by Tim Weaver
Somehow it seemed unlikely. To believe that, I had to be willing to believe she’d fooled Field twice on Skype, and a detective from Edinburgh face-to-face, and while people capable of lying that effectively did exist – I’d met them myself – they were rare.
As I found more photos of the three of them at the other end of the hallway, of extended family too – his mother and father, Kelly’s parents, cousins – I thought about Derryn again. My Derryn. If this was all about her, if it had started with her, where were the links to her in McMillan’s life? Where were the links to the woman pretending to be her? How the hell was I ever going to find her if I couldn’t find McMillan?
I moved further in.
To the left was the living-room door and a staircase; to the right, a dining room, what appeared to be a study, and a kitchen at the rear. The back garden was fenced in, and had a patio, a shed, and a row of fir trees at the bottom. Beside me, I could hear a soft gurgle from the nearest radiator and moans in the walls as pipes pumped hot water around.
I entered the living room and found expensive furniture, shelves in coves next to a chimney breast with a woodburner in it, a piano near the TV, surround-sound speakers, and modern art on the walls. More photos too, mostly of Kelly and Caitlin. I checked them over, looking for things that didn’t seem right. A few had been removed from their frames, presumably by the police for use in any future appeal for information.
Upstairs, at the top of the landing, I looked both ways. To my left were two doorways and some windows at the end, part of the converted chimney stack I’d seen from outside the first time I’d been here. Built around the windows were shelves, filled with books, more photos and trinkets.
I looked over the rooms, going through drawers, opening cupboards, using the light from the torch to illuminate murky interiors, and – when I came up short again – headed upstairs to the third floor. It was a loft conversion, a master bedroom with a wet room built at the end, behind a three-quarter wall. Skylights were on either side, above a row of built-in wardrobes, and there was the continuation of the chimney stack too, more of its windows flooding the floor with grey light.
I started with the wardrobes, going through his clothes, boxes he’d stacked at the bottom, pulling them out and digging around inside. When I was done with those, I moved on to his bedside cabinets: one was basically empty, except for a few charging cables; the other was full, clearly the one he used every night.
Inside, I found more photographs, these ones loose. They must have been twelve years old, as Caitlin looked about eight or nine. In one, the three of them were at Disneyworld. In another, presumably on the same holiday, they were at Kennedy Space Center. There was one of Caitlin and Kelly on a British beach somewhere. Another at a waterfront in Spain. One in a meadow. One of them eating fish and chips in St Ives. There were also photographs of McMillan with his parents, and McMillan and Kelly together, all pretty innocent.
I put them back, feeling a strange sense of guilt as I did – not at being here, illegally, inside McMillan’s home, but at invading the sanctity of his family through their pictures, through the only medium in which the three of them existed now.
And then I stopped again, realizing I’d made an error.
I’d missed something.
Behind the shot of the three of them at Disneyworld was another photograph, its corner poking out. The two of them had become stuck together over time, one disguised behind the other.
I prised them apart.
The one I’d almost missed was taken at an office party, balloons tacked to a wall above two desks. There was a corkboard full of notices off to one side. In the middle of the shot were four men and three women. Neither Kelly nor Caitlin was in this one, just McMillan.
This was somewhere at St Augustine’s.
Faintly, stencilled next to the corkboard, I could see its name spelled out above some sort of coat of arms, and one of the men was still wearing a lab coat, pens in his breast pocket. I turned the photograph over, but there was nothing written on the back – no description or date – so I flipped it again and drew it closer to me.
My gaze returned to the doctor in the lab coat. He was the same sort of age as McMillan, but not as handsome or well turned out – his hair was thinning, he was a little overweight – but he had vivid green eyes and his arm was around the woman next to him and they were laughing about something.
I looked at him, trying to figure out what it was that had caught my attention. Did I recognize him from somewhere? Where would I have seen him? Could he be the man in the CCTV footage from Chalk Farm? Could he be the man I’d found talking to Derryn that day at the hospital? Derryn had said that man was a patient – or, at least, that’s what I recalled her saying, but all of that had happened almost nine years ago. Could I have misheard her, or just misremembered?
Could he have been a doctor?
Even if all I had was a vague memory of the person at the hospital, the doctor in the photograph was definitely too chunky to be the man in the CCTV video, probably too tall as well, and the man in the footage – from what I’d been able to see of him in the shadows – was shorter, more toned, and had a fuller head of hair.
So what had given me pause?
I looked at McMillan and then back to the man in the lab coat, his face, the people he was with, and then my eyes drifted to his breast pocket again, to a name badge clipped to it. I had to look hard, because the writing on it was small, but – at the top, in precise, bold type – I could just about make out his name.
Instantly, I felt a charge of electricity.
Ask your father about Dartford.
That had been what someone had said to Caitlin in the second phone call from the payphone in Plumstead on 28 December. Field had told me they’d sent someone down to Kent to look into it – but what if whoever had made that call wasn’t talking about the town in Kent? What if they’d been talking about a person?
I looked at the doctor’s badge again.
It said, Dr B. Dartford.
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I pocketed the picture, knowing I’d got lucky: because it had got stuck to the back of another photograph, because the police hadn’t done a detailed forensic search of the house yet, they’d either not seen the photograph or they’d missed it completely. Now I had to make the most of it.
I found the number for St Augustine’s and hit Call. After a couple of rings, I got through to the main switchboard.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Can you put me through to Dr Dartford, please?’
‘Dr …?’
‘Dartford.’
‘Um, that doctor’s not on my list. Can I put you on hold for a moment?’
I told the operator that was fine and, as I listened to a rendition of Beethoven’s Sixth, I headed downstairs. At the windows in the living room, I peeled back the curtains and made sure no one was approaching the house.
The street was quiet.
The woman came back on the line: ‘My colleague tells me that Dr Dartford hasn’t worked here for seven years. She says he died in 2010.’
‘He’s dead?’
‘That’s what I’m told. It was before I started here, I’m afraid.’
‘Does your colleague know what he died of?’
I heard her place a hand over the phone and ask the question. When she came back on, she said, ‘He was killed in a car accident, apparently.’
I thanked her and hung up, going to Google. It took me less than ten seconds to confirm what she’d said: Bruce Dartford had been killed in a pile-up on the M1, coming back from a medical conference in Sheffield. He’d hit a jackknifed lorry.
Ask your father about Dartford.
Was I wrong then?
What if the call to Caitlin was about Dartford, the town?
I looked around the house, wondering if there might be anything else here, hidden away somewhere, that might help answer the question. For now, though, I dug around for a number Field had given me for Caitlin McMillan and fished out the p
repaid phone I’d packed earlier. It rang for so long I thought I was going to have to leave a message – but just as I was about to terminate the call, she picked up.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Caitlin?’
‘Yes. Who’s this?’
‘Caitlin, my name’s Detective Smith. I’m part of the team looking into your father’s disappearance.’ The words felt sour in my mouth: I hated the idea of lying to her – it felt almost like lying to Annabel – but it was the quickest way to get her onside. ‘Have you got a few minutes to answer some questions for me?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course.’
Her voice sounded small, troubled.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
She didn’t answer for a second. ‘I don’t know. Sick, I guess. I feel a long way away too. I just don’t know why Dad would do this. Why would he disappear?’
Carmichael, Field and their teams had clearly avoided giving Caitlin too much information, partly because they needed to contain the search for McMillan, but also – I suspected – because they needed Caitlin to be as lucid as possible in moments like this. If she knew the extent of McMillan’s problems, based on what Field had said about her idolizing her father, it would completely destroy her. His flawless outline would crumble in front of her. Yet, despite the damage that McMillan had done to me, I didn’t want to be the one to send the wrecking ball to his daughter.
‘As soon as we know anything, Caitlin,’ I said, ‘I promise you we’ll tell you, but in the meantime, could I ask you those questions?’
‘Okay.’
‘You last heard from your father on Thursday – is that right?’
‘Yes. I got this weird call and I wanted to ask him about it.’
‘ “Ask your father about Dartford.” ’
‘That’s right,’ she said. She sounded perplexed, misled.
‘He told you he didn’t know what that meant?’
‘Neither of us had the first idea, no.’
‘And you didn’t recognize the caller’s voice?’
‘No.’
I wandered through to the back of the house, checking the garden. As I did, I said, ‘Did the caller have a regional accent?’
‘Not that I noticed.’
‘And he hasn’t called since?’
‘No.’
I was still holding the photograph of Dr B. Dartford in my hands. ‘Did your father ever mention anyone called Dartford? Maybe someone he worked with?’
‘Not that I can remember.’
‘Ever remember him mentioning a colleague called Bruce?’
‘Bruce?’ She thought about it. ‘No, that doesn’t ring any bells either. Sorry. Dad used to talk about his work with me all the time, because I wanted to be a psychiatrist, just the same as him, especially after my mum got ill. I guess …’ She stopped. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice breaking up a little, ‘it sounds really naive and simplistic saying it aloud, but maybe I thought I could make her better.’
Except no one could make her better.
Not Caitlin, not McMillan himself.
I gave her a moment.
‘Did he talk much about his colleagues?’
‘Not a great deal. When we talked about Dad’s work, it was always about the work side of things – you know, the actual blueprint of psychiatry, what it took to get to where Dad is, his view on things, how he became so well respected. He said one day maybe we’d end up working in the same facility.’
‘At St Augustine’s?’
‘Maybe.’
That was another wish that would never materialize now. McMillan’s lies, the paucity of his file on me, the total lack of evidence that I was ever in his care – those things would cast long shadows. They would end his career.
‘Can you think of anywhere your dad might have gone?’
She took a long breath. ‘Nowhere,’ she said, and then I felt a flicker of a change in her tone, as if she was getting suspicious. I didn’t blame her. She’d already answered these questions.
‘I know we’ve been over this,’ I said, trying to reassure her. ‘I’m sorry for dragging it out.’
She sighed a little, seemed to relax again. ‘I can’t think of anywhere I haven’t said already,’ she went on. ‘I mean, I gave you guys all the places we used to go to on holiday. I basically gave you everything I could think of. If he’s not in those places …’ She faded out, sniffed. ‘I just don’t …’
She was choking up.
I wondered which places she’d suggested to the police, and how I could get her to run through them again without raising suspicion. But then I wondered if it even really mattered. If he’d gone anywhere obvious, it was almost certain the Met would have picked up his trail and located him already – which meant it was much more likely he’d gone somewhere no one knew about, including his daughter.
Once I’d thanked Caitlin for her time and tried to give her some small measure of encouragement – even if, ultimately, it was just another lie – I hung up and turned off the mobile. As I was putting it back into my bag, I noticed something: behind the living-room door was a rack, its pegs loaded with keys.
There was a car fob hanging from one of them.
I peeled back the curtains again, peering out at the street, and then grabbed the fob from the rack. Pointing it out of the window, I pressed the Unlock button. Over on my left, eight or nine cars down, a series of flashing lights went off.
Wherever McMillan had gone, he hadn’t taken his vehicle with him. And there was something else too: the morning the woman said she’d been dropped off at the pharmacy, her driver – the man who had taken her there – had got into an argument with a traffic warden. Field said the traffic warden had described the driver as having dark hair and possibly a goatee. McMillan had black hair and a beard. And the same traffic warden said the driver was behind the wheel of a Mondeo or a Lexus.
I looked along the road at McMillan’s car.
It was a Lexus RC.
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I checked my surroundings as I approached the car and then opened the driver’s door and slid in at the wheel.
It smelled new, the leather seats smooth and unblemished, but the car wasn’t entirely unmarked: I could see fingerprint dust on the steering wheel and along the passenger’s door – on the area above the glove compartment too. The police must have spotted the car and made the same connection I had, then dusted the passenger side in the hope of confirming that the woman had been in here. It made me wonder why Field hadn’t told me that McMillan owned a Lexus. Was this something else she’d deliberately kept back from me – or was it simply because she’d already dismissed it as a coincidence? The car definitely wasn’t the right colour: the traffic warden had said the vehicle he’d seen was light blue or grey, while McMillan’s Lexus was a bottle green. And the registration plate didn’t match either: the one at the pharmacy ended in MX; McMillan’s was personalized.
Even if she had written it off as a coincidence, Field had still had the car dusted, maybe because a fluke like this never sat entirely comfortably with a detective. But even as I accepted that as the most likely sequence of events, I couldn’t let my suspicions go entirely: what if the reason Field hadn’t mentioned McMillan owning a Lexus was because she really was keeping me in the dark? When I’d left her at the arches, I hadn’t been able to kick the idea that she was hiding something, and since then I’d found out about the man on the CCTV video and McMillan’s car. So if she didn’t want me digging, if she didn’t want me knowing these things, why tell me about the case and give me the alarm code for McMillan’s house?
Uncertain of the answers, I refocused and leaned over, checking the glove compartment, but only found manuals, handbooks, a packet of mints and some hand sanitizer inside. Snapping it shut again, I checked the rear seats. They were pretty much spotless.
Getting back out, I went around to the boot and popped it open. There was a gym bag, a picnic blanket rolled up at the very bac
k, and a collection of ‘bags for life’ scrunched into the corner. A bottle of de-icer, an ice scraper, some towing cables. It was certain the police had been in here too.
I pulled the gym bag towards me and unzipped it. It smelled fresh, washed. I yanked everything out, checking the interior of the bag. There were two zip pockets but all I found was a membership card for a gym in Thamesmead and a fixture list for a five-a-side league. Zipping it up again, I pushed the gym bag all the way to the back and lifted up the hatch for the tyre well.
Just a breakdown kit and a spare.
Leaving everything as I’d found it, I slammed the boot shut and used the fob to lock the car.
Then I stopped, a fresh idea forming.
Unlocking the door again, I got back in at the wheel and started the engine. On the dashboard, the seven-inch screen sprang into life.
I tapped a finger to Nav.
This sort of thing was always easy to overlook.
Some options appeared in a horizontal strip. I tapped Destination and then Previous Destinations. A list of the places that McMillan had been to – and had used the satnav for – were in a list on the right. He’d utilized the function a lot in the short time he’d had the car, especially on his daily journey to St Augustine’s, not because he didn’t know his way across the city, but because the satellite updated the system in real time with information about traffic accidents and roadworks, helping him to avoid hold-ups.
I moved down the list.
Using my phone, I started cross-checking postcodes that I didn’t recognize in Google. A lot turned out to be conference centres, universities and hospitals, places he’d gone to deliver talks or to lead workshops or to train people. There was a postcode in Edinburgh, close to the university, which must have been where Caitlin was living, and a cemetery in Richmond that he’d been to three times in two months. That was obviously where Kelly was buried.
