by Tim Weaver
‘Was he caught on film returning to the fair?’
‘No.’
‘So no one saw him come back that night?’
‘One of Cabot’s employees said he saw Grankin return at about half past ten. No footage to back that up, just the word of this guy. Uh … Calvin East.’
East. He was Grankin’s alibi.
I grabbed my pad and flicked back to the notes I’d made from the official casework on the Clark murders. It took me a couple of moments to find it: Murders carried out between approx. 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Sunday 11 July 2010.
‘Who was the client Grankin met at the pub?’
‘Uh … some guy called Paul Korman.’
‘Korman?’
‘K-O-R-M-A-N. Police interviewed him and he vouched for Grankin being with him, at the pub, between approximately eight o’clock and quarter past ten.’
I started to align my thoughts. Grankin was running security at the museum fair on Sunday 11 July. In the evening, he left to meet a client at 7.45 p.m. According to East, Grankin then returned at 10.30 p.m. At the same time, four miles south, a family were slain in a New Cross tower block.
The only person who could vouch for Grankin still being at the pub on St Katharine Docks, at 10.15 p.m., was whoever Paul Korman was. The only person who could vouch for his return to the fair was Calvin East. Police had two clean alibis from two separate people, enough to cast doubt on Gary Cabot’s suspicions about Grankin stealing that varnish. But what if both men were lying to police?
What if Grankin was actually in New Cross?
What if Korman was too?
I thought of the CCTV stills I’d studied from the night of the murders.
Grankin wasn’t the blond man, I knew that for sure. That man had been too well built, too different from Grankin’s skinny physique; he had distinctive features too: the dark eyes, the damaged nose. But Grankin could have been the driver.
Sitting, watching, waiting.
‘Is there an address for this Korman guy?’ I asked.
‘Back then?’ A pause. ‘Paul Benjamin Korman, 145 Bell Park Road. He told police he was renting it, which he was. But he hasn’t lived there since April 2011, and I can’t find another address for him anywhere.’
I felt my stomach tighten. ‘No photo or physical description, right?’
‘No.’
I thanked Task and hung up. I was starting to think I had found the man who drove the car to the family’s flat that night.
Now I was wondering whether I had found the man who murdered them too.
Therapy
4 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes after
‘Don’t hurt them. Please don’t hurt them.’
‘You’re nothing to them.’
‘Please …’
‘You’re nothing to anyone, Healy.’
He woke.
For a moment, he was disorientated, unsure of where he was, sweat in his eyes, twisted bed-sheets pinning him down like the roots of a tree. Then, slowly, things started shifting back into focus: the bleached white of the hospital room; a saline drip swinging gently from the UV stand; nurses out in the corridor, doctors in coats, patients passing in wheelchairs. He rolled his head across the pillow, in the direction of the window. All he could see from here was a square of daylight.
There was no detail outside.
No shapes. No definition.
Just sky.
The view, these dreams, waking up soaked through and out of breath, this was his life now. In the days before his heart stopped, he’d stared at the walls of the hostel he’d been staying in, at his possessions – paltry and unimportant – in a backpack next to his bunk, and he remembered thinking he’d hit rock bottom.
But that wasn’t rock bottom.
Healy knew that now.
There was still much further to fall.
He was sent to the psychologist at lunchtime on Friday 16 May. It had been four days since he’d woken up, and a succession of staff had tried to get him to talk.
Now someone else was going to have a go.
The nurses hauled him out of bed and into a wheelchair, his bones aching, creaking, like the hull of a wooden ship. As he shuffled his toes across the foot plates of the chair, he watched them wheel the UV stand around behind him and check his drip and catheter were still attached. His chest felt bruised, his breath catching in his throat, but he didn’t say anything. Healy cared more about the fact that his gown was open, his penis on show.
‘It’s fine,’ he said, his words slurred.
One of the nurses looked up. ‘We’re just making sure.’
He didn’t say anything. Maybe he would have done once, but he couldn’t summon the energy now. The nurse covered him up, put a dressing gown on him and asked him if he was ready. He shrugged, and the nurse wheeled him out.
The psychologist was on the third floor of the hospital, in an office at the far end of a long corridor of closed doors. Hers was partly open. On a name plate halfway up, it said CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY. Beneath that was a small whiteboard, the remains of other names – wiped away, but not entirely – at its edges.
Written there now was MEREDITH BLAINE.
The room was compact, airless, and had a single vertical window that looked out over the car park. She was seated at a small desk, with a computer on it and a desk tidy. There was an in tray, but there was no paper in it. Next to it was a red sofa, worn along the seams. The nurse wheeled Healy inside, then hauled him out of the chair and on to the sofa. Once the UV stand was in place, the nurse left the room, closing the door behind him.
‘My name’s Meredith Blaine,’ the psychologist said.
Healy just looked at her.
‘What can I call you?’ she asked.
She was in her early forties, dark-haired, small and bookish, but she was confident and unyielding. He tried staring her out, but she faced him down and eventually he had to look away, out to the car park, where the sun was shining.
‘You suffered a serious heart attack,’ she went on. ‘You were in a coma for a long time. There are unique psychological pressures associated with that, with coming out of it like you did. But there’s a medical issue too. Without you telling us who you are, we have no history, and we can’t prescribe the best treatment.’
Again, he said nothing.
She didn’t seem perturbed about the lack of response. Instead, she turned to the computer, tabbed through some options, and a record of his treatment – since the heart attack – appeared on screen. The room was so cramped, he could read it all clearly. He could see they had no idea who he was. No idea what his story was. Where his name should have been, there was just a hospital number.
‘Why won’t you tell us your name?’
He shrugged.
‘Are you in trouble?’
That made him smile.
‘Something funny?’
‘I just spent eleven weeks in a coma,’ he said, and then stopped. He hated the sound of his voice now, edgeless and soft, like he was drunk. ‘I’m pissing through a tube. I’ve forgotten how to walk. I’d say I’m in trouble, wouldn’t you?’
‘I meant, have you broken the law?’
‘Ever?’
It was her turn to smile this time, but – as that faded – a withering look emerged. ‘We’re waiting for the police to come in and take your fingerprints for us, but I’m pretty sure they’re not currently looking for you. I do some consultation work at the Met and have a few friends there. They checked for me. No one matching your description has raised any flags recently. No family or friends have come forward to tell us who you are. What I’m saying is, if you broke the law before your heart attack, if that’s why you won’t tell us your name, the police don’t know about it – at least until our request gets signed off.’
On the desk beside her was a water carafe.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asked.
He looked from the carafe to her, and nodded.
She poured him
a glass of water and placed it down beside him. ‘You were found in Stables Market,’ she said, and as she sat back down again, he caught a whiff of her perfume. ‘I spoke to one of the paramedics yesterday who treated you at the scene, in preparation for this meeting. He told me that a retired army sergeant called Gregory Finn pretty much saved your life; that without the CPR Finn gave you at the scene, you’d probably be dead. You’re actually very lucky.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘CPR alone won’t save your life – but, until the ambulance crew arrives, it gives you a fighting chance. If Finn hadn’t been there, you’d be dead now.’
He shrugged.
‘Would you rather be dead?’
Maybe.
She paused for a moment, eyeing him. ‘Finn also told the paramedics that, in the seconds before your heart attack, he saw your collapse.’ She stopped again – but this time Healy caught a glimpse of what was coming. ‘Finn said that you appeared to be running after someone, and that – when he opened up your shirt to administer CPR – he found there was already bruising on your chest.’ She used a finger to indicate the centre of her own chest. ‘Why did you have that bruising?’
He didn’t reply.
‘Who were you running after?’
He turned and looked out at the car park.
‘Had they taken something from you?’
When he eventually faced her again, she was studying him, unmoved, seemingly unaffected by this one-way conversation. A couple of seconds later, a flicker of something passed her lips, and then her eyes. Some knowledge of him.
Instantly, he realized what.
‘The paramedics found some items on you,’ she said.
A pause, as she looked for a reaction.
Healy felt a tightness in his stomach as he thought of the photographs, of the book. The photos were the only permanent thing he’d kept on him before the heart attack. The book had just happened to be with him that day. He’d wanted it for reference. He thought he might need it at the market. Blaine moved, shaking him from his thoughts, and he watched as she placed four pieces of paper down on the table in front of him. Photocopies of the three pictures; one of the book’s cover.
‘A Seaside in the City,’ Blaine said. ‘I’ve heard of Wapping Pier. I’ve never been down there. What interests you about that place?’
He could feel her eyes on him.
Again, he remained silent.
‘What about these pictures?’ she asked.
He looked at them.
‘Are they your family?’
A tremor passed through the centre of his chest, up into his throat. Tilting his head so she couldn’t see his face, he repeatedly swallowed until he felt like he’d regained his composure. He looked up – stoic, stable – and said nothing.
‘Is that your wife?’ Blaine asked.
He glanced at the picture of Gail.
‘Are those your daughters?’
He looked at April and Abigail.
‘Can we call them for you?’
Please don’t hurt them.
Don’t hurt my family.
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘You can’t call them.’
The words were out of his mouth before he could pull them back in, as if some primal part of him was desperate to give voice to what he’d been through, what he felt. How they’d been alive in his head. How he’d been there with them.
Spoken to them.
Loved them.
He glanced at her, and she must have seen the panic in his face, because she came forward in her seat, hand up. She was telling him everything was okay.
‘Is this your family?’
He looked at her for a long time, breathing slowly, composing himself. He wasn’t going to tell her. She wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t sure he understood. He’d been Healy, but not Healy; Mal, but not Mal. He’d been living in their flat with them, taken the girls to school, put them to bed at night. He’d walked the dog with them – except the family had never owned a dog. The dog in the dream was Charlie, Healy’s dog; the dog Leanne, Ciaran and Liam had grown up with, not the girls. In his head, he’d gone on the same stag weekend to Dublin that he’d organized when he’d been at the Met in 2007. It had been him, but someone else.
It had been a dream.
But for eleven weeks, it had been his reality.
‘Is this your family?’ Blaine asked again.
She was leaning all the way forward in her seat now, one long finger pressed against the picture of April. She watched him, waiting for a response.
Then something happened.
Suddenly, uncontrollably, he started crying. He tried to wipe his tears away, embarrassed, unnerved, but he was unable to stop them.
Blaine edged closer. ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. ‘They’re your family, aren’t they?’
He shook his head.
They were mine, he thought.
But only for a while.
38
I looked out into the night, trying to figure out my next move, thinking of Craw, of the conversation we’d had an hour ago. East needed to be found – and Grankin and Korman may have been the men at Searle House that night. That made one of them a killer and the other, at best, an accessory, at worst someone equally capable of taking a life. I knew that I was on the edges of something, circling the drain, being drawn deeper and deeper into whoever they were and whatever they’d done.
Was I ready for this again?
I thought of when I’d blacked out in the museum, the crushing sense of panic, and began wondering what it might feel like to call Craw up and pass on the entirety of the case, to protect myself for once, to relinquish control of an investigation before I’d brought it to its conclusion, before I had answers, reasons, a sense of closure. I’d never done it before, because the idea felt like a betrayal. I promised the families of the missing that, somehow, in whatever form, I’d bring their loved ones home, whatever it took – and that’s what I always did.
But this case was different.
I’d already found my missing person. I’d watched him being buried. I’d brought a skewed sense of conclusion to the family he’d left behind.
So what am I doing here?
As that question lingered, my attention moved to the passenger seat, to Healy’s copy of A Seaside in the City, to my laptop on the floor in the footwell, and the blank DVD I’d taken from Calvin East’s house, lying on top of it. There was no writing on it. No label. No marking of any kind. It could just as easily have been new and completely empty. Except, as I picked it up, I got that same sense of unease I’d had when I’d been in East’s house, standing in front of those wardrobe doors, finding it for the first time. Did the unease come from instinct, from a history of dealing with liars, knowing how they thought and tried to cover their tracks? Or had I now become so weary – and such a paranoiac – that I suspected everyone of everything?
I grabbed my laptop, powered it on and slipped the disc into the drive. A couple of seconds later, I watched as the DVD function kicked into life and footage of East popped on to the screen. It was an uneven, shaky video of him filming himself – and six other men in their early twenties – as they tried to skim pebbles on a beautiful, mountain-lined lake. He panned around and I saw a sign on a jetty close by: Queenstown Boats. They were in New Zealand.
It’s just footage from his travels.
I fast-forwarded it, doubts kicking in.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty.
After thirty, he’d switched countries – to Australia, and the Barrier Reef – and, as I watched him filming the same friends, each of them laughing riotously at a joke one of them had told, I grabbed my phone. This was innocent. There was nothing here. I was tired, sore; my instincts were off.
Craw was right.
It’s time to call her.
But then, immediately, the footage switched again. And, as it did, I realized something: this wasn’t footage from his travels.
This was some
thing much worse.
39
The last scene before the switch was of the six men East had been travelling with, sitting in a bar in Sydney, the Harbour Bridge just about visible through tinted glass behind them. They were laughing again – a different joke in a different place – empty bottles of beer scattered like debris on the table in front of them.
I could hear East laughing too, although not as wildly, as if laughter didn’t come as easily to him. His voice distorted the microphone as he asked the men to look towards him, to give the camera a thumbs up, but most of them didn’t even hear him – or ignored him. Eventually, he turned the camera around to face him, and for a few brief seconds I caught a glimpse of a younger, slimmer version of him; the boy I’d seen on the edges of the photograph in the museum. Callow. Uncomfortable.
Always on the periphery.
Then the footage cut to somewhere else.
An anonymous park.
Except it wasn’t: I watched the camera pan, could see grass and a concrete path. Edging further left, a climbing frame came into view, a mixture of ladders and circles. Then a swing, and another. A roundabout.
Searle House.
As the camera kept going, the north side of the tower block drifted in and then back out of view. When East returned his attention to the play park itself, he began zooming in on the swings. Both of them were occupied.
On the left was Abigail.
On the right, April.
Instantly, my mind shifted back to the witness statements I’d read over and over again, to what Sandra Westerwood – the family’s neighbour – had said to Healy about seeing a man with them all in the months before they died: The park next to Searle House has got some swings, a climbing frame, some slides, that sort of thing. I definitely remember seeing him there with the girls a few times.
This was him.
The man was East.
Another cut, and he was suddenly right next to them, the girls laughing at something he must have said seconds before he started filming. April looked at the camera and began singing a song that had been big in 2010. It was hard listening to her – a knot forming in my throat – not because she was out of tune, or had the words wrong, but because she sang so freely. She was unencumbered by the rules of adulthood. She sang so loudly, so innocently, I felt the knot in my throat harden and my composure drift. I thought of Annabel, and of Olivia, a girl the same age as April and Abigail, but a girl I’d been able to protect. There was no protecting the twins. They were gone.
