No One Home

by Tim Weaver

  ‘But it was the holiday thing that became the narrative,’ Healy said quietly.

  He was starting to get it now, just the same as me.

  I looked at the wall, where photos of Freda Davey had hung the day before. ‘None of the Black Gale investigators so much as even spoke to Freda’s oncologist. It was a line of enquiry that got missed entirely in the middle of a frantic search for nine people, and also because they already had an explanation for her delaying – she’d planned to take a holiday. And, ultimately, as bad as the news was for Freda, getting cancer again wouldn’t have seemed like a starting point for a whole village disappearing. So, her delaying her treatment made sense, whether for a holiday – as she’d told a few people – or because she was scared, as Rina suspected, and after that the search became about everything except her illness –’

  ‘When, in fact, her illness was where it all began.’

  I nodded, glancing at the Dictaphone again.

  I’d heard the next part once already, so I knew exactly what was still to come, including the final truth.

  It was just that a part of me didn’t want to have to listen to it again.

  I pushed Play.

  ‘Like I told you before,’ Freda said, ‘in my teens, into my mid twenties, the idea that Beatrix might not be able to find me, it played on my mind so much. But then I had Ian, and Rina three years later, and that feeling … I guess it sort of went away for a while.’ She stopped, sounding unconvinced at her choice of words. ‘Well, not away. It never went away. Not really. I suppose what I mean is I could pretend to forget it all, because I had a son and a daughter who I didn’t ever have to let go of, who I loved without apology, without having to justify or rationalize it. But then, in the middle of August, when I started to suspect the cancer had come back, I realized something: I’d never buried her memory at all. I didn’t bury her memory when she was born, I didn’t do it after I saw her face in the papers. Ever since she vanished, it’s been a crushing weight I can’t shift.’

  Silence: sombre, bleak.

  ‘I just want to know what happened to her,’ Freda said.

  ‘I know,’ Patrick responded softly. ‘I promise I’m doing my best. I’ve seen a copy of the original police report. I’ve spoken to Robert Zaid, to some of the others she was on that Politics course with. I’ve got another call lined up for tomorrow afternoon. I’m going to use a payphone – I’ve bought one of those calling cards – so there’s no record of it at home. I told Fran I’m meeting a client.’

  ‘I’m so sorry I’m asking you to sneak around like this.’

  ‘It’s fine. Like I said, though, I hate lying to her. I’m starting to think that she suspects something’s going on – that she knows this whole photography thing is just a smokescreen for something else – and it’s so hard not being able to tell her the truth.’

  ‘I know. I know it’s hard.’

  It sounded like Patrick was drumming his fingers against the dashboard.

  ‘The thing is, Freda, Fran would understand if I told her what’s going on. She’s a mother too. She’d instantly get it – the need to find out what happened to Beatrix, the search for closure. I mean, you’ve seen what she’s been like since you told everyone the news about the cancer. She’s a nurse. She helps people.’

  Everything went quiet for a moment.

  This was what had been missed.

  This was what no one but Patrick, Freda and her oncologist knew.

  ‘I know Fran would want to help.’ Freda’s voice had started to become muted. I reached over and turned up the volume. ‘But no one can do anything for me now.’

  ‘There must be something.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’ve made my peace with it.’

  ‘But I can’t … I just …’

  ‘It’s okay, Patrick. Really.’

  ‘But it’s not, is it? It’s not okay.’

  ‘No, it’s not. But sometimes that’s how life is.’

  Healy glanced at me, fully understanding now.

  There was another lull, this time for longer, and it was unmistakably a kind of mourning. Because, in reality, Freda hadn’t delayed her chemo due to the overwhelming nature of the treatment, or because she was frightened, and she definitely hadn’t delayed it for a holiday. She’d done it because she didn’t want to tell her husband, or her children, or her friends, the devastating truth – a truth that only her, her oncologist and Patrick Perry ever knew about.

  The doctors hadn’t caught it early.

  The treatment would never cure her.

  Freda Davey’s cancer had been terminal.

  47

  This had all begun with a woman’s illness.

  The recording continued, the numbers ticking over, Patrick and Freda silent. The lull in conversation spoke eloquently of a friendship – one soon to be over.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said eventually. ‘It doesn’t matter about that. I’ve been over it and over it, and it’s not going to change. So now I just need to know about Beatrix.’

  Again, Healy and I looked at each other across the table, but this time neither of us said anything. We didn’t need to. We recognized the pain in Freda’s voice, the fear of what was coming, of going to her grave without doing all that she needed to do. I’d seen the same look in my wife’s face before her death; Healy had seen the echoes in his own reflection in the months after his daughter had been murdered. The fights they’d had that he wished he could take back. The things he’d said that he’d have given his life to erase.

  Death was about love, and about grief.

  But more often it was about regret.

  ‘Patrick?’

  Our attention returned to the Dictaphone.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he replied, his words delivered in a rush of breath, a sigh which seemed to, once again, impart how he felt towards Freda. ‘Like I say, I hopefully might get somewhere with this call I’m going to make tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Okay. I appreciate it.’

  ‘I just want to do the best job I can for you …’

  ‘I know. And you are.’

  A pause. ‘Why don’t you just tell him?’

  There was no response from Freda.

  ‘You should tell him,’ Patrick said again, more forcefully, but without any sharpness to his tone. ‘You’re sick, and before … you know, before you …’ His words fell away. He couldn’t bring himself to say die. ‘Before it happens, you want to find out what happened to Beatrix. Everyone will understand that, Freda. Everyone. You told us about the illness, and you saw how we all rallied around, and John loves you more than anyone. Beatrix was your daughter, you were her mum. He’ll get it.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Freda replied.

  ‘John’s your husband. He’ll understand. He will.’

  ‘No.’ It was said with strength this time. ‘He can barely even cope with the fact that the cancer’s back, let alone it being terminal. I mean, I can’t look him in the face most of the time these days because it just sets us both off. So, me running around, destroying any hope of prolonging my life as I spend my time trying to find out what happened to the daughter I gave away …’ I heard movement again: the creak of a seat. ‘No. I’m not telling John.’

  ‘Does he even know about Beatrix?’

  ‘No. When I saw her photograph in the newspapers, that birthmark on her face, when they said she disappeared the day before her birthday, I knew it was her. I knew it. And that was when I should have sat John down and told him. He would have accepted it, I know he would. He’s such a good man. But I just …’ A sniff. ‘I should have told him from the start, I know that, but I was just so ashamed.’

  ‘You have nothing to feel ashamed about.’

  ‘I gave my daughter away,’ she replied, her words subdued, ‘and I never told my husband about it. I never told my kids. I have plenty to feel ashamed for.’

  It was obvious why she’d turned to Patrick to try and bring some closure. The police hunt had hit a wall back in
1987 and had lain dormant for twenty-eight years, and Patrick was a talented journalist, a friend she could trust, he had huge experience in hunting down leads, and he would want to help. Plus, she knew that if she asked him not to tell her husband – or mention it to Francesca, in case it got back to John that way – Patrick would do that as well. He was a man of his word.

  If he knew anything, it was how to keep secrets.

  Finally, the tape came to an end.

  Quietly, Healy said, ‘Something makes sense now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When we found those audio bugs in the houses, there were five in each, but the Perrys and the Daveys had different types of devices from the Gibbses – different designs – and to Randolph and Emiline as well. You remember that?’

  I did.

  ‘The Perrys’ and Daveys’ were smaller,’ he said, ‘harder to find; and in the other two houses, they were bigger, without the equalizer bars on them.’

  ‘Now we know why.’

  ‘The Perry and the Davey bugs went in at a different stage to the other two.’ And then he followed the idea to its natural conclusion: ‘They probably went in earlier because it was Patrick and Freda that were the focal point.’

  I nodded. ‘Because they were looking into Beatrix Steards’s disappearance.’

  Healy squeezed his eyes shut, as if he didn’t want to have to think about where this was going. But he knew, the same as me: it was bad now and was only getting worse.

  ‘So the bugs were in their homes before they even disappeared,’ Healy said.

  Tori Gibbs had said something, back at the start, that I’d filed away and almost forgotten about. I couldn’t refer to the actual quote in my notebook, because the page had been torn out by Mills and whoever he came with, but I recalled enough. She’d been talking about Chris, about her brother actually building the houses, and had said something that didn’t seem important at the time.

  The village had only just got decent broadband.

  I called Tori. It was early, but she was already up, so I reminded her of what she’d said and asked what she knew about the Internet at Black Gale.

  ‘Not much,’ she said. ‘Chris just mentioned they were all being upgraded.’

  ‘At the same time?’

  ‘No. I think he said they could only do it in blocks because everything was so far from the telephone exchange. I mean, you know how remote that village is.’

  ‘Do you know what he meant by “blocks”?’

  ‘Like, a house at a time, I guess.’

  Or two.

  I had the phone on speaker.

  Healy and I glanced at each other.

  ‘Do you remember when that upgrade started, Tori? It might be important.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She sighed. I could hear the journalist in her, the texture in her reply as she realized she was being led. ‘Probably not long before they all vanished, I guess. A week maybe? Ten days?’

  I flicked a look at Healy again.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m trying to work out who upgraded their broadband.’

  ‘You don’t think it was the phone company?’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ I lied, ‘it’s just a gap in my paperwork, and I’m trying to make sure we’ve got as complete a picture of the run-up to Halloween as possible.’

  It was fiction, and maybe she knew it, but I needed time to process what Healy and I had just found out before I was ready to share it with anyone else.

  Healy rubbed at his forehead as I hung up.

  ‘They posed as engineers from the phone company,’ he muttered, so quietly it was almost like he was telling himself. He looked up. ‘Do you think it was Mills?’

  I shrugged. ‘There’s probably no way of knowing now.’

  Healy was looking at the empty wall, studying it so closely it was like all the information we’d gathered was still up there. Eventually, he said, ‘So I get why Patrick and Freda were targeted. They started looking into Beatrix Steards.’ He was still staring at the barren wall. ‘What I don’t get is, why bug all four houses and why take all nine people from Black Gale? It’s miles more complicated, it’s much riskier, and it didn’t need to be done, anyway. You reckon it was wrong place, wrong time?’

  ‘You mean, they were all at the farmhouse, so it was just easier to take all nine of them when they came for Freda and Patrick?’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Abducting nine people was hard, it had the potential to go badly wrong very quickly, and none of the others posed a threat – so why bother involving them? Plus, whoever it was who’d come to Black Gale that night – whether it was Mills, Pierce, someone else or all of them – they wouldn’t have come unprepared. They’d been listening and watching Patrick and Freda for at least a week, possibly more, so they would have known about the dinner party; and even if, as unlikely as it was, they hadn’t known about the gathering until they actually arrived at the village, they’d have seen it and surely decided that any abduction was too risky.

  ‘Maybe the other villagers knew,’ Healy said.

  ‘You mean, they knew about Freda and Patrick’s search for Beatrix?’

  He shrugged. ‘That would explain the need to take all nine of them.’

  It would, and although Freda had been adamant she didn’t want anyone knowing at the time Patrick had recorded her, that she didn’t want her family thinking that her focus was on anything other than spending time with them and getting better, it didn’t mean she hadn’t changed her mind in the two days after. She’d already told the other villagers she was sick again. She could easily have gone on to tell them the cancer was terminal.

  And maybe, at the dinner, she’d spoken about Beatrix as well.

  ‘But why wouldn’t she have told her kids first?’

  Healy shook his head. ‘Maybe it was harder for her to do that. Sometimes it’s like that: when you love someone, you don’t want them to hurt.’

  I looked at him, surprised at the tenderness of the comment: it was a response that went way beyond this moment, back to decisions and situations Healy had long since left behind, but what he was saying was true.

  Sometimes the hardest conversations were with the ones we loved the most.

  Even if that turned out to be the case, though, there was still so much about that night that didn’t make sense. Why were there no tyre tracks belonging to any other cars? Why were there no footprints except the villagers’?

  I took a breath, trying to clear my head.

  ‘What about the other box full of clothes?’ Healy asked.

  It was a good question. There had been two large cardboard boxes in the hidden room at Seiger and Sten, one full of items belonging to the Black Gale villagers, the other packed with random clothes, a smashed iPad, phones and a power bank.

  ‘You reckon it might be more victims?’

  We looked at each other.

  It was the first time we’d used that word.

  Victims.

  ‘I hope not,’ I said, but it was a response without much conviction, because I didn’t know what the box meant, how many people its contents belonged to, over what period of time they had been collected – or where we’d find the owners.

  Maybe in the same place we find the villagers.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Raker?’

  ‘I just don’t know where other missing people would fit in,’ I said. ‘I don’t see where they sit alongside what went on at Black Gale and what happened to Beatrix Steards.’

  And I stopped short of saying the rest.

  That a part of me didn’t want to know.

  ‘What about this Robert Zaid guy?’ Healy pressed.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You still think he’s worth speaking to?’

  ‘I just know he’s a link to Beatrix Steards,’ I said, ‘and that Beatrix is a link to Black Gale.’

  ‘So you’re going to try and arrange a meeting with him?’

  ‘Yes,
’ I said, nodding.

  My eyes went to what was left of my notebook.

  ‘But there’s something else I’m going to try and do first.’

  The Photograph Album

  1993

  Los Angeles | Wednesday 19 May

  ‘Detective Kader? Are you okay?’

  Jo didn’t hear the voice to start with.

  She was miles away, watching cars pass on Temple Street, three floors below, the sun winking off their roofs as they moved between the dual shadows of City Hall and the Federal Courthouse. After fifteen years as a detective, she’d been back and forth to Downtown so many times, to the DA’s office here, to the Halls of Justice, out to the county jail and Twin Towers Correctional Facility, she could probably make the drive blindfolded.

  ‘Detective Kader?’

  Opposite her, a woman in her late thirties leaned forward in her chair, and Jo remembered where she was and what they’d been doing before she’d drifted off. On the desk, next to a PC, was a nameplate: DR LEILA BARNES, EMPLOYEE SUPPORT SERVICES UNIT.

  ‘Are you okay, Detective Kader?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jo said, and held up an apologetic hand.

  ‘I was asking about your son.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s doing fine. He’s in fourth grade now.’

  ‘So he’s – what? – nine years old?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘It won’t be long before he’s off to middle school.’

  ‘And then he’ll be a teenager and I’ll officially have to sacrifice my sanity.’ Jo smiled. ‘No, Ethan’s a good kid.’ She felt something flutter in her throat, like a filament about to burn out. ‘Have you got children, Dr Barnes?’

  ‘One. A daughter. She’s three.’

  ‘Well, enjoy it. The time goes by so fast.’

  Barnes nodded. ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  ‘Of course. I love being a mom.’

  ‘I sense a “but”?’