What Remains

by Tim Weaver

  That was when the decline started. It began as a slow drip of money going out, but not coming in. Throughout April and May, I could see evidence of him applying for jobs: filling up his car at petrol stations on opposite sides of the city; cash withdrawals from ATMs which, with the help of Google and job sites, I saw were situated close to places that had been advertising for security positions. By June, he swallowed his pride and applied for Job Seeker’s Allowance – just shy of three hundred pounds per month – paid on a Friday, in weekly instalments.

  Throughout June, he’d continued looking for work, but by July 2013 the routine began to wane. The money from his stint at the building society was long gone, and now he’d begun eating into his ten grand. As a result, he’d started to scale back his job applications, his travel, even his direct debits, cancelling the insurance on his car. When I zipped through to the back of the document, I found a copy of a SORN application. Healy had put his car into cold storage, securing it off-road somewhere. It made sense, as he wouldn’t have to pay anything on it. It wasn’t until the following January, after our meeting in Hammersmith, that I’d loaned him enough money to tax and insure the car, and get it back on the road.

  What the financials hid was what else happened in July 2013: Healy had received the divorce papers from Gemma’s solicitors. I wondered if that might have been a part of the reason why he scaled back his job search. He would have been affected by that: knocked off balance, probably surprised, definitely angry.

  By September 2013, a lot of the ten grand was gone, on running costs and bills. He was down to his last thousand pounds. He’d already moved out of the house on the Isle of Dogs, cancelling the tenancy agreement midway through a second six-month term. As a result, he had to absorb one month’s worth of rent.

  Now came the systematic closing down of the account, dismantled piece by piece. By October, all direct debits had been cancelled, and he’d switched his mobile number to Pay As You Go. There was no evidence of where he was living – definitely no other tenancy agreements, no payments to B&Bs or motels via his account – so at this point he’d either found someone’s floor to sleep on, which seemed unlikely given how few friends he had left, or he’d already become homeless.

  I felt another pinch of sadness for him.

  By the end of October, just seven months had passed since his contract finished at the building society. That was only seven months of unemployment, plus his JSA – as small as it was – was still being paid in, every Friday. Millions of other people had gone far longer without being able to find work – but millions of other people didn’t have Healy’s history. All the time he couldn’t find a job, his boys continued drifting away, his wife filed for divorce, his daughter remained a harrowing memory, and he was haunted by his failures as a cop. His career, the only job he’d ever wanted, was long gone, and the attritional process of applying for work he didn’t care about only accelerated his decline. In truth, he’d started along this road a long, long time ago, not just in the aftermath of his short-term contract ending in March. Even when he’d been staying with me in Devon, even when his account had still been healthy, he was a mess – resentful, grieving, self-destructive. Eventually it became hard to carry that burden, however well you disguised it. Eventually, you broke.

  Healy broke in November.

  Between November 2013 and February 2014, there was still some movement of funds – including, in January, the paying in of a small amount of money I’d loaned him, to go alongside the motel room, petrol money and Oyster card – but, from the end of February, he basically vanished from the page. In effect, the account became dormant. Even payments of his unemployment benefit, so consistent throughout the previous eight months, were halted in the third week of February, presumably because he’d stopped turning up for his interviews at the Job Centre.

  From March, there was nothing.

  Literally nothing.

  From 1 March until 2 October there were no card payments or cash withdrawals at all. This left his balance at two hundred and fifty in the red, because of an overdraft limit that basically locked down his account until more money was deposited into it. If I’d been hoping that his financial picture might give me a steer on what he’d done and where he’d gone in the months after we last spoke, I quickly realized that hope was forlorn.

  Or maybe not.

  As I went to close the file, something small caught my eye.

  19

  In the five weeks between 16 January, the day of our phone call, and 22 February, the date the last JSA payment entered his account, Healy developed a short-lived but noticeable routine. Every Saturday, after the Job Seeker’s Allowance was paid in on the Friday, he’d go to a cashpoint and take it out in its entirety. Different times on the Saturday, but always the same process.

  And always the same cashpoint.

  It was a Barclays ATM, identified on his statement with the abbreviation ELECA. ELECA would be its geographical location. Off the top of my head, I could think of only two possibilities – Electric Avenue, or the Elephant and Castle – but I spent a couple of minutes making sure, using another web search to try to locate any other London streets that might match, and then seeing where ‘Eleca London’ took me. It basically took me nowhere – to classified ads for guitars, and companies dealing with electricals – so I returned to my original two addresses.

  This, I realized, was where I had an advantage.

  What the Met didn’t know, because Gemma didn’t know it at the time, was that when Healy posted the letter and the divorce papers in August, he’d been homeless since the previous November – except for ten days in a Kew motel in January. That meant that, even if the Met applied the same method I had, and used the abbreviation as a way to get a handle on his movements after November 2013, they’d have been looking in the wrong place. They’d have probably gone looking for tenancy agreements he’d made at the time, evidence of him possibly renting a place near Brixton, or close to the Elephant and Castle. It would have been a pointless search, because he wasn’t renting anywhere.

  But it didn’t mean he hadn’t been close by.

  I spent the next ten minutes locating hostels and homeless shelters within a two-mile radius of both locations. The nearest to Electric Avenue was 2.1 miles away, and when I checked ATMs in the immediate area, I found two branches of Barclays within half a mile – but, crucially, no ATMs on Electric Avenue itself.

  Would the bank still use an ELECA abbreviation if its branch wasn’t on the road itself? It seemed unlikely, and when I began looking into ATMs in and around the Elephant and Castle, I discounted Electric Avenue entirely: there was a Barclays next to the northern entrance to the Elephant and Castle Tube station.

  This is where he was.

  What made it more compelling was that there were two hostels within a half-mile of the ATM, one – at the top of New Kent Road – barely any distance at all. Both were run by the same people, a charity called Christopher Gee Housing.

  Dragging my phone towards me, I tried the one nearest to the ATM first. It went unanswered, then to voicemail. I decided against leaving a message, and tried the second one. It was in the other direction, west along St George’s Road.

  This time someone picked up.

  ‘CGH.’

  ‘Hi,’ I said, pulling my notepad in closer. ‘My name’s David Raker, and I’m trying to find an old friend of mine. We lost contact back in January, but I think he might have sought shelter with you shortly before and after; possibly between November 2013 and February 2014. I’m not sure if you keep records of who comes and goes, but –’

  ‘We do, but those details aren’t something I can give out over the phone.’ It was a woman, softly spoken with a hint of a continental accent. ‘I’m sorry. We operate a privacy policy here, so for us to release that information you’ll either have to apply in person – with documentation to prove you’re a relative or guardian – or you might be able to find what you need by contacting social services directl
y.’

  ‘A relative or guardian?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘What about if he hasn’t got either?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What if he doesn’t have any family left?’ I said. I kept my voice even and friendly, but made it clear that the rules weren’t going to get us very far. ‘He’s a 49-year-old man. His parents are dead, his wife’s long gone, his kids too.’

  ‘Have you contacted social services?’

  ‘No, I thought it would be better to get in touch with you guys first. I’m pretty sure he was there, or perhaps in your sister shelter on New Kent Road. Either way, I’ve got reason to believe he might be in danger. I need to find him.’

  ‘Danger?’

  I looked out at the garden, making her wait. It was an old technique, one I hoped she wasn’t savvy enough to read. She sounded young, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t smart. Even if she saw right through it, I hadn’t lost anything.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement next door. Nicola, in shorts and a vest, was watering the pot plants along the edge of our shared fence.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not allowed to –’

  ‘Okay. What was your name again?’

  ‘My name? Ingrid.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks, Ingrid.’

  I hung up, and immediately tried the other shelter again. It rang for about thirty seconds, then someone finally picked up. A man with a Scottish accent.

  ‘CGH.’

  ‘Hi, my name’s Alan Schaefer, from Southwark Social Services. I think we spoke last week? Anyway, I’ve just talked to Ingrid, and she told me to call you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m trying to trace the whereabouts of a man called … uh …’ I paused as I checked paperwork I didn’t have. ‘Colm Healy. That’s Colm spelt C-O-L-M. I think he stayed at your place on New Kent Road, but Ingrid couldn’t find his records. Anyway, I was in the process of dealing with his emergency housing application but he’s failed to turn up, and – given his recent history – I’m concerned for his well-being. I was wondering if you might be able to help with a couple of things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘He was with you between November last year and February this year, correct?’

  A pause. ‘What was his name again?’

  ‘Colm Healy.’

  ‘Fine. Give me a sec.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  As he put me on hold, I felt a charge of adrenalin. If they had anything on Healy, I couldn’t get it mailed to me now – if they were even inclined to do it in the first place – because I’d lied about who I was. But if they had something, and this was the right place, that was a start. I could work around it. I wasn’t sure exactly what I hoped to find, or how this would progress any search for him, but it was better than a set of bank statements that presented everything after 1 March this year as a blank.

  The man came back on. ‘Right.’

  I could hear pages being turned.

  ‘Colm Healy. According to this, he came to us on 18 January and stayed for nearly six weeks. He wasn’t with us in November or December, so if he was in accommodation it was at another shelter.’

  The now-defunct one on Goldhawk Road, I thought.

  ‘Okay. When did he leave you?’

  ‘His last recorded day with us was on Thursday 27 February. We didn’t see him after that.’ Another pause. ‘Someone made a note here, saying he left his stuff behind. Clothes, personal belongings, all that kind of thing. Any idea why?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No idea.’

  But in reality my mind was moving fast. The fact that he’d left his things behind suggested he hadn’t been expecting 27 February to be his last day at the hostel. Five days before, on the twenty-second, was the last time he withdrew his unemployment benefit from the ATM at the Tube station. So when he’d taken the £71 out on that Saturday, had he already known he was going to drop everything – clothes, belongings, what constituted his life – just five days later? If so, why?

  What would motivate a decision like that?

  I thought about the alternative, that whatever happened on 27 February, happened without him ever seeing it coming – but reasons for that seemed even less clear. He was still alive in August, because he sent the letter to Gemma, so it seemed unlikely he’d come to any physical harm. So had he left because he hated the hostel? The people there? Even if he had, that still didn’t explain why he would purge so much of his life that day. After all, why leave his clothes behind?

  ‘Has this got anything to do with 18 August?’ the man asked.

  I tuned back in. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’ve got a note here that says he returned on 18 August.’

  ‘Mr Healy did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Three days before he sent the letter to Gemma.

  ‘Did he stay with you again?’

  ‘No. I’m just reading my colleague’s notes here.’ A brief pause. ‘Okay. She’s written down here that she asked him if he needed a bed, and he said he didn’t. When she asked him where he was staying, he was a little evasive, but in the end she managed to persuade him to tell her – and he said he was at The Meadows.’

  I wrote it down. ‘Is that another shelter?’

  ‘No. Well, certainly not one I’ve heard of. Not one my colleague had heard of either, as she’s put a question mark here, next to the entry for it.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘He asked if we’d kept any of his things.’

  ‘The things he’d left behind on 27 February?’

  ‘Right. His backpack. The clothes in it.’

  ‘Had you?’

  ‘Apparently, after a month, with no sign of him coming back, we boxed up his clothes and sent the best ones to charity. However, we did keep some of his personal belongings, in case. He had a phone, some photographs, some paperwork.’

  Paperwork.

  That had to be the divorce papers.

  ‘Do you know what the photographs were of?’

  ‘My colleague has put here that they were of his family.’

  ‘What happened with those?’

  ‘He said we could dump them.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Everything except his paperwork. It looks like he took that with him.’

  A silence settled between us: him, perhaps wondering why a man would choose to dispose of photographs of his family; me, caught between two ideas.

  On the one hand, that it wasn’t Healy who had returned.

  It was someone else.

  On the other, that it was, and in the hours before he wrote that letter to Gemma, he’d set his mind to doing one final, noble thing for her: signing the papers. In a way, the second idea was even worse, because it clearly spelt it out.

  By then, it was over.

  Clothes didn’t matter to him.

  Neither did photographs.

  Healy was finished.

  20

  There were no organizations, shelters or homeless hostels in London that went by the name of The Meadows. The search term was too vague to get me anything through Google either. And an hour later, as darkness clawed its way in, I was done with Healy’s phone records as well. Calls had tapered off from the middle of 2013, coinciding with the point at which Gemma had first sent him the divorce papers, and he’d stopped applying for jobs. At points in the months that followed, he could go a fortnight without making a single call to anyone. From November, calls became the exception rather than the rule, and by March – the same time he disappeared from the pages of his financial records – his phone fell silent too.

  I felt hollow.

  The idea of how he’d spent his last few days rubbed at me, an emptiness settling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t understand why he would go six months before returning to the shelter, or why he would leave without any of his things in the first place. I had no idea where The Meadows was, or if he’d even been telling the woman at
the shelter the truth. Basically, despite whatever advantage I had over the police in knowing some of Healy’s movements after November, I wasn’t that far on from where the official search for him had ground to a halt. I’d doubted the intensity of their investigation, seen apathy in the file, but maybe, when it came down to it, the Met had gone as far as they could.

  I went inside and began making myself some dinner, but halfway in I just perched on the stool at the kitchen counter – meat lying raw on the chopping board, vegetables half prepared – and realized I wasn’t even hungry.

  In every missing persons case I’d ever worked, there had always been the same routes in: financial statements and phone bills were like fingerprints, a trail formed of addresses and locations that propelled me forward, returning me to the moments before the victim became lost in the shadows. When they failed me, there were always the families: husbands and wives, parents, brothers and sisters, all able to paint a clear picture of the person they loved, and the ways in which they might have changed in the months before they disappeared. They gained me access to the parts of their loved one’s lives that no one else had ever glimpsed.

  With Healy, there was none of that.

  The traditional platform on which to build a search – his money situation, his phone calls – faded to grey from the moment he became homeless. He may have come up for air in January, but it was brief, and it had led nowhere. His family didn’t know him, even – arguably – when he was a part of their lives, and all that was left behind was a shell.

  A lonely, drifting soul, unattached to anything.

  Two hours later, I got a call.

  I was in the living room, lights off, silent, a beer bottle resting on my chest, when my phone began buzzing across the sofa towards me. It was Melanie Craw.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, picking up.