Never Coming Back

by Tim Weaver

  ‘That was private.’

  He shrugged. ‘You said you emailed some kind of picture?’

  ‘Jeremy, I don’t want to be rude, but it was–’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Cornell said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry, Eric. Honestly, I didn’t.’ He held up both hands. ‘I apologize if I offended you. That was never my intention.’

  ‘I appreciate–’

  But then Cornell took another step towards him, stopping a foot from Schiltz, an emotionless, clinical expression on his face; an expression betraying every word of the apology he’d just made. Schiltz had seen this side of Cornell before, rarely and only in fleeting glimpses, but always directed at other people. Now it was directed at him.

  ‘It’s my job to protect this group,’ Cornell said.

  Schiltz held up a hand. ‘It’s just a photograph.’

  ‘I want to see it.’

  ‘It’s just a photograph, Jeremy.’

  ‘Then I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’

  Schiltz had a room on the thirty-second floor. They left the villa, walked through to the main hotel and rode the elevator up in silence. As they passed the tenth floor, Cornell finally turned to Schiltz. ‘I’m sorry about this, Eric. I just want to set my mind at rest.’

  Schiltz shrugged.

  ‘You have to understand where I’m coming from: that group downstairs in the villa, it’s full of some of the world’s most successful businessmen. Discretion is key.’

  ‘I’m familiar with the rules, Jeremy.’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘Then why the need for this bullshit?’

  ‘I just like to keep on top of things.’

  There was no hint of the person Schiltz had glimpsed earlier; Cornell was back to who he was most of the time: smart, serious, quiet, watchful. If he hadn’t known him since Cornell was a boy, Schiltz would have probably added sincere and apologetic to the list. But the truth was, deep down, Jeremy Cornell wasn’t either of those things. He was something else.

  Schiltz just wasn’t sure what.

  The doors pinged open, and Cornell gestured for Schiltz to lead the way. Schiltz turned right, down a long, kinked corridor to his room. As he approached, he removed his keycard from the breast pocket of his shirt.

  ‘Weird,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What?’

  He shook his head. ‘I just thought I brought both keycards out with me.’

  He slid the card he had into the reader and popped the door open. Inside it was dark. He used the card to activate the lights, and headed straight to the table, on the other side of the bed, where he’d left his laptop on to charge.

  He stopped; looked at Cornell.

  Immediately, like an animal picking up a scent, Cornell knew something was up. He took a step closer to Schiltz, head tilting to one side. ‘Is there a problem, Eric?’

  Schiltz looked around the room.

  Cornell watched him. ‘Where’s the picture?’

  ‘On the laptop.’

  ‘So where’s the laptop?’

  Schiltz gazed at the empty table. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  Cornell took a step closer. ‘Someone stole it?’

  ‘I don’t know how–’

  ‘Someone stole it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Schiltz said, his voice raised. ‘Of course someone stole it!’

  ‘Who would steal it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who else has got a key to your room?’

  Schiltz looked at Cornell: the missing keycard. ‘No one.’

  But both of them were thinking the same thing: the prostitute Schiltz had been talking to in the hotel bar earlier in the evening. He’d never had any intention of paying for her, but she was friendly and for thirty minutes he’d enjoyed her company.

  And while he was distracted, she’d stolen his room key.

  ‘What was her name?’ Cornell asked.

  ‘I never asked her.’

  Cornell glanced at the empty table. ‘What was the picture of?’

  Schiltz looked at Cornell, incredulous. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who cares about a bloody picture?’

  ‘I care.’

  ‘Are you listening to what I’m saying? My laptop has been stolen!’

  ‘I heard you.’

  ‘It’s got private information on it.’

  ‘Who were you on the phone to, Eric?’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘Just tell me and then I’ll help you find–’

  ‘It’s totally irrelevant.’

  ‘I’ll decide whether it’s relevant or not,’ Cornell said, and took another step closer. There was a sudden twist to Cornell’s voice, a subtle, menacing shift in tone, and when Schiltz faced him, Cornell had changed. Still, rigid, not even a flicker of a muscle.

  ‘It’s just a picture of the three of us.’

  ‘You three men?’

  Schiltz nodded, contrite, cowed, aware instantly that he was allowing himself to be muzzled, but incapable of doing anything about it. The whole atmosphere had changed – Cornell had somehow turned the conversation on its head with a single look.

  ‘So who was asking about it?’

  ‘Just a woman I know.’

  ‘Her name?’

  He studied Cornell; one last futile attempt to fight back.

  ‘Her name, Eric?’

  Schiltz swallowed; felt a little nauseous.

  ‘You’re going to give me her name, Eric.’

  Then, finally, Schiltz relented. ‘Carrie,’ he said. ‘Carrie Ling.’

  18

  In the hours before it got dark, I put up the fence panelling in the back garden that had blown down during gales the week before. Dad had never been a big believer in power tools; anything that plugged directly into an electrical socket he viewed with a deep and pervading suspicion. However, he did buy himself a nailgun to help put up fences, back when he’d been managing fields of livestock on the farm, and as rain continued to lash in, it made my task easier, even if – by the time I was finished – I was soaked to the bone.

  As the last of the light disappeared, I heard my phone going inside the house. I left the nailgun outside and headed through to the kitchen, where my mobile was buzzing on the table. It was Ewan Tasker. I’d asked him to source the Lings’ missing persons file.

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you,’ he said after we’d chatted for a while, ‘I seriously doubt you’re going to be putting this case to bed based on what’s in the official file.’

  ‘It doesn’t amount to much?’

  ‘Most of it you probably already know.’

  ‘I’ll take the official version, anyway – just to be sure.’

  I could hear him tabbing through pages on his computer. ‘Okay. So, your friend Emily Kane calls police on 7 January and tells them her sister, brother-in-law and nieces are missing. Next day, she files an official report at Totnes. Any of this news to you?’

  ‘It’s confirming what I already know.’

  ‘For some reason, after taking Kane’s statement, the uniform at Totnes decided to fire it up the line.’ He anticipated my next question: ‘Why? Can’t say for sure. There’s nothing in the statement that would set alarm bells off, and scene of crime came up with a whole lot of nothing at the house. No sign of a struggle, nothing stolen, no blood. My guess is the PC thought it was weird that a whole family just disappeared like that.’

  ‘You would have done the same?’

  ‘Punted it up the tree? Yeah, I probably would have. I mean, I’ve never heard of that before. Families vanish all the time, but usually they turn up pretty quickly. It’s hard for a family of four to disappear, plus the way the house was left – that’s pretty unique.’

  ‘So what happened when CID got involved?’

  ‘9 January, forty-eight hours after the family go missing, two detectives take a forensic team to t
he house. Detectives …’ He paused, trying to find their names – but I already knew one of them was Rocastle. ‘Detectives Rocastle and McInnes. First one’s a DCI, second’s a DC.’ I heard him clicking through more pages. ‘Forensic team dusts the place down, fingerprint lifts, DNA samples, all the usual stuff – nothing. Nothing on the databases then and nothing now. I rechecked everything for you. The only things on there are the things you’d expect: their legally registered cars, their house, etcetera, etcetera. There’re no cautions, no arrests – all the adults have got a clean bill of health.’

  ‘So no mention of anything being stolen from the house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing being withdrawn from their bank accounts?’

  ‘No. There is a pretty extensive evidence inventory here, which I haven’t looked at too closely. You’ll probably want to pick that apart when I send these printouts over.’

  ‘Thanks, Task. Anything else?’

  ‘Did you know they called in the MPB?’

  The Missing Persons Bureau. Seventy-two hours after someone went missing, the police could call on the assistance of the MPB. They were the UK’s only dedicated missing persons team, logging about a thousand searches a year, working in conjunction with police forces to identify missing people, and put names to bodies and remains.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that. Did they find anything?’

  ‘No. Reading between the lines, it looks like the case went south pretty quickly, even with the MPB involved. Rocastle jacked it in after a few days, so McInnes was–’

  ‘Hold on. Rocastle only spent a couple of days on the case?’

  ‘Three days. Total.’

  ‘Does it say why?’

  ‘Yeah: the case was going nowhere. I’m paraphrasing, but you can see it all over the file. I’ve had my fair share of these, believe me.’ He stopped. A couple of taps. ‘Last recorded activity was 23 July, when they called Emily Kane to update her on the progress of the case – or lack of it, I guess. It’s an unusual case, but the police work here seems pretty solid.’ A couple of clicks. ‘Oh, and all their computers came up clean too.’

  I processed everything I’d heard. If the computers had come up clean, that almost certainly meant their emails had too, though I’d still double-check once Spike got me the login details. The involvement of Rocastle was interesting, though. The three days he’d spent on the case suggested he didn’t see anything worth pursuing in it – but it didn’t explain why he’d been involved in the first place. It wasn’t unusual for senior officers to lead missing persons cases – far from it – but it was unusual for someone with Rocastle’s level of experience to be dropped in as SIO on a case where there was no body, and no evidence to suggest the family were in any immediate danger.

  ‘What about sightings?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well, this is where it’ll get fun for you. Fifty-two possible sightings in the weeks after the family went missing, and none of them are up to much.’

  ‘Not a single one of the fifty-two?’

  ‘They elevated three to “Maybe if we’re desperate”, but – reading between the lines – they’re the best of a bad bunch. You know how it works: you field a shitload of calls, some will be useful, most will either be cases of mistaken identity, morons trying to get in your way, or old-fashioned crazies. It’s unusual to get nothing – but it happens. I’ve only skim-read these, but you can see why police weren’t getting too excited.’

  ‘So what are we looking at?’

  ‘This Emily woman didn’t tell you about these already?’

  She hadn’t mentioned them specifically, although she’d said that the police had told her the sightings didn’t amount to much. ‘I’m not sure she knew about them.’

  ‘Probably because the police decided against telling her. Personally, I always like to communicate everything – good or bad – but I can understand their reticence on these. False hope can create bigger problems.’ He stopped, reading from something. ‘Okay, so one was down your way, at some country estate in Dartmouth. The second was here in London, near the ExCeL. Plus, they were looking at some kind of anonymous call too.’

  ‘Can you talk me through them?’

  ‘Sure. The Dartmouth sighting was at a place called Farnmoor House, the day after the family went missing. House and land are owned by a guy called Carter Graham. He’s some kind of mega-businessman; spends a lot of his year out of the country, so he wasn’t at home. Gardener there – a guy called Ray Muire – reckons he spotted Paul and Carrie Ling and “a third party” crossing fields about a quarter of a mile from the house.’

  ‘A third party?’

  ‘Yet to be identified.’

  ‘Only Paul and Carrie? What about the girls?’

  ‘This Muire guy reckons just Paul and Carrie.’

  ‘So, what, the police didn’t take him seriously?’

  ‘I’m giving you the edited highlights here, but I think, in the end, they doubted his abilities to spot anyone from further than a distance of about six feet. He had some kind of a degenerative eye problem, diagnosed by a doctor Rocastle spoke to. This quack said Muire was a year out from full blindness. Rocastle did the interview himself before he left the ship, and asked Muire about his eyesight. In the transcript, Muire agrees his eyes are on the wane, but he seems to be pretty accurate with some of his descriptive detail.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Just the way he sets the scene, the way he describes the house and what he saw of the Lings. It’s an odd interview. I’ve only given it a cursory glance, but it starts off very accurate, very clear, then slowly becomes more rambling – and eventually incoherent.’

  ‘Sounds like it could be nerves.’

  ‘I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels more like he forgot what his own story was. But that first ten minutes or so, when he’s recalling things with a real sense of clarity, that’s probably why police zeroed in on him. That, and his location: they paid special attention to any sightings close to where the family lived and worked.’

  ‘What about the second sighting?’

  ‘At a set of temporary roadworks on Victoria Dock Road. You know it?’

  I did. It ran parallel to the ExCeL convention centre in east London. It was a weird place for the Lings to have been spotted. ‘Yeah. I know it. Who was the wit?’

  ‘Guy who worked for the council digging up roads. He said he read about the family’s disappearance online and reckons he saw two of them – the girls this time – two days after the sighting at Farnmoor. That’s 10 January. They were in a car: a red Ford.’

  ‘With who?’

  ‘A male. White. That’s about it.’

  ‘No other description?’

  ‘No. Police never tracked down the Ford either. McInnes travelled up to London and did an interview with him, but this guy wasn’t able to provide much of a description of anything, other than the girls looked a bit like the ones he’d read about. To be honest, I’d trust the blind guy at the house before I trusted this guy Barry Rew.’

  ‘That’s his name?’

  ‘Yeah. Rew’s a recovering addict, been done for drug possession, receiving stolen goods, laying hands on an ex. The cherry on top was getting banged up for five months off the back of the riots last year when he walked out of PC World carrying ten iPads.’

  ‘So what made this sighting stick?’

  ‘One tiny detail in his interview: he said Olivia was holding a Mickey Mouse soft toy while she was sitting in the back of the car. Police found photos of her at home with the same toy, but that detail never got made public. Rew couldn’t have known before.’

  ‘Did they ever think he might be involved?’

  ‘That was the other reason Rew’s sighting made the grade.’

  ‘They wanted to keep an eye on him?’

  ‘Correct. You would too if all you had to go on was the word of a thieving, woman-beating ex-smackhead.’

  I wheeled back. ‘Did anyon
e speak to the guy who owned the country house?’

  ‘McInnes spoke to Carter Graham on 12 January. He had to do the interview via video link, as Graham was in his New York office. Again, they seemed pretty happy with the answers. Graham has a ton of land in and around Farnmoor, and a lot of it is public right of way, so there’s just no way he can account for who uses it and who doesn’t.’

  Most missing persons cases led to sightings and most sightings amounted to nothing. I trusted Task’s initial take, and trusted him to spot anything that didn’t feel right in either sighting, but it would need closer attention once he sent the file through.

  ‘You said there was an anonymous call too?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He paused as he searched for the page. ‘Someone called the police and said they saw Paul and Carrie the day after they were allegedly seen in the grounds of Farnmoor. This time they were at a place called … uh … Miln Cross. You know it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know it.’

  But it seemed unlikely they would have been there. Miln Cross was nothing but a ghost now: a tiny fishing village, right on the edge of the sea, that had been wiped out in a freak storm. I hadn’t been born at the time, but locals had talked about it for years afterwards, their voices hushed as if its sudden destruction had frightened them somehow. In just two hours, fifty-foot waves and a devastating landslide had reduced fourteen houses, a shop, an inn, a chapel and the forty-two people inside them to nothing but bones and memories. It was only five miles along the coast, two shy of Farnmoor, so it worked in terms of the locality of the first sighting, but even before I’d left home to go to London in 1988 it had been closed to the public, and was now just a dangerous graveyard of broken buildings and yawning chasms ripped from the earth by the power of the storm.

  ‘What did the caller say?’ I asked.

  ‘Direct quote: “I’m calling about that family that went missing – the Lings. I saw the husband and wife at Miln Cross today. You should go down and take a look.” ’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Man or a woman?’

  ‘Man.’

  The obvious question was why keep the call anonymous? The only reason I could think of, given the supposed location of the sighting, was because the caller was trying to throw police off the scent – or that there might have been consequences to making the call.