Never Coming Back

by Tim Weaver

  She didn’t seem to hear me.

  ‘Emily?’

  ‘They were upset as well. I mean, obviously. It was their daughter. Paul was the stronger of the two, I suppose – he was a medical man, he dealt with this sort of thing all day. I don’t mean he was unfeeling – definitely not. But I think he decided he was going to try and remain strong, because Carrie and I, well … we were just a mess.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  She didn’t respond, as if her mind were elsewhere, and then a memory came to me: standing in Paul Ling’s study with her, asking her about why the Lings had waited so long to have Olivia. ‘Emily?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What happened after that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Things kept changing all the time. Some days doctors would seem more positive – though, to be honest, most days they weren’t. They pinned her leg, reset it, restructured it somehow, but after a couple of weeks they were still telling her it was a fifty-fifty chance whether surgery would take properly or not.’ She sighed. ‘The idiot driving that car had basically flattened her entire leg. It was horrendous.’

  I recalled seeing pictures of the family that had been taken in the last six months before they disappeared, and both of Annabel’s legs were intact then. ‘But the surgery took eventually?’

  ‘Yes. Eventually.’

  ‘That’s good. So this was when?’

  ‘The accident was at the start of December 2010.’

  Almost two years ago. It was why she thought it hadn’t been relevant.

  ‘And how long was her rehab?’

  ‘A year. But things were instantly much better once she got back.’

  I frowned. ‘Back from where?’

  ‘Oh, they went to the States for more surgery in February 2011. Paul and Olivia stayed out there for a month and then came back. Paul had his job; Olivia had missed a month of school and couldn’t afford to miss any more. But Carrie stayed behind with Belle, for the surgery, the recovery, everything else. They came back at the beginning of May.’

  ‘Why did they go to the US?’

  ‘They were offered a second opinion: consultation, tests, surgery, the works – all inside a week. Here, they couldn’t get in to see the specialist for a month and a half. She was in so much pain, she could hardly even walk.’ Emily stopped. She sounded on the verge of tears. ‘We all just wanted it sorted.’

  I was about to ask her who had offered them a second opinion when that last bit struck a chord with me: We all just wanted it sorted. I’d thought originally that it was the tone in her voice that kept registering with me. I’d become so used to people lying to me, I’d been searching her quieter, more uncertain moments for whatever it was she was keeping back. But maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe there was no deception. Maybe it was as simple as the way she spoke about the Lings: as if she were a part of their family unit, involved intimately in their decisions, their doubts, their fears.

  ‘Who was it who offered them a second opinion?’

  ‘A doctor they found via one of Paul’s friends.’

  ‘What was the name of the friend?’

  ‘Do you remember Lee Wilkins?’

  The name made me pause.

  I remembered him well. We’d grown up in the village, gone to the same school, and then Lee and I left home and never spoke for nineteen years. In an odd footnote, I’d bumped into him in a casino in Las Vegas at the end of 2007. I’d been on what turned out to be my last foreign assignment. He’d already been living in America for seven years, trying to make the break as an actor. I remembered our conversation that night, though not with absolute clarity. We’d been getting on well, enjoying reminiscing – then he’d gone to the toilet and never returned. There was some other guy with him too.

  What was it the guy had said to me?

  ‘David?’

  ‘Sorry. Yeah, I remember Lee. I ran into him a couple of years ago, actually. Do you still keep in touch with him?’

  ‘No. But he and Paul became very good friends. This was before Lee moved to the States in 2000. His sister got pregnant with her second child and there were all sorts of complications while she was carrying, and then even more after the baby came along. The baby ended up becoming Paul’s patient, and he was just amazing with Lee’s sister and the little girl. Lee was down here all the time from London when this was going on, because his sister’s husband just upped and left and never came back when he found out she was pregnant. Lee’s mum was struggling to cope with the stress of watching her daughter go through all that, so Lee really stepped up to the plate. He and Paul hit it off, first at the hospital when Paul was treating the little girl, then afterwards. Lee asked Paul out for a thank-you drink, and from there they developed this really close bond.’

  ‘So, what, Lee acted as a liaison between Annabel and the US doctor?’

  ‘I only know what Carrie told me.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  ‘That Paul was talking on Skype with Lee – this was after Annabel had been told she’d have to wait six weeks here to even see the specialist, let alone get it sorted out – and he was telling Lee how desperate they were. I think Paul was trying to keep it together but at the end of the day, well … it was his daughter.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Anyway, Lee mentioned to Paul that he knew this brilliant orthopaedic guy through his job.’

  ‘So Paul made the decision to fly the family out?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Lee offered to pay.’

  ‘For the flights?’

  ‘For all of it.’

  ‘The surgery too?’

  ‘Yes. By that stage he was earning a lot of money. Carrie said he was some kind of entertainment director at a bunch of casinos in Vegas – he was responsible for booking all the acts. I think he had his own show, I don’t know. I guess he could afford it.’

  ‘Even so, that’s a pretty big gesture.’

  ‘Huge.’

  ‘And they obviously accepted?’

  ‘Paul took a little more persuading, but I remember Carrie telling me about it the next day, and it was the first time I’d seen her smiling in a month. They had to take up the offer. Not to do it would have been insane. So, a couple of days later, they flew out.’

  ‘Where did they fly into?’

  ‘Los Angeles.’

  ‘Is that where the doctor was?’

  ‘I don’t know. It all happened so fast.’

  ‘They didn’t tell you when they got back?’

  ‘They kept quiet on a lot of the details.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Carrie just said Lee was keen to keep things on the QT, that he wasn’t one for big gestures and that he’d asked them just to accept the gift and not worry about the details. To be honest, that was good enough for me. All that mattered was Belle.’

  I looked down at the list on the table in front of me. Parker. Cathedral. Dicloflex. ‘So they never told you what the doctor’s name was?’

  ‘No, they didn’t.’

  ‘That didn’t bother you?’

  ‘Why would it? Belle got better. That’s all I cared about.’

  ‘Ever heard the name Parker?’

  ‘No. No, I haven’t.’

  ‘What about Cathedral – maybe the name of a clinic?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know if they took any pictures while they were out there?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see any, anyway.’

  I hadn’t found any in the house either; nothing relevant on any of the computers. I was hoping there might be some evidence of where they’d gone – the clinic, the doctor, anything. But it was a long shot. The trip out hadn’t been any kind of a holiday, and Lee Wilkins had, for some reason, asked for discretion. I made a note to go through their phones again to see if there were any pictures I’d missed.

  ‘A couple of final things: what were the actual dates of their trip?’

&n
bsp; ‘I can find out. Hold on.’

  I heard her put the phone down and walk away. While she was looking, I retraced my steps, back through the conversation. The list must have been one Paul made prior to the trip. I wondered if it was part of a conversation he’d had with Lee Wilkins, or maybe even with the specialist himself. I walked through to the living room, woke my Mac from its sleep and googled Parker, adding ‘orthopaedics’ and ‘Los Angeles’. There were four possible options, all with the surname Parker. When I did the same search, replacing Los Angeles with Lee’s hometown of Las Vegas, I got three more. I did the same with the search term ‘Cathedral’, adding ‘Los Angeles clinic’. Zero hits. The same in Las Vegas.

  A couple of seconds later, Emily returned.

  ‘Sorry about that. I had to dig out last year’s diary. Luckily, I’m a hoarder, so I always keep these things.’ She paused. I heard pages being turned. ‘Right. So. They flew out 3 February, and Carrie and Belle came back …’ More pages being turned. ‘6 May.’

  I wrote down the dates. With a flight there was a paper trail, at least as far as LA. If they’d taken an internal connection from there – possibly to Las Vegas, where Lee was based – that would be an added bonus. Finding out where they’d gone once they landed would be harder without an idea of which doctor they were seeing, or even where he was based. I could, in principle, get Spike to hunt through hotel records in LA or Vegas for the time they were out there, but it would be a forlorn task. If Paul had noted down the painkillers Annabel was going to be taking in recovery, it was just as likely that the other two names were connected to her operation too – which meant my best hope of picking up a trail was to find out which Parker had done the operation, and what Cathedral was.

  ‘How did they seem when they got back?’

  ‘From the States? Ecstatic.’

  ‘They all seemed exactly the same as always? You didn’t notice any changes in them in the eight months between them getting back and going missing?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m trying to look for reasons they might have left.’

  ‘No, they were fine,’ she said. ‘Better than fine, in fact, because everyone was firing on all cylinders. Belle was healthy, so everyone was happy.’

  ‘Did the police speak to you about this?’

  ‘About the trip to the States? Yes.’

  ‘What did they ask?’

  ‘Pretty much the same questions you did.’

  Which meant they’d failed to find the doctor. Or if they’d found him, he’d been able to provide a full account of the Lings’ trip out to see him. If I had to take a guess, I’d say it was more likely to be the second: Annabel went out with a serious leg injury and came back healthy, suggesting the specialist had lived up to his reputation. The best way to find him, and to close off that line of inquiry, was going to be through Lee Wilkins. I’d have to try to get in touch with him in the US somehow.

  ‘Okay, last question,’ I said to her, and thought about the Dartmoor phone box that Paul had received three calls from in the weeks and days leading up to the disappearance. ‘Did you ever hear Paul – or maybe Carrie – talking about having a connection to anyone on Dartmoor? Specifically, Princetown. Maybe they had a friend there, or some sort of business associate? Maybe they were getting calls more regularly in those final months?’

  ‘Dartmoor?’ She sounded confused, which was all the answer I needed. ‘The police also asked me that. Do you think that’s where they all went – Dartmoor?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Then what’s the relevance?’

  I paused, readying the lie. ‘It’s just a loose end.’

  A loose end that could be the key to finding them.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘They never mentioned anything.’

  It didn’t change much: I was still going to head up there.

  As I thanked her and hung up, something suddenly came to me: I’d been trying to recall the man who’d been with Lee; the man who’d come up to me at the bar in the Mandalay Bay, five years ago. And I’d been trying to remember what he’d said.

  Let me give you a piece of advice. He’d been in his forties, thin and wiry, with a smooth, hairless face. Someone will always have the edge over you, David. He’d known my name. You’re just flesh and bones like everyone else. He’d known who Derryn was too. Do both of you a favour and stay out of our business.

  I’d tried to tell him that I didn’t even know him. But then I remembered his response as clearly as if no time had passed at all.

  No, he’d said. But you know Lee Wilkins.

  28

  Martha Muire lived in a village on the eastern fringes of Torquay, in the other direction from Dartmoor, so, as I traced the circumference of the national park, I decided against doorstepping her. It wasn’t just that it was miles out of my way, or that I needed to be up and back as soon as possible in case Katie Francis called to say Carter Graham would see me. It was that she was an old woman – at seventy-two, almost five years older than Ray Muire would have been – and generally people of that generation thrived on routine. If I turned up, out of the blue, it would either confuse her or antagonize her. But if I called her first, it gave me the chance to lay the groundwork for a visit – if it even came to that.

  As soon as she answered the phone, I knew it was the right decision. She sounded older than seventy-two, reading her phone number out, then stumbling halfway through, then repeating it all over again. When she’d finished, I said to her, ‘Mrs Muire, my name is David Raker – I’m an investigator looking into the disappearance of the Ling family, here in Devon, back in January. I’m not sure if you remember that case from the news?’

  ‘No.’ She had a gentle Devonian twang to her accent. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well, one of the people who claimed to have seen that family in the days after they went missing was your husband.’

  A pause. ‘Ray?’

  ‘Yes. He said he saw them at Farnmoor House.’

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘David Raker.’

  Another pause. ‘Have we talked before?’

  ‘Before?’

  ‘Have you called me before?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  A strange question. I filed it away and moved on.

  ‘Mrs Muire?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would it be okay for me to ask you a couple of questions?’

  At first she seemed reluctant, perhaps a little suspicious, as if she’d answered all the questions about her husband she ever wanted to, and couldn’t think who might want to know more. But, slowly, as I gently started to steer her in the right direction, she began to warm up. We spent ten minutes talking about Ray and how much she missed him, and I didn’t interrupt, letting her answers build a picture for me: most of the time she was lucid and self-deprecating, playing on the fact that she was getting old, but occasionally she didn’t have to play on it. She’d lose the tail of the conversation, allowing it to wander off into other areas, and every time it happened I gently steered her back towards Ray.

  ‘So, what about Paul and Carrie Ling?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was convinced he saw them?’

  ‘There was no doubt in his mind.’

  ‘Do you remember what he said to you?’

  She’d struggled throughout to recall precise details, so I wasn’t holding out for any revelations – and I wasn’t disappointed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘But you believed him?’

  ‘Oh, definitely. He was my husband, of course, so I suppose your first instinct is to always support your partner. But even if that hadn’t been the case, it would have been hard to dispute him. I don’t remember the details, but I remember he was sure about what he’d seen.’ She stopped. ‘I mean, why would he lie about something like that?’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t lying. Maybe he was just mistaken.’

  ‘He k
new what he saw. I’m sure of it.’

  I didn’t bother fighting her on it. She’d fallen in line behind her husband and she remained true to him, a stance that would only have hardened in the months after his death. The facts seemed less romantic, though: Muire’s eyesight was declining rapidly, and he liked a drink. At best, those two things clouded the picture; at worst, they discredited Ray Muire as a witness altogether. Certainly, his interview with Rocastle didn’t paint him in the kind of posthumous glow his wife was clinging to.

  ‘He saw Paul and Carrie on a Sunday – is that right?’

  ‘I don’t really remember, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Did he often work Sundays?’

  A long pause. ‘I think it used to depend on what was going on at the house.’ She paused again. ‘Carter, well, he would hold a lot of parties and, you know, social …’

  She’d lost her train of thought. ‘Social events?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Did you and Ray ever attend any?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘That must have been fun.’

  ‘Oh, it was. Back when I didn’t have the turning circle of the Titanic, I used to like a little dance.’ She chuckled to herself. ‘But about ten years ago, I became unwell and I had to, you know …’ She stopped. ‘Scale back. It was a shame, but it didn’t bother me as much as it bothered Ray. He was a very social animal; loved being out and about.’

  I saw my chance: ‘So did he then start going out on his own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where was his local?’

  ‘We have a pub just down the road here, but mostly he used to like going back to Totnes. That’s where he spent a lot of his twenties, so he still had lots of friends there.’

  ‘How often did he go out?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Two or three times a week.’

  ‘Did it ever bother you?’

  ‘Not really. He’d only ever go for a couple of pints.’

  ‘But he obviously had more than that the night he died?’

  She didn’t respond, but her silence spoke volumes: he liked more than just a pint or two, and it was clearly something she’d never fully managed to get a handle on, maybe at any stage of their marriage. ‘He never got out of control, though,’ she added quickly, as if assuming I’d think the worst. ‘He was a lovely, kind man. His father had been a drinker, and he’d just grown up in that kind of environment. When he went out, he really went out if you know what I mean. But he always got soppy when he was drunk. He definitely wasn’t the aggressive type. I think, if he’d been like that, I wouldn’t have let him do it.’