Chasing the Dead dr-1

by Tim Weaver

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard you,’ I replied, and looked around again. ‘Who does the flat belong to?’

  ‘You just made a big mistake.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve made them before.’

  ‘Not like this.’ The line crackled and hissed. ‘Listen to me: you get back in your car and you drive back to wherever the fuck it is you’re from, and you forget about everything you’ve found. You don’t ever come out of your hole again. Is that clear?’

  I took the phone away from my ear and looked at the display. Another withheld number. ‘Who does the flat belong to?’

  ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘What’s the Calvary Project?’

  ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Where’s Alex Towne?’

  ‘You’re not listening to me, David.’

  I stopped. ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘One chance.’

  ‘How the fuck do you know my name?’

  ‘This is your one chance.’

  Then the line went dead.

  15

  The restaurant overlooked Hyde Park. At the windows were a series of booths, dressed up like an American diner, with mini jukeboxes on the tables playing Elvis on rotation. Above me on the wall was a clock showing 10.40, Mickey Mouse’s arms pointing to the ten and the eight. Three booths along were a French couple and, beyond them, a group of kids eating toast and jam. Apart from that, the place was empty.

  On the table in front of me, I had the pad I’d taken from the apartment and the mobile phone I’d picked up off the grass outside. Just like the phone in the flat, there were no contact numbers in the address book, nothing on the ‘recent calls’ list and no saved messages. Maybe they’d never used it. Or maybe they really did wipe it clean after every use.

  A waitress came over carrying my breakfast. An omelet, some toast and lots of coffee. She set it down and wandered off again. I loved coffee, sometimes even lived off it. It was probably as close as I got to an addiction. Food didn’t appeal to me in the same way as it had once, mainly because eating on your own wasn’t fun, but also because I’d become lazy during marriage. Derryn had been an incredible cook, and it had been safer, and tastier, for us both if she made the meals. Since she’d been gone, I tried to have a good breakfast and then usually didn’t worry too much about lunch. Maybe a sandwich from a packet, or a salad in a tub. Always a coffee. In the evenings, I ate small and late, usually in front of the news or watching something on DVD.

  I filled my mug and, while I waited for the food to cool, started going through the phone again. Dropping it had been a mistake, but a mistake they could probably live with. There was nothing on it that would lead back to them. No incriminating evidence. No numbers. Nothing traceable. But whatever their connection to Alex, they were still warning me off something. Perhaps I was close, perhaps I wasn’t, but it was clear I’d made some inroads.

  I pulled the pad towards me.

  When I’d been inside the flat, the light from the windows had been shining across the surface of the paper. It had highlighted the scars and grooves left from notes that had been made on previous sheets. I asked the waitress for a pencil and gently rubbed the tip of it across the pad. Slowly, words started to emerge. In the top right: Must phone Vee. In the middle, lighter and less defined, a series of names: Paul. Stephen. Zack. Towards the bottom, barely even legible until I held it right up to the window, was a telephone number.

  I picked up my phone and dialled it.

  Eventually, someone answered. ‘Angel’s, Soho.’

  I waited, could hear people talking in the background.

  ‘Is this Angel’s pub?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I waited some more, then hung up.

  I gave directory enquiries the number, and they told me the address that was listed for it. It was a pub on the edge of Chinatown. But I knew that even before I’d made the call. During my apprenticeship, I was paired with an old guy called Jacob, an experienced reporter who covered the City. Angel’s was his local at the time. He stopped going a couple of years later, after retiring to the Norfolk countryside.

  But I didn’t.

  I continued going right the way up until Derryn got ill.

  * * *

  My car was on the other side of the park. I entered at Hyde Park Corner and headed towards the Serpentine. Everything was quiet. The trees were skeletal and bare; the water in the lake dark and still. The only movement on its surface were two model boats, gliding and drifting, their sails catching the wind. I carried on walking, taken in by the smell and sounds of the place; of the grass covered by a blanket of fallen leaves; of the oaks and elms stripped bare as winter approached.

  Kids ran across in front of me, their muddy footprints a reminder of where they’d been and how often. Their parents watched from the side: chatting, laughing, their breath drifting away. It made me ache with loneliness. I remembered the times Derryn and I had talked about wanting a family, about what it would be like to hold our baby for the first time, or walk, hand in hand, with our son or daughter to school. We’d been trying for fifteen months when she got cancer, and — after that — we never got to try again.

  Sometimes I remembered the sense of finality as I watched her coffin being lowered into the ground. The feeling that there was no doubt any more; she was gone and she wasn’t coming back. I knew, deep down, there was no way Alex could have died in that car crash and still be alive, in the same way I knew there was no way Derryn could be. Yet, when I looked in Mary’s eyes, I only saw conviction there, so lucid, as if she had no doubt in what she was telling me. And I knew a small part of me wanted her to be right. I wanted Alex to be alive, however impossible it seemed. And the need to find out was driving me on, and, at least temporarily, helping me forget the loneliness.

  * * *

  After days of heavy skies and biting winds, snow finally started falling as I got back to the car. I climbed in, put the heaters on full blast and started scrolling through the numbers on my mobile. When I got to the one I wanted, I hit ‘Call’.

  ‘Citizens Advice Bureau.’

  I smiled. ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ the voice said.

  ‘Citizens Advice?’

  ‘David?’

  ‘Yeah. How you doing, Spike?’

  ‘Man, it’s been ages.’

  We chatted for a while, catching up. Spike lived in Camden Town and was the dictionary definition of illegal: a Russian hacker on an expired student visa running a cash-only information service out of his flat. During my days on the newspaper, when I still cared about naming and shaming politicians, I used him a lot.

  ‘So, what can I do you for you, man?’

  He spoke that form of American-influenced English that a lot of Europeans used, picked up by watching hours of music videos and TV shows.

  ‘I need you to fire up the super computer.’

  ‘Course I can. What you got?’

  ‘A mobile phone — I want to find out who it belongs to. It’s got no numbers on it, no address book. If I gave you the serial number and the SIM, could you find out where the phone was bought — maybe who it’s registered to?’

  ‘Yeah, no problem. You’ll have to give me a couple of hours, though.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I gave him all the details and then my phone number.

  ‘Oh, and my fee’s gone up a bit,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever it takes, Spike.’

  I hung up — and, within seconds, the phone was buzzing again. I looked down at the display. john cary. I’d forgotten to chase him up again.

  ‘John,’ I said, answering. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you.’

  No response.

  ‘I left a couple of messages.’

  ‘I can’t talk for long,’ he replied.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You still want that photograph looked at?’

  ‘Definitely.’
/>
  ‘Send it to me at home. I know a couple of people at the Forensic Science Service, and one of them owes me a favour from a while back. I can ask him to take a look at it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No.’ The line drifted. ‘But make the most of it.’

  ‘Look, I really appreci—’

  ‘I’m probably making the biggest mistake of my life.’

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. But I knew my instincts had been right: what had happened to Alex still ate at him, and a part of him longed for closure.

  I killed the call and watched the snow slide down the windscreen, my thoughts turning back to Angel’s. The last time I’d ever been inside, the winter had been the same as this one: long and cold, stretching from the beginning of November all the way through to the end of February. Two different times, both connected — like a small part of my past was now merging with the present.

  16

  Angel’s was a thin building, west of Charing Cross Road. Snow was already piling up against the door when I arrived. Next to it, barred like a cell, was a small window. I peered inside. It was dark; a square of white light at the back was all I could make out. Above me were a pair of neon angel’s wings, and next to the doorway a sign that said it wasn’t open until midday. I looked at my watch. 11.40.

  ‘You’re early.’

  I turned. ‘Woah! Where did you come from?’

  A woman was standing behind me, looking me up and down. She was in her mid-forties, pale and boyish, her blonde hair from a bottle, her eyes grey and small. I smiled at her, but she just shook her head. She glanced from the door of the pub to the sky, then pulled her long, fake fur coat tighter around her.

  ‘Come back in twenty minutes.’ She started unlocking the door.

  ‘I’m not here to drink.’

  She turned to me, disgusted. ‘You wanna strip joint, you’ve come to the wrong place.’

  ‘I’m not here for that either.’

  She pushed the door open and stepped into the open doorway. ‘You wanna chat?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘This ain’t the Samaritans.’ She went to push the door closed, but I shoved a foot in next to it and took a step up to the doorway. She didn’t look surprised — as if it happened a lot.

  ‘There ain’t no money here.’

  Her accent was strong. East End.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to rob you.’

  She stared at me, then rolled her eyes. ‘The Old Bill. Shit, this must be my lucky day.’

  ‘I’m not a police officer either.’

  She tossed her coat inside, across one of the tables near the door. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘No.’

  I rubbed my hands together. ‘We’ll just freeze to death out here, then.’

  She glanced up and down the street as snow settled around us, then looked at me and rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever,’ she said, sighing, and gestured for me to follow her in.

  It had hardly changed since the last time I’d been in. They’d replaced the wallpaper — but nothing else. The room was long and narrow, with a five-pointed cove at the back big enough for a couple of tables, and a jukebox wired up to the far wall.

  ‘So, what’s going down, Magnum?’ she said.

  I turned back to her. She was smiling at her joke. I removed my pad and a pen and set it down on the bar, sliding in at one of the stools. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  I got out my driver’s licence and held it up to her. ‘My name’s David Raker. I used to be a journalist.’

  She frowned, leaned in towards the licence. ‘Journalist?’

  ‘Used to be.’

  She glanced at me. ‘Jade.’

  ‘That’s your name?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Pretty name.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘You’re not used to compliments?’

  ‘From good-looking boys like you?’ She shook her head. ‘No. Last time I had a man tell me my name was pretty, he was twenty stone and had a comb-over that went all the way to his chin.’

  I smiled. ‘That’s my weekend look.’

  She went to smile and then it disappeared again, as if she’d reined it back in. She looked me up and down a second time, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘So, how long you on for today?’ I asked her.

  ‘Till seven.’

  ‘Looking forward to it.’

  ‘Like a hole in the head.’

  I fiddled with my notepad. It was a new page. Blank. She walked behind the bar, and leaned across it, staring down at the pad.

  ‘Looks like an interesting story.’

  ‘Could be, yeah.’

  ‘So, what’s a journalist want in this shithole?’

  I turned on the stool. ‘At least this shithole’s got new wallpaper since the last time I came in.’

  ‘That a fact?’

  ‘How long you been here?’

  ‘I don’t know — six months maybe.’

  I noticed a couple of photos on the wall behind me. I got down off the stool and wandered over. One was a picture of a woman I recognized. She was surrounded by a bunch of regulars on New Year’s Eve, three years ago. Her name was Evelyn. She worked behind the bar back when I used to come in with Jacob. I’d got to know her pretty well — well enough to tell her a little of my life, and for her to really mean she was sorry when I told her Derryn had cancer.

  ‘Evelyn still around?’

  ‘No.’

  I turned back to her. ‘When did she leave?’

  A flicker of something. ‘Dunno.’

  I studied her. ‘You don’t know when she left?’

  ‘It was before my time.’

  I walked back to the bar and sat down on the stool again. She didn’t look or sound convinced by what she was saying, but I couldn’t see a reason for her to lie.

  I moved on.

  ‘I’m trying to find someone who might have had a connection with this place. If I show you a picture of him, maybe you could tell me if you’ve seen him in here or not.’

  She nodded. I took out a picture Mary had given me of Alex and handed it to her. She squinted at it, as if she was a little short-sighted.

  ‘What’s his name?’ she asked.

  ‘Alex Towne.’

  Her eyes flicked to me across the top of the photo.

  ‘You know him?’

  She took a moment more, then handed the photo back to me. ‘No.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Course I’m sure.’

  In my top pocket I had a list of names, taken from the pad in the apartment at Eagle Heights. I unfolded it.

  ‘You got any regulars with names like these?’

  I’d rewritten the names on a separate piece of paper, one under the other. She read down the list and shrugged. ‘Probably.’

  ‘You do or you don’t?’

  ‘How the fuck am I supposed to know?’ she said. ‘This ain’t exactly the Ritz, I know, but this place gets busy. Lotta people comin’ and goin’.’

  I took the list back. ‘I’ll take that as a no.’

  ‘For someone who’s not a copper, you ask a lot of questions, Magnum.’

  ‘Just interested,’ I said, and looked around the pub again.

  Something didn’t feel right about what Jade had said. Either she knew when Evelyn left or she didn’t. And there was something else too. Her eyes had moved when I’d first handed her the picture of Alex, and her skin had flushed. I’d read books back when I first started getting big interviews on the paper, about kinesics and how to interpret body language. Pupil dilation, skin flushing and changes in muscle tone were all unconscious responses to lying.

  I turned back to her. She looked suspicious now, unsure about what I was doing. Maybe it was a natural suspicion, built up from her hours working in here. Or maybe she really was lying to me, and was startin
g to think I’d seen through it.

  Suddenly, the door to the pub opened. We both looked round as a couple of old men came in talking. One of them laughed and glanced towards the bar.

  ‘Morning, Jade. Are we too early?’

  She looked at me, then back to them.

  ‘No, Harry.’

  They shuffled up to the bar. One of them slid in at a stool and started fiddling in his pockets for change; the other stood next to him and eyed up the beers on tap. When they were finished, they both glanced at the photograph of Alex, and then at me.

  ‘Morning,’ Harry said.

  I nodded at both of them, then turned to Jade. ‘Is Alex Towne alive?’

  For a second I thought I saw something in her face, before she moved to the back of the bar and picked up two empty pint glasses.

  ‘Jade?’

  The two men looked between us.

  She started filling one of the glasses, pulling on the pump and looking straight at me — as if proving she had nothing to hide. When she was done with the first beer, she duplicated the movement for the second.

  ‘You okay, Jade?’ Harry said.

  She nodded.

  The old men looked between us again, trying to figure out if I was bothering her. They probably already knew what I’d found out in the ten minutes I’d been talking to her: Jade couldn’t be pushed around, and wouldn’t be intimidated — at least not while she was inside the safety of the pub.

  I scooped up the notepad and the photo and left. But that wasn’t the end of it. I’d be back at seven when she came off her shift — and this time she wouldn’t see me coming.

  17

  St John the Baptist church was in Redbridge, a depressing pocket of London close to the North Circular. Ugly, fading tower blocks cast shadows across the streets; melting snow ran from holes in the flyover; black exhaust fumes disappeared into the sky. As I parked the car, half-hidden behind an Indian takeaway, the church’s triangular roof rose out of the grey.

  Despite the setting, it was an attractive, modern building: all cream walls and exposed beams. A huge crucifix hung above the door, beautifully carved from wood. Christ looked down from the centre of the cross, a glimmer of hope in his face.