You Were Gone

by Tim Weaver

  And then there was the spare room and the office: I hadn’t been able to get either of those doors open that night. They’d seemed jammed. But they weren’t.

  He’d just never built them.

  I looked around the living room. The furniture, the sofas, the table – nothing was an exact match; the clock, designed with the maze-like triskelion, was home-made, not shop-bought. The ceiling was lower and the walls were closer in; the whole dimensions of the house were smaller. The differences were so obvious now, I could see them easily. But, stumbling about when I’d just come round from a blackout – confused, emotional, McMillan’s drug still weighing heavy in my blood – none of it had clicked.

  It had seemed like the real thing.

  I closed my eyes, trying to make sense of it all. Bennik must have brought me across the nature reserve from St Augustine’s, set everything up with Melody, and then returned me to the front gate. There, he’d deliberately avoided being caught on CCTV but ensured that I was in full view of the cameras in the minutes before a security card said McMillan exited the hospital site. The timings made it look like I’d returned to the hospital to confront McMillan by myself, to hurt him, and that was all Bennik needed: I had no memory of the incident, so I couldn’t explain it away, and I was on film so there was hard evidence I’d returned here from my house on the other side of the city. What Bennik couldn’t have known was that, in the hours after helping him set this up, McMillan would make a break for the coast. That had helped play into the idea that I’d hurt McMillan, because no one could find him after that – but suddenly Bennik didn’t have control over the man he was manipulating.

  Opening my eyes, I took in the house again, picking up one of the photos closest to me. It was of Melody, dressed in clothes that looked like Derryn’s. Next to it was another, and then another.

  All of them were of Melody.

  I glanced down the hallway to the bedroom. More memories came flooding back. This counterfeit house, this copy, was why Derryn’s clothes had been here, and why only old clothes of mine – clothes I’d thought were still in the loft – were hanging up in the wardrobe. He’d stolen them from me – slowly, item by item, over a long period of time, so that I didn’t notice their absence.

  He’d become me.

  I thought of Melody that first day I’d met her, of being sandbagged by the way she’d looked – and then slowly, over time, the differences between her and Derryn starting to wash out like a dye. This was the same. I turned and began to head down the hallway, in the direction of the bedroom, and I saw the flaws: the plastering on the walls looked different; the door frames weren’t made from the same wood. I got to the spare room and tried the door; when it didn’t open, I tried the office – neither door was the same design I had at home, even if they’d been painted the same colour. In one of the frames, I saw fingernail gouges, the evidence of when I was here, when I’d stood there, listening to her call me to dinner and it had felt like my heart was coming out of my chest.

  At the bedroom, I stopped.

  Everything hit me at once. It wasn’t laid out in the same way as my house was now; it was laid out like it had been in the weeks and months before Derryn died. The furniture had been returned to its original position; the striped duvet cover was the same design as the one she’d lain under – and died under – eight years ago. There was a lookalike bookcase next to the bed, the real version of which I’d chucked when one of the shelves snapped.

  It was filled with Eva Gainridge novels.

  There were paintings on the walls that Derryn had always loved, but which had begun to sting too sharply in the time after her death. I came to hate looking at them, at the heartache and memories clinging to every brushstroke and so I took them down and put them in the loft as well.

  Now they were back up.

  The photo frames weren’t quite right and the pictures were all of Melody, but they’d been positioned in the same places as the ones Derryn and I used to have. It was so distressing seeing it like this – this portrait of a life, this time machine – that I had to reach out and grab the door for support.

  I was back in the worst moments of my life.

  The days before she died.

  And then I noticed something else. Stepping further in, the carpet thinner than the one at home, I saw that the duvet was ruffled, untidy, as if it had been slept in. At first, I thought it was simply unmade, but then I realized that wasn’t the case.

  There was someone under the covers.

  77

  I rushed to the other side of the bed.

  It was Melody Campbell.

  She was lying under the duvet in a foetal position, dressed in one of Derryn’s nighties. Bennik had abandoned her. As Evan Willis, as the man he was to almost everyone but the woman he kidnapped, he’d grabbed everything he could and he’d fled.

  Her body looked so small, so fragile. The bones at her collar were like ridges on a hillside, the hollows of her cheeks sunken and dark. Her skin was almost yellow and she’d been sweating so much there were damp patches in crescents at her arms, her hair slick and coiled. She had a bandaged arm, but there was blood on the dressing and a thick residue had begun leaking out, a tendril of infection.

  ‘Melody?’ I said gently.

  She stirred but didn’t wake.

  I dropped to my haunches, so our eyes were on the same level, and said her name again. This time, her eyelids fluttered, a bird trying to take flight. I caught a brief glimpse of an iris, a flash of blue-green, and then it was like the power had been cut as it snapped shut again.

  Getting to my feet, I gently rolled her on to her back, the duvet twisted around her, and checked her pulse. It was slow. I swapped arms and began to peel back the bandaging. I’d only just pared it away from the skin when the smell hit me. The stench of infection was so strong, I had to pause for a moment.

  I peeled back the rest of the bandage.

  The wound had begun opening up, like a smile on her arm. It had definitely been inflicted by a knife. Bennik’s knife. I felt a burst of anger, a hatred for him that made my fingers close on her wrist. I released them again, conscious of hurting her, and saw that the wound was mottled with pus. She needed a hospital.

  She needed one right now.

  ‘Melody?’ I said again more urgently.

  This time, her eyes opened part of the way, struggling to focus. I gave her a few seconds and then said her name again, but now something was different. She looked like she was awake, like she was hearing me, but a frown was slowly forming.

  ‘You,’ she said, her voice hoarse.

  She doesn’t know who I am.

  I was just a man her husband told her to trick.

  She shifted on the bed, closer to me, turning her head so that it was no longer in profile. Her eyes flittered open and closed. She’d never looked like Derryn in profile, only like this, only front on; and as I looked at her, as I saw her up close again, as the past six days finally caught up with me, she looked enough like my wife to take my breath away.

  I love you, D.

  Suddenly, it was November 2009 again.

  I’ll always love you.

  I was holding Derryn’s hand.

  I’ll love you even after I’m gone.

  ‘Where’s David?’

  I snapped out of the moment, wiping my eyes.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Where’s David?’ she croaked.

  She swallowed, her head rolling to the left, as if it were too heavy. And then her eyes began to close, her mouth pressed against the pillow and her breathing dulled.

  I needed to get her out of here.

  Throwing back the duvet, I saw the full extent of her, how small her body had become. I looked around for something she could wear, couldn’t see anything and then went to the wardrobes. There, I found all of Derryn’s old clothes – as well as a mix of mine and Bennik’s.

  ‘David?’

  I turned to the bed again, ready to respond.
r />   Except it wasn’t Melody’s voice.

  Spinning on my heel, I looked out into the hallway. The voice had come from out there. I left Melody for a second, heading to the front of the house.

  Field was standing at the door. Something had happened to her. Her eyes were full of tears, glistening in the light from the house, and there was a bruise forming on her left cheekbone. She sniffed, took a step forward.

  ‘Field?’ I said. ‘What the hell happened?’

  Kent stepped into view behind her.

  I looked at him, even more uncertain than ever. And then, for the first time, I noticed something. He matched the physical description. Stocky, medium build and height, dark hair, a beard. Roy at the library had talked about the husband having a tattoo: I glanced from Kent’s face to the blue RSI bandage that he’d been wearing since the first time we’d met – except he had no injury, I realized that now.

  He was hiding whatever was inked on his wrist.

  Suddenly, I understood what McMillan was trying to tell me the night he died: not that John Bennik worked at St Augustine’s, but that he lived next to it. I suddenly understood the links to Charing Cross, why Melody had ended up there, how she knew to go to the flat in Chalk Farm that night, straight from the police station. I understood all of it as I looked at Kent and it froze my blood. Because John Bennik wasn’t in Madrid. He’d never been called Evan Willis either.

  He was here, and he was a police officer.

  And he had a knife to Field’s throat.

  78

  I backed up as he pushed Field into the hallway, and then, in the living room, he pushed her again and she hit a wall. I felt it bend against the impact. A puff of dust fell from the ceiling, a crack appearing in the plaster. The moment she recovered, straightening, he grabbed the collar of her coat, dragging her in front of him, the point of the knife at her neck.

  ‘Put down the metal pipe and sit,’ he ordered, indicating one of the chairs at the table.

  My eyes moved to Field: she looked in shock, and I could see another injury at the top of her hairline. This one was starting to bleed.

  I pulled out the chair and sat.

  He hustled Field towards the table, yanked a second chair away from it and then shoved her down, hard. This time, he winced. The knife injury. For the first time, I noticed a stiffness in his left hip. He shuffled a little to his right, so that he could bear the brunt of his weight, and without taking his eyes off me, without moving the knife at Field’s neck an inch, he reached behind himself to the sideboard, sliding out the middle drawer. He ripped the RSI bandage away with his teeth, dumped it in there, and I saw the tattoo.

  It was four sentences in black ink, one on top of the other: The body can wither. Memories can fade. But love never dies. RIP 26/11/09.

  It was the opening lines from No One Can See the Crows at Night and the date of Derryn’s death. Anger pulsed in my throat.

  Out of the drawer, he lifted a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Put these on,’ he said, wincing again.

  Field couldn’t see what was going on, but as Kent tossed me the handcuffs, he pressed the point of the knife in harder against her jugular – a threat; a promise that he would cut her throat if I didn’t follow his instructions. I watched her suck in a breath. It was a terrible, terrified sound, and a tear broke from her right eye. The whole time she looked at me, trying not to move, trying to remain silent, inert, as I snapped the handcuffs on.

  I looked at Kent.

  ‘You were right,’ he said, smiling. ‘I panicked.’

  He was referring to the interview I’d done with Carmichael down in Sussex. He must have read the transcript. I’d said the reason Bennik tried to shift the focus on to me by getting Melody to tell the police I’d followed her, why he used Roddat at the flat, was panic. The rationale for driving off and leaving Melody at the pharmacy was the same – if he got a ticket, if his registration was taken and he existed on the system somewhere, he became visible in a way he hadn’t been before. His real identity would be exposed. Later on down the line, he might get asked questions about why he was there, and who he was with. So he drove away before the traffic warden could give a detailed description of him, his car or his plate. He tried to stop a spiral – but the spiral had already started. It started when Melody wandered off, unsure about where he’d gone or where she should go.

  I’d never been certain why Melody had gone to the flat at Chalk Farm that night, but now I knew: when Field was busy interviewing me, Kent had gone into the suite to see her. I tried to imagine what Melody’s reaction might have been. Was she happy to see him? Scared that he might be angry she had wandered off? Whichever it was, he handed her the address, and directions, on a Post-it note and told her to go there afterwards. By then, he must have already organized it with Roddat. I knew as well why Melody recalled Charing Cross – of all the police stations in London – so distinctly; why she would go there after being abandoned at the pharmacy. It was because, at some point during the eight years he’d kept her a prisoner, Kent must have mentioned its name, perhaps only accidentally, perhaps without even realizing it, and – in her confusion, in the gradual deterioration and loss of self over such a long time – she remembered it, and she mistook it for a place she might find refuge.

  And then, finally, there was the CCTV footage from Chalk Farm. Kent had said that he was the person who’d picked up the telephone call from Melody; the one in which she’d sounded distressed and said she was being followed. Except the call, in reality, was never made – or, if it was, the paperwork was fudged by Kent – because he wasn’t at the station at the time, he was in the flat with her. As I’d told Carmichael down in Sussex, Kent must have been waiting outside the flat for a while, but once Roddat opened up, once Melody arrived, he’d told them what the plan was, and then he’d walked out again, keeping to the shadows as he helped the old woman in the stairwell. A few minutes later, after Roddat and Melody were both gone, he pulled up in the Volvo. He was back to being Gary Kent, a detective constable with the Met – trusted, tenacious, honourable. His role there explained something else as well: how he’d manipulated Roddat. Kent would either have threatened to charge him, branding him a sex offender, or – if he’d kept his real identity as a police officer hidden – told Roddat he would tip off the authorities. Whichever it was, I was absolutely certain now that Roddat had slept with an underage girl. In the dark of a nightclub, she’d probably looked much older. He could have ended up in bed with her without realizing how young she was. Not that either of those things made a blind bit of difference. He’d had sex with a child.

  Or was it even worse than that?

  I thought of Roddat taking his own life, of the suicide note that simply read, I’m sorry. If he’d done it before, if he had a history of it, if he had sex with underage girls all the time, that was something Kent could really use. Suddenly, it wasn’t one mistake in a nightclub, it was the actions of a prolific paedophile. Roddat’s tastes would have been abhorrent, ruinous, and – just like he’d done with Erik McMillan – Kent would turn the screw on him until he got what he wanted.

  ‘It just all went wrong at once,’ he said, the sound of him breaking my train of thought. He was quiet, almost regretful, and something had altered in his voice: he didn’t speak like the Gary Kent I’d met before. That version of him had a soft London accent, his voice expressive and dogged. Now, he spoke like the man on the Dictaphone tapes: almost no accent at all, more reserved, his tone more stilled, but with an anger behind it – a threat – that was truly frightening. ‘The cut on her arm,’ he went on, ‘became infected while McMillan was up in Scotland; then there was the pharmacy, the traffic warden; and then she ends up walking into Charing Cross because of one tiny mistake I made over two years ago.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘I wrote down something about the police station and forgot to get rid of the note. I got complacent, I suppose. I forgot myself for a fraction of a second and that was all it took. I don’t know how or w
hy she remembered it, but she did.’

  He meant that he was supposed to be David Raker. His story was supposed to be my story. But he’d let slip one small detail about his other life and it was enough.

  ‘The morning I took her to the pharmacy, it was my day off. I’m driving around London, trying to find out where the hell she is, and she’s already at my fucking place of work. I thought I got lucky after that: one of the guys in the office called me because he wanted to check something about another case, and we got talking and he said they’d had this woman turn up who was supposed to be dead. I was still south of the river then, driving around Woolwich, so I went down the road to Plumstead. I knew that place, knew that area, knew there were no cameras there, and I phoned McMillan and prepped him for everything that was coming. I told him the police were going to call and – when they asked – he had to pretend he’d treated you. But McMillan kept fucking me around, kept arguing. He said he didn’t care any more if I told the world about Bruce Dartford. And I thought, “You don’t care? Really?” So I put the phone down and called his daughter, and he caught a glimpse of what it would be like if his girl ever knew the truth, and, after that, he realized he cared quite a lot. Once I was done, I went into work, pretended I needed to check on something, and the moment she was alone, I switched off the CCTV, went into the interview suite and gave her the address for the flat.’

  ‘But the cat was already out of the bag,’ I said.

  ‘It was like dominoes,’ he muttered, his eyes briefly skirting the living room. ‘You can understand why I panicked. This place took a lot of work. We loved it here. If Derryn hadn’t made me so angry that day, none of this …’ He faded out.

  Derryn.

  He wasn’t talking about Derryn, he was talking about Melody – the woman he’d erased. He was talking about the reason she had the injury on her arm.