by Steve Mosby
Still looking at the computer, he was angry with himself.
You're making yourself sick. You know you are.
That was true. But he felt that every morning, and it wasn't enough to make him stop.
Kearney was well-known in the department for getting too involved: for demanding answers to the questions that other cops had long since learned were more sensible to avoid. They just wanted the who and maybe the how, but Kearney always needed to search out the why. He felt compelled to look at something until it made sense. Until he could comprehend it.
That was exactly the problem.
Todd Dennis, Kearney's partner, had told him once that police work was dangerous in the same way the sea was. From a high enough altitude, Todd said, it looked calm and peaceful. But however tempted you were, it was always a mistake to head down for a closer look. Because the waves didn't care about you, and they carried on regardless; you wouldn't find answers to make sense of them. All you'd find down there was a million identical places to drown.
Kearney got up and headed for the shower.
Then he put on his suit and ate breakfast slowly, thinking of the investigation that was waiting for him. The one that had, in a roundabout way, started him on this descent.
Operation Butterfly had been running at various speeds for the last four years, with the number of men assigned to it ebbing and flowing in an irregular heartbeat. The peaks represented the confirmed killings of three women and the disappearance and suspected murder of two others.
In all five cases, the abduction scenario had been almost identical. The women had been taken late at night on their way home, and their cars were found abandoned along quiet stretches of road, the passenger doors left hanging open and the interiors bright in the darkness. It looked as though the women had pulled over for some reason, and the killer had emerged from the undergrowth and stolen them away.
In serial enquiries such as this, Kearney found himself remembering the first and last victims most vividly. The others mattered just as much, but the first and last circumscribed the investigation. They held it in place like bookends.
Linda Holloway was the first. In life, she had been a solicitor, married, successful and happy. In death, her killer had dumped her body in a wooded gully north of the city. When they found her, she was bright white and lying face up in the mulch of autumn leaves, with coins of wet mud on her skin. There was no blood at the scene, and none remaining in her body; the autopsy revealed a number of insertion points on her right arm, the bore and bruising consistent with that of an industrial syringe, and the cause of death was ruled to be exsanguination. For reasons unknown, Linda Holloway's abductor had bled her over a period of days until the process eventually killed her.
Six months afterwards, the second known victim, Melissa Noble, was taken. Her body had never been found. Next was Kerekes, then Slater at the end of last year. Both were eventually found lying on riverbanks. Price, abducted in January, remained missing.
Five victims. Three bodies.
And the other end of the investigation was Rebecca Wingate. Over the last few days, Kearney had spent a long time staring at one particular photograph of Rebecca. She was young and attractive, with her hair tied back, and she was wearing a black suit that she looked a little nervous and unsure in. Every time he saw it, Kearney felt a desperate urge to reach into the picture and take her hand.
Rebecca Wingate's car had been discovered four days ago, abandoned by the roadside. One door was hanging open, and the indicator light was still blinking, as though in shock at what had happened.
Somewhere, Kearney told himself, she was still alive.
It wasn't just in his dreams.
Half-past eight.
Fully composed now, he parked up. In front of him, the police department's new building was enormous and imposing: a block of shining steel and glass, glinting in the sun. It was ten storeys high. The bottom three floors were wider than the ones above, and then the top slanted to a point in one corner. It looked like a sword piercing the sky. Kearney had a vague idea it was meant to.
He drummed out a quick solo on his knees.
First things first.
That meant finding Simon Wingate in reception.
Wingate was wearing a black suit and sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped in front of him, staring down at the floor. For the last four days, since his wife had gone missing, he'd presented exactly the same figure, exactly the same pose. He kept almost perfectly still.
Kearney had worked traffic accidents before. He'd sat with the relatives of victims outside hospital wards at two in the morning while they waited for news, their fingers twitching anxiously, and so he recognised a vigil when he saw one. The difference was that people in a hospital could at least expect news of some kind, but nobody could guarantee Simon Wingate anything.
Wingate must have known that, but he continued to turn up regardless, and that made other cops nervous. They couldn't quite figure out what he wanted. Todd had actually started coming in the side entrance to avoid him.
He's like a fucking… angel of death, or something.
I think you mean 'judgement'.
Whatever.
Every day, Wingate faced the world with the top of his bowed head. He was thirty, but he looked older. Rebecca Wingate was slightly younger: only twenty-seven. Kearney pictured her face again now and felt sad as he sat down beside her husband.
'Good morning, Simon. How are you holding together?'
Wingate just shook his head. He rarely looked up or spoke more than a few words. Nevertheless, Kearney made a point of sitting with him like this every morning. It felt wrong to leave him alone.
'Can I get you anything?' he said.
'No.' Wingate shook his head again. 'I'm sorry. I don't want to bother anyone.'
'You're not. I promise.'
'I just don't know what else to do.'
'I know.'
'Where else to be.'
Kearney nodded. He understood. There was no point Wingate being anywhere right now, because his wife wouldn't be with him. This place - horribly - was as close as he could get to her until she was found.
'You can sit here all day, Simon. The moment we have any news, I'll let you know.'
Wingate nodded. 'Is there anything I can do?'
Every morning, he asked that question. The man was self- educated and ran a small but successful security business that he'd built up from scratch. This was impossible territory for him. He was used to being in charge - tackling and solving the problems that came his way - and now he felt suddenly disabled.
Where possible, Kearney made an effort to spend these short periods of time with the relatives of victims, and he'd seen this reaction a number of times. There was always pain. There was always fear. Ultimately, there was usually grief. All of those took their turns at being unbearable, but the sense of being powerless was constant, and often the hardest thing of all for people to deal with. So Kearney felt for Wingate, but all he could offer him was the same answer he always gave.
'You can stay strong.' He rubbed his hands together slowly. 'You can keep yourself in one piece. And you can keep believing that we'll find Rebecca. Because we will find her. Look at me, Simon.'
Wingate did look at him. His gaze moved up slowly, revealing eyes that were pink and tired. Devoid of hope. Life, even. Kearney kept his own face firm, his expression resolute.
'We will find her,' he repeated. 'I promise you.'
Wingate stared back. Kearney was a slight man and looked younger than he was, but his eyes were piercing and serious. Kearney's ex-wife, Anna, had told him he was a reassuring presence. People believe you, and they trust you to help them. She said he looked capable and dependable. And that was true. Whatever turbulence was going on below, the surface remained calm.
Wingate nodded carefully. A delicate gesture, as though he was scared it might break. Then he looked back down at the floor.
'Thank you, Detective
.'
Kearney stood up. 'Take care, Simon. I'll see you soon.'
Wingate didn't reply, so Kearney said nothing more. He keyed himself through behind the reception desk and waited for the lift to arrive.
A stupid thing to say.
That was another observation his colleagues would have made. Detective Paul Kearney - always making stupid promises he couldn't keep. He knew full well that what he'd just told Simon Wingate was absurd. There were no guarantees they would find Rebecca at all, never mind alive. And given the way he felt himself disintegrating, Kearney couldn't even be sure he'd still be around if they did.
But he'd made the promise anyway. Because it was what the man needed to hear right now. Because there was nothing else worth saying.
The elevator doors hushed open. He emerged into an open office full of cubicle desks and people talking on headsets. The air hummed with the subdued murmur of phone conversations, and he could smell the clean carpets and polish. At the far side of the office, sky-bright windows looked out over the city. In the distance, the ring road, with all its bridges and underpasses, looked like a series of drab, grey ribbons, tied loosely in bows.
Kearney made his way across, then down the corridor to the office he shared with Todd.
His thoughts returned to Anna.
She'd always said he was dependable, yes, but her perspective on that had changed. The marriage had ended last year, as a result of Kearney drifting - slightly helplessly - into a brief affair. It was a painful memory, but thoughts of both Simon Wingate and his own nightmares kept leading inexorably back to it.
When Anna found out what he'd done, she told him that the worst thing wasn't the affair itself, but every single false 'I love you' he'd uttered to her while it was going on. Afterwards, she'd gone over them in her head, and felt each one as a separate stab of betrayal. Promises that he had known could never be kept, but which he'd made in an attempt to fool them both.
That was the worst thing, she said - far worse than what he'd done. It was the deception that hurt her the most.
* * *
Chapter Six
I wasn't expecting a fanfare when the plane landed and I didn't get one. But I did feel something as I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac. It wasn't electricity, exactly, just a tingle that passed from the soles of my feet up my legs and into my chest - and then seemed to drift away on the light breeze. As though the sensation had been checking it was me and had now hurried away to tell someone I'd arrived.
It was a warm day. Nowhere near as dense a heat as I'd left behind in Italy, but the sky above was clear blue, with a flock of birds heading across, the formation rippling like a fingerprint pressed on water. At ground-level, an enormous expanse of tarmac and yellow lines, with a low, flat terminal in the distance.
I was home.
After a few moments, a single-decker bus arrived, beeping quietly, and I boarded it, taking hold of a rubber strap hanging from the roof. It jolted and sped off, and I watched the plane recede through the back window. At baggage collection, I stood by the conveyor belt, arms folded, foot tapping, watching the luggage pass. I was travelling light, as always. When my small rucksack appeared, I picked it up and walked away quickly.
Two minutes later, I was standing in the throng of the main airport, helpless as a rock in a stream. All around me, for the first time in two years, there was English conversation. It was almost overwhelming. It felt like I'd been sitting in silence for a long time and someone had just turned on twenty televisions.
After finding a cash point and buying a newspaper, I went outside and found the taxi rank.
'Where are you going, mate?'
'Town centre.' I closed the door.
As he drove, I turned my attention to the newspaper. With the crime being local, I'd expected Sarah to be front page news, but she wasn't. Instead, there was a photograph of a different girl below the headline:
FEARS GROW FOR MISSING REBECCA
I scanned it briefly, then opened the paper and found the article on Sarah relegated to the third page:
POLICE SEARCH FIELD IN HUNT FOR BODY
I read it through, but it only confirmed more-or-less what I'd learned yesterday. A walker had spotted the discarded vodka bottles by a wall and called it in. Forensic teams had been on site since yesterday afternoon. And so on.
Something about the wording bothered me though. The whole article seemed a little more non-committal than the report I'd watched yesterday. There had been no official confirmation, for one thing. No further comments from Detective Hunter. And then there was that headline. Police were searching the field. And saying hunt implied it was ongoing.
I leaned forward.
'Have you been following that murder case?' I said. Then I glanced at the paper's front cover and figured I'd better clarify that. 'The girl in the field, I mean?'
'Everyone has.' The taxi driver shook his head. 'Terrible.'
'They've found her, haven't they? It's definitely her.'
'Yeah. They've not said, but what else can it be?'
I sat back, still uneasy. But he was right, of course. The gate, the bottles: it matched the description James had given. So what else could it be? The police might not have confirmed it yet, but maybe they took their time with things like that. The headline might just be worded cautiously.
'You know what gets me the most?' the driver said.
One of his hands was resting lazily on the steering wheel, and his tone of voice suggested he'd mentioned this to a few people.
'What?'
'That she was lying out there all that time.' He shook his head again. 'Sad to think of that.'
Lying out there for five days. Yes, it was sad, and I felt that guilt again. It was irrational, because even if I'd been here, I doubted I could have done anything. But it still felt like I'd let her down somehow. Perhaps it was just because it was sad, and when something like that happens you automatically think of all the ways you could have stopped it. Sadness blurs things, like tears, and it's all too easy for could to become should.
'Well, at least someone's found her now,' I said.
The driver nodded.
'Yeah,' he said. 'Does look that way.'
Two years is a strange length of time to be away from a city.
As we closed in on the centre, I started to recognise the areas we were passing through, and it was an odd sensation. I'd expected the streets here to be filled with old memories, almost as though they'd been waiting around for me, but the opposite was true. In my absence, the place seemed to have become slightly unfamiliar, and I found myself observing it from a distance, noticing the changes and then feeling unsure whether they were real or I'd simply forgotten how it always was.
There certainly wasn't any obvious justification for the sense of dread I'd been feeling. Returning here wasn't anything like as painful as I'd worried it might be.
See? I told myself. This isn't so bad.
Maybe it was even good.
I had the driver drop me by the train station, and then went to a slightly seedy hotel behind it called the Everton. Apart from the vertical neon sign hanging down, it looked more like a bland, grey office block than a place to sleep. I had no idea if my lack of permanent residence was going to be a problem, although I could give the address of the storage unit I'd rented if
I needed to. But if anywhere in the city was going to rent a room no questions asked, I figured this would probably be the place.
The receptionist didn't bat an eyelid.
'How long will you be staying?' he asked. His tone of voice suggested they took bookings from one hour upwards.
'A week,' I guessed. 'We'll take it from there.'
He raised an eyebrow.
'Payment up front for that.'
I clicked my card down on the counter.
Top floor. I looked around my room. It was small, containing little more than a single bed at one end, a wash-basin at the other, and a thin shelf running along at waist-height that
was intended to be a desk. I opened a door - found a toilet and shower cubicle - and closed it again. There was a small window out onto a fire-escape, but nothing to see through it apart from a saw-blade silhouette of industrial roofs.
I put my bag down on the bed and went for a shower.
Half an hour later, I was washed, changed and in a different taxi, heading across town to my first port of call. I'd known Mike since university, and, with Sarah gone, he was the closest thing I had to a friend still living in the city. Under normal circumstances I'd probably have been round there right now. That's what friends do when something hits them hard: they congregate and band together. But when the taxi driver dropped me off outside, I realised this had probably been my first mistake.
The house looked almost the same from the outside - a redbrick semi with a small garden out front, a brown wooden carport over the drive - but there were a few telling differences. The smart white family saloon in the driveway, for one. No way was that fast enough for Mike. And the buzz-cut on the front lawn was, by any stretch of the imagination, far too much effort.
Most of all, I'd always recognised the house from the stickers in the front window: DayGlo pink and yellow stars taped to the inside of the glass. He'd had them at uni, then got hold of a new set when he bought this place shortly afterwards. They weren't there any more. Those stars were so indelibly associated with him that if they were gone I was sure he must be too.
I hesitated on the pavement as the taxi pulled away - then decided I could at least knock. Whoever lived here now might at least have a contact address for forwarding on post.
When he opened the door, it took us both a second to recognise each other.
I got there first. Mike had cut his hair and was wearing an untucked work shirt and suit trousers, but he hadn't changed all that much because he hadn't tried to. From his point of view, though, God only knew what he saw. I was tanned, unshaven, unkempt, and dressed in clothes that probably still had at least a patina of dust from abroad. It seemed that what I'd thought in the hostel was true. People who'd known the old Alex Connor wouldn't recognise him now.
