You Were Gone

by Tim Weaver

‘It was in his house.’

  I let out a breath, as if I’d been holding it in for days, and the relief flooded through me. I’m not going mad. I turned away from Field, the emotion forming a lump in my throat, my vision smearing. The death certificate hadn’t just existed in my head. I’m not going mad. He stole it from me. That was why it hadn’t been in the loft. Did that mean the face in the alley had been real? The heart on the window? Those hours alone with the woman in my house? If one was real, all of them had to be real. And if that was true, I wasn’t losing it. I wasn’t sick.

  I was being played.

  When I returned my gaze to her, Field was staring at me. It could just have been the way the shadows lay across her, but it looked as if there was an apologetic slant to her face now. She understood why I’d tried to fudge the question of the death certificate: because I’d gone up into the loft and it hadn’t been there. It had been taken.

  ‘So is this why you’ve had a change of heart?’ I asked her. ‘You realize now I’m not some fantasist?’

  ‘They found pictures of the woman,’ she said, by way of reply.

  With her spare hand, she reached into her jacket pocket, unlocked her phone and went to her photographs. In the lack of light, I could see everything on the screen: she’d taken shots of some of the evidence recovered at the scene of Roddat’s suicide, all of it bagged and marked. When she got to the picture she wanted, she turned it around and held it up for me to see. Another evidence bag, this time with an actual, physical photograph inside it. It was a close-up of the woman’s face.

  ‘He had hundreds of these,’ she said.

  ‘Just photos of her face?’

  Field shook her head. ‘Her face, her body – every inch of her, basically. They’re all taken against a blank wall, but they’re all of the woman. Different clothes, front on, profile, chin up, chin down, hair up, hair down. But she’s fully clothed in every single one of them. These aren’t sexual. It’s like some kind of academic study.’

  I thought of the article on FeedMe.

  ‘He was the source,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  I looked at her. ‘Now we know who “Crime and Punishment” must have got the woman’s photograph from. Roddat was the source for their story. He must have scanned in one of these pictures and emailed it anonymously. Have you tried tracing the origins of the email that FeedMe received? That way, we can confirm it’s him.’

  Field didn’t say anything.

  ‘Field? Are you listening to me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? No what?’

  ‘We haven’t tried tracing the origins of the email.’

  I frowned. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Roddat wasn’t their source,’ she said quietly. ‘I was.’

  48

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Before you blow your top,’ she said, her voice hard, unrepentant, ‘hear me out. I couldn’t find any trace of this woman anyw–’

  ‘You took that picture of her they published?’

  ‘Just give me a chance to explain.’

  ‘Explain what? That you sold me down the river?’

  She held up a hand, waited. ‘Are you going to give me a chance to speak?’ When I didn’t respond, she said, ‘I needed to try and ID this woman. I couldn’t find any trace of her anywhere – I still can’t find any trace of her anywhere. And now it’s even worse than that because we can’t actually find her. On that first day, the only thing I cared about was trying to work out if this woman was actually your wife.’

  ‘I told you she wasn’t.’

  ‘I’d never even met you before. Did you really expect me to sit there and take your word for it?’

  ‘So you let it play out in the media?’ I stepped back, could hardly even look at her. Deep down, I knew I was a hypocrite: in the past, I’d done things I shouldn’t have in order to progress cases. But, right now, I didn’t feel like playing fair – not when it was about my wife, the woman I’d loved, and the way her death had scythed me in two; not when it was about her memory being perverted, bent out of shape, played with like some toy. ‘Have you got any idea what you’ve done?’ I said to Field, my voice throbbing with anger. ‘Thanks to you, half the country thinks I’m a liar.’

  ‘I thought it would help.’

  ‘Help who? Me? I’ve got tabloid journalists crawling all over me now. They’re digging into everything. Even my own daughter thinks I’m lying.’

  ‘I wanted to ID her as quickly as possible,’ Field said, ‘not wait around for all the boxes to be ticked at Charing Cross. The minute Kent phoned me at home and told me about the call she made, the way she sounded so distressed, the fact that she wasn’t even at the flat when he finally got there – I knew we had to move fast. That same night. If I got a story posted to FeedMe the next morning, maybe her family would see her picture and call us, or a neighbour would recognize her. But no one came forward. No one seems to know who she is. That bothers me as much as anything else. Does it mean her family haven’t seen the article, or does it mean she doesn’t have any family?’

  ‘You asking my opinion now?’

  ‘You would have done the same,’ she said, her tone barely changing at all. She really didn’t think it was a mistake.

  I just looked at her.

  ‘Do you want me to say sorry?’ she said, but if she did it would only be a word, empty of any meaning. ‘Is that what you want, Raker?’

  ‘That piece was a hatchet job.’

  ‘I didn’t have any control over what they wrote.’

  ‘You knew what they would say about me.’

  She nodded, which was about as close to an apology as I would get.

  I took a breath, looking out at the rain. I was angry at her, at everything her actions had set in motion – but, ultimately, what did it matter now? There were bigger things to worry about, starting with where the woman was.

  ‘Why would he call you and Kent?’ I said.

  She leaned in. ‘What?’

  ‘I think it was Roddat who forced the woman to phone into Charing Cross the night she went to the flat. He saw me tailing her. But why? Why would he get her to tell you that I followed her?’

  ‘To shift the spotlight away from himself?’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe he needed to create some breathing room for himself. Maybe he just needed us to spend some time looking at you while he took the woman to wherever they went next.’

  ‘So he did it in order to buy himself some time?’

  I wasn’t convinced, and I got the feeling she wasn’t either.

  ‘Whatever his reasons,’ she said, ‘the evidence is there. The woman went to the flat in Chalk Farm where Roddat was waiting for her. We’ve got that on film. He leaves with her. We’ve got that on film too. She called the station. That’s on record.’

  ‘So why would he kill himself? Why would he go to all that trouble, successfully buy himself some time, and then kill himself? He’d shifted the attention on to me. He’d put you and Kent on alert. It had got to the point where you were in my house taking my DNA; I looked guilty as hell when you asked to see the death certificate, we both knew that, and that story on FeedMe was busy colouring everyone’s opinion of me.’ I paused, looked at her, and then thought of McMillan. ‘I’ve got a whole chunk of time I can’t account for, and a respected doctor telling the world I’m sick, either because he was working with Roddat, or because Roddat had something over McMillan and was manipulating him. Whatever the reason, Roddat was winning. The trap had gone off. So why would he kill himself?’

  ‘Maybe he knew we would find out the truth eventually.’

  ‘Maybe. But something isn’t right.’

  From her face, she seemed to agree.

  In the brief lull, I thought of the video of Roddat taking the woman from Chalk Farm. ‘Have you got any witnesses?’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To anything. Did anyone see anything?’

  ‘The suicide, no. We spoke to the neighbours at his cou
sin’s place and no one saw or heard anything. There’s no CCTV in the street either. As for the night the woman was kidnapped: we’ve managed to identify most of the people who appeared on film before and after Roddat entered the stairwell, and again when he came back down with her, and we’ve spoken to all of them but one so far. They’re all dead ends.’ She put her cigarette between her lips and drew in the smoke. ‘It would help if we could find McMillan.’

  As she said that, I realized something.

  ‘I forgot to follow up on McMillan’s relationship history,’ I admitted. ‘If he’s got a daughter, he must have been married, or engaged, or at least attached.’

  ‘Married. His wife died ten years ago.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘She cut her wrists in the bath.’

  ‘Another suicide?’

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ she said. ‘The coroner said it was open and shut. She’d suffered from depression for most of her adult life.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Kelly.’

  I got out a pen and wrote it on the back of my hand. I didn’t even bother to hide what I was doing now.

  ‘So what tipped Kelly over the edge?’

  ‘Unclear,’ Field said. ‘Maybe we can ask McMillan when we find him.’

  ‘He’s definitely not with his daughter?’

  ‘He’s not in Scotland, Raker, I told you that yesterday.’

  I looked at her. Was there something else she wasn’t telling me?

  ‘Do you think the woman’s dead?’ she asked.

  I studied her, trying to work out if that was what had gone unspoken a moment ago. ‘I think “I’m sorry” could mean any number of things,’ I said.

  ‘You mean it’s possible Roddat killed her?’

  ‘Or McMillan did. Or Roddat killed him too.’

  Was McMillan a cold-blooded killer, though? Was Roddat?

  ‘Something feels wrong,’ I said again. I looked at her for a moment and thought about the death certificate, about Roddat taking it. Should I tell her what else I’d found in the loft?

  ‘I can see your brain going,’ she said, a half-smile on her face.

  I nodded, hesitated for a moment more, and then could see more reasons to tell her than not: ‘When I went up into the loft to try and find the death certificate, I also found a book. I think there’s a chance that Roddat might have given it to Derryn before she died.’

  I watched Field’s expression change.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m serious about the book; whether Roddat gave it to her or not, I’m not so sure about. It was No One Can See the Crows at Night by Eva Gainridge. Have you read that?’

  ‘Gainridge? She wrote that Wolf’s Head book.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s her most famous one, but Crows came before that. It’s her debut. It’s about a woman whose husband returns home from the Second World War, and she starts to think that it’s not her husband at all, but an impostor.’

  She instantly understood the connection.

  ‘Derryn loved Gainridge,’ I said. ‘She was her favourite writer.’

  ‘So what makes you think Roddat gave her the book? Or that he knew her before she died?’

  ‘I don’t know. But someone gave it to her.’

  Thank you for our special time together.

  ‘You’ve been through McMillan’s phone records, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘You saw the call he got from a payphone in Plumstead?’

  ‘Yes. You clearly have as well.’

  ‘The book came from a community library about a minute’s walk away.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s not a coincidence. It can’t be.’

  ‘I didn’t know Roddat had a connection to that area.’

  ‘That’s just the thing,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t, not as far as I can tell. He doesn’t have any connection at all to south-east London. He lived in north London, same as his cousin, and his family’s in Manchester.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been there.’

  ‘Why would he go to a library ten miles from his house?’

  ‘Maybe he knows someone there. Maybe he has friends down that way. Maybe he just likes their selection of books. Why do any of us do anything? We’ve got half his house in evidence bags now, so we’ll probably know the answer before long.’

  ‘What if Roddat never made that call to McMillan?’

  ‘So someone else is involved now?’

  ‘You think it’s so unlikely?’

  She didn’t reply for a moment, looking out of the archway, towards the street. She checked her watch. ‘What if it isn’t even relevant?’ she asked.

  ‘The phone call? It’s got to be.’

  ‘Because the phone box is so close to the library?’

  ‘Yes, but not just that: who calls from payphones these days?’

  ‘A lot of people do.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘a better question is, why do people call from payphones? I can only think of two reasons: one, they don’t have a mobile and they desperately need to use a phone; two, and more relevantly, the call can’t be traced back to them.’

  Again, she didn’t reply.

  ‘Can I have a look at the photos of the woman?’

  Field checked her surroundings again and then handed me her phone, letting me scroll back and forth through the pictures. Roddat had positioned her in various ways – facing him; in profile; some of the photos taken from above and others from below – and many were only fractionally different from the previous one, so it was almost impossible to tell them apart. It was like he was trying to document every angle, every curve, every natural line, every tiny flaw. The more I looked at her, the more I saw what Kennedy had been talking about when we’d been discussing the department at St Thomas’s that studied so-called ‘twin strangers’. He’d said the doctors there had computers that in seconds could separate physical characteristics that looked identical – or pretty close – to the human eye, and prove they weren’t identical at all. From the front, the woman did have a striking similarity to Derryn. Not anywhere close to exact, but close enough to fool someone who didn’t know Derryn like I did. When she was side on, though, the differences were much clearer. Her mouth protruded further than I remembered Derryn’s doing, and her chin was less pronounced. She wasn’t a natural blonde either, I realized now. From a top-down shot that Roddat had taken, I could see the faintest hint of roots emerging along her parting. So why would she go to such lengths to pretend she was my wife?

  ‘You’ve definitely never met Roddat before now?’ she asked.

  I shook my head as I handed her back her phone. ‘No. Never.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘I think I’d remember if I had.’

  ‘But you reckon Derryn might have known him?’

  ‘Like I said, someone gave her the book.’

  I pictured him: not the version of him I’d found at the end, with a noose coiled around his neck, or even the man I saw on the CCTV video at Chalk Farm, but the person in the photograph on the Hammond’s site. Could he have known Derryn?

  ‘How would he have met her?’ Field asked, echoing my own thoughts.

  I tried to think, tried to seek any sort of answer, but then I turned to Field and saw something in her face that stopped me dead. A second question lay unspoken on her lips and I knew exactly what it was. Slowly, a terrible idea began to re-form in the blackness of my thoughts, one I’d already faced down – and dismissed – after finding the book.

  ‘No,’ I said to Field.

  ‘I have to ask it.’

  ‘The answer’s no.’

  Thank you for our special time together.

  ‘Raker, did Derryn ever cheat on you?’

  49

  ‘Derryn never cheated on me.’

  ‘Do you know that for sure?’

  ‘Are you listening to me? I said it never happened.’r />
  ‘Would you know if she had?’

  ‘I said no.’

  My words were hard and laced with anger. I didn’t blame her for asking the question, but even thinking it made me feel sick. I swallowed it down, took a breath, and calmly, more in control, said, ‘She and Roddat could have met, yes. I mean, that’s possible. I don’t know where or when or how, but it’s possible. There’s no way in hell she ever had an affair, though. It never happened. I’ll never believe that.’

  Field nodded, but her expression still held the idea.

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I replied, and could feel rain drift into us, blown our way by the wind. ‘You don’t understand what we had. No one does. What we had, it was …’ I stopped, the words disintegrating, the emotion like a tremor in my throat. I didn’t need to defend fourteen years of marriage to Field. I didn’t need to defend the woman I loved, mourned and missed.

  All I had to do was know.

  And I knew.

  Field watched me for a moment longer, taking another drag on her cigarette, then said, ‘So we don’t know why Roddat became so obsessed with your wife, we don’t know why this woman is pretending to be Derryn and how she knows so much about you both, and we don’t even know where she is – or where McMillan is either.’

  I looked at her. ‘Are you accusing me of something?’

  ‘I’m just laying out our predicament.’

  ‘ “Our predicament”?’ I studied her in the dark of the tunnel, half-formed in the shadows. I’d let most of my anger go, but not all of it, and as I continued, it clung to the edge of my voice: ‘What is this, Field? Are we working together – is that it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re not working together.’

  ‘So why are you doing this?’

  ‘I told you, some things don’t sit right with me.’

  ‘Some things don’t sit right with you? Come on. You decide to put your entire career on the line to tell me about Roddat because something bugs you?’

  ‘I can walk away, if you’d prefer.’

  ‘I just want to know why you’re here.’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘You know why it matters.’