by Tim Weaver
What she wanted was an excuse to come down here.
‘Raker?’
I’d never seen her cry once when talking about her father. She’d never got close. What kind of daughter showed zero emotion when describing her dad going missing?
One who was working against him.
I looked at her, and then out into the café, moving between faces. Was it just her, or were other cops involved too? Could they be here, at the other tables? I’d told Craw where we were going before we’d left Dartmoor. She could have phoned in the details to whoever else was involved while we were driving down here. But then my gaze finally returned to her and I thought of something worse: I’ve been watching you for a while now, and you’ve never had a clue. Maybe the reason Reynolds was on to me so early was because he’d been prepped by someone before the case had even started.
Maybe I was sitting with her.
‘Raker?’ she said. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’
She seemed agitated now, on edge, and suddenly this whole thing made perfect sense: what better way was there to watch me? And as I thought of that, something hit me hardest of all: listening to Reynolds on the phone at his flat. I’d been out on the roof, him at the window, only able to hear his side of the conversation. ‘What?’ … ‘What help can that possibly be?’ … ‘Are you fucking insane? Now he knows all about me.’ … ‘Yeah, well, you better hope so.’ He was being told his file had been accessed. He was being told I knew some of his history now. And he was being reassured it was part of the plan.
‘Raker?’
I held up a hand. ‘I’m just thinking.’
‘About what?’
About you being the one who accessed Reynolds’s file for me. About what your plan is. About why you and Reynolds would work together in order to find your father.
‘About what?’ she said again.
‘Is it easy to gain access to the database?’
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to pull them back in. My shoulder pinged with pain and my guts began churning at the thought of being set up, of being betrayed by the daughter of the man I was being paid to find. Yet even as the truth began to form in front of me, a part of me still fought against the idea. I didn’t know Craw. Not really. In reality, no one knew anyone. But I hadn’t expected this. At no point had I ever seen this coming.
‘The database,’ I said.
‘Are you talking about the police database?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hard.’
‘It’s hard to access it?’
‘What do you think?’ she said, a look of contempt in her face. ‘It’s not open to the public, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Could someone log in with your ID?’
A frown, but no response.
‘Could they?’
‘Technically, yes.’
‘But only if you told them your number?’
She nodded. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘Is that the done thing?’
‘What?’
‘Telling people your number?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Does anyone know yours?’
She studied me for an instant – a split second of confusion – and then it was like a light switched on. She shifted back in her seat, hands flat to the table.
Something had changed in her.
‘Why?’ she said.
I didn’t reply.
Instead I felt a pop of pain at the back of my head and, for a moment, white spots flashed in front of me. When they were gone, a fresh spike of nausea bubbled in my throat. I tried to ignore it, watching Craw’s eyes move out to the café. I turned and looked myself. Almost unnoticed, it had become just us and a driver in a green tracksuit top.
On cue, he glanced in our direction.
He was in his forties, bearded, overweight, but big and powerful. He looked from me to Craw, his eyes lingering on her, and then returned to the newspaper he had out in front of him. He could be working with her and Reynolds.
Anyone could be working with them.
‘What’s going on, Craw?’
She faced me, said nothing.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’
This time she leaned in across the table, hands still flat to it, fringe straying across her eyes. ‘I think you need some rest, David,’ she said quietly. ‘Maybe a doctor too.’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘I think a doctor would do you good.’
I glanced at the man in the green top again.
‘Once you’ve rested, then we can talk.’
‘Talk about what?’
‘Talk about what’s really going on here.’
My fists had balled together without me even realizing, my muscles tense, nerves shredded. I watched her as she leaned back in her chair again, running a hand through her hair, setting it right above the arc of her eyebrows. My vision blurred slightly.
Then my phone shattered the silence.
I looked down at the display.
Ewan Tasker.
I picked it up, eyes still on Craw. ‘Hello?’
‘Raker, it’s me.’
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah. They’re both safe and sound.’
‘Thank you.’
He paused. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah. I’ll call you when this is all over.’
I hung up, placed the phone face down again and looked at my watch.
It was 2 a.m.
Craw was examining me from behind her hand, her elbow to the table, her knuckles against her lips. Her face was unmoved, like a mask.
I scooped up the handset and stood, feeling unsteady on my feet now. My head was pounding. My stomach slithered, like something was moving inside it.
Craw gripped my arm. ‘Where are you going?’
The man looked over at us again.
‘I’m going to find out the truth,’ I said to her.
She just stared up at me, hand still clamped at my elbow.
‘Let go of me.’
‘This is only going to lead to more trouble, David.’
‘Then stop me.’
I ripped my arm away, looked again at the driver and walked out into the rain. As it pounded against my face, hard as needles, I gazed in through the glass at her. She was sitting at the back, eyes fixed on me, saying something to the man.
Another pop in my head.
Another wave of pain.
I headed to the car.
56
By the time the sun bleached the sky, it was eight o’clock and I was sitting in a medical bay in A&E at Derriford Hospital, north of Plymouth. I’d ended up at the hospital after leaving Craw, my head getting worse every moment I was behind the wheel, until – at a set of traffic lights, four miles on – I’d blacked out. I’d been unable to think, unable even to drive straight, and by the time I arrived, I’d already been sick once. My shoulder was badly bruised, but there was no break. Of more concern to the doctors had been a gash to my head, at the base of my skull.
It had needed nine stitches.
As I waited to be discharged, I drifted in and out of sleep, desperately tired but unable to drop off. My head was full of static, full of conversations replaying over and over. In the hinterland between consciousness and sleep, I started to wonder what it was I’d seen and heard the previous night; how much of it was real, how much imagined. At 9 a.m., tired of waiting, I discharged myself, and as I moved outside, into the cool of the morning, it felt like everyone I passed was watching me, every whispered conversation carrying my name. At the car – looking worse than ever in the daylight – I surveyed the car park and saw shadows move inside vehicles, in reflections off the glass. I heard footsteps running off.
I heard my name spoken.
I let myself into the back seat and collapsed on to it, pulling the door shut. The car was freezing, smelling of burnt electrics and damp, and it instantly began to steam up as
I lay there, face down. My shoulder throbbed, pulsing like a heartbeat. The stitches at the back of my head sent green shoots of pain upwards, into the dome of my skull. But I didn’t care about any of that. I’d slept six hours in the last forty-eight. All I cared about was sleep. And finally, slowly, I let it take me away.
I woke to the sound of my phone.
Disorientated and chilled, I rolled over and hit my arm on the door. To start with, I wasn’t even sure where I was. The skies were dark, thunderous. The windows had steamed up too, obscuring most of what lay outside.
Hauling myself up, I rolled my shoulder. It was stiff, but felt better. My head was still throbbing, though, a dull, repetitive ache, like a drumbeat. Clearing a patch on the glass, I remembered where I was: the car park at Derriford Hospital. Beyond the roofs of the cars to my left was the functional grey concrete of the main building.
I looked at my watch.
Three-fifty in the afternoon.
I’d been asleep for almost seven hours.
As I played catch-up, filling in everything I’d been too fuzzy to cope with earlier in the day, I felt the phone again, still buzzing in my jacket pocket.
I took it out.
A south Devon number.
‘David Raker.’
‘Ah,’ a voice said. ‘I was wondering if I was going to get an answer from you.’ It was an old man, his voice a little cracked, a gentle wheeze playing out behind his words. ‘Just woken up from your drunken stupor, have you?’
Suddenly feeling hot, I got out and breathed in the coolness of the day. There was no rain, just the reminders of the night before: puddles everywhere, water sloshing in the drains and the gutters, long-dead leaves scattered across the car park, reduced to piles of bronzed pulp. I scanned the area around me: a family getting out of their car, a woman walking to the pay-and-display meter. No one watching me. No one waiting.
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Alan Poulter,’ the man said. ‘You don’t remember calling me last night? Three o’clock in the bloody morning. Next time, try calling at a decent hour.’
Poulter.
The doctor from Bethlehem.
Vaguely, in some distant part of my memory, I remembered calling him. I’d been in a state the night before: rattled from what I’d found out about Craw, woozy from the head injury, crippled by a lack of sleep.
‘I’m sorry, Dr Poulter.’
‘So you should be.’
‘I wasn’t drunk, if that makes it any better.’ I felt around in my pockets with my free hand and removed my notepad. ‘I was in a car accident. A minor head injury.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway, apologies.’
‘That’s, uh …’ A pause. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Thank you for calling me back.’
I laid my pad on the roof of the car, pulling a pen out of the spiral binding. Then I looked around me again. I’ve been watching you for a while now, and you’ve never had a clue. The woman was attaching her ticket to the inside of her windscreen now. The family I’d seen were long gone. Otherwise, the car park was empty.
‘I was hoping to talk to you about Bethlehem,’ I said.
‘I see. Who is it you work for?’
‘I find missing people.’
‘For the police?’
I thought about what the best answer would be to that. Poulter came from a time and a profession where confidentiality was paramount. Over the phone, and without the opportunity to get a sense of who he was, I opted for a lie. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘For the police.’
‘I see,’ he said again.
‘So can I ask you about Bethlehem?’
‘I prefer to call it Keel Point Hospital. The worst thing that happened to that place was when that religious nutter decided to rename it. As the years went by, the media, the locals, they loved the fact that it had this holy name on the front of the building, and – as they saw it, anyway – these unholy minds locked inside. They used it as a stick to beat us with. I’m sure they secretly did a little dance of joy when Silas murdered all those people in the kitchens.’
I gave him a moment to calm down, recalling the story of how William Silas had escaped his handcuffs and ended up killing and dismembering four staff, then pushed on. ‘How long did you work there, Dr Poulter?’
‘Twenty-nine years.’
‘Were you there until it closed?’
‘Oh no, no, no,’ he said. ‘I retired back in 2005.’
‘Right. Okay. Well, I’m trying to find a man who may have had some kind of a connection to the hospital. I’m not sure he was a patient there, but – according to my information – you and he were in touch by telephone. His name was Leonard Franks.’
‘Franks?’
‘Yes. Leonard.’
Nothing on the line except the soft sound of wheezing.
‘Dr Poulter?’
‘He was the policeman, right?’
Bingo. ‘That’s exactly right, yes.’
‘Yes, I remember him. Well, I read about him.’
‘You mean, in the local newspapers?’
‘Yes. He disappeared at the start of the year, didn’t he?’
‘On 3 March, yes.’
‘Ah, right. Either way, I remember reading about it, because I thought to myself, “I’m sure I know that man from somewhere.” ’
‘You knew him from the hospital.’
‘I can see that now, yes.’
‘But I don’t think he was a patient of yours, was he?’
‘Oh no. He lived in London, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. Unfortunately, Mr Franks’s family haven’t been able to locate him.’ I paused and thought of Craw, but then instantly moved on, not wanting to get distracted. ‘However, I believe you may have been in touch with him in or around the year 2000.’
‘That’s a long, long time ago, Mr Raker.’
‘I realize that, yes.’ I stopped, scanning the car park again. ‘I don’t suppose you recall what you and Mr Franks talked about?’
A snort. ‘Absolutely no idea.’
‘None at all?’
‘It was thirteen years ago. We used to have conversations with the police all the time. They’d always be checking up on people they’d arrested; people who we were now treating. A lot of police officers don’t like the fact that human beings suffer psychological problems and do unfortunate things because of them. They prefer things in black and white. It helps them sleep at night. So they used to call us a lot, double-checking patients – their arrests – hadn’t taken them for a ride to avoid going to prison.’
‘And Mr Franks?’ I said, prodding him.
‘I only remember him retrospectively.’
‘You mean, from what you read about his disappearance?’
‘Right.’
I decided to change the angle of attack. ‘If I mention some names to you, could you maybe tell me whether you recognize them as patients?’
‘I can’t talk about individual patients, Mr Raker.’
‘All of these people are dead.’
I looked at the list I’d made – Welland, Viljoen, Preston, whoever Kay was – and knew that only two of them were confirmed dead. But I kept going, anyway.
‘It’s unethical,’ Poulter said.
‘I realize I’m asking a big favour here, Dr Poulter. I’m not asking for details of what you discussed with these people …’ I stopped. Not yet, anyway. ‘It’s simply a question of narrowing their movements down to Keel Point at the time you were in touch with Mr Franks.’
‘I had a lot of patients in twenty-nine years.’
‘But maybe we can just give it a go anyway?’
A long pause. ‘Okay. If you think it would help.’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Okay, so first: Pamela Welland.’
‘How do you spell that?’
I spelled it out for him. I already knew this one was a dead end. Welland had never left London in her eighteen years, let alone left it for a psychiatric hospit
al in Devon.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Did she live down here?’
‘In Devon? No. She lived in London.’
‘Hmm,’ he repeated. ‘Her name rings a bell, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t one of my patients. How old is she now?’
‘She was murdered in 1996, aged eighteen.’
‘Oh. Well, she definitely wasn’t one of mine, then. Would I have read about her death in the newspapers, like I read about Franks?’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘That must be it, then.’
‘All right. What about Paul Viljoen?’
Again, I spelled it out for him. Again, he said no.
‘Simon Preston?’
He considered it. ‘No. That doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘Ever treat a patient with the first name Kay?’
‘K-A-Y?’
‘Yes.’
‘In twenty-nine years? I couldn’t say for sure.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘I’m seventy-eight, Mr Raker. I’ve been retired for eight years. I spent almost half my working life at that hospital. You can’t expect me to remember everyone I treated.’
A few spots of rain began falling, dotting the roof of the car and the pages of my notepad. It seemed to sum up the direction this conversation was heading.
‘You don’t have any idea what you were calling Mr Franks about, back in 2000?’ I asked again. ‘Maybe someone he’d arrested had been transferred into your care?’
‘That’s the most likely possibility.’
‘But you don’t know for sure?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
I flipped back through my notes, through the names of everyone connected to this disappearance, and felt a fizz of frustration.
‘Welland,’ Poulter said.
I tuned back in. ‘Pamela Welland?’
‘Yes. You said she was murdered in London?’
