by Tim Weaver
She spent more of the holidays with Ethan, Claire and Maisie, either up in San Francisco or at home in her apartment, and she eventually gave up golf because of mild arthritis in her shoulder. And then, slowly, the coffee mornings and social events and dinners started to become a little more sporadic and she found herself spending more and more time at home, in her own company. As her life became less hectic, she began retreating into her own thoughts, going back to her career, to things that she wished she’d done, or done better. Finally, she found herself digging out her old notebook, flicking through its yellowed pages, and – in the middle – stopping at the names of the ones that had got away: Gabriel Wilzon and Donald Klein. Once she saw them, everything came full circle.
She remembered the call she’d taken about Adrian Vale.
She remembered the man called Patrick.
In the first conversation he’d had with her, he’d given her his surname. She recalled that clearly, she just didn’t recall what it was. She’d never written it down. Her hangover had been so bad that day, her stomach churning, her head thumping, that the notes she’d made had ended up being worthless. She’d been banking on the follow-up call to fill in the blanks.
But the follow-up had been totally different.
Because whoever had called her the second time hadn’t been Patrick.
Even then, she sat on that knowledge – the certainty that a deception had taken place – for a long time doing nothing about it, anxious about letting her old life invade the sanctity of her retirement. But with every passing week, the more she denied herself, the more it ate away at her and, eventually, she found it impossible to resist any longer. At the point she finally started looking properly into who the call had been from, and who the real Patrick was, over sixteen months had passed. But, immediately, she started to hit barriers. The name was too common, the search parameters too wide. Was she looking for a Patrick who knew Adrian Vale? Was she looking for a Patrick who knew Beatrix Steards? Or was she looking for neither? All three routes ended up in dead ends so she then decided to switch tack.
She went back to landline phone records she’d already pulled from AT&T and zeroed in on the second call on 1 November 2015 from the man claiming to be Patrick.
The number was listed as UNKNOWN.
But the first call wasn’t.
The number listed for that had a +44 international code and, when she reverse-traced it to its source, she discovered it was a payphone in a place called Sedbergh, a small town in the county of Cumbria. She had no idea where either of those were, but this time she didn’t let anything else get in her way. She spent hours researching the area and looking for Patricks in it.
When she still couldn’t find him, she started massaging the truth. She called the police forces in Cumbria and North Yorkshire, and told them she worked for the LAPD. Worked. It was technically correct, she just hadn’t worked for them for almost fifteen years. To her surprise, it started opening some doors – slowly. Cops in both police forces said they would call her back, and the Met said the same thing when she got in touch with them about the unsolved disappearance of Beatrix Steards. After that, it became a waiting game. Weeks and months would pass, and then she would chase again, and then she would get the same vague reassurances about a response, wait some more, and would have to chase anew. Eventually, though, she got the answers she needed. The name Patrick was a dead end and so was the town of Sedbergh.
But Beatrix Steards was different.
Two years after the phone call from Patrick, after being passed between different detectives, someone at the Met agreed to talk to her in detail about Beatrix Steards. She sat at a window thousands of miles away, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and made pages of notes, and at the end, when she asked for the name of the last person to access the case, the cop told her: Detective Inspector Kevin Quinn.
She chased him for months, emailing him, leaving messages for him, and in the end she figured she was going to have to try some other route. But then Quinn called her back one day, at the start of April, almost two and a half years after she first picked up the call from the man called Patrick.
‘Are you a mate of Raker’s?’ he asked her.
‘Who’s Raker?’
There was a pause on the line.
‘You haven’t talked to him?’
‘I haven’t talked to anyone,’ she said. ‘Who’s Raker?’
‘David Raker. He called me about this same thing a few weeks back.’
She dragged her iPad towards her, swiped it on, and put in a quick Google search for David Raker. She found him easily: he was a missing persons investigator, based in London.
‘Did this Raker enquire about a guy called Patrick?’ she asked Quinn.
‘Patrick? You mean Patrick Perry?’
A few days later, armed with the information that Quinn had given her, she started looking into Black Gale, the disappearance of Patrick Perry and eight other people in the same village, and then the names associated with the Beatrix Steards case, trying to find the links between those two and Adrian Vale; between everything she had and the deaths of Gabriel Wilzon and Donald Klein. And that was when she stumbled across Robert Zaid, captured within a few, solitary photographs.
Except the moment she saw his face, she knew.
It wasn’t Robert Zaid at all.
Inside an hour, she’d booked a flight to London.
63
I went to the very edge of the veranda, the adrenalin washing out of me, woozy from the cold. Vale was completely still, only the grass moving faintly around him.
Turning, I looked back at the house.
‘Isaac?’
Out in the forest, it was silent too.
‘Isaac, are you here? It’s Raker.’
I headed back to the house, moving along the hallway and into the living room. Even though the fire had died out, it was still warm, and – as I paused in the doorway – I took it all in for the first time. There was hardly any furniture, just the sofa bed, a rickety wardrobe, and a bookcase filled with old paperbacks.
And another mattress.
Off to my left, I could see the rear door that Vale had used in order to come back around on me. It was moving slightly, massaged by the wind.
Mills has made a run for it.
I quickly went to the wardrobe and yanked it open.
Men’s clothes were on hangers – coats, woollen jumpers, trousers – and there were T-shirts in an untidy pile at the bottom, alongside summer and winter shoes. I grabbed a jumper, some trousers and some socks, and then levered my freezing feet into a pair of hiking boots. Nothing fitted, but all of it was warmer and more comfortable than anything I’d been dressed in since waking up in the black of Vale’s prison.
I grabbed the rifle and headed for the rear door.
It opened on to a small porch with steps that led directly to a narrow mud path ringing the property. The path was totally hemmed in on one side by the forest. I was literally on the edge of the trees, staring into the shadows beyond.
There was no sign of movement anywhere.
I moved around the building in the direction of the veranda, keeping my eyes on the trees, then stopped on the parcel of grass where Vale’s body still lay. His eyes were open and his blood had washed the frost-flecked grass a pale pink.
A noise.
I followed the sound, off to my right. The trees were moving now in the wind, their branches swaying, and with it came the sound of pine needles scratching the roof. I raised the rifle and looked through the scope, sweeping the gun from left to right in an effort to see beyond the treeline.
And that was when I spotted him.
A distant figure, in the forest.
He was heading away from me, his movements jerky and unstable, as if the ground were uneven, and as he took a furtive glance over his shoulder he almost lost his footing entirely.
I broke into a sprint.
It took me ten seconds to get to the treeline, and as soon as I pa
ssed the first row of pines the sound seemed to deaden completely. It was like going beneath the surface of a lake. In front of me, to the sides, everywhere I looked, massive trees went on for ever – spruce, yew, aspens, their trunks as high as cathedrals – and while the temperature wasn’t as raw beneath the canopy, the ground was like concrete. Every step jarred my muscles and joints, the weeks of inactivity weighing on me now.
But I kept going, pushing on, looking up, way ahead of me, as Mills drifted in and out of sight. The trees were rammed together so tightly there was no defined path, every possible trail packed with leaves, debris from branches and exposed roots. The limbs dipped and bowed, swiping at me as I passed, and on the ground – pockmarked with pine needles and bird tracks – there was still a thin blanket of snow.
I heard the snap of twigs up ahead, the crunch of leaves, but couldn’t see him at first. Then I passed through a narrow gap between two huge pines and spotted him up ahead, maybe only eighty feet away now, a dense fog gathering above him.
Was he really tiring already?
I picked up the pace, pushing down my own exhaustion, concentrating on my own footsteps, where they fell, trying to gain more ground and more distance on him.
And then I looked up to check where he was.
He was gone.
I stopped, watching the spaces ahead of me. When he didn’t appear, I moved towards the tree closest to me, the bark gummy with sap, and peered past it. There was no sign of him. I rounded that tree and went to the next, quietly, but still couldn’t see him.
Where the hell was he?
Instantly, the size of the forest seemed to pull into focus and I felt a flutter of panic. I’d come a quarter of a mile, maybe even more, but it was nearly impossible to be sure: I couldn’t see the treeline any more, let alone the clearing or the house. I wasn’t even certain if I was looking in the right direction.
I gathered the rifle in close to me and moved forward, in through a U-shaped hole between two sprawling spruces, their mottled trunks like diseased skin, and then again, weaving a trail between three others. Ahead, I saw scuffs in the ground: leaves, twigs and needles, all scattered where a boot had landed, dragged – or stopped dead.
I heard a click up ahead.
‘Don’t come any closer.’
I tried to figure out where the voice was coming from.
All I could see was trees.
‘I will shoot you,’ Mills said. ‘Drop the rifle.’
I crouched, keeping my eyes ahead of me, and placed the rifle down on the ground. I had no idea if he was bluffing: the only thing I could see was a maze of wood, an endless repetition of timber that eventually became a grey, opaque wall.
‘Isaac?’ I said. ‘I just want to talk.’
Silence.
I still had one hand on the rifle.
‘Isaac?’
‘Let go of the rifle, Raker.’
This time, the voice sounded like it was coming from slightly behind me, to the left.
I didn’t move, just glanced in that direction.
‘Let go of the rifle.’
I did as he asked, standing again, keeping my gaze fixed on the same part of the forest as before. Wherever he was, he was definitely to my left, hidden by the gloom.
‘Isaac?’
‘Shut up.’
I could see him now, shadowed.
‘Let’s talk,’ I said, trying to sound assured.
I spotted the gun in his hands, the unmistakable silhouette of it at his side. He came into view beyond a massive pine, lingering there for a moment, a spectre, and then he moved. A step to his right, another, then one forward, then another and another. He started walking faster, the gun aimed directly at me, but he was limping, and it was obvious now why he’d run out of breath so soon.
Vale had ruined one more life before his had ended.
Mills had a knife in his stomach.
64
‘Get on the ground,’ he said.
He jerked the gun towards a patch of earth about six feet from where I was standing. I looked at him as I moved, hands up, trying to tell him I wasn’t a threat: he suddenly looked older, his dark grey hair wiry and uncombed. But he held the weapon straight and true, and it was obvious that he knew exactly what he was doing with it.
He’d fired it before.
Maybe he’d killed with it.
He used his free hand to sweep his hair back from a face drained of colour, a face marked by worry, and secrets, and what seemed to be the lucid acceptance that this might be the last hour of his life playing out, here in the middle of a forest.
‘On the ground,’ he said again.
I dropped to my knees, the forest floor hard beneath me, snow caught in the folds of a spruce tree to my left, and he stopped just in front of the rifle. He was dressed in a thick winter coat with a fur-lined hood, a pair of combat trousers and an old, scuffed pair of black boots. The knife was in the right-hand side of his stomach, embedded to the side of the hip. As he kicked the rifle away with his heel, he winced.
‘Is Adrian dead?’ he asked.
His voice sounded desperate.
I looked at the gun he was holding, a white finger on the trigger, the blue of one of his eyes just above the sights as he angled the weapon down at me. I could hear my heart in my ears, feel my pulse in my throat. I didn’t know what the right answer was.
‘Yes,’ I said simply.
He nodded, looking off to a spot over my shoulder, and, as he did, I saw that his eyes were wet. It was marginally warmer under the canopy, but still freezing, the cold bedded in, so it could easily have been the temperature. But the muted flicker in his face told me it wasn’t.
It was relief.
He looked at me again, wiped one of his eyes with the tip of his thumb, and then – his face creased, pained – crouched down and got on the ground. Shuffling back, bringing the rifle with him, he leaned against the thin, marbled trunk of a cedar tree.
I watched him, saying nothing, as he started hunting around in his pocket, and when he found what he was looking for he brought it out, clasped inside the hollow of his palm. I was eight feet from him, maybe as much as ten, and initially it was hard to see what he was holding, but then he said, ‘You used to be a journalist …’
He threw across what he’d been holding.
It landed in a mix of dirt and frosted grass beside me: a small notebook, a pen clipped to the spiral binding. I picked it up and opened it. It was new, totally empty.
‘You know shorthand?’ he asked.
I frowned.
‘Do you or don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Then write this down.’
I studied him, his eyes, his expression, understanding what he was asking me to do but not understanding why. But then he gestured to the notebook with his free hand, and I unclipped the pen and turned to the first page.
‘What’s going on, Isaac?’
‘Just write down what I say, or I swear to God I’ll kill you where you sit.’ He stared at me, his eyes hard. ‘You think I won’t do it?’
I held up a hand. ‘No, I believe you will.’
‘Then do what I say.’
As I clicked on the pen, Mills looked down at himself, at the knife reaching out of his stomach like an arm. Keeping it in was helping to stem the blood flow.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s start at the beginning. Write this all down, just the way I say it.’ He pointed at the notebook, the chill air fanning its pages. ‘July 1985. Write that.’
I did as he asked.
‘You know anything about Vale before he came to the UK?’
‘Not much.’
‘Well, he killed two people out in LA. He told me all about it once. By then, I’d got myself in too deep with him, accepted too much money, had blood on my hands, so all I could really do was sit there and listen. He wanted to talk to someone about it – confess, I suppose – and I’d gone beyond the point where I could say no.’
‘What do you mean, blood on your hands?’
‘What do you think I mean?’
Black Gale.
‘Did you kill them all or did he?’
‘Just write down what I’m saying,’ he said, waving the gun at me. He couldn’t even look at me now. ‘Like I just told you, he killed two people out in LA.’
‘Who were the victims?’
‘One of them was called Pablo something or other. He was an illegal immigrant from Mexico who lived in the same neighbourhood as Vale, and who Vale used to smoke pot with sometimes. Anyway, this Pablo kid, he tells Vale about this guy he knows who sells extra-strong weed out of a motel room somewhere – I think Vale said it was in West Hollywood. So Vale, playing it safe and not wanting to take his mum’s car to a drug deal, goes to see this guy he used to work for part-time: this old man, Caraca, thinks Vale’s being nice, coming back to say hello and see how he’s doing, but what Vale’s really up to there is stealing a key to the place, so he can come back later and borrow a car without the manager ever knowing. Which is exactly what he does, and then he takes Pablo with him to this motel to score some of this magical pot that they can’t get in their part of the city.’
Mills adjusted himself against the tree, grimaced.
‘Donald Klein,’ he said. ‘That’s the name of the dealer. The other victim. But he used the name Gabriel Wilzon to rent the room.’
I wrote the name down and watched as Mills glanced beyond me, deeper into the forest, in the same direction he’d looked before.
‘Something goes badly wrong,’ he said, his eyes slightly narrowed, as if he were struggling to remember everything that Vale had told him. ‘Basically, this Pablo is a hothead, and when Klein tells him the price of the pot, he realizes he’s gone all that way and doesn’t have anywhere near enough money. So Pablo suddenly thinks he’s Tony Montana and starts venting, shouting and screaming that the weed’s overpriced, and then he starts stuffing his pockets without paying; when Klein pushes him away, Pablo pulls out a gun. Klein, he’s just a stoner selling weed out of a motel room – not some criminal mastermind – so he shits his pants on the spot, and Vale, believe it or not, is initially trying to act as peacemaker.’ A smile traces the corner of his lips. ‘Vale as peacemaker. Like that makes any sense.’
