Never Coming Back

by Tim Weaver

  ‘Is that Paul and Carrie in there?’

  He nodded.

  I took a long breath, struggling to find the words. Prouse had told me they were dead, but a part of me had hoped it was another lie. ‘And the bodies in the boat?’

  He shrugged. ‘The people at Farnmoor. I don’t even care any more. In the end all the killing just washes over you.’ A pause. I decided not to press him again – not yet. He had a look I’d seen so many times in the faces of reluctant killers: a need to confess, even as every atom told him to keep quiet. In the brief silence, wind pierced the wall of the house and cast itself out across the water, ripples merging and forming. Then, just as I sensed it would, the confession came: ‘It was never supposed to be like this. I never wanted it.’ His voice was quiet, as if he was repeating something, a speech he’d been over in his head countless times. ‘I wanted a retirement fund. A good education for my kids. A house they could grow up in, open space and fresh air. I didn’t want them to have what I had: parents who barely remembered we were even there, a childhood where I was making my sister dinner when I was ten years old. I wanted a life for my kids. But how could I ever give them that when in every promotion I went for, every interview I did, I got sandbagged by cops who hated me for who I was?’

  He meant a cop who investigated other cops.

  A rubber heeler.

  ‘So you hooked up with Cornell.’

  ‘I met him at a fund-raiser.’ He paused. ‘I never liked him, but we eventually came to an arrangement. He needed someone on the inside, making sure certain things were kept off the books. I wanted the insane amount of money he was offering me to do it.’ His eyes drifted off into space again. ‘It was fine to begin with. But then it all started to unravel when Carrie saw that photograph. I never asked questions. I never even knew his real name was Kalb. They always referred to him as Thom. They said he was Swedish.’

  ‘He wasn’t Swedish.’

  ‘Where was he from?’

  ‘Germany. He ran a concentration camp.’

  This time he nodded, but the information didn’t even seem to register. ‘I didn’t like the direction things started going. Cornell made me get everything I could find on that family, on anyone who knew them, and when I started to have doubts about it, when I said I was going to stop taking his money and back away, he had Prouse started following me around.’ He glanced at me. ‘At first, I thought, “He’s just a fisherman.” But then I started to realize he wasn’t just a fisherman. I’d get home and he’d be waiting in a car outside my house. I’d take my children to the park and I’d look up and see him watching. I confronted him one time, and he came right out with it: “Do what Cornell asks, or we kill your kids.” I started to realize there was no way out when I got to school one day to pick my son up, and that ratty fuck was standing there, keeping my boy entertained.’

  Seawater washed into the room, out from behind him, across to where I was. My eyes moved to the hole in the wall panel; to the bodies in it. To Paul and Carrie Ling.

  ‘So you just went along with it?’

  For a moment, anger flared in his eyes. ‘No, I didn’t just go along with it.’ But then he paused, and the anger ebbed away like the water in the room, and he returned to the soft, controlled tone I’d begun to know him for. ‘That call to Paul Ling on 3 January, I made that. I didn’t know he’d just been to see Lee Wilkins. I didn’t know anything about Wilkins. But I knew Cornell had said he planned to take the family on the seventh.’

  So it had been Rocastle that had made the spoof call.

  ‘What did you say to Paul?’

  ‘I’d considered taking them myself, getting them out of there, putting them somewhere safe. So I called him up and told him he was in trouble but everything was going to be fine. I told him I was a friend and he needed to sit tight. Cornell never found out about the call, but it was like he could see right into my head: the next day was when I turned up at my boy’s school and saw Prouse there with him … so I killed the plan.’

  It made sense now.

  On 3 January, Paul received Rocastle’s call from an untraceable number; the next day he made a short, aborted call to a travel agency. My assumption had been that he was wrestling with uncertainty. I remembered the video on Olivia’s laptop, too: Paul was right. He said we were in danger. He said it had something to do with the notebook. But I didn’t believe him. Paul might not have mentioned he’d been to see Lee, but he had discussed the threat with Carrie, the content of the phone call, and she’d played it down. From what Emily had told me, from what I’d read, from what I’d seen of her myself, Carrie was composed and pragmatic, even in the face of something frightening. But Paul hadn’t been paranoid. He wasn’t overreacting. She should have listened to him.

  ‘Were you the one who tipped police off about Miln Cross?’

  He looked up from the floor. Nodded once. ‘No one took it seriously. Look at this place. It’s a fucking memory. I phoned in the tip and then went into the office the next day, and McInnes and the rest of the boys were pissing themselves laughing about it. I had to sit there and laugh with them, knowing it was legit.’ He looked at the gun, tilting it slightly. ‘They sent a boat around with two uniforms in it – and that was the end of it.’

  ‘They didn’t find anything?’

  ‘They looked, but we’d hidden the bodies too well.’ He glanced at the panel. ‘This whole thing, it’s new. It looks old – that was the whole point. It looks like it was a part of the original house. But we warped it and softened it to make it look that way. And these holes in it’ – he pointed to the fist-sized punctures, top and bottom – ‘that’s how we lifted it off the wall. All that money I was being paid and what it basically came down to was body disposal. Getting rid of the evidence. Slowing decomposition. The water, the smell of rot, that would cover up some of it. But, just to be sure, Cornell made us embalm all the bodies and then wrap them up in plastic. Airtight, so the insects wouldn’t get in.’

  For a brief moment there was complete silence: no waves, no water running in, no wind, no rain against the walls. I studied him. ‘Didn’t you ever worry that cops like McInnes would find out? That you’d leave a trail?’

  ‘All the time. But I managed to keep things tight. There were no mistakes, nothing to lead back to any of us: not me, not Prouse or Francis, not to Cornell or whatever the hell he was involved in across the pond. Things were nice and clean for a long time – and then Prouse screwed things up by dropping Kalb’s body in the water.’

  ‘Why was Prouse taking care of it?’

  ‘I didn’t think there was much that could go wrong. Cornell had boxed Kalb at source and put him on ice. He was packed in like a sardine. We kept him like that from the moment he landed. So I assured Cornell that Prouse could handle it. I’d had enough. I was thinking about an exit strategy and I didn’t want to deal with another stiff.’ A grunt, eyes on the space in front of him. Then he looked across at Cornell, lying in the water. ‘There’s my exit strategy: another dead body.’

  A trace of a smile on his face; a flicker of irony.

  I moved again.

  ‘Hurting people never bothered Prouse, probably because he was as thick as shit,’ he said, his voice even quieter and more reflective. He sounded jaded, worn out. He sounded broken. ‘He botched the whole thing: let the body just go. If it wasn’t so desperate, it would have been funny. Except Cornell didn’t find it funny. He went crazy. Batshit insane. And when Cornell went insane, people got hurt.’ He looked up at me, a hint of contrition in his eyes. ‘And then finally it ended up in that clusterfuck yesterday. Lee Wilkins called Cornell, begging for forgiveness. I think he found the guts because he thought Cornell was still in the States and wouldn’t be able to get to him. Maybe he thought Cornell would slowly warm to the idea of him coming back into the fold. Wilkins was that kind of idiot. The truth was, Cornell had just landed in London – but he was still miles away – so he called me and told me to take care of you. That’s all I was to h
im: some chess piece he could move around. But I wasn’t down here either yesterday – at least not until much later. I was up in Bristol on a training course, and it didn’t finish until six.’ He stopped, smiled to himself. ‘A Saturday training course. Can you believe that? The one and only time one of those has ever come in handy. So I had to send Prouse. The fact you were still alive, and your place was already swarming with cops when I arrived, told me Prouse had failed again.’

  ‘So you came after me at the Ley …’

  ‘Yeah. But it was pitch black and I couldn’t see shit. I had to get closer, and that was when you heard me. Cornell told me to kill you, so I followed you, out on to that path full of reeds. But, honestly, I couldn’t see a thing.’

  He glanced at me, at where my feet were, but he was gone now; so far into all the thoughts he’d ever wanted to give voice to that he hadn’t seen me move two feet closer.

  ‘And Farnmoor?’ I asked him, trying to maintain some momentum.

  He rubbed an eye. ‘That was why Cornell had flown back in: to take care of Graham. But that was when I knew I had to get out of this. I watched Cornell put one in Katie Francis’s head, mid sentence, while she was sitting at her desk talking to him, and I thought to myself, “What the fuck am I doing?” Even if Kalb’s some magic bullet that brings this whole operation down, none of this is worth it. I knew the killing would just go on and on, because as long as the photograph was still out there, Cornell didn’t know where it was and he could never rest easy. He’d just have to keep cutting people down.’

  ‘Did Cornell ever say what connection he had to Kalb?’

  Rocastle shook his head.

  And now I would never find out.

  ‘All I knew was that he was bad news. You only had to watch Cornell to see that. As soon as I found out Graham had called you and you were going to Farnmoor, Cornell started panicking about …’ He paused. ‘He was panicking about certain things, worried you’d get to the house, find out how this Kalb guy connected everything, how all this crap knitted together. Plus, he wanted to get back to the States as quickly as possible. So I told him to go and make preparations for his return to the US, and that I’d take care of you. I’d make sure everything was sorted, that there would be no blowback.’

  ‘And just like that, he trusted you?’

  ‘Cornell didn’t trust anyone. But the situation at Farnmoor …’ His eyes flicked to me and away. He’s keeping something back. ‘He was just persuaded to do things a certain way, that’s all. We had a discussion. I told him I could lure you in more effectively than he could. I was a cop. You and me, we might not have seen eye to eye, but whatever else you thought about me, you saw me as a cop. With me, your guard would be down.’ He shrugged. ‘I said, “That will make him easier to kill.” Eventually, he agreed.’

  ‘But you didn’t kill me.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t.’

  I remembered the moment, earlier, when Rocastle had led me back into Haven. Well, well, well, Cornell had said. This is an unexpected surprise – isn’t it, Detective Rocastle? He thought I was dead already. He’d assumed Rocastle had taken care of me.

  ‘Why not kill me?’ I asked.

  ‘I couldn’t find you, for a start. I left Cornell’s handiwork untouched at Farnmoor, wanting you to find that slaughter. Then I kept up the pretence – all the bullshit, like I was mad at you, like I was going to bring you down, but the reality was, I couldn’t care less. All I wanted was for you to find that scene at the house and then to find out what was going on. I knew Cornell would want to stay tonight, to help me dump the bodies here, to make sure the job was done properly this time, but then, once we were done, he’d piss off back to the States thinking everything’s sorted, including you. Meanwhile, you could carry on getting to the answers. Instead, you screwed things up by arriving here.’

  ‘Why did Cornell bring Kalb back to the UK?’

  Rocastle shrugged.

  ‘And no one at the airport batted an eyelid?’

  ‘Cornell told anyone who asked that Kalb was his uncle and that he’d died while out in the States. Kalb’s body was in a custom-made, refrigerated box, and he had a fake Swedish passport, so everything looked fine. Not that there were many questions. Cornell had this nice little arrangement – a guy on the payroll at London City Airport, and a guy on the take at some airport in Las Vegas. He could come and go as he pleased. In and out like he’d never even been here.’

  London City Airport.

  Suddenly, something else fell into place. That’s why Barry Rew saw the girls at ExCeL. They were on their way to the airport, less than two miles down the road.

  ‘Cornell split the family up because he found Carrie and Annabel upstairs in their house the night he came for them,’ Rocastle went on, ‘and he became convinced they’d talked to one another about Kalb. He wanted them separated, so he could go at them one after the other. He did Carrie first. It was terrible. Him and Prouse, they just …’ He stopped for a long time. ‘I couldn’t let him do that to the girls, or at least, I had to try to prevent it. So, after they’d finished with Paul and Carrie, after Prouse had taken them to the barn, I pretended to Cornell that the police had picked up his scent and that he should get the hell out. I told him to fly back to the States and leave the girls with me for a couple of days, and I’d send them on if he wanted. But he didn’t trust me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he could see it in my face. Having kids changes things in you.’ A flash in one of his eyes. ‘So he flew back to the States, thinking the cops were getting suspicious, and he left Prouse orders to put the girls on the next available flight. That’s who Barry Rew saw driving them to the airport. That fucking fisherman. But before they left …’ He touched a finger to his eye. ‘I told Annabel I’d make it right.’

  I looked at him. ‘Make it right how?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Make it right how, Rocastle?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’

  ‘Of course it matt–’

  ‘I failed them!’ he screamed at me, and then immediately bowed his head, looking down at the floor. ‘I failed them both. I couldn’t make it right. Now they’re both dead.’

  I gave him a second. ‘Do you know where they’re buried?’

  All I could see was the top of his head, his face vaguely reflected in the water. He didn’t reply for a long time, then – quietly – he said, ‘Firmament.’

  ‘Firmament? What’s that?’

  ‘Where they’re buried.’

  ‘Is it in the desert, like Cornell said?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘Is it a town outside Vegas?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How do you know about it then?’

  ‘I overheard them.’

  ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Who’s them?’

  Then he looked up – and raised the gun.

  ‘I’m not jeopardizing my kids’ futures.’

  He aimed it at my chest. I stopped and held up my hands. Instinctively, I went to reason with him, knowing he was caught midway between guilt and acceptance, knowing I could use his vulnerability to turn him around. I started moving a hand towards him.

  ‘Your kids are going to be fine, I promise.’

  He started shaking his head. ‘No one can know that I told you. I don’t want to give anyone a reason to come after my kids. Do you understand? You have to find out.’

  ‘Find out what?’

  One more step and I was on him.

  ‘Find out what, Colin?’

  ‘It’s over for me,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not over.’

  ‘It’s over!’

  He moved the gun right and fired past my left shoulder. It passed so close, I felt the air shift around my head. I staggered back, my body automatically tensing for the second shot. But nothing came.

  And when I looked at him, I saw tears filling his eyes.

  ‘I
t’s over,’ he repeated, all his fight gone. He wiped away the tears, even as more came, lowered the gun and then looked across the room at me. ‘This morning I deposited three hundred and forty-five thousand pounds into a bank account. The pin code is four-oh-four-seven. The card is in an A6 envelope. I posted the envelope through your door.’

  ‘Is that why you wanted me to go home?’

  He nodded.

  McInnes wasn’t waiting for me. The card was.

  ‘I know you don’t owe me anything,’ he said, more tears starting to form in his eyes, ‘not after everything I’ve done, but my kids …’ He tailed off, unable to speak, tears running in trails down his cheeks. I started to realize what was going on, why he’d left me the card. ‘My kids don’t deserve to suffer because I fucked everything up.’

  ‘Colin, listen to me: we can sort this out.’

  ‘Give the card to my wife. Tell her I’m sorry.’

  ‘Rocastle!’

  I moved quickly across the room, flashing-forward to what was about to happen. And as he looked at me, tears spilling down his face, there was a moment that moved in slow motion; a silent conversation, as clear as if he’d spoken the words aloud to me: I’m begging you, if you do this for me, tell my kids I was everything they wanted me to be.

  And then he placed the gun in his mouth.

  And he pulled the trigger.

  64

  Emily locked up her car and then crossed the driveway to the front door. I’d left it open so she could come straight in. I glanced out of the kitchen window, out across the beach, bathed in the watery light of a clear autumn day. In front of me, on the desk, was my pad, but I knew everything already. I’d seen their bodies with my own eyes. It was all burned into my memory: pulling the wall panel down, their corpses inside, the smell finally hitting. I’d watched flies escape into the dark and insects spill out, dying the instant they hit the standing water. I’d rolled the bodies out of the wall cavity and torn away the plastic. And when their faces looked up at me, I knelt there, next to them, as a deep sadness throbbed in my chest. It felt like I’d let them down. Even though I’d found Paul and Carrie, just as I’d promised Emily I would, all that moved through me was a sense of failure. If the search for them had already become a wake, now, finally, at the end, it was a funeral.