No One Home

by Tim Weaver

  So drink had never ranked high on her list of priorities, even if – some nights – it would have been an easy way to go after her son had gone to bed. In those first few years, the house had seemed massive, its rooms empty, the bed as big as a football field. Drinking herself into blackness may not have been the worst thing in the world, even if it didn’t seem like it now.

  She washed her face, popped a couple of paracetamol, then wandered into the kitchen. The blinds weren’t twisted all the way shut and, from where she was, she could see across the rooftops to the beach. Out the front of one of the stores down there she could see a huge inflatable skeleton and remembered that today was Halloween. She watched the sea for a moment, moving metronomically, blue and calm, and then the brightness of the sky started to make her eyes sting, the sun pouring in through the slats of the blinds.

  Suddenly, the phone started ringing.

  She filled a glass full of water, took a long, deep mouthful, and then shuffled across, assuming it would be Ethan. He’d called the day before, to tell her he was thinking about her on her last day at work, and said he’d call her this morning to talk about how it had gone. He’d find it hilarious that she had a hangover.

  As she picked up the phone, she saw the machine was still blinking, reminding her that she had a message she hadn’t listened to yet.

  ‘Jo Kader,’ she muttered.

  ‘Ah, Detective Kader. Brilliant.’

  It was a man, English accent.

  ‘I’m not a detective any more,’ she said sharply. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Excuse me. Of course. I’ve had my head in this investigation far too long. Let me start again. Ms Kader, my name’s Patrick Perry and I’m hoping you can help me.’

  She’d never heard of him.

  ‘We haven’t met before,’ he went on, ‘although I left a message on your machine yesterday. I’m not sure if you’ve had the chance to listen to it, but it doesn’t matter if not.’ He paused. Jo couldn’t hear anything beside his voice: wherever he was, it was either quiet or deliberately secluded. ‘I live in the UK, but I’m looking into a case that might possibly have a connection to something that you worked on a long time ago.’

  ‘How did you get my number?’

  ‘Uh, well, I found a profile of you on the University of California website.’

  It was simple, and obvious, and she felt like a fool for asking. She sank another mouthful of water and willed the paracetamol to kick in. The hangover seemed to be getting worse.

  ‘But before that,’ Patrick Perry said, obviously trying not to make her feel like she was being stalked, ‘I called the LA Sheriff’s Department, and then the LAPD, and that was how I eventually found you. To cut a long story short, I’ve been trying to see if I can find out anything more about a man called Adrian Vale.’

  Jo blinked, shocked to hear his name after so long.

  She hadn’t thought about Adrian Vale for months. She hadn’t looked at the notebook, packed away in one of the drawers in the spare room, for even longer.

  But she’d never forgotten.

  ‘What about Vale?’ she said.

  Perry continued: ‘Well, I was shunted around from pillar to post for a while – but then, eventually, I managed to get someone in Cold Cases at the LAPD to do a search for Vale and his name came up in relation to the murder of a man called … uh … Donald Klein. Apparently, you were the last person to add anything to Klein’s file. It was in 2003 – on your last day at the LAPD, I think.’

  Jo went to the window and twisted the blinds shut. Her head was banging so hard, white spots were flashing in front of her eyes.

  ‘Ms Kader?’

  ‘I remember,’ she said.

  And she did: on her last day in Robbery-Homicide she’d told one of her detectives to pull the Klein file for her. Unlike the murder of Gabriel Wilzon, it had never been closed, chiefly because Ray Callson’s parting gift to the casework was a note saying that he didn’t believe Klein was the killer and it wasn’t a murder-suicide. So, while Hayesfield shut the LASD’s half of the investigation down, the LAPD had kept theirs open. No one was working it, no one was likely to work it any more – and any potential evidence was lost in the passage of time – but, even after so long, Jo had still felt that sense of debt to the two dead men: so she’d gone in and entered Adrian Vale’s name as the probable murderer of both. She’d had her doubts about him – and there was never enough evidence to convict – but he’d remained her best, and only, lead. Now, though, none of that seemed to matter. Squeezing her eyes shut, she said, ‘I thought Vale was dead.’

  She’d gone looking for him in the months after Ethan left to go to Berkeley, the house she’d shared with Ira and her son in the Valley too overwhelming by then, big and empty and forlorn. Whenever she’d get home from work, she’d hate the silence of it, so she’d kept herself busy by looking into Vale again, and after weeks of Internet research and long-distance phone calls she’d managed to speak to someone at East Sussex County Council in England, who pulled a death certificate for her.

  ‘He is dead,’ Perry responded. ‘He died in 1989.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand.’

  She felt like she needed to puke now.

  ‘I think he might have been involved in the disappearance of a woman called Beatrix Steards. The two of them were at university together in London.’

  Grabbing a pad off the counter, Jo said, ‘Steards?’

  ‘Yeah. S-T-E-A-R-D-S.’

  ‘So this girl disappeared and never turned up?’

  ‘No. Never. She vanished in March 1987.’

  Jo retched; and then again.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Perry asked her.

  ‘Look … Patrick, is it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  She started hurrying through to the bathroom.

  ‘Patrick, you’re going to have to give me a few hours, okay? I definitely want to hear what you have to say – definitely – but I’m …’ She got to the bathroom, covered the mouthpiece of the phone and heaved into the toilet. Nothing came up. ‘I’ve woken up with a bug or something, so could you call me back in a couple of hours?’

  ‘I’ve got to get back for a dinner tonight.’

  She remembered then that it was 4 p.m. in the UK.

  ‘Okay. How about tomorrow morning?’

  ‘That sounds great,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to you then. I can’t promise you anything new – and Adrian Vale is still the best fit for a suspect – but I don’t know. I just think …’

  Jo felt dizzy now, unsteady even with a hand on the basin.

  ‘You think what?’ she muttered, bile burning at the back of her throat.

  ‘I think there’s something even worse going on here.’

  53

  ‘You said you remember the man who murdered Beatrix?’

  ‘Probably murdered,’ Zaid responded. ‘Adrian Vale, his name was. He just always seemed the most likely suspect.’ He uncrossed his legs and shuffled forward on the sofa. ‘Actually, this isn’t the first time someone’s come asking me about Beatrix in the last few years – and it’s not the first time I’ve tried to put it all together in my head.’

  ‘Who else wanted to talk to you about her?’

  He rubbed a hand against his mouth, thinking.

  ‘It was a man from up north. Manchester, I think.’

  ‘Do you remember his name?’

  He nodded. ‘Someone Perry.’

  ‘Patrick Perry?’

  ‘That’s the chap,’ he said. ‘That’s him. We talked over Skype. He was some kind of journalist – or used to be. I’m afraid I don’t recall the specifics of what we discussed. I mean, I’m trying to think when we actually chatted.’

  I waited, wanting to see how this story unfolded.

  ‘I guess it must have been two, two and a half years ago,’ he said.

  ‘So around October 2015?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ He whistled. ‘It’s hard to remember things I did
two and a half weeks ago. He asked me about Beatrix, I know that, about when she went missing – probably what I talked about to the police too. I’m sure I would have spoken to him about Adrian.’

  From somewhere else in the house, I heard a noise.

  ‘Cats,’ Zaid commented, waving a finger in the vague direction of the second hallway. ‘They belong to a friend. Stupidly, I said I’d look after them while she was in Italy with work – but I never realized I’d be allergic to their hair. The day after they arrived, I just couldn’t stop sneezing, so I’ve had to quarantine them in the spare room.’ He pointed to my pad. ‘So, are you also looking into what happened to Beatrix?’

  ‘In part,’ I said. ‘She might inform another disappearance I’m working on.’

  ‘Oh,’ he responded, ‘I see.’

  ‘I know it was a long time ago, but do you remember anything specific you might have said to Patrick?’

  He took a breath, as if going back to 1987 hurt him, a physical pain he couldn’t shift, and he began going over the account of what he remembered from the time. It matched almost exactly with the timeline DS Smoulter had put together three decades ago, and then the account he’d given to Patrick over Skype in October 2015. He asked me if I wanted something else to drink, and when I said I was fine, he stood and went to the kitchen. I watched him as he grabbed a bottle of whisky from one of the cupboards, pouring himself a measure, his movements slower somehow, maybe burdened by the memory of Beatrix. He looked at me and then sank the whole thing, before pouring himself another one.

  ‘So you’re still adamant that Adrian Vale was behind Beatrix’s disappearance? You think he killed her?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Sure?’ A forced smile. ‘I don’t think we can be one hundred per cent sure about anything.’

  He downed the second glass of whisky.

  ‘But Adrian …’ He almost mumbled the name, as if he didn’t want to form it on his tongue. ‘Adrian was always struggling to fit in. Always. It wasn’t that we actively left him out – we never overtly avoided him; well, not until after Beatrix disappeared, I suppose – but he didn’t belong. You know how some people are. They just don’t fit in, however hard they try to – and you never take to them, despite your best efforts.’

  ‘So he was always on the outside of your group?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, he tried hard, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘We didn’t talk much, because I always felt there was something about him. All the abuse he got, all the name-calling, being physically shoved and pushed sometimes, most of the people doing it mistook his silence and lack of retaliation for weakness. But I never did. Right from the start, from the moment I met him, I could see something.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  His eyes were back on the bottle.

  ‘The sort of thing that could bite you,’ Zaid replied.

  54

  ‘You were scared of Adrian Vale?’

  He shrugged. ‘Wary.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Like I said, I think he disguised who he really was.’

  I watched him for a moment, replaying what he’d just told me. I wasn’t certain he was lying to me – I just wasn’t sure he was telling me the truth either. The way he talked about Vale, the way Vale had scared him: it felt erroneous somehow, insufficient, as if he’d left something unsaid.

  ‘Did you go to his funeral?’ I asked.

  Zaid seemed surprised by the question. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. It was a very small occasion. His mother had already passed on and so had his father, and anyone else he might have been connected to back in LA had long since stopped talking to him, so he was cremated in a cemetery in Brockley.’

  Zaid came back to the sofas.

  ‘Have you ever heard the name Jacob Pierce, Robert?’

  He thought for a second.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘He’s a solicitor, based up in York.’

  ‘Oh, wait a minute: yes, I have heard of him.’

  I studied him more closely now. His head was slightly ducked so I could see his eyes, but not as clearly as I’d have liked.

  ‘How do you know him?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t really know him, I just know the company he used to work for. Before he moved up north, Jacob Pierce worked for Franklin Habash down here in London. They were the law firm that my dad used to use, run by an ex-pat Iranian, like him.’

  ‘Jacob Pierce was Adrian’s solicitor back in 1987.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s right.’

  ‘Did you recommend Franklin Habash to Adrian?’

  He shrugged. ‘He asked if I knew a solicitor. I said I did.’

  ‘But you said the two of you didn’t really talk?’

  ‘We talked enough over time.’

  ‘You mean, you grew closer?’

  ‘No, not closer,’ he replied, shaking his head, as if the idea offended him. ‘Adrian and I were never close. But we would talk a little on occasions, so when he asked me if I knew any solicitors, I gave him the one I knew. At that stage, in the hours after Beatrix went missing, I wasn’t really thinking about allegiances. I wasn’t even thinking that Adrian might know where she was. I was naive, I suppose. I thought maybe Adrian knew something that could help the police.’

  ‘So why would he need a solicitor?’

  Zaid frowned. ‘I was twenty-two, David. I’d never even been close to anything like that. I didn’t think about it all that much. He asked, and I obliged.’

  There was silence now from Zaid.

  Silence in the house as well.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Black Gale, Robert?’

  He frowned again.

  ‘It’s in Yorkshire,’ I explained. ‘It was in the news a few years back.’

  ‘Doesn’t ring any bells with me.’

  ‘The entire village went missing on the same night.’

  A spark of recognition in his eyes this time.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait, I think I do remember. “Just like the Twilight Zone.”’

  I nodded. ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Is that the case that you think Beatrix might be tied to?’

  ‘Patrick Perry lived there,’ I said, by way of a reply.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘He never talked about it with you?’

  ‘The village? No.’

  ‘Okay.’ I pushed on. ‘Okay, so what about –’

  The sound of a phone shattered the silence. As it rang, its tone seemed to be coming from three or four different parts of the house.

  He looked at me and rolled his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, David. I switched off my mobile, but I forgot to put the house phone on mute.’

  ‘Can it wait?’ I asked. ‘I’m almost done.’

  ‘I won’t be long, I promise,’ Zaid replied, and then he hauled himself up off the sofa. ‘There’s beer and wine in the fridge. Help yourself.’

  He smiled and headed down the second hallway, towards the main bedroom at the end. As he got there, he grabbed a phone off the wall just inside the room, and I heard him say, ‘Robert Zaid,’ before pushing the door shut with the edge of his foot.

  The house quietened again.

  I looked at my notes for a moment, annoyed at being made to wait, and went back over what Zaid and I had just talked about. That lingering sense that something had been left unsaid didn’t go – but I couldn’t see the deceit in what I’d written down.

  I took out my phone, checking for messages.

  There was no signal.

  There was Wi-Fi – and an invitation soon popped up to join Zaid’s home network – but it required a password I didn’t have. Other than that, I had no bars at all. How could I be right in the heart of London and have no reception?

  Getting up, I went through to the garden room, standing at the doorway that led out to the lawn. Nothing. I tried the door, hoping it might open
– that I might be able to go outside – but as soon as I pressed down on it, I heard a gentle beep from elsewhere and remembered how Zaid had locked up the house after I’d first arrived. At the time, it had seemed like the understandable actions of a wealthy man concerned about his security; now, being sealed in, it only fed my sense of unease.

  I moved around the sunken living room, into the hallway with the gym and the shower room, trying to find a signal in there, then headed back out again. Opposite me, I could see along the hallway where Zaid had gone, the door of his bedroom still shut. Behind me was the wall of photographs, full of shots of Zaid – bigger, smaller, fatter, thinner; shaking hands, standing in front of landmarks – that I’d noticed earlier on.

  This time, though, I was much closer to them.

  I was looking at the pictures in detail, seeing people Zaid had shared time with, the places he’d worked in and visited, the experiences he’d had. For the first time, from just inches away, I was properly able to take in the chronicle he’d mounted of his life.

  And, as I did, I felt a sudden twinge of panic.

  Something wasn’t right.

  55

  There must have been over forty photographs on the wall, different sizes and in different frames, arranged in a series of vague, concentric circles. It should have a looked a mess, but it didn’t: when I’d first come into the house, I’d thought how warm it made the place feel, a document of Robert Zaid’s life that quietly suggested, despite his wealth, Zaid was a normal guy.

  He’d had family he’d loved.

  He’d done things he was proud of.

  In the very centre was a shot of Zaid and his parents. Zaid couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. They were on a veranda, sea in the distance behind them, the whitewashed walls of Spanish villas dotted about in the greenery in between. This must have been the home that Zaid’s father had owned in Marbella, a place – according to the profile piece I’d read – that Robert had sold when his parents died in a helicopter crash in 1989. They’d come down in the Pyrenees after a weekend skiing.

  Something about the picture didn’t add up.