You Were Gone

by Tim Weaver

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I said in response.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you ever have any dealings with a Catherine Field?’

  A pause. ‘Who?’

  ‘She’s a DS in Charing Cross CID.’

  ‘No, not that I remember. Why?’

  ‘She just came up in relation to something.’

  ‘You in trouble, Raker?’

  Yes. I just don’t know how much.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘But you’re working a case?’

  ‘Maybe the beginnings of one.’

  I thought of the woman, and then of Erik McMillan.

  ‘You ever heard of St Augustine’s?’

  ‘Is that the hospital?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, surprised. ‘So you know it?’

  ‘Not well,’ he said, ‘but I’ve been there. Once.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Probably ten, eleven years ago. A seventeen-year-old girl turned up in the water at Shadwell Basin.’ Kennedy paused. ‘Anyway,’ he said, his Irish accent fainter now, ‘long story short, I went to the hospital to chat to a patient there who had lived with her for a while to see if he knew anything. He didn’t. It was a waste of time, really. He’d been reprogrammed by then.’

  ‘Reprogrammed?’

  ‘You know, rehabilitated or whatever.’

  ‘Did you meet a doctor called McMillan?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘Anything else you remember?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About your trip there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, but then the rest of his sentence fell away. I wondered for a moment if it was because he didn’t actually have anything else to say, and he was just looking for a way to keep me on the line. Other than the father and son he spent his days with on the trawler, he was alone, so I knew he enjoyed these calls. He’d loved being a detective. Now he could only get a taste of it when we talked.

  ‘It’s just a weird place,’ he said finally.

  ‘St Augustine’s?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘In what way’s it weird?’

  ‘Well, you know what it used to be, right?’

  ‘ “Used to be”? No.’

  ‘It was a quarantine centre. If you had leprosy, typhoid, tuberculosis, smallpox – anything like that – you got shipped off there, even if you didn’t want to. It’s why they built it in Thamesmead: the way they designed it, there’s only one way in and one way out, and that’s along a single stretch of road. Before things changed in the sixties, people would just get dropped off there, the gate would get locked, the doors would be bolted, and no one would ever see them again. Also,’ Kennedy said, ‘only half of it’s open.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They only use half the site.’

  I frowned. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. One half of it hadn’t been used in decades, so they closed the whole place down for a couple of years in the early eighties with the idea that they’d restore the entire thing. But by the time they’d done all the rebuilding work on the existing half, they realized all these protected birds had started nesting in the other, shittier side. Anyway, it’s too late now: it’s been designated a nature reserve.’

  ‘So one half just sits there deteriorating?’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ Kennedy said. ‘It feels weird. You’re standing in this ultra-modern hospital, looking out the window at the other half of the site, and it’s broken and run-down; it’s overrun by trees and grass, weeds, birdshit everywhere. That place …’ His words fell away for a moment. ‘It’s like there’s something wrong with it.’

  13

  After dinner, I zeroed in on Erik McMillan.

  Spike was already on the case, putting together a background check for me, but I couldn’t wait and do nothing – I needed to fight back – so I returned to Google and started doing a basic search. Field had told me that McMillan was a doctor with a good reputation and it didn’t take me long to realize she wasn’t joking. He’d published acclaimed research, had written books on the subject of psychiatry and had won countless awards, and to top it all off he was a huge campaigner, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for mental health charities. Understandably, he was well respected and extremely well liked.

  In his late forties and photogenic, he was also attractive, his side-parted black hair perfectly arranged, his beard exact, his choice of glasses – a bright red – adding an unorthodox twist to his appearance. People called him innovative and principled. They said that he was caring.

  So why had he lied to the police about me?

  I returned to the St Augustine’s website and cycled through the links that had failed to work on my phone at the station. Contact and Support Us were self-explanatory, and Foundation just detailed the work of the hospital’s fundraising arm, Asclepius – the Greek god of healing – and featured a series of photographs of staff members and patients at various events. McMillan, with his red glasses, was in a couple of them. I tried to imagine what he might have to gain from lying about me, and what his connection might be to the woman who claimed to be my wife, but I was still struggling to see the link. After that, I went looking for a home address. I couldn’t find one. It was possible he was ex-directory, or he didn’t have a landline, or maybe Erik wasn’t even his given name. It would be in the paperwork Spike sent me, so I moved on.

  Under the History tab, I found a dry, concise account of the hospital since it opened its doors in 1901. They’d downplayed its history as a quarantine centre in the bio, and a series of images – maps of the site from various points in history, including an up-to-date satellite photograph – showed that it was built right on the edge of the Thames. I thought of how the woman had told Field the hospital was close to London City Airport, but it was at least a mile and a half away, north of Thamesmere lake. There were two housing estates on either flank, a newer one to the west and a much older one immediately to the east, built right on the fringes of the nature reserve. If it hadn’t have been for the security fences, boxing the entire St Augustine’s site in, it would have looked like an innocuous industrial site from above.

  I moved on to the What We Do tab.

  The hospital described itself as providing ‘medium-secure inpatient services for adults with mental health illnesses and/or personality disorders’. That meant it wasn’t quite Broadmoor or Ashworth, but the people being treated had almost certainly committed an offence, and were most likely a risk to themselves and the public. Under a subheading titled Who are we?, there were photos of the management team, seven in all, three men and four women. McMillan was second from the top, his job title listed as Clinical Director. He had opted against the glasses this time.

  There were no answers on the hospital website, and McMillan didn’t seem to have any social media accounts, so I shifted my attention back to the woman, to the job she said she had, and to the flat at Chalk Farm.

  I dialled the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich.

  Even though I knew, if the woman even worked there at all, that she wasn’t going to be on shift tonight, I pretended I was trying to locate a nurse.

  ‘What’s their name?’ the woman on the switchboard asked.

  ‘Derryn Raker.’

  I heard my voice splinter, my words catching, and felt a swell of emotion: panic, and sadness, and anger.

  ‘I can’t see anybody of that name on our lists,’ the operator said.

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  I thanked her and put the phone down, realizing I’d been holding my breath. The woman had lied about her place of work, which meant she’d probably lied about plenty of other things too. I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse. Field might start to see that I was telling the truth – because she’d almost certainly got the news from the Queen Elizabeth herself by now – but that didn’t answer the question of why the woman was pretending to be Derryn. It d
idn’t reveal how she knew so much about me, or what her aim was. Was she trying to confuse me? Unsettle me? Throw suspicion on me?

  I turned my attention to the flat in Chalk Farm.

  It took two minutes on the Land Registry website to find out that the flat was owned by an Adam Reinsart. I’d never heard of him before and was pretty certain he hadn’t been a friend or work colleague of Derryn’s. Instead, when I put his name into Google I discovered that he ran a series of successful north London restaurants and – because of that, as well as his involvement with local food banks – his name had frequently featured in the pages of the Hampstead & Highgate Express.

  Again, just like with McMillan, I couldn’t find any connection between him and the woman. I didn’t know her real name, which didn’t help, but I couldn’t see her picture or description in any of the stories about Reinsart or any of the photographs of him – and there were a lot of photographs: in front of his latest restaurant; at Camden Lock as part of an anti-graffiti campaign; dressed in pink, at the start of a fun run; with his wife, who – like Reinsart – was in her sixties – and then with the female manager of his best-known restaurant, XYZ, in Belsize Park. Lots of women, but not the one I was after.

  I put his name into the phone book. There was only one A. Reinsart in that part of the city and he lived at the top of Highgate Hill.

  I went to the bedroom, dug through my drawers and found a prepaid mobile, then brought it back to the living room. I was going to need to lie to him in order to get him to talk to me, and I didn’t want the Met going through his phone records – if it ever came to that – and finding my number on his bill.

  A woman answered. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mrs Reinsart?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m calling from the Metropolitan Police. Is your husband home, please?’

  ‘Uh, yes. The police? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘oh, okay,’ and I heard her place the phone down. In the silence that followed, I felt bad for lying to her, but this was the quickest and most efficient way to get answers. My identity – who I was and what I did – had to remain hidden from her for the same reasons I hadn’t marched up to the door of the flat and demanded the woman let me in. It would just raise more suspicions about me, and would edge me closer to a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Reinsart?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What’s this about?’

  He had a South African accent.

  ‘Mr Reinsart, I’m calling from the Metropolitan Police, but I assure you, there’s nothing to worry about, and you’re not in any trouble. I was just hoping you could help us with our enquiries. Am I correct in saying you own a flat at 2 Sovereign House in Chalk Farm?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Flat number 99?’

  ‘Yes. Is everything okay with it?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, sir. We’re investigating a crime that took place nearby and I was hoping to get in touch with the person who is currently renting the flat from you but we haven’t been able to speak to them. No one is answering the door.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said.

  ‘Why’s that, sir?’

  ‘Well, because there’s no one living there at the moment.’

  I paused: surprised, confused. ‘The flat’s empty?’

  ‘My last tenant moved out at the end of November, and the new one isn’t due to move in until January. Uh …’ I heard the sound of pages being turned. ‘The, uh, the 6th of January.’

  ‘Does anyone else have keys?’

  ‘Sure. The rental agency will have a couple.’

  ‘Which agency are you using?’

  ‘Hammond’s on Highgate Road.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘No, no one else has keys.’

  I could tell by his voice that he was getting suspicious, that the cogs were beginning to turn. I tried not to let him affect my own reasoning, and focused on how the woman hadn’t had a set of keys either. So was that why the door was off the latch? Had she left it like that? Could she have been living rough there?

  ‘What was the name of your last tenant, Mr Reinsart?’

  ‘Mark Wissich.’

  ‘Did he live alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives now?’

  ‘He emigrated to Australia at the end of November.’

  I’d been writing Wissich’s name down, but now put a line through it.

  ‘And your new tenant? What’s their name?’

  ‘Uh …’ Pages being turned. ‘Kevin Eggers.’

  ‘But he doesn’t have a key yet?’

  ‘No,’ Reinsart said. ‘He’ll pick them up from Hammond’s on the 6th of January.’

  Even if the woman was living rough in the flat, how could she possibly have found out that it was empty? She’d told Field she lived with me, but appeared to have connections to Woolwich, and both of those places were at least ten miles away from Chalk Farm, so it seemed highly unlikely she’d just stumbled across an unoccupied, unlocked flat in a completely different part of the city.

  I thanked Reinsart and hung up.

  It was after 10 p.m., and much too late to call Hammond’s, so I tried to figure out where I went next. As I did, my gaze stopped on a drawer in the sideboard, one I hadn’t looked inside for a long time. I got up, went across to it and slowly slid it open.

  It was full of old video-camera tapes.

  I hadn’t thought about them in a couple of years, and I hadn’t watched them in even longer.

  They were all home movies of Derryn.

  14

  I selected two at random.

  The first was recorded on a skiing holiday we’d taken to the Austrian Alps in February 2002. In the footage, we weren’t out on the slopes; instead, Derryn was walking ahead of me, through the local village, looking over her shoulder and smiling as I filmed us approaching the restaurant we were eating in. The village was beautiful, utterly picturesque, its rows of timber buildings dwarfed by grey folds in vast, snow-streaked mountains.

  I asked her what she was going to have for dinner.

  My voice sounded different, stronger somehow, my words crackling slightly as my mouth drifted close to the microphone. Derryn smiled again at me, looking into the lens of the camera. She always hated being filmed.

  ‘Glühwein,’ she replied.

  ‘For starters?’

  ‘Starters, mains and dessert.’

  She flicked me a V sign, not bothering to turn around this time, and then doing so eventually, her face outlined by the blue hood of the ski jacket she was wearing. I paused the film, studying her, looking for things that I could see were different from the woman claiming to be her – the eyes, the shape of her jaw, the teeth. Derryn had chipped one of her central incisors on the edge of a surfboard during a trip we’d made to Cape Town one year, and while it had been repaired, the chip itself had remained a different shade of white. It was a small thing, a tiny defect that most people wouldn’t even notice, but it was a thing I remembered with absolute clarity now I saw it again, and I didn’t recall the woman having the same imperfection, though it would have been hard to see, even on an HD feed. She definitely didn’t have the same colour eyes or the same lips either – not quite – nor the same chin, and she didn’t speak like Derryn was speaking here. She hadn’t emphasized the same words.

  Because she isn’t my wife.

  I said it over and over to myself, trying to settle the turbulence in my head, and then carried on watching. I’d taken the camera out on the slopes the next day, keeping it in a backpack, and, with the wind roaring in the microphone, I’d filmed the two of us descending into the valley. On the TV, I watched Derryn weave a series of perfect turns, so smooth and capable on the snow that she was soon far ahead of me, like a blob of ink on an alabaster wall.

  The film cut away again, to late
r on, the two of us in the ski lift, heading back up the angle of the slope, people like ants below our dangling feet. She was filming this time.

  ‘Are you scared?’ she said. ‘Admit it, you’re scared.’

  Onscreen, I smiled. In the living room, I smiled too.

  ‘Ooooh yeah,’ I told her. ‘I’m absolutely terrified.’

  ‘We’ve made a bet, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Room service for the person who gets down the slope fastest.’

  ‘Room service? I thought the bet was one euro.’

  ‘You always were tight with money, Raker.’

  That made me smile again onscreen, my whole face lighting up. I hardly recognized the person I was watching. It had been so long since I’d smiled like that. It wasn’t even a reaction to her comment, really, a jokey, throwaway line she always used whenever money came up. Instead, it was a reflection of who we were at the time and who we’d been all the way up until the end. It was a reaction that spoke so eloquently of our marriage, its comfort, without a single word being uttered.

  My phone started ringing.

  I was so hypnotized by what I was seeing, it took me a couple of seconds to register the sound. When I did, I hurriedly paused the video, picked up my mobile and looked at the number.

  Tanya Rye, one of Derryn’s best friends.

  They’d been at nursing college together. I hadn’t spoken to her in months – maybe even a year – but I’d left a message for her while I was waiting for the woman in the shadows outside Charing Cross police station. I’d been confused at the time, completely knocked off balance, and I’d needed somewhere to go for reassurance.

  ‘Hey, Tanya,’ I said, trying to sound relaxed.

  My eyes were still fixed on the TV; on the frozen image of Derryn.

  ‘David Raker,’ she replied, clearly surprised that I’d left her a message.

  ‘Thanks for calling back. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. I hope it’s not too late?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, not at all. I’m sorry it’s been so long.’

  ‘It’s fine. I mean, it’s lovely to hear from you.’

  ‘How are you? How are Mick and the kids?’