You Were Gone

by Tim Weaver

  I don’t want to make any mistakes.

  But I’ve started trying to talk to her about you; she’s a sounding board, a way for me to get my head straight at home, at night, when I’m not in my sessions with Erik. I’ve admitted to her that I’ve had a breakdown. I tell her all about it. I tell her that McMillan is treating me, and I pretend I have this thing called Capgras delusion, which is where you get all fucked up in the head about the people close to you. I don’t have that at all, but she seems to believe me. Admittedly, in these early days, she doesn’t always play ball, which is why I sometimes have to keep the gag on, or tie her up. Sometimes I have to hurt her, even though I don’t want to.

  But, over time, I know that will change.

  I have a system I’m going to use.

  You know how we used to love to read, don’t you? Well, you wouldn’t believe how much reading I’ve done over the past five weeks. I’ve studied these techniques over and over again, every day since I brought her here. I’ve watched documentaries on the Korean War, on Patty Hearst, on Manson, on Koresh. I’ve now read so many books and written so many notes, I’ve watched so many DVDs, you could fill an entire room.

  Soon, we will get to the first stage.

  I’ve isolated her.

  Next, I will start the assault on her identity.

  You know, Derryn, I think – even when I stood at your bedside in those last few days, holding your hand, seeing how sick you were, how you could hardly even breathe – I still didn’t accept you were dying. I didn’t believe anything would get in the way of us – not even your illness.

  Now I realize something.

  It doesn’t have to.

  Because I have Melody. All the things that are different about her I can change. Her weight, her hair – those things are easy. I can get contact lenses made for her eyes so they’re exactly the same as yours. Her movements, her confidence – I can alter those too. They can be taught, like an actress playing a role. They can be refined. I can teach her to talk like you and eat like you, remember all the things that you did in your life. We can watch the home videos of you that I stole. I’ll edit out anything with your husband in it, so it’s just about you. Only you. She’ll learn about you, and she’ll behave the same way you do, and eventually she’ll believe it’s her. She’ll look at the screen and talk about herself. She won’t get sick like you. She won’t go to work like you. She won’t have friends.

  She’ll just be mine.

  So, yes, I miss you so much, Derryn, and I’m sorry that your husband got between us. I was going to kill him, and I lied to you – I was going to do it slowly. I’m sorry I have to admit that now, as I stand at your graveside.

  But none of that matters any more.

  Because now I have Melody.

  And I’m going to make her into you.

  67

  I stood, using the nearest piece of furniture for support, and my eyes started to blur. The confession fell from my hands.

  McMillan just looked at me, tears in his eyes, bleeding out.

  John turned Melody into Derryn.

  All the pieces began to click into place. I remembered the tweet I’d read about how Melody had walked into the deli here, acting strangely, asking for directions back to Belfast. Whoever John was, he’d brought her here. He must have called it a holiday, acted like they were a real couple, that their relationship wasn’t built on a kidnapping, on lies, on keeping Melody a prisoner until she became what he wanted. The woman at the deli said that Melody had referred to herself as Kerrin – Derryn – but, later on, changed her mind and told them her actual name. Was it because she was scared? Panicked? Disorientated? Had she managed to get away from John for those few short minutes?

  Had it been an escape?

  If she’d got away from him somehow, beyond his control for a time, it had been a failed attempt. He must have found her again quickly, because I hadn’t discovered a single mention of her anywhere else on the web after that. But then another detail stuck with me: the description of her having very short blonde hair.

  I blinked, another terrible idea starting to form.

  No. No, not this.

  Had he wanted her to be so much like Derryn, he’d shaved her head? Had he wanted her to be like Derryn at the end, when she was sick? Nausea spread like vines through my throat. The obsession had started with Derryn in the time before she died, and in one tiny moment, forgotten entirely by me for eight years, that obsession had spilled out into both of our lives when I found him bothering her at the hospital. She never talked about that man again, which must have meant he didn’t try to speak to her before she passed on – but he would have been there. A man like that, wired how he was, couldn’t turn it off like a light; all I’d done in confronting him that day, in pushing him away, was to force him into the shade. So had he followed us after that? Had he watched those final months of her life play out from a distance?

  Or had he got closer than that?

  The idea almost cut me down. Could he have got inside my house years before I ever found his book in the loft? Could he have tried to get close to Derryn again? And then, off the back of that, something else landed so hard it really did wipe me off my feet and I dropped to my knees: it would have been safer and easier for him to wait for me to go out and then get close to her.

  He’d been there alone with Derryn.

  He’d been at her bedside in her final weeks.

  The sirens were just outside now, but it took a second for it to hit home. I was barely functioning, consumed by the idea that this man had been inside my home when my wife was dying. I tried to dismiss it, to tell myself it was only a theory, nothing more, but it was an image I couldn’t unsee, one that blinked like a strobe behind my eyelids.

  Wiping at my eyes, I attempted to gather my composure, to ready myself for the police, but my whole body felt like it was withering. I tried to imagine when he might have invaded my home, why he would ever do what he did to Melody afterwards, alter her like that, and one thing kept returning to me: he wanted to nurse her back to health. He wanted to succeed where no one else had.

  The doctors. The hospitals.

  Me.

  He wanted to be the one who saved Derryn.

  DAY SIX

  * * *

  68

  Erik McMillan died in the back of the ambulance.

  I stood at the entrance to the cottage, the wind still blowing, the rain chattering against the roof, and listened to the paramedics desperately try to revive him. By the time McMillan was dead, the police had arrived in force.

  Officers began cordoning everything off, laying down metal plates for detectives and forensic staff to walk on, and eventually a mobile incident unit parked up on the grass at the front of the house, and I was shuffled inside before I could contaminate any more of the crime scene. From its windows, I watched officers and forensics moving between the bedroom of the cottage, the living room, kitchen and bathroom, photographing and collecting evidence, the brief anonymity of McMillan’s existence here destroyed for ever.

  Three hours later, after my clothes had been bagged and I’d been given replacements, and after a detective from a Sussex Major Crime team had conducted an initial interview with me, I watched another vehicle emerge off the main road and head down the stone path towards the house. It pulled up behind the truck, but I could see enough of it to know who was inside: Carmichael clambered out, his big frame encased in a black raincoat. There was no Field, no Kent, just him and someone else from his team. He walked up to the cottage, showing a uniformed officer his warrant card, and then he talked to another detective for a while. Finally, he turned and looked at me.

  We stared at each other through the half-misted windows of the vehicle, and I thought of what Field had said yesterday beneath the railway arches. Carmichael was the tip of the spear. He was driving the entire investigation now, which was why he was here and not her. And, worse than that, he didn’t like me, didn’t like what I did for a living, ho
w I went about it, or any success I might have had.

  I was tired, bruised, as drained as I could ever remember being.

  But I’d have to forget all of that for now.

  Because he was coming for me.

  Carmichael set up the interview in the truck.

  The detective from the Sussex Major Crime team sat beside him: she was in her early forties, and had introduced herself as DI Mulligan during the initial interview with me. On a stool behind them was a DC called Yedborough, pale and serious, who had travelled down with Carmichael from London. He sat in silence, taking notes.

  Carmichael first made me go over my visit to Killiger.

  I gave him exactly the same account as I’d given Mulligan. It was four in the morning and I was starting to flag, but it wasn’t hard to maintain my story because, for the most part, it was true. The only things I altered were details that might incriminate me, or give Carmichael a foot-up: when he asked about the fourteen pages of notes that McMillan had written, I told him I’d seen them on McMillan’s desk at St Augustine’s the night he invited me there, and that was how I found out about the mailbox and, in turn, discovered the name Melody. It was hard to say whether any of them believed me, but it was harder for them to disprove it. I’d placed the notes I’d got from the mailbox inside the top drawer of the bedside cabinet at the cottage, so it looked like McMillan had brought them to Sussex with him. In the moments before the paramedics entered, I’d also asked McMillan what he wanted to do with the letter he’d written to Caitlin. He could barely talk by then, but he said enough with his eyes. I ripped it to pieces and flushed it down the toilet.

  The more frustrated Carmichael became, the more he fixated on my decision-making, on the reasons why I might not contact them as soon as I found out the woman was called Melody Campbell. ‘You knew her name and you chose to remain silent,’ he said, almost spitting the words through his teeth. ‘It’s unacceptable.’ I suspected most of his irritation came, not from me failing to give him the name, but from the fact that I’d got there before him. After that, he tried to paint all of my decisions as some grand conspiracy of silence and, because the same questions got asked by him so often and with such force, he eventually got what he wanted.

  I lost my cool.

  ‘You want to know why I didn’t pick up the phone to you?’ I said, coming forward at the table. My words were quiet but my voice was taut. ‘Because everyone at the Met thought I was involved in her disappearance and, when you and I spoke last time, it was clear you wanted me kept entirely out of the loop. So, when I found out her real name, I’ll be completely honest with you: I couldn’t think of anyone I would less want to call than you.’

  Mulligan’s mouth twitched. I got the sense that she didn’t particularly care for Carmichael and I wondered if it was just coincidence that she was the second female detective I’d met that had felt that way. Was he chauvinistic? Did he have a problem with women? It was hard to tell for sure, but if he did, it was something I could use to lever them apart.

  ‘We need to find Melody,’ Carmichael said, undeterred by my last comment.

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘We need to find her now.’

  He phrased it like an accusation.

  ‘I said I agree with you.’

  ‘You really don’t know where she is?’

  I frowned. ‘If I knew where she was, don’t you think I’d tell you? Whatever you might think of me, there’s no way you can seriously believe I would put her life at risk – further at risk – by pretending I didn’t. Why the hell would I do that?’

  He eyed me with mistrust. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘You think I want my moment in the media spotlight, is that it?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘You used to be a journalist, after all.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, it’s not such a stretch from one to the other, is it?’

  ‘As much of a prick as you are, even you don’t believe that.’

  His cheeks coloured. Yedborough looked up from his notepad briefly; Mulligan kept her head down. Carmichael stared at me, unblinking, until the colour washed out of his cheeks, and – calmly and deliberately – he said, ‘You told us you saw Melody’s name in those fourteen pages of notes that McMillan had written?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And those notes are what exactly?’

  ‘I think maybe they’re an account of his meetings with Melody, and with this John guy – this man who calls himself her husband. There are a lot of dates in there, and many of them seem to relate to Melody. Maybe they’re dates on which he helped them.’

  ‘Helped them?’

  ‘Treated them.’

  ‘McMillan was giving them therapy sessions?’

  ‘No. From what I could tell from the notes, it was more like simple medical help. I mean, there was no way that this guy could ever take Melody to an actual doctor if she was ill, otherwise too many questions would get asked. But McMillan was in Edinburgh with his daughter over Christmas and he didn’t get back until late on the 28th, so that’s why I think this “husband” took Melody to a pharmacy earlier that day. He probably delayed and delayed the decision, but the cut on her arm was too badly infected.’

  ‘So you think McMillan was using those notes as an insurance policy?’

  ‘I think that the original idea – maybe the ultimate idea – was for McMillan to tell the police, or the media, or someone at the hospital about the things he’d seen and been forced to do; about Melody, about John. But the problem with McMillan was that he was frightened.’ I stayed on that last thought for a moment. Frightened of losing his daughter. ‘And that fear was why those notes – all those details about Melody and the man who kidnapped her – never got handed over to you, or the newspapers, or to someone – anyone – who could do something about it.’

  ‘And that was why he made them so hard to translate?’

  ‘Right. Because he didn’t want anyone else to be able to read them, especially the man who took Melody. In McMillan’s mind, I think he saw them as a last resort; a way out if he was ever cornered – if his life was truly under threat, or he was arrested.’

  ‘You said he mentioned something else before he died?’

  ‘ “Ease war.” ’

  ‘Any idea what that means?’

  I shook my head. ‘He said the guy who took Melody “erased her” at ease war – as in, turned her into Derryn – so maybe it’s a place. But it doesn’t relate to anything in his notes, or anything I’ve found out.’

  Carmichael finished writing, making me wait for him, and when he looked up, I could see in his eyes that he was preparing to go on the attack again. The friendlier, calmer tone of the conversation was about to be jettisoned. He was trying to unsettle me by shifting back and forth.

  ‘So you’ve really got no idea who this man is?’ he said, leaning back, his seat creaking under his weight. ‘The one who took Melody?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t know what his surname is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or where he lives?’

  ‘No. But he works at St Augustine’s.’

  ‘McMillan confirmed that?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Carmichael glanced at Yedborough, and the younger man began to furiously write something down. For a long time, the scratch of his pencil was the only sound.

  ‘We think his surname might be Bennik,’ Mulligan said.

  It was the first time she’d spoken since the interview had started. Carmichael glanced at her, a twist of frustration on his face. He preferred it when I knew nothing, floundering in the black of confusion.

  ‘Does that ring any bells with you, Mr Raker?’

  ‘Bennik?’ I said to her. ‘No. Who is he?’

  She shrugged. ‘We don’t know much about him. He’s got no criminal record and we can’t find any pictures of him. We’re still digging around, though.’

  ‘So how have you made the connection?’


  She held up a hand, reassuring me that the answer was coming. ‘We think he was reported missing by some people he worked with.’

  ‘Missing? When?’

  ‘He rented a flat in east London between November 2007 and February 2009,’ Mulligan said. ‘Neighbours said he was sharing with a woman, possibly a girlfriend, who introduced herself as Nora. We think that could be Nora Fray. She disappeared too, in January 2009. Her name wasn’t on the tenancy agreement so it’s hard to say for certain, but no one has seen Nora since the beginning of ’09.’ She studied her notes for a moment. ‘Anyway, in the middle of January 2009, he was admitted to hospital with a skull fracture.’

  ‘How did he get that?’

  ‘He told hospital staff that he came off a bicycle.’

  But the inference was clear: as far as they were concerned, he hadn’t got it coming off any bike; he’d got it from Nora Fray. She’d fought back.

  It wasn’t a disappearance.

  It was a murder.

  I felt a flutter of panic take hold: was it already too late for Melody? Had he done the same thing to her that he’d done to Nora Fray?

  ‘Weird thing is,’ Mulligan went on, ‘there’s no medical records for John Bennik prior to his admission.’

  ‘So that’s not his real name?’

  ‘No. In fact, the only John Bennik we’ve been able to find, anywhere, is a 57-year-old man from Bournemouth who died of a heart attack in 2002.’

  I understood immediately: ‘He stole someone’s identity.’

  ‘Correct.’

  The panic I’d felt for Melody became something else now: conflict, guilt. Was I any better than this man I was trying to find? Because I’d done the same as him. I’d stolen an identity when we’d created Bryan Kennedy. We’d taken a man’s life, the pieces of his biography that serviced our need, and transplanted it on to someone else entirely. I hadn’t thought about it then, because the need had been so desperate, but it hit me hard now. In this moment, it was difficult to feel anything but shame.