I Am Missing: David Raker Missing Persons #8

by Tim Weaver

  Beth squeezed Richard’s hand again.

  ‘What’s going on, Rich?’

  ‘I went up there because of you,’ he said. ‘People talked about the Brink, and I didn’t believe them, but when you and Penny came back, and I saw the look in your eyes, I thought, “The only way I’m going to find out the truth about what’s going on up there is by going myself.” So that’s what I did. I went up myself. But what I never told you was that I did it differently from you and Penny: I didn’t go up late evening or at night. I went up in the middle of the day.’

  Beth shuffled closer. ‘Did you see something else?’

  ‘On the other side of the fence, it starts to gradually slope down. You would have seen that, even in the dark. There’s all this marshland, these huge bogs; there’s walls of scree from Mount Strathyde. The slope, it eventually goes all the way down to the sea, but it must be three or four miles across. It’s vast.’ He stopped, watching the wheels of an overturned tractor spin. ‘I walked for an hour and nothing happened. There was no monster. There was nothing out there at all. I walked all the way down, almost to the sea, and then I came back up again. On the way up, I went a different route, staying parallel to the fence, but a couple of miles across from it.’

  ‘What did you see?’ Beth asked again.

  Richard didn’t answer straight away. He looked at her, something moving in his eyes, and placed a hand to his head, his beanie shifting, some of his red hair escaping.

  ‘Do you know what a tarn is?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it’s a mountain lake.’

  ‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘Right. Out in the Brink, if you head towards Mount Strathyde rather than towards the sea, you eventually get to this tarn. It’s hidden away, about halfway up. It’s walled in on all sides by peaks, and there’s only one way in and one way out of it, up a thin scree path. But, once you’re inside, it’s like being in this huge coliseum of hills. It’s stunning.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Penny?’

  He glanced at her, running his fingers – cut, bruised, oil-stained – across his mouth, as if he wasn’t sure how to express himself – or maybe didn’t want to.

  ‘There’s a cabin there,’ he said.

  ‘A cabin?’

  ‘A wooden cabin. It’s on the far side; the opposite side to the way in and out. When I saw it, I started heading up the scree path, towards the tarn. I was going to walk around the lake, get closer to the cabin and see who it belonged to. But at the top of the path, as it opened out, my foot caught on something and I fell over.’

  The wind ripped in again.

  ‘I fell over a length of tripwire,’ Richard said.

  ‘Tripwire?’

  ‘As soon as I touched it, I set something off.’

  Outside, things crashed and snapped and moaned.

  ‘There was this series of short, fast clicks. Click, click, click. Click, click, click. I could hear them coming from somewhere close by, so I looked around and I found a box – like, a receiver – hidden among some rocks. It was flashing red, on and off.’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘So what did you do?’ Beth asked.

  ‘I ran.’

  ‘Back to the fence?’

  ‘Yes.’ He spoke quietly, his gaze fixed on the sea. ‘But I only made it about thirty feet when I lost my footing on the scree. I was so scared. I was running so fast. I fell over, into some of the rocks, and there was this kind of ravine at the edge. It fell away about six or seven feet into a stream. I saw them down there.’

  ‘Saw what?’

  He paused. ‘There was a telescope there. And an anorak.’

  ‘A telescope?’

  ‘Yes. Like people use for stargazing. But it had been there a long time. It was covered in mud and moss. So was the anorak. That was orange and really old, filthy, rotten. It clung to the rocks at the edge of the stream. Even if I’d been able to get down, I don’t think I could have peeled it off without it disintegrating. So I just left them both there, got up on my feet again, and ran.’ He faded out, the emotion starting to tremor in his throat. ‘Maybe fifteen minutes after that, maybe more, I heard the noise.’

  ‘The noise?’

  ‘The noise,’ Richard repeated, and this time she got it. The noise. The noise that she and Penny had heard the night they’d gone over the fence.

  The noise the monster made.

  ‘It seemed to be coming from the direction of the fence,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t know how else to get home. So I just ran. I ran so fast for the fence I could barely even breathe.’

  They both stared at each other.

  ‘I never really put it together until I met you, Beth; until you showed me those pictures of you and Penny as kids. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Yeah. That was a few months back.’

  ‘Right. You remember there was a picture of Penny in there?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘She was with her dad. On his knee.’

  ‘I remember the picture, yeah. So what?’

  There was a lull filled by doors fanning open and smashing shut again; by machinery tinkling and clanging; by the creak of the whale-oil tanks as they shifted gently against their scaffolding.

  ‘Rich?’

  Finally, he ripped his gaze away from the windscreen. ‘In the photograph you showed me, Penny’s dad was wearing the same anorak.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The anorak I saw, it belonged to Penny’s dad.’

  ‘Are you …’ She stopped. ‘Are you sure?’

  But then she remembered the anorak in the picture: it was orange.

  ‘When I got back to the fence,’ Richard was saying, his fingers clinging tightly to Beth’s, ‘they were waiting for me. My dad. Your dad. As soon as they could see me, they told me to hurry, to run as fast as I could, and once I got there, they helped me climb over, and I thought I was safe.’ One of his eyes began to well up. He wiped at it with the back of his hand, but more tears began to form. ‘But I wasn’t safe. As soon as they got me on to the right side of the fence, my dad picked me up and slammed me against his car, and he said, “What the fuck did you think you were doing?” He was so angry. “You know not to go out into the Brink. You know how dangerous it is. You heard about those girls. You could have been killed.” They punished me like they punished you. They brought me back to the fence that night and left me there, and it … it was …’ He sniffed. ‘It was there.’

  Beth squeezed his hand.

  He took a moment, trying to quell his emotions. ‘It came all the way up to the fence.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I saw it in the shadows, out of the corner of my eye. I heard it. I thought I could feel its breath on the back of my neck. But you know what the weird thing was?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When Dad came to pick me up the next morning, it looked like he’d been crying. He untied me from the fence and hugged me, and he told me he loved me.’

  ‘He didn’t ever do that normally?’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘You said Jack did the same when he came back to get you and Penny. It wasn’t the hug – it was what else Dad said to me. He took me straight from there all the way out here.’ Richard pointed to the whaling station. ‘That was the first time I ever came here: when I was sixteen. He brought me all the way out here because it’s as far away from Sophia as it’s possible to get, and he turned to me, and he had tears in his eyes, and he said, “How far around the tarn did you get?” ’

  Beth leaned back a little.

  ‘He started telling me about Penny. He said that she was going to the UK when she was sixteen, but they weren’t worried because even if she told anyone over there about the monster, who would believe her? But he said I was different. He said I’d been further into the Brink than anyone else had ever been, and now people on the islands were concerned about me. He meant I’d seen more than just the monster. And that was
when it got weird. He started saying to me, “Don’t leave the island. If you up and leave now, they’ll think you’re running. So you need to stay and you need to keep quiet about the tarn. If you don’t, I might not be able to protect you.” ’

  ‘Protect you?’ Beth said. ‘Why would he need to protect you?’

  Richard didn’t respond straight away, his fingers tightening around Beth’s as if he were slipping and trying to hold on. ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually, ‘but I looked at the tears in my dad’s eyes, and it was like I could see something else – the real reason he was crying.’ He faded out.

  Rain flecked against the windscreen.

  ‘It was like he thought the worst was still to come for me.’

  52

  Beyond the noise of the air conditioning, we both tried to process Beth’s recollection of the conversation she’d had with Richard Kite – Richard Presley – at the whaling station. ‘It’s something about that cabin,’ she said, looking at me. ‘It’s hiding a secret; and our dads, they both know what it is.’

  ‘What about the monster?’ I asked her.

  She frowned. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You still think it’s real?’

  ‘We’ve already been over this.’

  ‘They laid tripwire across the entrance to the tarn.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So doesn’t that suggest to you that Bill Presley, your dad, whoever else – they’re doing anything they can to stop people from getting up to that cabin?’

  ‘The monster isn’t made up.’

  ‘It’s a story they invented to keep people out.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘Beth, think about what you’re say–’

  ‘Don’t tell me to think about what I’m saying!’ she fired back, and then stopped, realizing she’d allowed her voice to get too loud. ‘You weren’t there.’

  ‘Did you actually see it?’

  ‘Yes. How many fucking times do I have to tell you?’

  ‘No, I meant, clearly. Did you see it there, in front of you, in the full glare of torchlight? Or did you only catch glimpses?’ I stopped, watching her. ‘Have you ever thought about the reasons why your dad might tie you to that fence with your back to it, rather than tie you to it so you could see out into the Brink?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘If he wanted to prove the monster was real, why not let you see it?’

  Her head dropped to her chest. I didn’t blame her for believing in it – for still believing in it, even after Richard had told her about the tarn and the cabin – because, that night at the Brink, she’d been a frightened, confused child in a place where rumours and lies had found a breeding ground. Afterwards, no one had tried to convince her otherwise; in fact, the opposite: plenty of others in the town slowly began to believe the same thing. But there was no monster.

  Or, at least, not one from any fairy tale.

  As delicately as I could, I leaned into her and said, ‘You told me Richard was too scared to leave the islands because of the warning his dad had given him – so what changed his mind?’

  She eyed me for a moment, still pissed off.

  ‘Rich found something,’ she said eventually.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This was last December,’ she said. ‘He was having trouble sleeping, so he went downstairs to make some tea and found his dad out cold at the kitchen table. He was drunk. Rich said his dad was drinking more and more. Every night he was passing out like that.’

  It sounded like Bill Presley was on a downward spiral – but from what?

  ‘His dad had left his laptop open,’ Beth said. ‘There was an application on it. An instant messenger.’

  The Red Tree IM. It had to be.

  ‘Who had Richard’s dad been speaking to?’

  ‘Roland Dell.’

  I gripped the water bottle tighter.

  ‘He was one of the men who came to see you earlier,’ she said.

  ‘I know. I’ve met him before. What were they talking about?’

  ‘Penny.’

  She almost whispered the name, as if it were too painful to voice. I remembered what she’d said to me earlier: I don’t think Penny disappeared. I think she was killed. I’d been uncertain then if she was guessing, or basing her opinion on some piece of information she hadn’t told me about. I realized now it was the latter. She was well aware of what had happened to her sister – because Richard had told her.

  He’d seen the truth on his dad’s laptop.

  ‘Rich’s dad must have been typing drunk. He kept saying they would go to hell for what they did. That’s what he wrote: We’ll go to hell for what we did. When Rich leaned over him and started scrolling through the conversation, to try and find out more, he discovered they’d been talking about Penny …’

  ‘They mentioned her by name?’

  ‘No, they used her initials. PB. They talked about how she’d been missing since 2014. But Dell said it like Penny wasn’t missing, but something worse.’

  I tried to join the dots.

  I thought of Penny’s father, of how Caleb Beck had been linked, by Penny, to the money that Dell had passed through the school. We’ll go to hell for what we did. Penny’s father was dead, that much seemed obvious – the question now was how much Dell, Bill Presley and Jack Kilburn knew about it. Whatever the truth, if Presley was involved, the corruption was endemic in Sophia and spread all the way to the police.

  ‘Have you ever met Dell?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not personally, no.’

  ‘But you know of him?’

  ‘My dad knows him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Dad, Bill Presley, Roland Dell, a guy called Anthony Jessop – they all grew up on the islands together in the seventies and eighties. Dell wasn’t born there, though – he just moved to the islands when his old man became governor. I don’t know much more than that.’

  With that, something else fell into place: why Dell seemed so conflicted about Penny’s murder. I wouldn’t have chosen that end for her, he’d told me. She was the stepdaughter of a man he’d grown up with. Dell would have moved to the UK in 1984, the year Penny had been born. He wouldn’t have known what she looked like as a grown woman, which was how she’d managed to turn the tables on him and convince him she was called Corrine Wilson. It was how she’d been able to dig around in Dell’s life and find a connection back to her father.

  ‘There was this rumour about Rich’s dad.’

  I tuned back in. ‘About Bill Presley?’

  ‘Yes. But Rich wasn’t the one that told me.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. But people talk. That’s all they do in Sophia: they talk.’

  ‘So what was the rumour?’

  ‘This was from way back, when I was still a baby, so I don’t know if it’s true or not, but there were these rumours about Dell and Bill Presley. Basically, Dell moved to London when he was sixteen, and would then come back for summer holidays because his father was still governor. Anyway, apparently, when Dell came back at the end of his first year of university, Bill Presley was seen in town early one morning, in the back alley behind the pub. He was just sitting there, on the ground, crying. Like, really crying. Most people just assumed he’d spent the whole evening there; that he was still drunk from the night before. I mean, it might have been summer back in the UK but it was winter on the islands, and in the middle of winter the sun doesn’t come up until 9 a.m., so it was dark and quite hard to see him. But apparently it wouldn’t have been outside the realms of possibility for Bill Presley, even in his twenties, to be so pissed he hadn’t made it home.’ She took a moment, looking up at me. ‘But some people said he wasn’t drunk at all. They said Bill Presley never even went into the pub the evening before; that no one had seen him for the whole night. In fact, one of Bill’s neighbours supposedly saw him leaving his house at six that morning. He’d been crying then as well – and not only tha
t. There was blood on his coat.’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘On his sleeves.’

  I tried to process that, to put it together. Dell had returned to the islands in his summer holidays. At some point around then, Bill Presley had been spotted, in tears, with blood on the sleeves of his coat. Presley told Dell they were all going to hell for what they did: he meant himself, Dell, Jack Kilburn and maybe this Anthony Jessop guy too. And the thing that looped it all together was something Beth had said, but didn’t seem to realize the significance of.

  Dell returned for the holidays after his first year of university, which would have made him nineteen at the time. It meant he’d returned to Sophia in 1987.

  The same year Penny’s dad went missing.

  53

  ‘Penny got a job at the school in order to investigate Dell, right?’

  Beth nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘So what do you think first made her suspect him?’

  ‘Penny’s dad and Roland Dell’s dad used to be friendly,’ she said. ‘You can find all these pictures of them together at social events if you go back and look at old issues of the Empress Express. So maybe it was that.’

  I watched her. ‘Or maybe it wasn’t?’

  ‘Maybe it was something I told her,’ she said. ‘When I was really young, my dad got drunk once and started telling me that Caleb Beck had been rich. I told Pen about it, but she didn’t believe me. I guess we didn’t think much more about it after that because it never seemed like Fiona had been left anything by Penny’s dad. We never lived in a big house, never had nice cars or foreign holidays, not in the entire time I was growing up. But then, a few months before Pen left the islands for good, Dad suddenly bought himself this brand-new Land Rover. Like, brand new.’

  ‘How did he say he could afford it?’

  ‘He said he’d come into a bit of money.’

  It made sense straight away.

  Beth had said this happened a few months before Penny left the islands, which would have been August or September 2000. In September 2000, Dell used the Red Tree to funnel money into three accounts in the Empress Islands. What if one of the accounts was Jack Kilburn’s? What if the other two had belonged to Bill Presley and Anthony Jessop? The four men had grown up together – could they have stolen Caleb Beck’s money together? What if they’d killed him for it?