David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (9 page)

He pushed back and grabbed my arm, trying to snap it. Wriggling free, I pumped a fist at his face, and missed. Then did it again. He rolled to the left, my fist slapping against the ground, then used my weight transfer to push me off. When I swivelled to face him again, he was already on his feet, caked in mud.

‘Stop!’ I shouted.

But he didn’t stop. By the time I was on my feet again, he had made it to the metal fence, then dropped to his knees and quickly crawled through a gap. As he stood up, safe on the other side, he pulled up the hood on his jacket so I couldn’t see his face properly, and jogged away.

I got to the fencing and pressed against it. He was halfway along a narrow alleyway that led from the opposite side of the road, moving more slowly now

Then he disappeared for good.

On my way back to the car, about twenty feet from where the kids were playing football, I spotted something: a mobile phone. Mud was caked to it, the display face down, wet grass matted to the casing. I knelt, picked it up and wiped it clean. As soon as I unlocked the keypad, it erupted into life. I hit ‘Answer’.

On the phone: silence. Then the sound of cars in the background.

‘You’re gonna wish you hadn’t picked that up,’ a voice said.

I paused. Stood. I could see my knife about six feet across the grass from me. I walked over and scooped it up, then glanced towards the fence, back to the flats and out to the main road again.

I was being watched.

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Who are you?’

‘
Did
you hear me?’

‘Yeah, I heard you,’ I replied, and looked around again. ‘Who does the flat belong to?’

‘You just made a big mistake.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve made them before.’

‘Not like this.’ The line crackled and hissed. ‘
Listen to me:
you get back in your car and you drive back to

I took the phone away from my ear and looked at the display. Another withheld number. ‘Who does the flat belong to?’

‘Is that clear?’

‘What’s the Calvary Project?’

‘Is that
clear
?’

‘Where’s Alex Towne?’

‘You’re not listening to me,
David
.’

I stopped. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘One chance.’

‘How the fuck do you know my name?’

‘This is your one chance.’

Then the line went dead.

The restaurant overlooked Hyde Park. At the windows were a series of booths, dressed up like an American diner, with mini jukeboxes on the tables playing Elvis on rotation. Above me on the wall was a clock showing 10.40, Mickey Mouse’s arms pointing to the ten and the eight. Three booths along were a French couple and, beyond them, a group of kids eating toast and jam. Apart from that, the place was empty.

On the table in front of me, I had the pad I’d taken from the apartment and the mobile phone I’d picked up off the grass outside. Just like the phone in the flat, there were no contact numbers in the address book, nothing on the ‘recent calls’ list and no saved messages. Maybe they’d never used it. Or maybe they really did wipe it clean after every use.

A waitress came over carrying my breakfast. An omelet, some toast and lots of coffee. She set it down and wandered off again. I loved coffee, sometimes even lived off it. It was probably as close as I got to an addiction. Food didn’t appeal to me in the same way as it had once, mainly because eating on your own wasn’t fun, but also because I’d become lazy during marriage. Derryn had been an incredible cook, and it had been safer, and tastier, for us both if she made the

I filled my mug and, while I waited for the food to cool, started going through the phone again. Dropping it had been a mistake, but a mistake they could probably live with. There was nothing on it that would lead back to them. No incriminating evidence. No numbers. Nothing traceable. But whatever their connection to Alex, they were still warning me off something. Perhaps I was close, perhaps I wasn’t, but it was clear I’d made some inroads.

I pulled the pad towards me.

When I’d been inside the flat, the light from the windows had been shining across the surface of the paper. It had highlighted the scars and grooves left from notes that had been made on previous sheets. I asked the waitress for a pencil and gently rubbed the tip of it across the pad. Slowly, words started to emerge. In the top right:
Must phone Vee
. In the middle, lighter and less defined, a series of names:
Paul. Stephen. Zack
. Towards the bottom, barely even legible until I held it right up to the window, was a telephone number.

I picked up my phone and dialled it.

Eventually, someone answered. ‘Angel’s, Soho.’

I waited, could hear people talking in the background.

‘Is this Angel’s
pub
?’

‘Yeah.’

I gave directory enquiries the number, and they told me the address that was listed for it. It was a pub on the edge of Chinatown. But I knew that even before I’d made the call. During my apprenticeship, I was paired with an old guy called Jacob, an experienced reporter who covered the City. Angel’s was his local at the time. He stopped going a couple of years later, after retiring to the Norfolk countryside.

But I didn’t.

I continued going right the way up until Derryn got ill.

My car was on the other side of the park. I entered at Hyde Park Corner and headed towards the Serpentine. Everything was quiet. The trees were skeletal and bare; the water in the lake dark and still. The only movement on its surface were two model boats, gliding and drifting, their sails catching the wind. I carried on walking, taken in by the smell and sounds of the place; of the grass covered by a blanket of fallen leaves; of the oaks and elms stripped bare as winter approached.

Kids ran across in front of me, their muddy footprints a reminder of where they’d been and how often. Their parents watched from the side: chatting, laughing, their breath drifting away. It made me ache with loneliness. I remembered the times Derryn and I had talked about wanting a family, about what it would be

Sometimes I remembered the sense of finality as I watched her coffin being lowered into the ground. The feeling that there was no doubt any more; she was gone and she wasn’t coming back. I knew, deep down, there was no way Alex could have died in that car crash and still be alive, in the same way I knew there was no way Derryn could be. Yet, when I looked in Mary’s eyes, I only saw conviction there, so lucid, as if she had no doubt in what she was telling me. And I knew a small part of me wanted her to be right. I
wanted
Alex to be alive, however impossible it seemed. And the need to find out was driving me on, and, at least temporarily, helping me forget the loneliness.

After days of heavy skies and biting winds, snow finally started falling as I got back to the car. I climbed in, put the heaters on full blast and started scrolling through the numbers on my mobile. When I got to the one I wanted, I hit ‘Call’.

‘Citizens Advice Bureau.’

I smiled. ‘Oh, come
on
.’

‘Who’s that?’ the voice said.

‘Citizens
Advice
?’

‘
David?
’

‘Yeah. How you doing, Spike?’

‘Man, it’s been
ages
.’

‘So, what can I do you for you, man?’

He spoke that form of American-influenced English that a lot of Europeans used, picked up by watching hours of music videos and TV shows.

‘I need you to fire up the super computer.’

‘Course I can. What you got?’

‘A mobile phone – I want to find out who it belongs to. It’s got no numbers on it, no address book. If I gave you the serial number and the SIM, could you find out where the phone was bought – maybe who it’s registered to?’

‘Yeah, no problem. You’ll have to give me a couple of hours, though.’

‘Sure.’

I gave him all the details and then my phone number.

‘Oh, and my fee’s gone up a bit,’ he said.

‘Whatever it takes, Spike.’

I hung up – and, within seconds, the phone was buzzing again. I looked down at the display. john cary. I’d forgotten to chase him up again.

‘John,’ I said, answering. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you.’

No response.

‘I can’t talk for long,’ he replied.

‘Okay.’

‘You still want that photograph looked at?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Send it to me
at home
. I know a couple of people at the Forensic Science Service, and one of them owes me a favour from a while back. I can ask him to take a look at it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No.’ The line drifted. ‘But make the most of it.’

‘Look, I really appreci–’

‘I’m probably making the biggest mistake of my life.’

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I said nothing. But I knew my instincts had been right: what had happened to Alex still ate at him, and a part of him longed for closure.

I killed the call and watched the snow slide down the windscreen, my thoughts turning back to Angel’s. The last time I’d ever been inside, the winter had been the same as this one: long and cold, stretching from the beginning of November all the way through to the end of February. Two different times, both connected – like a small part of my past was now merging with the present.

Angel’s was a thin building, west of Charing Cross Road. Snow was already piling up against the door when I arrived. Next to it, barred like a cell, was a small window. I peered inside. It was dark; a square of white light at the back was all I could make out. Above me were a pair of neon angel’s wings, and next to the doorway a sign that said it wasn’t open until midday. I looked at my watch. 11.40.

‘You’re early.’

I turned. ‘Woah! Where did you come from?’

A woman was standing behind me, looking me up and down. She was in her mid-forties, pale and boyish, her blonde hair from a bottle, her eyes grey and small. I smiled at her, but she just shook her head. She glanced from the door of the pub to the sky, then pulled her long, fake fur coat tighter around her.

‘Come back in twenty minutes.’ She started unlocking the door.

‘I’m not here to drink.’

She turned to me, disgusted. ‘You wanna strip joint, you’ve come to the wrong place.’

‘I’m not here for that either.’

She pushed the door open and stepped into the open doorway. ‘You wanna chat?’

‘This ain’t the Samaritans.’ She went to push the door closed, but I shoved a foot in next to it and took a step up to the doorway. She didn’t look surprised – as if it happened a lot.

‘There ain’t no money here.’

Her accent was strong. East End.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to rob you.’

She stared at me, then rolled her eyes. ‘The Old Bill. Shit, this must be my lucky day.’

‘I’m not a police officer either.’

She tossed her coat inside, across one of the tables near the door. ‘What do you want?’

‘Can I come in?’

‘No.’

I rubbed my hands together. ‘We’ll just freeze to death out here, then.’

She glanced up and down the street as snow settled around us, then looked at me and rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever,’ she said, sighing, and gestured for me to follow her in.

It had hardly changed since the last time I’d been in. They’d replaced the wallpaper – but nothing else. The room was long and narrow, with a five-pointed cove at the back big enough for a couple of tables, and a jukebox wired up to the far wall.

‘So, what’s going down, Magnum?’ she said.

I turned back to her. She was smiling at her joke. I removed my pad and a pen and set it down on the bar, sliding in at one of the stools. ‘What’s your name?’

I got out my driver’s licence and held it up to her. ‘My name’s David Raker. I used to be a journalist.’

She frowned, leaned in towards the licence. ‘Journalist?’

‘Used to be.’

She glanced at me. ‘Jade.’

‘That’s your name?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Pretty name.’

‘Whatever.’

‘You’re not used to compliments?’

‘From good-looking boys like you?’ She shook her head. ‘No. Last time I had a man tell me my name was pretty, he was twenty stone and had a comb-over that went all the way to his chin.’

I smiled. ‘That’s my weekend look.’

She went to smile and then it disappeared again, as if she’d reined it back in. She looked me up and down a second time, but didn’t say anything.

‘So, how long you on for today?’ I asked her.

‘Till seven.’

‘Looking forward to it.’

‘Like a hole in the head.’

I fiddled with my notepad. It was a new page. Blank. She walked behind the bar, and leaned across it, staring down at the pad.

‘Looks like an interesting story.’

‘Could be, yeah.’

‘So, what’s a journalist want in this shithole?’

‘That a fact?’

‘How long you been here?’

‘I don’t know – six months maybe.’

I noticed a couple of photos on the wall behind me. I got down off the stool and wandered over. One was a picture of a woman I recognized. She was surrounded by a bunch of regulars on New Year’s Eve, three years ago. Her name was Evelyn. She worked behind the bar back when I used to come in with Jacob. I’d got to know her pretty well – well enough to tell her a little of my life, and for her to really mean she was sorry when I told her Derryn had cancer.

‘Evelyn still around?’

‘No.’

I turned back to her. ‘When did she leave?’

A flicker of something. ‘Dunno.’

I studied her. ‘You don’t know when she left?’

‘It was before my time.’

I walked back to the bar and sat down on the stool again. She didn’t look or sound convinced by what she was saying, but I couldn’t see a reason for her to lie.

I moved on.

‘I’m trying to find someone who might have had a connection with this place. If I show you a picture of him, maybe you could tell me if you’ve seen him in here or not.’

She nodded. I took out a picture Mary had given

‘What’s his name?’ she asked.

‘Alex Towne.’

Her eyes flicked to me across the top of the photo.