by Tim Weaver
‘He paid for seven nights up front,’ Torus said, bringing Jo back into the moment. ‘Fifteen bucks a night, hundred and five bucks for the week – but I called it a round hundred.’ He nodded at Jo as if he expected something in return – perhaps congratulations, or a positive reinforcement of his generosity.
‘Did you see him much after he checked in?’ she asked.
‘Not once.’
‘He didn’t come out of his room at all?’
‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying, I don’t watch my guests.’
She looked around. ‘Is that why you don’t have any cameras here?’
‘We had one out front for a while,’ Torus said, waving a finger in the vague direction of the courtyard, ‘but the VCR got screwed up and the wires burned out.’
‘Better get that done after the a/c, then,’ she said.
Torus made a hmph sound.
‘Do you remember what this “Gabriel” looked like?’
A frown. ‘Ain’t you just seen him upstairs?’
‘He’s been in there a while,’ Jo said, keeping it vague. Torus made an oh with his mouth, obviously taking that to mean natural decomposition. That reassured Jo: he couldn’t have snooped around the room before calling the cops, or had any direct contact with the body – or, worse, actually been involved somehow – because he clearly didn’t realize the tub was full of acid and that the issue wasn’t decomposition, it was corrosion. ‘Anything you remember about his face? Scars? Marks? Teeth? Maybe he had a harelip or a distinctive pattern of freckles?’
Torus leaned forward and put his elbows on the counter, drumming both sets of fingers against the walnut. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I mean, I saw him for a couple of minutes on Friday night. He handed me the money, I gave him the key, y completo.’
Jo walked to the door in the hope there might be a breeze. There wasn’t. The morning was absolutely still.
She looked back across the courtyard, in the direction of the second floor. A uniformed deputy was standing guard at the doorway, and below, at ground level, Chen and his assistant were reloading equipment into the back of the coroner’s van.
‘Reckon you could describe him to an artist?’
Torus shrugged. ‘I guess.’
‘He hasn’t got a car parked out there, so did you see anyone drop him off?’
‘No.’
‘No vehicles? A cab maybe?’
‘No.’
‘See any vehicles coming and going that didn’t belong to guests?’
This time, Torus didn’t respond.
‘Rivaldo?’
He looked conflicted. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. There was this red station wagon on Saturday or Sunday night. I ain’t sure which. Didn’t see who was driving it either.’
Jo took a step closer.
‘It didn’t belong to any of the guests?’
‘If it did, they didn’t put it in here,’ he said, pointing to the column in the guestbook where occupants were asked to write down their licence plates. ‘It must have only been here a few hours, though, cos I was checking some couple in, then I went to watch a movie out back, and next time I came through to here the car was gone.’
‘You remember the make or model?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Nothing at all?’
‘No. But there was a sticker in the windshield.’
‘Yeah? You remember what the sticker said?’
‘Caraca something or other.’
‘How you spelling that?’
Torus spelled it out for Jo.
‘And you don’t remember the rest of what it said?’
‘No. The Caraca bit was big and bold, the rest was small as shit.’
Jo’s eyes went to the second floor again as another deputy began knocking at a door halfway along, hoping for an answer that wasn’t going to come. Jo had already found out that the same seven people had been staying here since the night Gabriel Wilzon checked in: two couples, a guy on his own, a lone female and Wilzon himself. The deputy had already talked to all six remaining guests – and none of them had seen anything. Now he was reduced to knocking on empty rooms.
But maybe this wasn’t going to be a total dead end.
Jo just had to find out what Caraca was.
15
Someone else was at Black Gale with us.
It was a man, barely more than a silhouette at the top of the track. He didn’t look towards the farmhouse – and even if he did, it would have been hard to see the Audi: it was parked behind one of the tractors, in the shadows of the barn.
‘Healy,’ I said quietly. ‘Look.’
We both got up and went to the window.
‘Who the hell is that?’ he muttered.
The man had started to move: he walked down the mud track, pausing at the beginning of the Perrys’ driveway. For a second he just stared at their house, his head turning to take in the others as well, and then I realized he was holding something in his hands.
A phone.
He started taking photographs of the houses with it.
Healy glanced at me, frowning, but I kept my eyes on the man. He’d stopped at a rut in the track, a dip adjacent to the third house belonging to Randolph Solomon and Emiline Wilson, and, as he did, sun briefly punctured the cloud and he became a little clearer. From where we were, it was hard to tell his age – forties maybe, or early fifties – but he was tall, well built, had dark grey hair, and was dressed in jeans and a suit jacket. He took more pictures, and then walked up the driveway to Randolph and Emiline’s front door to check if it was locked.
When he was done there, he returned to the track and started going further up, pausing outside the Daveys’ to take even more shots. Instinctively, Healy and I both backed away from the glass, conscious of being seen now, at least until we figured out what was going on – but, as we did, the movement registered with him. For the first time, he glanced at the farmhouse, his eyes quickly shifting from window to window, to the tractor and then the Land Rover. From where he was, he still wouldn’t have been able to see my Audi, but the fact that he’d clocked our movement, as slight as it was, instantly told me enough. Whoever this guy was, he was alert.
Then something else got his attention.
This time, he looked the other way, up towards the Black Gale sign – a fast, abrupt movement. Had he heard something? Or thought he had? He moved quickly, pocketing the phone and hurrying up the track, only slowing a few feet ahead of the entrance. From where we were, it was impossible to see the road in because the village was built on a downward slope, but there was no sound other than the faint whine of the wind; certainly no rumble of approaching cars. A few moments later, the man swivelled around, looking down the track, his gaze lingering on the farmhouse yet again. After that, he made a beeline for the side of the Perrys’.
He disappeared from view.
Leaving Healy at the window, I quickly moved through to the living room, which had a partial view of the three gardens. The man wasn’t in any of them. I watched for a moment, waiting for him to appear, but then Healy called me back, his voice deliberately low. By the time I returned to the kitchen, the man was out front again, trying the door on the Perrys’ house.
He returned to the Daveys’ again, heading along the side of their property. Once he was done there, he repeated the same routine at Randolph and Emiline’s, trying the front door before disappearing out of view at the side of their house, and then reappearing a minute or so later.
What was he doing?
Finally, he emerged again and took a few steps up the slope in the direction of the main gate. He looked like he was getting ready to go.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he began coming down the track towards us.
‘You need to go upstairs,’ I said to Healy.
‘What?’
He stared at me like I’d offended him.
‘We don’t know who this guy is and you’re supposed to be dead, so I think it’s bette
r if he doesn’t find you in here, because I don’t fancy going to prison – do you?’
I gave him a look that said everything, but he still lingered for a moment, his stubbornness an echo of the man he’d been before this, when every decision he didn’t like became a battle. Eventually, though, he went, his path upstairs a series of creaks.
I switched my attention back to the window.
The man was continuing his approach, his pace slowing as he got closer to the farmhouse. I’d retreated further, using the darkness of the interior to disguise myself, but even though I knew it would be difficult for him to see me, I felt no particular comfort in knowing that: there was a severity to his expression that set me on edge.
Twenty feet from the front door, he finally saw the Audi.
His whole expression changed, his body tensing, his eyes narrowing, and then his gaze switched between the kitchen window, the living room and the upstairs bedrooms. By then, I’d already started moving, heading out into the hallway.
He knew someone was here.
I didn’t have any choice but to confront him.
16
The man’s eyes were already on me as I stepped out of the house. He tilted his head, watching me from under his brow.
‘Can I help you?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied with a smile – but it looked awkward on his face, discordant. ‘I didn’t realize there was anyone else here.’
‘Neither did I until a minute ago.’
‘Is that your car?’ He gestured to the Audi.
‘It is, yes.’
‘Let me guess: you hit a deer?’
He must have spotted the animal in the undergrowth at the edge of the road on his way in. The question was odd, though: even as he asked it, something else moved in his face. I couldn’t work out what it was, but it stuck with me as he once more glanced at the windows of the farmhouse and said, ‘You here by yourself?’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘I see.’
I wasn’t sure now if his question had been genuine or some kind of test to see how honest I was prepared to be.
Did he know Healy was here?
How?
‘I’m Isaac Mills,’ he said, the change of direction wrongfooting me. Somehow I’d expected to work harder for his name. ‘I’m from a company called Seiger and Sten. You might have heard of us. We’re the legal firm looking after the estate of Randolph Solomon and Emiline Wilson. We gave Ross Perry a set of keys and, very kindly, he comes to check on everything, but once a quarter we like to do the same.’
That, in part, tallied with what Ross himself had told me the day before: that Randolph and Emiline’s solicitors had given him a key. I couldn’t say for certain if the second part was true. Was this guy simply here doing a quarterly check? Or was he here for something else?
‘What’s with the photographs?’ I asked him.
A flicker in his face.
Now he knew I’d been watching him.
‘We feel it’s important to document any changes. Lovely as these places are, they’re remote and they’re vacant, and that makes them very attractive to criminals.’
He was from somewhere in the north-west, well spoken, but that was about as much of a mark as I could place on him.
‘You don’t check the insides of the properties?’
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes, if we feel it’s necessary.’
‘But not today?’
‘Apart from the farmhouse, they all appear to be locked up tight.’
It was almost accusatory, as if I were the one out of place here, not him. I said, ‘So how come you were looking at the other houses?’
This time, he didn’t respond straight away, seeing exactly where this was going: if he was looking after the affairs of Randolph Solomon and Emiline Wilson, why had he been taking photos of the other homes? And what had he been doing for so long at the sides of the houses? Taking a step closer, he said, ‘I’d have to be a pretty callous individual to drive all the way up here and not show any interest in the upkeep of these other houses, don’t you think? We might not be representing their interests in the same way as we do Mr Solomon and Ms Wilson’s, but if there was something wrong – if one of the homes had been broken into, or a roof tile had come loose, or a fence panel had fallen over – it goes without saying that I would let Mr Perry know. That’s the decent thing to do. I mean, I’m sure any of us would do the same, given the circumstances.’
‘I’m sure we would,’ I said.
‘And what is it you’re doing here?’
I tried to weigh up whether telling him mattered or not.
‘I’m helping the families.’
‘Helping them.’ He nodded once and looked at the Audi again. ‘Helping them how?’
‘By trying to find them.’
‘I see,’ he said for a second time, but there was a flicker in his eyes that didn’t quite conform with his expression, and I started to realize something.
He’d never asked for my name.
He took a step closer to me. ‘And how’s that going?’
‘It’s early days.’
‘Of course.’
His words suggested a measure of sympathy for the complexities of a missing persons investigation, especially one on this scale, but again his eyes shifted briefly to the upstairs windows and I wondered if he knew for sure that I wasn’t here alone. The thought made me nervous.
‘Well, I’d better be going,’ he said finally.
But he didn’t go.
He stayed where he was and carried on looking at me.
‘I didn’t catch your name. Mr …?’
‘Raker.’
‘Ah,’ he said.
If I’d been willing to believe he had no idea who I was, I might have considered it an odd response. But I didn’t. Because this was exactly what I’d seen in his face all along – the dissonance in his expression, the movement in his eyes. This was why he’d never asked for my name until now.
Because he already knew who I was.
He’d known all about me before he ever turned up here.
17
Isaac Mills headed away from me, back along the track.
Halfway up, he glanced over his shoulder and I wondered if he was trying to work out how long I’d been watching him before he discovered I was here. He looked a second time as he got to the apex of the road, where the Black Gale sign stood.
Then he was gone.
I immediately broke into a run. My neck hurt, my shoulders, the bruising across my chest, but I ignored all of it and headed after him. As I got to the wall beside the sign, I slowed, dropping to a crouch and moving in against it, using a break in the stones to peer through to the other side. His car was parked forty feet down the slope, in a natural lay-by. It was a dark blue Lexus. He’d started up the engine – a low rumble against the relative stillness of the moors – and was on his phone.
I took a photo of the car, zooming in on his registration plate, and by the time I was done he’d finished his phone call and was pulling the car out. The brake lights winked as he snapped the handbrake off, and I heard the dull sound of the radio being turned up. After that, he hit the accelerator.
As soon as he was gone from view, I hurried back down the track, towards the Perrys’ house, and took out my phone, accessing the address book and zeroing in on the name Ewan Tasker. Just like Spike, Tasker was a source from my days as a journalist; unlike Spike, Task had gone on to become one of my best friends. He’d worked for the NCIS for a long time, a precursor to the National Crime Agency, and – even now, in his late sixties – he was still doing consultation work with the Met. If Spike was my key to things like bank statements, to information that existed on servers that I couldn’t access, Task was how I got into the police database.
‘Raker,’ he said as soon as he picked up.
‘Hey, Task. I’m not disturbing you, am I?’
‘No. I wish I could tell you I’m on the way to the gym, bu
t the truth is, I’ve just picked up a latte and a chocolate muffin.’
‘Living the dream.’
‘And what a dream it is.’
I could hear traffic, people, the hum of the city – and all of it felt a million miles away from here.
‘Thanks for sending over that file.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Is it helping?’
‘Hard to say yet. I’m still going through it.’
‘I remember reading about that case in the papers when it happened. Didn’t they vanish on Halloween night? “Like something out of the Twilight Zone”, right?’
I looked around the village, at its stillness, its solitude.
‘Right.’
‘So I’m guessing you need something else?’
‘I’m sorry to have to ask,’ I said, and that wasn’t a lie: I really did feel bad about pressing him for another favour. However careful we were – and we always were – every time he went into the database he was risking his work, his reputation, even his pension, so while I tried to even things up in whatever way I could, turning up to his charity golf days in order to be humiliated over eighteen holes, ultimately I could never repay him completely.
‘What is it you need?’ he asked.
‘I was hoping you could chase down a car for me.’
‘All right, give me a sec.’ The noise of the street dulled just a little: he’d clearly found a spot that was quieter and was digging around for a pen. ‘Okay,’ he said.
