by Tim Weaver
They only existed now in film.
As one of my eyes blurred, Abigail appeared on-screen: shy, quiet, more contemplative than her sister. ‘Are you going to sing too, Abs?’ East asked, and as his voice broke the spell – the attachment I’d built with the girls through the eye of the lens – I felt my grief subside and a rage take hold. It was so strong it frightened me.
‘No,’ Abigail said. ‘I don’t want to sing.’
‘But you’ve got a beautiful voice.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘You have.’
On-screen, Abigail looked from her sister back to the camera, and then off to the side of the shot. East swung the camera around, following the direction she was focused on: Gail Clark was approaching from Searle House.
‘Tell her, Mummy!’ East shouted.
‘Tell her what?’ came the response.
‘Tell Abs she’s got a beautiful voice.’
‘You know you have, Abs,’ her mother said to her as she reached the park. On the swing, Abigail shrugged, but was smiling. ‘Cal wouldn’t lie to you, hun.’
Cal.
They called him Cal.
Westerwood thought she’d heard the family call the man ‘Mal’. A whole line of inquiry had been built on the idea the suspect had been called Malcolm.
But it wasn’t Malcolm she’d heard.
It never had been.
As the footage jerked quickly from side to side, I realized East was giving the camera to Gail. She took it from him and started filming him with the girls.
He was wearing an olive-green shirt.
Again, I saw how another key pillar of Healy’s investigation had crumbled to dust. Westerwood had told him in her interview that the suspect was wearing the kind of shirt a delivery man might wear. She was right. It did look like that.
But it wasn’t a delivery company he worked for.
Back in 2010, the shirt must have been what museum employees wore when they weren’t in Victorian costume. Or maybe, for a while, Gary Cabot had given them the choice between the two. I could see a Ferris wheel was stitched into the breast pocket, the words Wapping Wonderland and Museum below that, too small to be seen from where Sandra Westerwood would have passed. Clearly, soon after this, things had begun to change at the museum, because I hadn’t seen a single person with a shirt like this anywhere in the building. Cabot must have realized the period costumes were part of the attraction for tourists – so the shirts were binned.
I watched as East started pushing the girls on the swings. He was more of a familiar shape now: tubby, a hint of beard growth, thinning black hair parted at the side. He wore the same style of glasses too, the lenses a little big for his eyes, but they were less conspicuous, the rims a muted grey.
The girls started laughing, asking him to push harder, and he did, saying something – disguised by a breeze in the microphone – that made them laugh. He started making a whoosh sound every time he gave them a shove, a process that went on for a minute, maybe more. The longer it went on, the more I started to see something take shape in his face, his eyes, in the way he was laughing with them.
This isn’t an act.
He wasn’t trying to dupe them. He liked being here.
The screen went black.
It was back a couple of seconds later; this time, he was inside the Clarks’ flat. He was behind the camera again, filming Gail and the two girls playing Scrabble in the living room. Around them was the story of their lives – the photo frames, the DVD boxes, books, clothes cast aside, a table set for dinner – that I’d never seen in the crime-scene photography. That version of the flat had been a graveyard, a monument full of memories that looked like it should never be occupied again.
This was alive, vivid.
This was home.
With a bump, East placed the camera down on to a nearby coffee table, and went across the room to join them in the game. I watched them all, unable to take my eyes off the footage, mesmerized by this hidden chronicle of their life.
‘Wait a second,’ he said, looking down at his letters. He broke out into a smile. ‘I reckon there have been some busy fingers, swapping out my vowels.’
April descended into giggles, unable to maintain the lie.
East began laughing.
After a couple more minutes of them playing, East got up again and came across to the table, the camera rocking slightly as he pushed the on/off button.
Blackness.
It stayed like that for a short time and then snapped back a decade to when East had been travelling. He was in South East Asia somewhere, filming from a high window. Below, car horns blared in a crammed street full of vehicles and people, massive neon signs attached to buildings like barnacles.
I fast-forwarded it, all the way through his tour of Asia, through China, Hong Kong and Thailand. The last shot was from the airport terminal in Bangkok, out across the brightly lit tarmac to where a Boeing 747 waited to take him home.
Then there was nothing.
No more footage.
No answers.
I tore my eyes away from the screen, my vision momentarily adjusting to the darkness outside the car, and snapped the lid of the laptop shut. I needed to find East. I needed his reasons. I needed to understand why this had happened.
I could break him.
I could make him pay.
Closing my eyes, I tried to settle my nerves, tried to force the tension out. It felt like I had a migraine coming, a drumbeat thumping at the side of my head.
Did he keep this as a way to remember them? He’d put the footage in the middle of a DVD of his travels, presumably so it wouldn’t be found. Because he was keeping it back from Grankin? From Korman?
Taking a series of long breaths, I forced myself to calm down. It was after eleven. I’d been up for seventeen hours. I was exhausted, bruised, emotional.
I opened my eyes again.
Across the road, the security light had sparked into life at East’s house. In the brief seconds between closing and opening my eyes, something had set it off.
I watched, waited, gaze fixed on the entrances to the house. After a couple of minutes, the light flicked off and a semi-darkness settled around the property. A street light cast an orange glow across the garden and the front of the house.
And then I saw movement.
Someone was in the living room.
40
Ducking on to East’s driveway, I hurried towards the living-room windows and dropped in beside them. My back to the wall, I looked out into the street. It was quiet. In the houses opposite and adjacent, curtains were pulled and blinds closed. It was after 11 p.m., and most of his neighbours had turned in for the night.
I stole a look at the living room.
It was dark, lit only by the lights from adjoining properties at the rear, and – this side, at the front – the orange glow from the street. The room looked no different from the way it had been when I was inside earlier. Nothing had been moved or disturbed. I took a breath and checked the road. It was clear.
I peered inside a second time.
At the back of the property, the sliding doors were slightly ajar. Not much, but enough. Had I mistakenly left them like that? I’d come in that way, picking the locks on that same door, identifying them as the easiest way in.
Had I got sloppy and forgotten to close them?
A noise made me start, out on the street: the sound of gravel being kicked along the pavement. When I looked, it was a cat, tracing the fence at the front of East’s property, eyes peering through the slats at me: there, gone, there, gone. I watched it all the way, as it first stopped at the mouth of the driveway, staring in at me, its eyes glinting in the half-light; and then as it disappeared out of sight.
Thump. The sound of a door closing inside.
I looked again.
This time I saw someone.
A man was in the doorway connecting the living room to the kitchen. He had one gloved hand on the frame, almost l
eaning against it, and another at his side, and was looking out of the rear windows of the house. His back was to me, making it hard to get a sense of who he was, the hood up on a knee-length green raincoat. It was almost like a fisherman’s jacket, its plastic sheen catching the light as he adjusted position, a fractional movement from left to right that saw him glance across the living room. I edged back, even though he hadn’t seen me: the drawstring on the hood had been pulled tight, so all I could make out was the vaguest hint of a face. He was tall, skinny, and wearing dark combat trousers.
Grankin.
What would he be doing back here? Why return without the car? Over one shoulder was a brown leather bag – like a satchel – its buckles unclasped, and below the lip of the raincoat, a pair of black boots. I watched as he turned away from me again to face the sliding doors, and stepped further into the living room. And then, as he scanned the room – eyes darting from one piece of furniture to the next – I realized he was holding something at his side: a four-inch kitchen knife.
I felt a flutter of alarm.
He’s come back for East.
Except East wasn’t here.
He moved towards me, heading in the direction of the hallway. I whipped back out of sight, breath catching in my chest, and waited. Thirty seconds later, I peeked into the living room again. He’d left the lights off, but I could see the blink of a torch from upstairs. He was looking around the bedrooms.
I headed back to the car and waited.
Five minutes later, Grankin emerged from the side of the house, hood still up on his coat, torch and knife back inside his satchel. At the top of the driveway he paused, looking up and down the road, and then he headed towards the railway bridge behind me. I slid gently down into my seat, watching him pass on the other side of the road, and then grabbed my coat and my phone.
There was a footpath running under the bridge, adjacent to one of the arches. As soon as he disappeared through it, I got out of the car, locked it and went after him.
41
He headed east, through a maze of side roads and alleyways, until he finally got to Southwark Park. I kept about eighty feet between us, sometimes more, and as we crossed the park I dropped even further back as the number of people began to thin out and cover became harder to find. Once we emerged into civilization again, I closed the gap, getting a sense for the rhythm of his movement, the pace he maintained, the way he’d look to his left and right, but rarely behind him. Every time his satchel slipped around to his back, he’d place a hand flat to it – grey and bony in the lack of light – and return it to the front. And, every time he did that, I noticed a kink in his step, as if he were carrying some minor injury.
Once he got to Lower Road, he emerged into a crowd of people gathered outside a pub, stopped and then crossed the street. I kept to the same pavement, watching him from the other side until he veered right on to Surrey Quays Road. Two minutes later, as the huge, inverted pyramid of Canada Water Library came into view on the right, I finally realized where we were heading.
The Tube station.
I hung back, letting him get ahead, wondering why he hadn’t just got on to the Tube at Bermondsey. There wasn’t much in it, but Canada Water was marginally further. He must be getting the Overground. Once we were inside and beyond the gateline, I saw I was right: he found a seat on the platform, hood still up, satchel on his lap. I got confirmation of where he was, and then backed out, hovering in the concourse area. It was eleven-fifty, and the station was virtually deserted.
I didn’t want to get caught out now.
Three minutes later, the train pulled in.
I watched as he boarded, then did the same much further down. As the doors slid shut, I started to wonder where he was headed. The train was going via Peckham and terminated at Clapham High Street, which meant the choices were limited. Surrey Quays. Queens Road Peckham. Peckham Rye. Denmark Hill. Clapham.
Thirteen minutes later, I got my answer.
At Denmark Hill, just as I’d done at the previous three stations, I edged out of the open doors and looked along the train. This time, Grankin got off. I waited until he’d disappeared into the concourse, and then exited the carriage.
Out of the station, he made a beeline for Denmark Hill itself. He kept on readjusting the satchel, bringing it back from behind him, as well as the hood of his coat, which he continually checked was still in place. As we moved on to Camberwell Road, a breeze suddenly picked up, ripping down towards us.
Grankin barely broke stride, pressing forward at the same pace, with the same pattern of movement: his satchel, his hood, the hint of an injury. Eventually, at the corner of Burgess Park, he took a left, leading me through a series of side streets and then into a cul-de-sac surrounded by low-rise blocks of flats. Someone had forgotten to take their washing in from a third-floor balcony; on a telephone wire above us, a pair of trainers hung by the laces. Otherwise it was quiet, lifeless, and it wasn’t until we were right at the end of the road that I saw what else lay ahead, sitting there in the shadow of the flats, almost forgotten about: a row of six terraced homes, hidden from view unless you were looking for them. All six were boarded up.
Two had been gutted by fire. On another, the roof had collapsed, its tiles falling away to reveal the support beams underneath. On the one next to that, the rendering had cracked, jagging up the middle of the house in a rift as wide as a hand. Others were being attacked by weeds, fusing themselves to drainpipes, doors and windowsills.
I stopped in a nearby doorway, watching.
In front of the row of houses, he paused, looking back in my direction, and then at the windows and doors around him. Once he seemed content that the coast was clear, Grankin started moving again, towards the last of the houses, on to a small, dark path that presumably led to the rear gardens.
I followed, crossing the space as quickly and silently as I could, and then paused at the entrance to the path. Briefly, I caught the green flash of his raincoat and then he was gone again. Once I got to the back of the house, I saw him coming around in an arc, beyond the fences that still marked the boundaries of the properties, broken and warped. The lawns were dumping grounds, the shrunken, rotten bones of old prams and chairs, refrigerators and tyres, sitting among waist-high grass, weeds and dense brambles. Each of the houses was identical: a set of patio doors, a kitchen window, a back door. Every possible way in to the properties had been boarded up, and every space covered with graffiti.
I wondered where exactly Grankin was headed, but then he came to a half-collapsed fence panel at the foot of the garden belonging to the third house along – one of the two that had been burned from the inside out by fire – stepped through it, and started down towards the building. He went slowly across the garden, but knew exactly where to tread. At the back door he stopped, looked either way along the terrace, then placed his thin fingers at the edge of the panel. It swung against the wall, like the blade of a windmill, one of its screws, on the top left side, still pinning it to the brickwork. Beyond the panel, the blackness of the interior revealed itself.
He disappeared inside.
Once the panel rocked back into place, I followed his path towards the house, stopping at the top of the garden. What now? Grankin was dangerous. I didn’t need to see the knife he’d been holding earlier to know that: I’d seen as much in his face. Pull back the panel – and then what? I didn’t know the layout of the house at all. I had no idea what it was like in there.
But what if he was the driver that night? What if it was him waiting in the car outside Searle House, sitting there, knowing what was going on inside? Could I just walk away from this moment with one of the men responsible here, on the other side of a broken panel, just feet away from me? Could I walk away without getting answers for that family? For Healy?
Steeling myself, I headed down to the house, grabbed hold of the panel and inched it aside. There was hardly any light. Somewhere, something fluttered – like a candle – but it seemed far off. I wa
ited, letting my eyes adjust to the depth of the darkness, and then I heard a noise: the gentle moan of a floorboard.
He was upstairs.
I slipped through the gap, set the panel back in place and waited a second time. As my eyes adjusted further, I realized the light I’d seen from outside was a candle, its flickering glow coming from the next room, but painting the edges and right angles of the one I was in. This was a kitchen, the worktops long gone, the units stripped down to melted, twisted bones. On the only flat surface that remained, Grankin had stacked canned fruit and tins of processed meat. The room smelled of the fire that had gutted it, but also of decay, dust and mould.
I passed out of the kitchen, into a narrow hallway.
A bathroom was on the right, ravaged like the kitchen, and on the left were stairs, the steps broken and misshaped. Beyond the bathroom was the dining room, nothing in it except a tatty foam mattress and a sleeping bag. Via a connecting archway was the living room, a table in the centre with a chair pushed under it. There was a stack of papers on one side, and a set of three candles next to that. Only one of them was lit, but I could see others dotted around the sides, on the floor, in coves, or on shelves that still remained.
Then: a noise from above me.
Another floorboard.
He’s moving around.
I double-backed to the kitchen and searched for something I could use to protect myself. Sitting among the cans were a tin opener, a fork, a spoon and a serrated bread knife. Grabbing the knife, I returned to the bottom of the stairs.
