I Am Missing: David Raker Missing Persons #8

by Tim Weaver

  Even with the imperfect translation, I could see right through it. The question wasn’t how Torres failed to materialize on the Empress Islands, it was why she vanished once she’d got here. Because I was certain she had got here, even if all the evidence of her doing so had mysteriously become lost, misplaced or erased. The clue was in the date she went missing: July 1987. The same month Caleb Beck vanished. The same month Roland Dell came back to the islands for his summer holidays. The same month Bill Presley was spotted outside the pub, with blood on his sleeves.

  I checked my watch.

  I’d already been gone five minutes. If I was gone any longer, Carla Presley would start to get suspicious. Grabbing my phone, I took camera shots of all the cuttings, placed them back into the folder and then returned it to the desk as I’d found it. On the way, I had another quick look through the kitchen drawers, couldn’t find the tissues, so went to the downstairs bathroom instead and ripped off some toilet roll. When I got back to the living room, Carla was watching me, her gaze following me like she knew something was up.

  I was meant to have come from upstairs.

  I held up the tissue, trying to pretend that everything was normal, unsure whether to hand her the paper or offer to help her to use it. Except I could hardly look at her now, the guilt welling in the pit of my stomach. All the good work I’d tried to do for her son, the obsession that had brought me to the other side of the world, and none of it seemed to matter in this moment: she knew – we both knew – that I’d been searching her house, taking advantage of her infirmity.

  I looked at her. ‘I’m sorry, Carla.’

  I meant it, meant every word of it, but she just stared at me, unmoved as if by choice this time, not by disability.

  ‘When this is over,’ I said, ‘I hope you’ll understand why.’

  She blinked, tears filling her eyes again.

  I tried to smile at her, but it wouldn’t form properly, so instead I got up, placed the tissue in her hand, and then left her alone in the silence of her house.

  62

  Kilburn lived five miles out of town, on a farm in the middle of nowhere. There was no public transport on the islands, so the only way I was going to get there – unless I fancied a long walk in the freezing cold – was by taking a taxi or hiring a car.

  Neither was a great option. A taxi meant relying on someone else to pick me up and drop me off, and – in terms of disguising any approach – didn’t offer a lot of subtlety. Hiring a car made more sense from that point of view, and was less conspicuous, but was no more practical: the only rental place was in St George, and that was twelve miles away.

  Until I figured out the best plan of attack, I decided to focus on finding out more about the stories I’d discovered in Presley’s office, and headed back down the slope to the library. The gravel crunched underfoot as I crossed the car park to the Portakabins, which turned out to be the perfect alarm call: at the windows, I saw metallic blinds part, a pair of eyes watching me. A moment later, the blinds pinged back into place.

  The Portakabins were joined together, the middle one connected at either end to the others, the structure forming a vague semicircle. The entrance was up a pair of rusting metal stairs and, when I pulled the door open, warm air rushed at me. I thought of Carla Presley again, of feeling the same switch in temperature as I opened the door to her place – and then I remembered how she’d looked at me.

  The way she knew I was lying to her.

  I pushed the guilt down, burying it with all the grief I’d tried to suppress over the years, the regrets, the fear, and looked left and right. The interior was small and dated, like an extended mobile library. Old, heavy-duty carpets had begun to wear through, the cream walls were marked by fingerprints, and there were scratches and cracks where the building had begun to deteriorate with age. Stand-alone electric heaters had been placed all the way down to where a computer sat in an alcove, and, in the quiet that greeted me, I could hear its soft, insect-like buzz.

  ‘Good morning.’

  I followed the voice.

  Further down, on the same side as the entrance, a woman in her forties stood behind a desk, both hands flat to the top, smiling at me. She seemed stiff, a little cautious, and it instantly put me on edge.

  ‘Morning,’ I said, pulling the door shut.

  I checked the library again; there was no one else here. I glanced out of the nearest window to the sloping road that took me back into Sophia. There was no one out there either.

  ‘Can I help you with something?’ the woman said.

  ‘I’m doing some research,’ I said. ‘I’m up from the ship for the morning.’

  ‘I see,’ was all she said.

  I looked towards the computer at the far end. Above it, printed out and taped to the wall, was a piece of paper that said: FAST INTERNET AVAILABLE HERE. Even if the definition of fast was likely to be different from back home, it was still going to be quicker than dealing with a lethargic, inconsistent 3G signal, and I wouldn’t have to read everything off a four-and-a-half-inch screen.

  ‘Could I use your computer?’

  She made a face.

  ‘If you’re wanting to use the Internet on it,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid that we’re having some problems at the moment. Something to do with’ – she waved a hand airily around her head – ‘the servers, or the exchange, or something like that. I’m not sure that I really understand any of it.’

  ‘Is there anywhere else that has a computer?’

  ‘In Sophia?’

  She looked at me like I was asking where I could find the Holy Grail. As I studied her reaction, I couldn’t quite decide if she was telling me the truth or playing me, so I just thanked her and headed back outside.

  The cold hit me like a wall. There was still snow in the air too, drifting delicately across me, blown in off the mountain. I looked up, in the direction of Strathyde, and saw that the fog was beginning to clear, the ragged edge of a peak showing through the cloud as if a hole had been punched in a roof. In a couple of hours I was hoping it would be gone, and then I’d take the trail up to the tarn and see what lay there for myself.

  ‘You the guy that’s looking for Kilburn and Presley?’

  Off to the side of me, a man was sitting on a pile of concrete breezeblocks sewn through with weeds and grass. He was dressed in a thick black coat, collar up, a blue beanie pulled down over his ears. Silver-grey stubble lined the lower half of his jaw, his skin etched with years and weather. In his right hand, a cigarette smoked gently; his left was pressed against his knee, supporting his weight. He looked in his fifties and was big, maybe six two and sixteen stone, but the expression in his face betrayed his size: he was on edge – jumpy, scared.

  ‘Are you him or aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I’m just a tourist,’ I replied, ‘up from the Olymp–’

  ‘Don’t fuck around with me, okay?’

  He got to his feet, taking a quick drag on his cigarette, then tossed it out across the gravel. It died instantly in the cold.

  ‘Just …’ He stopped, teeth pressed together. He leaned in closer to me and I could smell the sourness of him: tobacco, old alcohol, sweat, fear. ‘You made a mistake going in there.’ He meant the library. ‘That’s Kilburn’s sister that runs it.’

  He looked out across the car park, towards the Portakabin door, and then gestured for me to follow him. I hesitated for a moment and then went after him. We moved beyond the edge of the Portakabin to where the gravel dropped away, into a steep bank. A muddy trail was marked into it, thousands of footsteps embedded like fossils. The bank led down to a side street, lined with red tin roofs. It was another route leading back to the centre of town, with one big difference: the woman inside the library wouldn’t be able to see it.

  The man glanced at his watch, then out along the street, as if thinking.

  ‘You know where the lido is?’ he said.

  ‘I know it’s out of town.’

  ‘Head east from the mai
n street, out on Reynolds Road. Just keeping going. You won’t miss it.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘It’s almost midday. Meet me there at 1 p.m. It’s still too cold for anyone to be there, so we’ll hav–’

  ‘Wait a second, wait a second.’

  He fizzed with frustration, his fists balling. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not meeting you anywhere until you tell me who you are.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, checking his watch, and then the road. The panic was like an earthquake tremoring through his body. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Your name would be a good start.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said again. ‘My name’s Jessop. Anthony Jessop.’

  63

  I looked at him. ‘You’re Anthony Jessop?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, his fingers nervously drumming out a beat against the palms of his hands. ‘Have you heard of me?’

  ‘I saw you mentioned in a newspaper story.’

  He eyed me for a second – and then it seemed to click.

  ‘You mean, when we went up into the hills?’

  I nodded.

  ‘That got reported back in the UK?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It got reported in the Express.’

  He frowned. ‘So you’ve been to St George?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To the newspaper archive there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied, just to move the conversation on. ‘How did you find me?’

  He looked up and down the street and leaned closer. ‘One of my best friends works in the supermarket,’ he whispered, as if even saying it aloud put him in danger. ‘The checkout girl he’s got in there told him you’d been in. She said you were asking about Bill Presley.’

  ‘I was asking about you and Jack Kilburn too.’

  ‘Yeah, well, she doesn’t know me. She knows Bill.’

  ‘So, have you been following me around?’

  ‘Look, are you going to meet me or not?’

  ‘I’m not meeting you anywhere until I know what’s going on.’

  He swallowed, more frantic than ever: whatever best-laid plans he’d had were already starting to fracture. He’d expected to be in a position of authority, of power, able to call the shots.

  ‘Anthony?’

  He held up a hand, looked like he was gathering himself.

  ‘I was a mainlander like you,’ he said, ‘but I hated my life back in Wigan, so in 1985 I came over here. I liked this place to start with: the quiet, the solitude.’ He glanced left and right. We were still alone in the street. ‘But the quiet, the solitude, if you’re not wired up right, you can lose your mind in it.’

  I watched him. ‘Is that what happened to you?’

  ‘I know things about Kilburn and Presley,’ he said quickly, wiping snowflakes away from his cheeks. ‘I know things about a guy called Roland Dell too. You heard of him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked past me, over my shoulder, and he was close enough to me now that, in the green of his eyes, I could see the reflection of Mount Strathyde. Partly consumed by cloud, it looked thinner – a jagged silhouette, like a knife blade scything out of the earth.

  ‘I know what they did,’ he said. ‘Dell, Presley, Kilburn.’

  ‘What they did?’

  ‘Up in the Brink. At the tarn, there.’

  I studied him. ‘What do you mean, you know?’

  ‘I mean, I know,’ he said through his teeth. ‘I know what they did up there in 1987.’ He shifted closer to me, his lips only inches from my ear, as if scared to say it. ‘I know what they did, because I was there.’

  64

  The lido was at the absolute periphery of the town, where there were no homes and buildings, just a single, two-lane road travelling west to east, and an endless blanket of grassland stretching from the foothills of the mountain to the edges of the sea. Occasionally, through the mist and snow flurries, I could glimpse the suspension bridge connecting this island to the next, but there was no sign of any other life out here, which was presumably why Jessop chose it.

  As the town thinned, protection from the wind went with it, and the cold became unrelentingly brutal. I could feel it rip at my skin like nails, and putting up my hood and pulling a scarf over my face seemed to make no difference at all.

  When I finally got there, I found a circular building on a plateau. I’d seen it described as a mix between a castle and a UFO, and neither was far off: it was hulking and squat, a kind of brutalist auditorium, with small, slit-like windows embedded in huge blocks of yellow-grey concrete. Around the entrance and frilled along the top were art deco flourishes – zigzags, sunburst motifs, curves, chevrons – and, when I passed through an unmanned turnstile at the front, and into the lido itself, I found an open-air foyer with a small roof. The pool sat in a depression ahead of me, surrounded by grass and old benches. Changing rooms were off to my left, and an Empress Islands flag on the roof whipped and snapped in the wind.

  Snowflakes swirled and eddied as I headed back to the turnstile to see if Jessop was approaching. The road into Sophia remained empty.

  I stood there for a moment, thinking.

  There were no hiding places here, apart from the changing rooms, so I wasn’t worried about being surprised – but I still felt on edge. I knew nothing about Anthony Jessop, other than he’d been there the night Penny and Beth were taken up to the fence, so I had no idea if I could genuinely trust him.

  He could have been coming out here to kill me.

  I got out my phone, saw it was almost five past one, and then went to my address book. I needed to let someone know where I was, but more importantly, I needed to let Richard know his real surname and the name of his parents.

  Just in case I never came home.

  He picked up straight away. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Richard, it’s me.’

  ‘Hey, David.’

  He sounded relaxed, which was good. It meant he and Howson were still okay. I’d messaged Richard a couple of times since leaving the ship and he’d told me he was fine, but it was more reassuring hearing it in his voice than reading it in a text. As he talked to me about how he’d been researching the Empress Islands, trying to see if he could jog a memory of some kind, I looked again for Jessop. This time, in the distance, I could see a vehicle coming through the mist and snow.

  ‘Richard, listen to me. Have you got a pen there?’

  ‘Yeah, hold on.’

  I heard him put down the phone and as the line went quiet, I looked back out at the road. The car was about a minute away. I could see a silhouette at the wheel. It looked like Jessop – big, broad – but it was hard to be sure. There was no sign of anyone else in the car, in the passenger seat or in the back. I scanned the fields either side, the road, the town in the distance.

  He didn’t appear to have brought anybody else.

  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t coming.

  ‘Okay,’ Richard said, coming back on to the line.

  ‘I haven’t got a lot of time, but I need to let you know a couple of things quickly. Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your surname is Presley.’

  Silence on the line.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Presley?’

  ‘Yes. Your mum and dad’s names are Carla and Bill. I’ve met your mum. She’s …’ She’s what? ‘She’s not very well.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She had a stroke a few years back.’

  I looked out along the road. Jessop was closer than ever and I realized – as much as it pained me to do it – I needed to move the conversation on.

  ‘Richard, I’m sorry to have to rush this, but I need to ask you something else. Have you ever heard of anyone called Anthony Jessop?’

  I wasn’t sure if he was paying attention.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  He sounded groggy, confused.

  ‘Have you ever heard of a man called Anthony Jessop?’

&
nbsp; ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Okay, well, write this down. That’s the name of the guy I’m meeting now. Anthony Jessop. He’s originally from Wigan. Early fifties, been on the islands since 1985. I don’t know much more about him.’ I stopped, watching Jessop, his car – a metal-grey Land Rover Defender – spitting up mud and slush. ‘That’s what worries me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I’m meeting him in a second.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘If you don’t hear from me again, you need to make sure that all of that information gets into the hands of a man called Ewan Tasker.’ I read out Tasker’s mobile number. ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Are you okay, David?’

  ‘Is that clear, Richard?’

  The Land Rover was pulling in. I started to move away from the turnstile, back out on to the grass that surrounded the pool.

  ‘Richard, is that clear?’

  ‘Yes.’ He sounded hesitant. ‘Don’t you think you can trust him?’

  ‘I don’t think I can trust anyone here.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in a lido, a mile and a half outside of Sophia.’

  ‘Can’t you call the police?’

  Your dad is the police.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The cops are in on it.’

  Silence on the line.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Richard.’

  I hung up before he could say anything else, before he could attempt to try and talk me out of meeting Jessop.

  It was too late in any case.

  Jessop appeared at the turnstile. He flipped down his hood and came through the gate, its squeak breaking the hush of the lido. When he saw me, he seemed to relax, his shoulders inching down, as if he’d been holding his breath. He looked out at the pool again, at the changing rooms, and I realized he was doing to me exactly the same as I’d done to him: checking for back-up, for traps, for dangers.

  ‘I didn’t know if you’d show,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you bring me out here, Anthony?’

  He looked confused. ‘You wanted answers.’

  ‘Yeah, but why give them to me?’