Fall From Grace (36 page)

And yet I couldn’t deny its risks.

Especially now.

It had never really mattered before Annabel came along. I wasn’t unconcerned about my safety, but the pull I felt to the lost, to the families of the missing, drove me forward. Despite everything that had happened to me, all the devils I’d had to face, all the darkness in men, I’d never regretted a single moment. And yet I regretted what happened tonight. I regretted compromising my daughter.

‘What do Maddie and Evelyn think about your work?’

She shrugged. ‘That’s not who you are to your kids. When I was still going off to work in uniform at the beginning, they were too young to notice. Now they’re older, they have their own lives. I doubt they give it a second thought.’

‘And your husband?’

‘I don’t know what Bill thinks any more.’

She gave me a look that said everything:
There are problems in our marriage – and I don’t want to discuss it
. I nodded, looking out at the café.

When I turned back to her, she was still staring at me, obviously angry and upset about being drawn into a conversation about her personal life.

‘How are those two cases connected?’ she asked.

‘Pamela Welland and Simon Preston?’

A nod of the head.

Before I could answer, my phone started buzzing. I picked it up and looked at the display.
Murray
. I glanced at my watch again. One-forty-five. Either she wasn’t sleeping, or this couldn’t wait.

‘Sorry,’ I said to Craw. ‘I need to take this.’

She looked annoyed, but opened her hands out and sunk back in her seat.

‘Evening,’ I said, pushing Answer.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No.’

‘You need to hear this.’

I glanced at Craw, who was looking down into her mug of tea, gently turning it with both hands. She gave the impression she wasn’t listening, but I knew her well enough by now: she was taking in every word.

‘What have you got?’ I asked.

‘That place you talked about. Bethlehem. Something about it rang a bell. I’ve just been back through my notes, and … it’s in there.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s from a while back, May 2000, but I remember it now. The Boss must have been out of the office, I guess, maybe in a meeting, maybe on a case. Somewhere.’ She was talking quickly, frantically. ‘Anyway, he got this call, and I took a message for him. I didn’t have anything else to hand, so I took down the message in my notebook. I knew it wouldn’t get lost that way.’

She paused, making no move to continue.

I prompted her: ‘Okay. So what was the message?’

‘This guy who called, he said his name was Poulter.’

I pulled out my own notebook, wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder, and flipped to a new page. I could see Craw watching as I wrote the guy’s name down.

‘Who is he?’

‘He didn’t leave a number, but I wrote down the message he asked me to pass on: “Tell Mr Franks that I’ll be at the hospital until 7 p.m. tonight.” ’

Bethlehem
.

I tried to think logically. ‘He could have been calling from any hospital.’

‘No. I, uh …’ Murray paused, her silence heavy with guilt. ‘Look, I know I betrayed the Boss’s trust, but I thought at the time he might be ill. I was concerned.’

‘Are you saying you then tracked this guy down?’

‘Yes. To the hospital. That’s why the name Bethlehem rang a bell with me.’

‘What did Franks say when you passed on the message?’

Craw had been looking out at the room, at the drivers gradually drifting out into the night to continue their journeys. But, at her father’s name, she snapped back to me.

‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ Murray said. ‘But, honestly, I don’t think he really said anything. I think he just thanked me.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s how I remember it going.’

‘He didn’t look at you strangely?’

‘This was thirteen years ago. I don’t remember
how
he looked at me. It just says in my notes that this guy was called Poulter, and he’d called the Boss from that hospital.’

‘Okay.’

‘Obviously Bethlehem has closed down now, so the number I had for him there is dead. But I did a little digging and have managed to find a home number for him.’

She read it out to me.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘This is great.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe not.’

I paused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s something else you should know.’

‘What?’

Hesitation on the line.

‘Murray?’

‘You remember you asked me to check that police ID number you found at the top of Franks’s missing persons file? The one you came across at Reynolds’s place?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I got a name.’

‘So we know who passed him that file?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who does it belong to?’

A long silence.

‘It belongs to Melanie Craw.’

55

I looked across the table at Craw, her eyes on me again.

‘Okay,’ I said to Murray. ‘I’ll give you a call in the morning.’

She could immediately sense something was up. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah. Fine. I’ll phone you later.’

Ending the call before Murray could ask me any other questions, I placed the phone down on the table and then casually closed, and pocketed, my notebook.

‘Who was that?’ Craw said.

She asked the question flatly, as if she had no investment in its answer, but there was a kind of narrowness to her face now, like she was holding her breath.
Like she knows something’s changed
. I paused, giving myself a moment to think.

She pushed her cup aside. ‘Raker?’

I was seeing the cracks in the wall.

She’d driven two hundred and twenty miles when she could have just sent Derek Cortez to check on the house. She’d appeared only minutes after Reynolds, telling me she hadn’t passed him on the way – and yet, given the remoteness of the house, and the single-track approach, that seemed impossible. Then there was all the crap she’d spun about me not answering my mobile.
Because she’d deliberately called me on my old phone
. I’d dumped that handset days ago, after I found out Reynolds was tracking it – and the first person I texted with the number for the replacement was her. Now it seemed clear: she’d chosen not to call me on the new one because she didn’t
want
me to answer.

What she wanted was an excuse to come down here.

‘Raker?’

I’d never seen her cry once when talking about her father. She’d never got
close
. What kind of daughter showed zero emotion when describing her dad going missing?

One who was working against him
.

I looked at her, and then out into the café, moving between faces. Was it just her, or were other cops involved too? Could they be here, at the other tables? I’d told Craw where we were going before we’d left Dartmoor. She could have phoned in the details to whoever else was involved while we were driving down here. But then my gaze finally returned to her and I thought of something worse:
I’ve been watching you for a while now, and you’ve never had a clue
. Maybe the reason Reynolds was on to me so early was because he’d been prepped by someone before the case had even started.

Maybe I was sitting with her.

‘Raker?’ she said. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’

She seemed agitated now, on edge, and suddenly this whole thing made perfect sense: what better way was there to watch me? And as I thought of that, something hit me hardest of all:
listening to Reynolds on the phone at his flat
. I’d been out on the roof, him at the window, only able to hear his side of the conversation.
‘What?’ … ‘What help
can that possibly be?’ … ‘Are you fucking insane? Now he knows all about me.’ … ‘Yeah, well, you better hope so
.’ He was being told his file had been accessed. He was being told I knew some of his history now. And he was being reassured it was part of the plan.

‘Raker?’

I held up a hand. ‘I’m just thinking.’

‘About what?’

About you being the one who accessed Reynolds’s file for me. About what your plan is. About why you and Reynolds would work together in order to find your father
.

‘About
what
?’ she said again.

‘Is it easy to gain access to the database?’

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to pull them back in. My shoulder pinged with pain and my guts began churning at the thought of being set up, of being betrayed by the daughter of the man I was being paid to find. Yet even as the truth began to form in front of me, a part of me still fought against the idea. I didn’t know Craw. Not really. In reality, no one knew anyone. But I hadn’t expected this. At no point had I ever seen this coming.

‘The database,’ I said.

‘Are you talking about the
police
database?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hard.’

‘It’s hard to access it?’

‘What do you think?’ she said, a look of contempt in her face. ‘It’s not open to the public, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Could someone log in with your ID?’

A frown, but no response.

‘Could
they?’

‘Technically, yes.’

‘But only if you told them your number?’

She nodded. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘Is that the done thing?’

‘What?’

‘Telling people your number?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Does anyone know yours?’

She studied me for an instant – a split second of confusion – and then it was like a light switched on. She shifted back in her seat, hands flat to the table.

Something had changed in her.

‘Why?’ she said.

I didn’t reply.

Instead I felt a pop of pain at the back of my head and, for a moment, white spots flashed in front of me. When they were gone, a fresh spike of nausea bubbled in my throat. I tried to ignore it, watching Craw’s eyes move out to the café. I turned and looked myself. Almost unnoticed, it had become just us and a driver in a green tracksuit top.

On cue, he glanced in our direction.

He was in his forties, bearded, overweight, but big and powerful. He looked from me to Craw, his eyes lingering on her, and then returned to the newspaper he had out in front of him.
He could be working with her and Reynolds
.

Anyone could be working with them
.

‘What’s going on, Craw?’

She faced me, said nothing.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’

This time she leaned in across the table, hands still flat to it, fringe straying across her eyes. ‘I think you need some rest, David,’ she said quietly. ‘Maybe a doctor too.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I think a doctor would do you good.’

I glanced at the man in the green top again.

‘Once you’ve rested, then we can talk.’

‘Talk about what?’

‘Talk about what’s really going on here.’

My fists had balled together without me even realizing, my muscles tense, nerves shredded. I watched her as she leaned back in her chair again, running a hand through her hair, setting it right above the arc of her eyebrows. My vision blurred slightly.

Then my phone shattered the silence.

I looked down at the display.

Ewan Tasker
.

I picked it up, eyes still on Craw. ‘Hello?’

‘Raker, it’s me.’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah. They’re both safe and sound.’

‘Thank you.’

He paused. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah. I’ll call you when this is all over.’

I hung up, placed the phone face down again and looked at my watch.

It was 2 a.m.

Craw was examining me from behind her hand, her elbow to the table, her knuckles against her lips. Her face was unmoved, like a mask.

I scooped up the handset and stood, feeling unsteady on my feet now. My head was pounding. My stomach slithered, like something was moving inside it.

Craw gripped my arm. ‘Where are you going?’

The man looked over at us again.

‘I’m going to find out the truth,’ I said to her.

She just stared up at me, hand still clamped at my elbow.

‘Let go of me.’

‘This is only going to lead to more trouble, David.’

‘Then stop me.’

I ripped my arm away, looked again at the driver and walked out into the rain. As it pounded against my face, hard as needles, I gazed in through the glass at her. She was sitting at the back, eyes fixed on me, saying something to the man.

Another pop in my head.

Another wave of pain.

I headed to the car.

56

By the time the sun bleached the sky, it was eight o’clock and I was sitting in a medical bay in A&E at Derriford Hospital, north of Plymouth. I’d ended up at the hospital after leaving Craw, my head getting worse every moment I was behind the wheel, until – at a set of traffic lights, four miles on – I’d blacked out. I’d been unable to think, unable even to drive straight, and by the time I arrived, I’d already been sick once. My shoulder was badly bruised, but there was no break. Of more concern to the doctors had been a gash to my head, at the base of my skull.

It had needed nine stitches.

As I waited to be discharged, I drifted in and out of sleep, desperately tired but unable to drop off. My head was full of static, full of conversations replaying over and over. In the hinterland between consciousness and sleep, I started to wonder what it was I’d seen and heard the previous night; how much of it was real, how much imagined. At 9 a.m., tired of waiting, I discharged myself, and as I moved outside, into the cool of the morning, it felt like everyone I passed was watching me, every whispered conversation carrying my name. At the car – looking worse than ever in the daylight – I surveyed the car park and saw shadows move inside vehicles, in reflections off the glass. I heard footsteps running off.

I heard my name spoken.

I let myself into the back seat and collapsed on to it, pulling the door shut. The car was freezing, smelling of burnt electrics and damp, and it instantly began to steam up as I lay there, face down. My shoulder throbbed, pulsing like a heartbeat. The stitches at the back of my head sent green shoots of pain upwards, into the dome of my skull. But I didn’t care about any of that. I’d slept six hours in the last forty-eight. All I cared about was sleep. And finally, slowly, I let it take me away.