You Will Never Find Me

by Robert Wilson

  ‘Oh, hello, what do you want?’

  ‘I don’t want anything, Esme.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Esme, detecting a tone. ‘What I meant was, why did you call?’

  ‘It’s about Amy.’

  ‘You’ve found her? Already?’ said Esme. ‘My God, she didn’t last long.’

  ‘Where are you?’ asked Boxer. ‘You sound as if you’re out walking.’

  ‘I’m just letting myself into the flat. I’ve been shopping.’

  ‘O.K., I’ll wait until you’re settled.’

  He heard her working the locks, the door opening and closing.

  For some reason, this time, with Esme, he felt the horror of being the bearer of such news. Going about her everyday life in her retirement, not a happy woman, she’d never been a happy woman. How could she be with that battering father, her business partner and ex-lover murdered and her husband disappeared? No, Esme could never be described as remotely happy, but she did ‘apparent contentment’ very well. And if anything punctured that contentment she always had alcohol to fall back on. Having said that, there was never anything pathetic about her drinking. There was no weeping and wailing or imposing of herself on others. It was just something she did to maintain some equilibrium.

  ‘You’re not talking to me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m waiting until you’re ready,’ said Boxer.

  ‘I’m going to put you down while I take my things off.’ Strange that he hadn’t been so conscious of this terrible feeling with Mercy, to whom he had been bringing the very worst possible news. He supposed that this was because they were in it together, that it was equally devastating. Also he suspected that somewhere in Mercy’s mind she was prepared for the worst. Her profession had prepared her. She knew this hell could and did happen every day.

  ‘O.K., I’m ready. Tell me where you found her and what she had to say for herself.’

  ‘I want to make sure you’re sitting down, Esme,’ he said, and that silenced her.

  He told her, and when his words had finally stopped tumbling into the unresponsive phone there was a monumental silence, as if not just one human being had been struck dumb, but an entire city. After it had gone on for too long he said something that he might have expected her to say to him: ‘I’m sorry, Esme.’

  Grief is essentially a selfish emotion. It’s inspired by the loss of others, but it’s private and deeply personal. No one but the individual experiencing it can understand its power, which is why, thought Boxer, couples who’ve lost a child often don’t last long together. Their grief makes them too self-centred. As he thought this he realised that he had no idea how Esme would take this news. His mother’s emotional state was a mystery to him. He knew she liked Amy. He knew they had a relationship. He also knew, from recent conversations, how Esme worked the relationship. No expectations. She liked Amy when she was nice and disliked her when she was being objectionable. He’d assumed that there was a closeness but with a respectful distance. He was not prepared for what Esme now revealed to him.

  The deathly silence was broken by a shuddering, guttural sob and the phone clattered onto the table. Hissing intakes of breath came down the line as if she was being cut again and again and each cut was introducing another horrific slash of newly angled pain. He was shocked to hear his mother crying and knew that these were no ordinary tears but a retching up from the absolute bottom, as if she was vomiting up her soul to get free of her terrible body.

  He’d seen this before in his professional life when a kidnap he’d been working had gone badly wrong—a child murdered by a drug gang—but the mother was already mentally prepared and surrounded by family. Here, now, with his own mother fifteen hundred miles away, he was appalled by what he’d unleashed: helpless, even panic-struck by her reaction. He’d never imagined such emotional depth in her because she’d never shown any; she’d always insisted on a determined anti-sentimentalism.

  ‘Esme!’ he roared. ‘Esme. Pick up the phone.’

  There was a desperate inhalation as of someone coming up from the depths or seizing a moment during an uncontrollable vomit.

  ‘Mum!’ he roared. ‘Pick up the phone, Mum!’

  The reply was a clattering and smashing to silence. Phone dead. Nothing.

  He redialled. Nothing. Again. Again. Again. He tried her land line. No answer. It rang to death every time. In a panic, which was an emotion he had rarely been aware of, he called Makepeace. He didn’t want to burden Mercy.

  The words poured out of him and Makepeace had to slow him down, get him to repeat. He got it out in sound bites.

  ‘She’s taken it very badly. Had an immediate and total breakdown. I need someone to go round there. I know this isn’t your business.’

  Makepeace told Boxer to leave it with him. He’d have someone round there in minutes.

  ‘Just call me as soon as someone gets to her,’ he said.

  Boxer paced Zorrita’s office, couldn’t think of anybody he could call. He didn’t know any of his mother’s friends; in fact, he wasn’t entirely sure she had any. Although there was . . . what was her name? It shocked him how far removed he was from his mother’s life. He slumped in the chair, gripping the arms with an even greater emptiness expanding in his chest. Now he had this sense of the permanent, the one person he’d known his whole life, spinning out of control.

  George Papadopoulos was glad to get away from the Netherhall Gardens house. Twenty-four hours had passed with no contact. The strain was telling on Bobkov’s face, his body starting to sag under unseen weights.

  It was past 19:00 by the time Papadopoulos reached the redeveloped old Consumption Hospital in Mount Vernon. The sun had gone down and it was on its way to becoming dark. He pressed Esme Boxer’s bell. No answer. He called the porter, showed his warrant card to the camera and explained his business. The porter brought him into his office. He was in his sixties with brilliantined white hair and a white moustache that had yellowed where he smoked. He was a Londoner and, from his bearing, looked as if he’d been in the military.

  ‘She’s gone out,’ said the porter.

  ‘Like when?’

  ‘I passed her in the corridor outside her flat about ten minutes ago. I said good evening but, you know, she’s a funny one that. Sometimes says hello, sometimes you’re lucky to get a nod.’

  ‘Can you describe her? What she was wearing?’

  ‘Long dark blue coat, trousers, big black handbag over her shoulder.’

  ‘Could you tell what state she was in?’

  ‘State?’

  ‘I mean, did she look distressed?’

  ‘Not particularly. Like I said, sometimes she’ll give you the time of day, other times she’ll look straight through you. Quite a few of them are like that in here.’

  ‘Have you got a key to her flat?’

  ‘Yes, but you’ll need a warrant for that.’

  ‘I need a photo of her. I have to find her but I don’t know what she looks like. All I’ve been told is that she’s had some bad news and is very upset.’

  ‘Bad news?’

  Papadopoulos sized him up, knew he was going to have to give out if he was going to get anything back.

  ‘Her granddaughter was murdered in Madrid at the weekend.’

  ‘You mean, Amy?’ said the porter, his face coming apart in shock.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ said the porter. ‘I can’t believe it. Such a lovely girl. Murdered? Who’d do a thing like that to a sweetheart like Amy?’

  Papadopoulos had heard a few things about Amy from Mercy and none of them had featured the words ‘lovely’ or ‘sweetheart’. But he could see the porter was genuinely broken up, had slumped back onto his desk, arms folded, head dropped and shaking.

  ‘Now Amy, she did have time for you,’ he said, looking up. ‘She’d come in here, have
a little chat and a cup of tea, a bit of a laugh. Tell you what was going on. My God. Murdered? No wonder Mrs. Boxer’s upset.’

  ‘Were they close?’

  ‘I never saw it. She wasn’t the sort, Mrs. Boxer, to show anything like that. Amy told me. Said her grandma was the only person in the world she really loved.’

  ‘And the parents?’

  ‘She was having terrible trouble with them. Especially her mother. I told her it was just a phase but . . . ’

  ‘Did you ever see her mother?’

  ‘Mercy? Yes, but not much. She and Mrs. Boxer . . . ’

  The porter winced on one side of his face.

  ‘Families,’ he said. ‘Funny old game.’

  They went up to Esme’s flat. The porter limping because he’d sprained his ankle on the Heath walking the dog. Papadopoulos phoned Makepeace, who was stunned to hear of the successful relationship between Amy and her grandmother.

  ‘Get a good photo of her,’ said Makepeace. ‘I’ll check with the Hampstead force, see if they can spare some manpower.’

  The porter opened the flat. They went through the living room and bedroom. No photos. Not one family shot. In the kitchen they found the shattered mobile on the floor, the fridge door open.

  ‘I need photos,’ said Papadopoulos.

  ‘Try the desk in the spare bedroom. That’s her office.’

  There was a camera on a tripod leaning in the corner. On the desk a closed Macbook Pro. In the central drawer were a number of black and white photos of an attractive woman knocking on seventy with a mixed-race girl. Both of them had eyes which, even in monochrome, were piercing.

  ‘You can see where Amy gets those eyes from,’ said the porter.

  Papadopoulos flipped through the shots. They were taken using a self-timer. Sometimes Amy hadn’t been able to get back quick enough and there were shots of the two of them collapsed back on the bed laughing. The most gripping shot was of Esme looking straight to camera while Amy stared into the side of her face with what could only be described as pure joy.

  ‘They’re bloody crazy about each other,’ Papadopoulos muttered to himself.

  The porter nodded. It hadn’t occurred to him before. He’d been caught up in his own friendship with the girl.

  Papadopoulos opened the laptop, booted it up, isolated the best shot he could find of Esme Boxer and sent it through to the Central Communications Command in Lambeth with an explanatory text. He took a shot with his own phone.

  Also in the drawer was an old Filofax stuffed with papers, business and restaurant cards. There were names and addresses, some crossed out with new addresses reinstated elsewhere.

  ‘Did Mrs. Boxer have any friends?’

  ‘Only one woman came regularly. Sounded Australian but said she was South African and had lived in Perth. Betty Kirkwood. They were in the same line of work—making TV adverts.’

  Papadopoulos found numbers for her and put them into his phone. He went back to the kitchen, looked in the fridge. He’d rarely seen one with so little food in it. Just ranks of white wine, some beer and plenty of tonics.

  ‘She liked a drink?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the porter. ‘Ten in the morning she’d have alcohol on her breath. Mind you, never saw her the worse for wear. She was trained up for it.’

  ‘Alcoholic.’

  ‘Not the only one in this building,’ said the porter. ‘She toned it down when Amy came. Didn’t need it so much. Had the company.’

  ‘Reckon she had a bottle in that handbag she had over her shoulder?’

  ‘It’d fit.’

  ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

  Papadopoulos followed the porter’s directions and opened the door to find packets of pills for high blood pressure, paracetamol, small tubes of creams all over the floor. Above the towel rail the medicine cabinet was empty.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Looks like she’s taken a bottle of booze and some pills and gone somewhere to make sure she’s not found.’

  ‘The Heath,’ said the porter. ‘Get lost up in the woods. Nobody’d find her. Only the joggers and dog walkers are out and they stick to the paths.’

  ‘Where on the Heath?’

  ‘The East Heath is heavily wooded right up to the Kenwood Estate, but at least the estate will be closed by now. Parliament Hill Fields is open land so I doubt she’d go there,’ said the porter. ‘You’re going to need some people if you want to cover East Heath and Springett’s Wood.’

  Papadopoulos put another call through to Makepeace, gave him the update and the porter’s information.

  ‘The Hampstead police are up against it after all the cuts,’ said Makepeace.

  ‘So a chopper’s out of the question?’ said Papadopoulos. ‘Because that’s what I’m going to need to cover this kind of ground.’

  ‘I can’t put in a chopper request for this.’

  ‘Any chance of some dogs?’

  ‘I’ll work on some handlers. See what I can do.’

  ‘I’ve got some fitness fanatic friends with big followings on Twitter. I’ll see if they can steer a moonlight triathlon in this direction,’ said Papadopoulos.

  They hung up. The porter was on his mobile. They left the flat, went back to his office. The porter had a scarf and a hat he’d taken from Esme’s coat rack.

  ‘You’ll need these for the dogs,’ he said. ‘I’ve just put out word to some of my dog-walking friends. Some of them belong to ramblers’ clubs. They should be able to turn out some people between them.’

  ‘We’ll take a cab back to my place,’ said Isabel.

  ‘No,’ said Mercy before she remembered who she was with. ‘It’s O.K.’

  They were heading for the lift outside Makepeace’s office. Mercy had been surprised how glad she was to see Isabel. They’d fallen into each other’s arms.

  ‘I didn’t bring a car,’ said Isabel, ‘and I’m not taking you back on the Tube.’

  ‘No.’

  Why did she keep saying no? Was this just a manifestation of denial? Negate everything. And yet she wasn’t in denial. She’d faced what had happened to Amy, taken it in. Maybe she hadn’t dealt with it, but she hadn’t blocked it out.

  They stood by the lift, looked at each other. Mercy saw the woman’s kindness. This was probably the last place she wanted to be: looking after her new man’s ex. She reached out for Isabel’s hand.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got my car here. I’d like to drive, you know, do something that’ll occupy my . . . my crazy mind. Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy. No blue flashing lights.’

  Isabel squeezed her hand. They went down to the car.

  ‘Is it O.K. if we go back to your place?’ said Mercy. ‘I don’t think I can face my own house, just yet.’

  Mercy drove over Vauxhall Bridge and took a left down the Embankment. She gave herself over to the occupational therapy of driving, the demand for concentration, which blocked out the horror thoughts.

  ‘What do you think of me?’ she asked, the question appearing in her brain and coming out, uncontrolled. ‘As a person? I’d be interested to know what somebody who doesn’t know me very well thinks.’

  Isabel looked at her in the strange intimacy of the half-lit dark of the car. An odd question, and she wasn’t sure how much truth was being asked for. Or whether Mercy was looking for reassurance?

  ‘Even if it’s something . . . bad, I still want you to tell me,’ said Mercy. ‘I . . . I’m . . . I don’t know what I am right now. Maybe you can help?’

  ‘Something bad?’ said Isabel, astonished. ‘You’re not a bad person, Mercy. I know bad people. I spent a lot of time with people who didn’t care, who didn’t give a damn about anything human. That could never be said of you. Charlie told me how relentless you were in tracking down the people holding Alyshia. He said that without your intervention she would
n’t have survived. The only possible motivation people like you have for doing that kind of work is that you care. So stop thinking you’re bad.’

  ‘I find it easier to care about people professionally,’ said Mercy. ‘I imagine people’s relationships as perfect examples of what, say, a mother and daughter’s love should be like. So I imagined you and Alyshia together. That motivates me. But in real life my own relationships are hopeless.’

  ‘So are mine. So are everybody’s,’ said Isabel. ‘It’s a messy business being human.’

  ‘At least you can show people close to you what you feel about them,’ said Mercy. ‘I can’t . . . unless I hate them. Like Esme. I hate her.’

  ‘You can’t hate without being able to do the opposite,’ said Isabel. ‘Why do you hate Esme?’

  There were all sorts of reasons. She could enumerate them. But if she started to trot them out they’d seem piffling, unworthy of such a powerful emotion as hate. And yet she did hate Esme. She hated the influence she had over Amy.

  ‘I’m thinking about that, you see,’ said Mercy. ‘And I’m already lying to myself. My mind is telling me I loathe Esme because she has a bad influence over Amy. But the reality is that I hate her because I envy her relationship with my daughter.’

  ‘Grandparents are always more successful with their grandchildren than they ever were with their own. The pressure of bringing them up properly is off.’

  ‘Esme and Amy have a connection. I see it every time they’re together. It drives me crazy.’

  ‘Because almost every teenage girl has a problem with her mother?’

  ‘No, because when I look at Esme I see myself. I see a woman incapable of showing her feelings for another human being,’ said Mercy. ‘You can’t believe what she was like with Charlie. The life he had as a kid, his father disappearing, and yet she gave him nothing. And now she has this meeting of minds with my daughter. It makes me sick. Now don’t tell me that isn’t bad.’

  ‘It’s completely understandable,’ said Isabel. ‘And not many people have that sort of insight.’

  ‘It seems ugly to me, which is why I’ve never told anybody about it before. I should be happy that at least they have a relationship with each other even if they can’t with their . . . own.’