David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (2 page)

‘Take a seat,’ I said, pulling a chair out for her.

She nodded her thanks.

‘So, tell me about Alex.’

I didn’t know about the dental records.

She composed herself. ‘But you know what the worst bit was? That before he died, he’d just disappeared. We hadn’t seen him for five years. After everything we’d done as a family, he just… disappeared.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘The only thing he left me with was the memory of his body lying on a mortuary slab. I’ll never get that image out of my head. I used to open my eyes in the middle of the night and see him standing like that next to my bed.’

Her eyes glistened.

‘I’m sorry, Mary,’ I said again.

‘You met Alex, didn’t you?’

She took out a photograph. I hadn’t ever met him, only heard about him through Derryn. She handed me the picture. She was in it, her arms around a man in his early twenties. Handsome. Black hair. Green eyes. Probably five-eleven, but built like he might once have been a swimmer. There was a huge smile on his face.

‘This is Alex.
Was
Alex. This is the last picture we ever took of him, down in Brighton.’ She nodded

‘It’s a nice picture.’

‘He was gone five years before he died.’

‘Yes, you said.’

‘In all that time, we never once heard from him.’

‘I’m really sorry, Mary,’ I said for a third time, feeling like I should say something more.

‘I know,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s why you’re my only hope.’

I looked at her, intrigued.

‘I don’t want to sound like a mother who can’t get over the fact that her son is dead. Believe me, I know he’s dead. I saw what was left of him.’ She paused. I thought she might cry, but then she pulled her hair back from her face, and her eyes were darker, more focused. ‘Three months ago, I left work late, and when I got to the station I’d missed my train. It was pulling out as I arrived. If I miss my train, the next one doesn’t leave for fifty minutes. I’ve missed it before. When that happens I always walk to a nice coffee place I know close to the station and sit in one of the booths and watch the world go by.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Anyway, I was thinking about some work I had on, some patients I had seen that day, when I…’ She studied me for a moment. She was deciding whether she could trust me. ‘I saw Alex.’

It took a few moments for it to hit me.
She’s saying she saw her dead son
.

‘I, uh… I don’t understand.’

‘You
saw
Alex?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you mean, you saw him?’

‘I mean, I saw him.’

I was shaking my head. ‘Wh–
How?
’

‘He was walking on the other side of the street.’

‘It was someone who looked like Alex.’

‘No,’ she replied softly, controlled, ‘it was Alex.’

‘But… he’s dead.’

‘I know he’s dead.’

‘Then how could it possibly be him?’

‘It was him, David.’

‘How is that
possible
?’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, ‘but I’m not crazy. I don’t see my mother or my sister. I swear to you, David, I saw Alex that day. I
saw
him.’ She moved forward in her seat. ‘I’ll pay you up front,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s the only way I can think to persuade you that what I am saying is true. I will pay you money up front.
My
money.’

‘Have you reported this?’

‘To the
police
?’

‘Yes.’

She sat back again. ‘Of course not.’

‘You should.’

‘What’s the point?’

‘Because that’s what you do, Mary.’

‘My son is dead, David. You think they’d believe me?’

‘Why did you think
I
would believe you?’

routine
.’

She smiled.

‘I don’t know you as well as I knew Derryn, but I do know this: I took a chance on you believing me, because if, just for a moment, we reversed this situation and
you’d
seen the person
you
loved, I know you’d take a chance on me believing you.’

‘Mary…’

She looked at me as if she’d half expected that reaction.

‘You have to go to the police.’

‘Please, David…’

‘Think about what you’re–’

‘
Don’t insult me like that
,’ she said, her voice raised for the first time. ‘You can do anything, but don’t insult me by telling me to think about what I’m saying. Do you think I’ve spent the last three months thinking about anything else?’

‘This is more than just a few phone calls.’

‘I can’t go to the police.’ She sat forward in her seat again and the fingers of one of her hands clawed at the ends of her raincoat, as if she was trying to prevent something from ending. ‘Deep down, you know I can’t.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He
can’t
be alive, Mary.’

‘You can’t begin to understand what this is like,’ she said quietly.

I nodded. Paused. She was pointing out the difference between having someone you love die, like I had, and having
someone you love die then somehow come back. We both understood the moment – and because of that she seemed to gain in confidence.

‘It was him.’

‘He was a distance away. How could you be sure?’

‘I followed him.’

‘You
followed
him? Did you speak to him?’

‘No.’

‘Did you get close to him?’

‘I could see the scar on his cheek where he fell playing football at school.’

‘Did he seem… injured?’

‘No. He seemed healthy.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘He was carrying a backpack over his shoulder. He’d shaved his hair. He always had long hair, like in the photograph I gave you. When I saw him, he’d shaved it off. He looked different, thinner, but it was him.’

‘How long did you follow him for?’

‘About half a mile. He ended up going into a library off Tottenham Court Road for about fifteen minutes.’

‘What was he doing in there?’

‘I didn’t go in.’

She stopped. ‘I don’t know. When I lost sight of him, I started to disbelieve what I had seen.’

‘Did he come back out?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘No. I followed him to the Underground, and that’s where I lost him. You know what it’s like. I lost him in the crowds. I just wanted to speak to him, but I lost him.’

‘Have you seen him since?’

‘No.’

I sat back in my chair. ‘You said three months ago?’

She nodded. ‘Fifth of September.’

‘What about Malcolm?’

‘What about him?’

‘Have you said anything to him?’

She shook her head. ‘What would be the point? He has Alzheimer’s. He can’t even remember my name.’

I paused, glanced down at the photo of Derryn on my desk. ‘Switch positions with me, Mary. Think about how this sounds.’

‘I know how it
sounds
,’ she replied. ‘It sounds impossible. I’ve been carrying this around with me for
three months
, David. Why do you think I haven’t done anything about it until now? People would think I had lost my mind. Look at you: you’re the only person I thought might believe me, and you think I’m lying too.’

‘Please, David.’

‘I
don’t
think you’re lying, Mary,’ I said.
But I think you’re confused
.

Anger passed across her eyes, as if she could tell what I was thinking. Then it was gone again, replaced by an acceptance that it had to be this way. She looked down into her lap, and into the handbag perched on the floor next to her. ‘The only way I can think to persuade you is by paying you.’

‘Mary, this is beyond what I can do.’

‘You know people.’

‘I know
some
people. I have a few sources from my newspaper days. This is more than that. This is a full-blown investigation.’

Her hand moved to her face.

‘Come on, Mary. Can you see what I’m saying?’

She didn’t move.

‘I’d be wasting your money. Why don’t you try a proper investigator?’

She shook her head gently.

‘This is what they get paid to do.’

She looked up, tears in her eyes.

‘I’ve got some names here.’ I opened the top drawer of my desk and took out a diary I used when I was still at the paper. ‘Let me see.’ I could hear her sniffing, could see her wiping the tears from her face, but I didn’t look up. ‘There’s a guy I know.’

She held a hand up. ‘I’m not interested.’

‘But this guy will help y–’

‘Why not?’

‘Can you imagine how many times I’ve played this conversation over in my head? I don’t think I can muster the strength to do it again. And, anyway, what would be the point? If you don’t believe me, what makes you think this investigator would?’

‘It’s his job.’

‘He would laugh in my face.’

‘He wouldn’t laugh in your face, Mary. Not this guy.’

She shook her head. ‘The way you looked at me, I can’t deal with that again.’

‘Mary…’

She finally lowered her hand. ‘Imagine if it was Derryn.’

‘Mary…’

‘
Imagine
,’ she repeated, then, very calmly, got up and left.

I was brought up on a farm. My dad used to hunt pheasant and rabbits with an old bolt rifle. On a Sunday morning, when the rest of the village – including my mum – were on their way to church, he used to drag me out to the woods and we’d fire guns.

When I was old enough, we progressed to a replica Beretta he’d got mail order. It only fired pellets, but he used to set up targets in the forest for me: human-sized targets that I had to hit. Ten targets. Ten points for a head shot, five for the body. I got the full one hundred points for the first time on my sixteenth birthday. He celebrated by letting me wear his favourite hunting jacket and taking me to the pub with his friends. The whole village soon got to hear about how his only child was going to be the British army’s top marksman one day.

That never happened. I never joined the army. But ten years later I found a jammed Beretta, just like the one he’d let me use, on the streets of Alexandra, a township in Johannesburg. Except this one was real. There was one bullet left in the clip. I found out later the same day that a bullet, maybe even from the gun I’d found, had ended the life of a photographer I’d shared an office with for two years. He’d dragged himself a third of a mile along a street, gunfire crackling around

At the house I rented later that night, I removed the bullet from the gun, and have kept it with me ever since. As a reminder of my dad, and our Sunday mornings in the forest. As a reminder of the photographer who left this world, alone, in the middle of a dust-blown street. But mostly, as a reminder of the way life can be taken away, and of the distance you might be prepared to crawl in order to cling on to it.

It had just gone nine in the evening when I called Mary and told her I’d take the case. She started crying. I listened to her for a few minutes, her tears broken up by the sound of her thanking me, and then I told her I’d drive out to her house the next morning.

When I put the phone down, I looked along the hallway, into the bowels of my house, and beyond into the darkness of our bedroom, untouched since Derryn died. Her books still sat below the windowsill, the covers creased, the pages folded at the edges where she couldn’t find a bookmark. Her spider plant was perched above it, its long, thin arms fingering the tops of the novels on the highest shelf.

Since she’s been gone I haven’t spent a single night in there. I go in to shower, I go in to water her plant, but I sleep in the living room on the sofa, and always with the TV on. Its sounds comfort me. The people, the programmes, the familiarity of it – they help fill some of the space Derryn used to occupy.

I got to Mary’s house, a cavernous mock-Tudor cottage an hour west of London, just before ten the next morning. It was picture-perfect suburbia, right at the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac: shuttered windows, a wide teak-coloured front porch and flower baskets swinging gently in the breeze. I walked up to the door and rang the bell.

A few moments later, it opened a sliver and Mary’s face appeared. Recollection in her eyes. She pulled the door back and behind her I could see her husband, facing me, on the stairs.

‘Hello, David.’

‘Hi, Mary.’

She moved back, and I stepped past her. Her husband didn’t move. He was looking down at a playing card, turning it over in his hands. Face up. Face down.

‘Would you like some coffee or tea?’

‘Coffee. Thanks.’

She nodded. ‘Malcolm, this is David.’

Malcolm didn’t move.

‘Malcolm.’

Nothing.

‘
Malcolm
.’

He flinched, as if a jolt of electricity had passed

‘Malcolm, come here,’ Mary said, waving him towards her.

Malcolm got up, and shuffled across to us. He was drawn and tired, stripped of life. His black hair was starting to grey. The skin around his face sagged. He was probably only a few years older than Mary, but it looked like more. He had the build of a rugby player; maybe once he’d been a powerful man. But now his life was ebbing away, and his weight was going with it.

‘This man’s name is David.’

I reached out and had to pull his hand out from his side to shake it. He looked like he wasn’t sure what I was doing to him.

When I let go, his hand dropped away, and he made his way towards the television, moving as if he was dosed up. I followed him and sat down, expecting Mary to follow. Instead, she headed for the kitchen and disappeared inside. I glanced at Malcolm Towne. He was staring at the television, the colours blinking in his face.

‘You like television?’ I asked him.

He looked at me with a strange expression, like the question had registered but he didn’t know how to answer it. Then he turned back to the screen. A couple of seconds later, he chuckled to himself, almost guiltily. I could see his lips moving as he watched.

Mary returned, holding a tray.

‘That’s fine.’

‘There’s blueberry muffins, and a couple of raspberry ones too. Have whichever you like. Malcolm prefers the raspberry ones, don’t you, Malc?’