wasn’t there, a pad, some pens. There was a bookshelf, high up behind the desk, stacked with Bibles, biographies and reference material.
‘Morning.’
A voice from behind me.
It was a young guy, a silver laptop under his arm, dressed in a casual shirt and a pair of jeans. Early thirties, blond shoulder-length hair, parted in the centre, and the eyes to match: big, bright, alive. He smiled as he stepped forward.
‘Morning,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the minister here.’
‘Well, it must be your lucky day,’ he replied. He took another step towards me and held out his hand. We shook. ‘Reverend Michael Tilton.’
‘David Raker.’
‘Nice to meet you. You’re not a Bible salesman, are you?’
I smiled. ‘No. Don’t worry – you’re safe.’
‘Ah good!’ he said, and stepped past me into the annexe. ‘Sorry about the mess in here. I’ve got a youth pastor starting in a few weeks and I’m trying to get things in shape before he arrives. Except, at the moment, it’s just a dumping ground for all my stuff.’
He set the laptop down then slid a small heater out from under his desk and turned the dial all the way up to ten. He closed the door.
‘Pretty humble surroundings, huh?’
There was only one chair, but a couple of removal crates were lying in the corner. He dragged the crates across towards me.
‘And sorry about the seat too. You’re our first visitor in here.’
I sat down. ‘This place looks new.’
‘Yeah, it is,’ he said. ‘We finished it in October. It’s a temporary home for my youth pastor while we raise some money to build an extension on the church.’
He sat down at his desk and glanced at his laptop. On-screen, I could see a password prompt.
‘Well, I won’t take up too much of your day, Reverend Tilton,’ I said, and got out the photograph of Alex.
‘Call me Michael, please.’
I nodded, placing the picture down on the desk in front of him. ‘I’m looking into the disappearance of someone who might have visited you here at one time.’
‘Okay. This is him?’
‘His name was Alex Towne.’
Michael picked up the photograph and studied it. ‘I’m trying to think,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I haven’t seen him around – not in the last couple of months, anyway.’
‘It won’t have been in the last few months.’
‘Oh?’
‘Here’s the real killer: it would be more like six years ago.’
Michael looked up to see if I was being serious. ‘Really?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
He looked at the photograph again. ‘How old is he?’
‘He’d be about twenty-eight now.’
‘So, would he have been part of our Twenties group?’
‘I’m not sure he came to this church regularly. It could have been just once, it could have been a few times. He had some connection with your church – but I haven’t been able to figure out what yet.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘I remember most of the youth quite clearly – I used to be the youth pastor here myself – but…’
As he continued looking at it, I took out the birthday card.
‘This is the connection,’ I said, flipping it over so he could see the sticker on the back. ‘It was a card he bought here, and it says it was made by a woman called Angela Routledge. Is she still around?’
His expression dropped. ‘Angela died a couple of years ago.’
‘Anyone else who might remember selling these cards?’
Michael thought about it – but not for long.
‘Angela ran the card stall on her own. She did it all on her own. Got the materials, made the cards, did everything herself. She was an extraordinary woman. She raised a lot of money for us. It’s because of people like her that we have blessings like this.’
He meant the annexe.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said, picking up the photograph again. ‘Can I borrow this photograph for a couple of minutes?’
‘Sure.’
‘I used to draft in a friend of mine for the youth meetings. Let me go and call him and see if he remembers your guy.’
‘You can borrow my phone if you like.’
‘No, it’s fine. I left my mobile inside, and I should probably lock up the church if I’m going to be out here.’ He pointed at the picture. ‘What did you say his name was?’
‘Alex Towne.’
He nodded. ‘I won’t be long.’
He stepped past me and headed towards the church.
I sat for a while on the edge of the crates, looking out through the door. Snow slid down the roof of the main church and spilled out over the drainpipe.
My phone started ringing.
‘David Raker.’
‘David, it’s Spike.’
‘Spike – what you got for me?’
I could hear him using a keyboard. ‘Okay, so the mobile phone was bought in a place called Mobile Network, three weeks ago. It’s on an industrial estate in Bow. I’m guessing it’s some kind of wholesaler, working out of a warehouse.’
‘Okay.’
‘You got a pen?’
I looked around. There was one on Michael’s desk.
‘Yeah – shoot.’
‘The phone’s registered to a Gary Hooper.’
‘Hooper?’
‘Yeah.’
I wrote Gary Hooper on the back of my hand.
‘I don’t know whether that’s any help.’
‘That’s great.’
‘I’ve got a statement here too.’
‘Perfect.’
‘Looks like the phone’s hardly been used. There have only been three calls on
it in the past three weeks. Do you want me to read the numbers out?’
‘Yeah.’
He read them out, and I wrote them under Gary Hooper.
The first two numbers I didn’t recognize. The third I definitely did. It was the number for Angel’s.
‘Spike, you’re the magic man. I’ll get you the money later.’
‘You got it.’
I killed the call, and immediately tried the numbers I didn’t recognize.
On the first, an answerphone kicked in after three rings. ‘Hi, this is Gerald. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’ I hung up and wrote the name Gerald down.
As I was putting in the second number, Michael returned. He placed his phone down on the desk and turned to me. His expression said everything.
‘Sorry,’ he said, handing me the photograph of Alex. ‘My friend doesn’t know him either. It’s hard to describe how your guy looks over the phone, but I could probably list every member of our youth group over the past seven years, and Alex… well, he isn’t one of them. I’m really sorry. I hope I haven’t spoiled your day.’
‘No, don’t worry. I appreciate your efforts.’
I glanced down at his phone. On the display it said: LAST CALL: LAZARUS – LANDLINE. He smiled at me again, then scooped up the phone.
‘Is there anything else?’
‘No, that’s fine,’ I replied. I shook his hand and stepped out into the snow. ‘Thanks for your help.’ And then I headed back to the car, letting the cold bite at my skin.
The traffic was terrible as I made my way back into the centre of London. The deeper I got into the city, the slower things became, until finally everything ground to a halt. I watched the snow continue to fall, settling in thick mounds on chimneys and street lights, road signs and rooftops.
Nothing moved but the weather.
After a while, I popped my phone in the hands-free cradle and punched in the second number. It clicked and connected, but no one picked up. I left it for about a minute and, when it was obvious no one was home, reached over to end the call.
Then someone answered.
A voice I recognized.
‘St John the Baptist.’
It was Michael Tilton.
18
I posted the Polaroid of Alex to Cary, and then made my way back towards Soho. By the time I was parked, it was almost seven o’clock – and the end of Jade’s shift. After buying myself a coffee I found a spot in the shadows, across the street from Angel’s. I didn’t want to scare her, but if she saw me straight away, she’d probably disappear back inside. That was her safety net.
Laughter sounded nearby.
A couple, dressed in business suits, stumbled into a nearby restaurant. Opposite, a group of teenaged girls giggled and stopped outside the pub. They looked at each other. One played with her hair; another adjusted her skirt. Then they all reached into their bags for fake ID.
From inside, probably fresh on the evening shift, came one of the barmen, emptying an ice bucket into the gutter. I backed up, further into the shadows. He registered the movement and glanced across the street, eyes narrowing, head tilting. He lingered for a second more, as if trying to satisfy his curiosity, before disappearing back inside.
The street quietened. More snow started to fall.
I sipped at the coffee.
The lull was disturbed by a group of women, out on a hen night, moving along the street. Behind them, a man followed close by, his boots dragging in the slush. Some of the women looked over their shoulders at him – a look that suggested that if they’d been on their own, somewhere less populated, they might have been worried. He dropped back a little as they passed the front of Angel’s, his face disappearing into his coat, but then, when he was past the entrance, he speeded up once more. Some of the girls at the back of the group flicked a look at him again; one of them – fired up with alcohol – turned and asked, ‘What’s your fuckin’ problem?’ But the argument fizzled out when she saw his attention was no longer focused on them or where they were headed. He was looking across the street.
Right at me.
Our eyes locked for a split second and he seemed to hesitate. But then he tagged on to the group again, breaking into a jog and eventually passing them. When he was clear, he looked up ahead to where the road split.
Something stirred in me. A memory.
By the time he started disappearing west, parallel to Chinatown, it had come to me: the guy who broke into my car at the cemetery.
He looked back, saw I was still watching him, and quickened his pace. I tossed the coffee aside and followed. He turned right at the end of the street, then started moving through the crowds working their way down towards Shaftesbury Avenue. It was packed. Shops were still open. Restaurants were luring people in. A queue from a theatre curved out and along the pavement towards me.
He glanced back again, bumped into someone and then upped his pace, disappearing into a crowd of tourists. I headed after him, to where the group – gathering around a tour guide – were blocking the pavement. He emerged the other side and crossed the street.
Then he broke into a run.
Forcing my way through the crowd, I could see him barging through another group of tourists further down. One of them stumbled as he pushed past. Her husband called after him. But when he looked back, it wasn’t to apologize. It was to see how close I was.
I tried to move faster, put my head down for a second, and lost him. He’d gone behind a theatre queue. I crossed the street. There was a back alley close to the queue, black and narrow. Steam hissed out of a vent high up on one of the walls. As I got closer, he burst out from a knot of people about halfway down, glanced at me once, then disappeared into the alley.
The darkness sucked him up.
When I got to the mouth of the alley, I could only hear the echo of footsteps at first. Then he emerged from the shadows, partially lit by a window above. I started down the alley after him. He was a long way ahead of me, almost on to the next street. He stopped when he got there. Looked back. And then disappeared out of sight.
By the time I’d got to the end, he was gone. I stood for a moment, looking both ways. There were crowds on both sides of the street, and cars passing along it. And there were shadows everywhere, doorways to disappear in, tiny vessels of lanes and alleys. Slices of night that would hide him for as long as he needed.
I looked at my watch. Ten minutes past seven.
A thought hit me. Maybe this was the point: they were luring me away from Angel’s so I couldn’t get at Jade. Tricking me. Manipulating me. Maybe the barman had glimpsed me in the shadows out front after all, and gone in and raised the alarm.
But then I stopped dead.
About a quarter of a mile down on my left, Jade was crossing the road. She looked both ways, a cigarette glowing between her fingers, and moved off in the opposite direction. I hesitated, suddenly unsure it was her.
But it was.
It was Jade.
I followed her, keeping to the other side of the street, moving in and out of the pools of light cast by the street lamps. When I drew level with the alley she’d emerged from, I looked along it and saw a big green door, partially open. Above it were a pair of neon angel’s wings. She’d left through the rear entrance – which meant they knew I was waiting.
So why lead me back to where Jade would come out of?
Because it’s a trap.
I hesitated.
What if it was? What if the first guy had led me here and now Jade had been told to lead me somewhere else? What if that phone call outside Eagle Heights had been my one chance to walk away? The one chance I hadn’t taken.
She disappeared from sight at the end of the road.
I stood there, frozen to the spot, uncertainty pumping through my veins. Something flooded my chest, a sense that I’d been here before, in the first few weeks after Derryn’s death: standing on the edge of a precipice, watching the ground crumble beneath my feet.
But then I saw my reflection in a nearby shop window and realized how much direction this case had brought to my life, the energy it had returned to me. And I understood that if I wanted to carry on moving forward, this was something I had to do. A step I had to take.
So, I went after her.
When I got to the end of the road, I saw Jade about forty yards along a street to the right. She was crossing the road and heading for a thin sliver of back street, partially lit. There was a restaurant on the corner, its front decorated in tinsel and Christmas trees. Otherwise it was another London back alley full of exit doors and second-floor windows.
I caught up quickly, and then slowed as I got closer to her.
‘Jade?’
She stopped and turned. She couldn’t see me to start with, then I moved out of the dark and under the light of a Christmas tree.
Her face dropped. She sunk her hands into the pockets of her fur coat: a reflex action. She felt threatened by me. Maybe she hadn’t actually been leading me anywhere.
I held up a hand. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
She didn’t reply. Her eyes darted left and right.
‘I just want to talk to you.’
She nodded, slowly.
‘Were you leading me somewhere?’
Her face creased a little. A frown. ‘I was tryin’ to get away from you.’
‘Why?’
‘’Cos you’re trouble.’
‘You knew I was coming?’
She nodded. ‘One of the guys saw you out front.’
The barman. I’d been right.
‘What was the point of the decoy?’
She frowned again.
‘The scruffy guy,’ I said.
Her expression didn’t change.
‘The guy who led me to you. What was the point of that?’
She shrugged and looked away. But when she turned back, her expression had changed to a kind of relief, as if she’d just reached the biggest decision of her life.
‘What d’you want with me?’
‘I just want to talk.’
She shrugged again, and nodded. ‘Then we talk.’
Her eyes got darker as we walked; harder to read. I tried to figure out whether she was scared, or confident, or both, but I gave up as we got to the car. Men were probably drawn to her suddenly and easily – but left just as quickly when they realized she’d never let them in.
