by Tim Weaver
He shrugged. ‘I just needed to distract you for a few hours.’
‘To do what?’
‘To make sure things were watertight.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I suppose I would have had to kill you.’
As I studied his aim, I expected him to waver, to show some sign of being uncomfortable with the gun – but he wasn’t. He was steady.
‘Let me ask you something,’ he said, eyes not moving from me. ‘I met Melanie at a house party in 1989. We dated for three years, and then in 1992 we got married. Do you know how many times in over twenty-four years together – in two decades of marriage – Melanie ever came to me for advice? Bearing in mind, for a moment, I was her husband.’
I just looked at him.
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Zero times. Our marriage – if you can even really call it that – was defined by one thing, on repetition: Leonard Franks. When they were still up here in London, before the move down to Devon, I’d get home from work and Melanie wouldn’t be here – she’d be over at their place. At weekends, it was him she wanted to spend time with. She’d leave the kids with Ellie and go and play golf with him. She’d call me in the evenings to say she was going to be working late – and then I’d see Leonard pulling up outside and dropping her off, and find out they’d all been out drinking: her, him, every other starstruck moron at the Met who thought Len was the second coming. The two of them always made a point of never discussing work, even when they were out drinking like that, as if that were some incredible achievement. But they talked about everything else – literally everything and would never share any of it. Can you imagine how frustrating that becomes, David?’
‘So killing her makes it better?’
‘Over the course of twenty-four years,’ he said, ignoring me, ‘it just builds and it builds, until …’ A brief, distant look. ‘Until, finally, you snap.’
‘Well, you snapped all right, Garrick.’
‘If I hadn’t done it, she would have found out what I was doing eventually,’ he said, and smiled – but it was sad, as if it carried the weight of bereavement. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘I bought Leonard this pen for his birthday one year, this beautiful, gold-nibbed Caran d’Ache Léman fountain pen from Switzerland. This was back when I was still trying to understand how to muscle in on their territory, when I still cared about becoming part of their clique. Melanie told me I didn’t need to – maybe she meant that I shouldn’t; that he wouldn’t like it – but I did it anyway. I ignored her, and I gave it to him, and he was very polite, thanked me, told me I shouldn’t have. About six months later, we were round there for dinner, and I happened to find it in one of the kitchen drawers, dumped there with the ninety-nine-pence biros. A four-hundred-pound pen.’
‘You know how pathetic you sound?’
‘Really?’ He made a hmph sound, like he was processing what I’d just said. ‘You know, I removed that pen – there and then – and claimed it as my own. I carried it through years of sessions with patients. Years. And you know the first person who ever guessed the importance of that pen to me?’
I didn’t reply.
‘Casey Bullock,’ he said. ‘Did you know Leonard bought her a dog?’
‘What?’
‘A dog,’ he said. ‘I had my fountain pen, and she had her dog. Bear, she called it. It was such a Leonard way of dealing with a situation. Their child drowns in a lake, and Leonard tries to fill the gap that’s left behind with an animal. I mean, Casey seemed to like the dog. In fact, she was very upset when it died. And then when she eventually told me everything – about her affair with Leonard, their child, all the secrets, all the lies – after it finally all spilled out of her after years of sessions, I sat there utterly stunned and thought, “What a mundane gift for such an elaborate liar.” A dog.’
He paused, backing away from the kiln, and went to the table. He perched on its edge, gun resting on his lap. Next to him the empty Coke can rocked gently.
‘Living with her was like living with him,’ he said quietly. ‘The older she got, the worse she got. She never shared anything. She never told me about her day. All we used to talk about was what she wanted done around the house, about the girls and their fucking homework. That was all we had.’
‘And now you don’t even have that.’
He flashed a look at me, but his tone didn’t change: flat, quiet. ‘You’re so perfect, aren’t you? A perfect widower, a perfect dad. You think because you had some horny teenage romance twenty-five years ago that you’re now an expert father?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m no expert.’
His eyes lingered on me for a long time. ‘I hate him.’
A long silence, as if he were reassessing that statement.
‘Actually, that’s not true,’ he finally continued. ‘I hate him even more than that. Sending him that file in January … I would have loved to have been there when it arrived, when he looked at the envelope and figured it must have come from the cold-case people at Plymouth – and his face when he opened it up and his world fell apart. That was a great piece of timing. I didn’t mean it to be so perfect, because I didn’t know he’d been in contact with them about taking on freelance work. But he deserved it.’ He looked at me, taking a long breath. ‘The truth was, though, I started compiling that file long before he ever thought about taking on freelance work. It was eight months in the making. Do you know what started it off? Do you know what made me reach out to someone like Neil Reynolds, and get his help in compiling it?’
‘What?’
‘One night the June before last, nine months before Leonard magicked himself into thin air, we were at their place on Dartmoor. He and I were out front, sitting around a barbecue. He never let me cook. Even when they came to ours, Melanie would always let him take charge. He’d help himself to my tongs, to my cutlery. When we went down there, I just slumped into a chair and tried to drink my sorrows away. It was the same that day as it had been every year I was married to Melanie. The same as always: I didn’t know what to say to him, he didn’t know what to say to me – just this unspoken tension. Anyway, I knew all about his indiscretions by then – Casey had already told me everything – and the more I had to drink, the more I chewed on it, the more I wanted to call him out on it.’
He eyed me for a second. ‘I looked at him and thought, “You’re a fucking liar.” I hated him, just as much as Reynolds hated him. More. His public persona, it was a sham. He wasn’t that man. I saw the real him, even before Casey started telling me about what he’d done. I saw the real Leonard Franks every day of my miserable marriage. The way he treated me, the way he looked at me like I was something on his shoe. It ate away at me, until finally, we were standing over that barbecue, and I cracked. I said to him, “Are there any circumstances, any circumstances at all, where I might be good enough for you or for your daughter, Leonard?” After I said it, I stood there frozen, scared about what his response would be, but also somehow relieved that I’d actually got it out.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said no. He said to me, “You’re not the man I wanted my daughter to marry. You’re not the man she deserves. You’re not good enough for her, John.” He always called me John, not Bill. I hated the name John, even though I used it for work. It was my father’s name, and he was a man just like Franks: never happy with who I was, or what I wanted to be.’ He looked out at the warehouse, gesturing to the spaces around him. ‘Like I was ever going to settle for a life blowing glass.’
His voice raised just a fraction, but then, a second later, it settled back into the same tone: ‘That’s why Leonard started calling me John. He knew I didn’t like it. I’m sure he secretly loved the fact that Melanie decided to go with Ellie’s surname, even after we got married. And after it was all out in the open, after he told me I wasn’t good enough for his daughter, I knew it was over. Not for me. It was just the start for me. But I knew it was all over for him – because I was going to g
o after him. I was going to show the world who he really was.’
‘You think it was heroic?’
‘It was, in a way.’
‘You’re delusional.’
A twist of animosity, there and gone. Then he shrugged. ‘The chances of me working at Bethlehem at some point were always high. When it was still open, there were only four high-security psychiatric facilities in the entire country, and I was moving between them all the time. But Casey actually becoming one of my patients … it was fate. I was seconded down there, at the same time I was doing two days a week at the Met, and when Casey finally told me why the Pamela Welland case had meant so much to her, it was perfect. It took five years for it to all come out, every detail, but it was perfect.’
‘And Franks never knew?’
A snort. ‘Leonard never showed a moment’s interest in what I did. Not a moment. He never once came to see me when I was at Scotland Yard, even to say hello. Towards the end, Melanie was exactly the same. They knew I’d spent years doing contract work at facilities all over the country, but if either of them had made any effort, if Leonard had spent a single second asking me about my work, he would have found out I was down at Bethlehem. He’d have realized I was down there at the same time Casey was being treated.’ He studied me, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead. ‘But you know what the most damning indictment of him is? He never even bothered asking Casey who her doctor was. If he had, he could have stopped all of this before she confessed. She gave him Poulter’s name back at the start, but Leonard never bothered asking again. That was so typical of him. He loved her, don’t get me wrong, but I think a part of him was happy, knowing she’d been packed off to the nuthouse, unable to create any problems for him – the sort of problems she’d created for him when she’d tried to kill herself.’
‘And Reynolds?’
‘I kept in touch with Neil,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘even after he was fired, because I saw something in him that I might be able to use later on down the line. He was angry, but he was disciplined. And when the time was right, I told him all about Casey and Leonard, about their son – and he told me about his own suspicions.’
‘You mean about Franks killing Simon Preston?’
He nodded. ‘And you think I’m the bad guy.’
‘You’re both pond life.’
‘He’s the one who killed Casey.’ He drifted for a second, and for the first time it was like he’d lost his focus. ‘I liked Casey. She was smart. She was a challenge to get at. I spent over five years trying to get to know her, how she thought, why she was so willing to let her life drift by while she lived with worthless dogshit like Simon Preston. And then, when she finally told me about Leonard, about everything that had happened, when I found out that that was the reason – that she was, in her naivety, protecting Leonard, and his reputation – I sort of …’ He stopped; a genuine flash of pain. ‘I sort of felt betrayed.’
Clunk.
Garrick didn’t move, even as the sound came again. I looked around at the warehouse: to the spaces beyond the empty shelves, to the loading doors, back to the corridor. When I turned again to face him, he’d come forward, gun up in front of him. There was about eight feet between us.
Too far to try to go for him.
‘Well, I guess this is the end,’ he said. ‘I had to be quiet when I got rid of Melanie because gunshots tend to arouse suspicion in suburbia. But here …’ He looked around. ‘It’ll just go down as industrial noise.’
Clunk.
It sounded right on top of us, and this time there was a minor movement of his head, eyes swivelling right, as if the proximity of the noise had surprised even him. And, as his body adjusted, the gun moved fractionally side to side.
This is my chance.
Ducking, I charged him.
A gunshot sounded.
It happened so fast I barely had time to think, and it was only as I made contact, knocking him into the table, both of us going sprawling across the floor of the warehouse, that I felt an old pain bloom in my shoulder, forking across my chest like a lightning strike. He was six feet from me, on his side, facing away, the gun beyond his grasp. He started scrambling to his feet. As I moved, my chest heaved. I was struggling to breathe. I went at him again, straining every sinew, using the table – on its side now – to get to my feet.
This time my direction was off, but I got enough of him. I grabbed him as he bent for the gun, and we stumbled forward, past the kiln, into the back wall. We hit it hard, Garrick in front of me, face on. I’d managed to use part of him to cushion the blow, but as I rolled away – feeling the heat of the fire above me – I still felt dazed: blood leaked from a wound in my arm, old bruises were throbbing, my head lurched like a sinking ship. I looked across at Garrick: he was slumped, blood on his face, his nose bent and broken from hitting the wall face-first. His eyelids fluttered briefly, as if his body were trying to restart.
He was alive, but unconscious.
I forced myself on to all fours, sucking in deep breaths, then paused there for a moment, trying to suppress the nausea in my throat.
It’ll pass.
It’ll pass.
It didn’t, not fully, but as I used the half-wall circling the kiln to get to my feet, I stood and breathed in again. Gradually, I started to gain control of myself.
And then I noticed something.
Under the kiln was a switch.
87
The switch was between two sets of runners. It hadn’t been visible when I’d been at the front. I bent down and shuffled in closer: it was like a light switch. No markings. Just on or off. I reached forward and flicked it down.
Clunk.
The kiln began to move.
It made a gentle whine as it shifted back, the fire still burning inside it. For a few seconds – as I stood there, holding my shoulder – all I could see was more of the polished concrete floor. But then, slowly, a thin black line started to show itself. Inside five seconds, the line had become a rectangle.
Inside ten, the rectangle had become a hole.
The kiln reached the end of its runners with another clunk, and revealed all of the hole: four feet square, the blackness showing a set of rickety wooden steps.
I moved to the lip of the hole.
There was nothing visible beyond the halfway point of the ladder. I looked around the warehouse for a torch, but Garrick hadn’t brought one with him, and all I had was a torch app on my phone. Something soured in my throat as I dropped on to my backside and placed my foot on the first step of the ladder. Not nausea any more: disquiet, growing and clotting every moment I looked down at what lay beneath me. Gingerly placing my foot on to the next step down, I realized why Garrick hadn’t bothered bringing a torch.
On the wall, just inside the hole, was a light switch.
I reached in and turned it on.
Below me, a single light bulb erupted into life, scattering a creamy glow across a concrete floor. There was dust everywhere, debris from the kiln too: flecks of paper, tiny chunks of wood, pieces of discarded electrical equipment. On three sides, the walls were close up to the ladder. On the fourth, a thin corridor snaked off into the shadows.
I paused there for a moment, my arm crackling with pain, my lungs feeling like they might be about to close, and looked across the warehouse to where Garrick lay.
What have you done now?
I headed down.
The further I got, the colder it became. By the time I was on the ground, the heat of the kiln was completely gone. Ahead of me in the shadows, despite the light from the bulb, it was hard to see anything, but somehow I got the sense the space was big. As I inched forward, my footsteps echoed slightly and the walls felt like they parted, dropping off into the darkness. A few feet further in and I started to be able to smell something.
It was sweet, not sickly: not perfume exactly, but something close. And, on the back of that, there was something more familiar. At first, I couldn’t quite place it.
<
br /> Then it clicked.
I stopped, goosebumps scattering up my arms.
Fast food.
I felt something change inside the room, as if the air had been disturbed, like there was a shift in the shadows – and then a hand grabbed at my face. Nails clawed at my skin as I stumbled back, clipping a wall. When I lost my balance, a weight came with me, one hand still clamped on to my jaw, the other trying to dig their way into my neck.
I hit back: one punch to whatever part of the body I could get to, and then another. Whoever was on top of me wheezed, the air shooting out of them, but it was only after I managed to push them off – scrambling back into the light – that I realized something.
It was a woman.
I removed my phone and shone it out into the darkness. In the far corner, she was lying on her side, in the foetal position, a half-eaten burger, an empty packet of fries and a plastic cup of Coke four feet away from her toes. She was dressed in what amounted to rags: torn jeans, a frayed fleece, one sock, no shoes. Her hair was a mess: greasy, dirty, a tangle caked to her face. At her left ankle was a chain, secured to the rear wall.
As she lay there crying, I moved closer.
‘It’s okay,’ I said to her. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
Above her was a series of metal pipes.
She’d been hitting them. It wasn’t just the movement of the kiln making the noise. It was her trying to get someone’s attention.
I held out a hand.
‘It’s okay,’ I said again. ‘It’s over now, Casey.’
88
I spent Christmas with Annabel and Olivia in Devon, and when – the day afterwards – they began a slow tour of their extended family, I ducked out, headed back to my parents’ old cottage and sat at the window, watching the sea. I imagined my mum and dad in the same place years before, sitting across from one another at the same table, admiring the same view.
On 27 December, I took a drive along the coast. It was a freezing cold day, wind buffeting the car as I wound my way down to Keel Point beach, and once I’d parked I kept the engine running, turned the heaters all the way up and switched on the radio.
