The Reviver (16 page)

Jonah felt cold. ‘And what was it you were looking for, in my scans?’

She hunted until she found the right clip. ‘All the remnant cases that I’ve been able to run through this imager showed a set of marker signals under standard visual hyperstimulation protocols, like we took you through. The markers are stronger by far, but they mimic the GT signals in duration and pattern. When the remnants are gone, so are those markers. The severity of a case is directly reflected in the strength of the markers. Something about the revival, about the stress the reviver was under, meant that the brain kept producing these signals, triggering these unusual waves of activity. It seems inevitable that such activity causes disruption to normal thought processes.’

‘And I had none of the markers?’

‘You were all clear, Jonah. And if you follow my orders, you’ll stay that way.’ She stood. ‘Now get home and rest.’

‘Sam’s retirement party is on Tuesday,’ Jonah said. ‘Will you be going?’

‘Far too busy, Jonah.’ He could see regret in her eyes. For the first time, Jonah realized there might have been some truth to those rumours. Stephanie Graves hesitated before adding: ‘Wish him all the best from me.’

‘I will,’ Jonah said.

His footsteps were light as he walked to his car. He trusted Stephanie Graves. If she thought his experience with Alice Decker was just hallucination, then it was; if she said he’d be fine, then he would be. Really
believing
it would take some work, but he was starting to think he’d get there.

His mind brought the phrase
ghost traces
into sharp focus, accompanied by the sudden cold he had felt when first hearing the term.
No,
he thought.
Just words. Nothing to fear.

It would all be behind him soon enough. The overwork and the complications that had come with it.

Alice Decker would be a thing of the past.

11

Annabel Harker waited in the darkening house, sitting in her father’s armchair, staring at the phone that refused to ring.

It had been over a week since she’d arrived, and she was drained. There was only so much fear before numbness took hold.

A bottle of brandy sat on the small table next to her, calling, but she ignored it.

She knew it in her bones, in her blood: that the news, when it came, would not be good.

*   *   *

Her call to the police had been surreal, as she gave details of her father and explained the situation. As she spoke, she felt suddenly foolish – that she should have waited, that a benign explanation was staring her in the face.

She answered each question as well as she was able.

‘Has anything happened recently, Miss Harker? What does your father do for a living?’

‘He’s a writer.’

She could hear the double take.

‘
The
Daniel Harker?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, but her mind was elsewhere.
Has anything happened recently?
How would she know? Every year, her father took himself away, cut himself out of her life. Every year, he became a stranger again.

‘What was your father’s state of mind, Miss Harker? Could he have intended to harm himself?’

She froze.

Her first thought was of a time the year after her mother died, when Daniel’s mood was at its darkest. She had stayed with him then from the middle of April to the middle of June, terrified that he would harm himself, be it through drink or a blade to the wrist.

‘You should go home,’ he had told her one night. ‘I’m better. I’m much better.’

‘Not yet.’

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘To be certain that you won’t do anything stupid.’

Her father looked at her, sad and proud and sorry. He hugged her. ‘I couldn’t do that to you, sweetheart.’

They held each other for a time before he added: ‘Besides, I wouldn’t be able to face your mother if I did.’

It had been a joke, of a sort. Annabel knew her father had no faith in an afterlife, or at least not in one that brought that kind of meaningful reunion. The great irony of the man who had found Eleanor Preston.

‘Miss Harker?’

The voice on the phone brought her back from her thoughts.

‘I’m sorry…’

‘I understand this is a difficult question, but it’s important. Have you any reason to believe your father intends to harm himself?’

No,
she thought.
Of course not.

‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘He has a history of depression.’ She felt her cheeks burn. Saying it aloud felt like betrayal. Bringing the police in
at all
felt like betrayal. She was
making
this happen, by acknowledging it. ‘There’s something else you should know.’

She explained that her father had received numerous Afterlifer threats. The police had been aware of them, and of the one which had actually been carried out, but they assured her that any connection was unlikely. The assurance was automatic; by their tone, Annabel knew they would treat it as a serious possibility.

The image was strong in her mind of a man screaming outside the house, red from the waist down, one hand raw. Bloody stumps where two fingers were gone.

The Afterlifers had mellowed through time, by necessity – revival had overwhelming public support. But in the early years, they had attracted plenty of followers who were disaffected enough to take extreme positions, dedicated to stopping revival at any cost. Nine years ago, a series of threats were sent to Daniel’s home, with instructions on a public denunciation of revival, which Daniel ignored and the police played down. It culminated in a parcel bomb. Annabel had been at home and was first to hear the soft thump outside, then the screams of pain; she had opened the door to see the young courier on the ground, and all she could do was stare at the blood as her father came past, running to help.

The next eight months had been the longest of her life. Her father hired ever-present security until the threat subsided, and even at school she had felt some level of risk each time she opened her locker or walked out of the gates.

Annabel wondered if they had returned at last. Closing her eyes she saw the screaming man again, but this time he had her father’s face.

*   *   *

She had started to drink the remaining alcohol that night, getting viciously drunk and regretting it in tears the next morning. She was disturbed by the symmetry of finding herself sitting in her father’s chair, despairing and intoxicated, as he himself did every year.

The isolation was the worst. She needed to talk, but who to call? Her father was her only family. She had a roster of colleagues, some of whom she thought of as friends, but each time she’d come close to ringing them she’d stopped. None was close enough for this kind of burden, bemused sympathy and well-meaning encouragement all she could expect.
Worse than nothing,
she thought.

Nine weeks before and she would have called her then-boyfriend, a record four-month relationship that had come crashing down so fast it had left her head spinning. Even so, as she’d got increasingly drunk she’d come close to making the mistake of calling him.

As she dried her tears in the morning she thought about her failed relationships, and the way she spent so much time worrying about her father, gearing up each year for another emotional beating and resenting him for it.

There was a curious paradox. She was always relieved when a relationship ended, and it was because her own parents had loved each other so completely. It was that absolute love that had led her father into his absolute despair. Into grief so deep that he was still drowning in it.

Love always turned to grief. Was it any wonder she was relieved whenever she failed to find it?

Hungover, waiting for the police to call and struggling to function; she did nothing that day, her mind always returning to one thought:
I wasn’t here. I wasn’t here to help him.

She considered pouring the alcohol away, but opted instead to move the bottles out of sight. After all, she reasoned, she might really need them.

*   *   *

Two detectives came to the house the next afternoon. It was still very warm and humid, but everything seemed drained of colour. Both detectives looked tired and harassed.

‘Hello, Miss Harker,’ said the older-looking of the two, a gray man in a gray suit. The colour was even leeching from the police, Annabel thought. ‘Detective Harrington; this is Detective Weathers.’ His colleague was a woman, just as colourless save for a hint of lipstick. The woman nodded as her name was spoken.

Annabel stayed at the door, reluctant to invite them in. She’d been told they were coming, by phone call that morning, but letting them inside would cut the final strands of denial. It felt dangerous, like inviting a vampire across the threshold.

‘Is there news?’ she asked. ‘They wouldn’t give me much over the phone.’

‘Yes. May we…?’ said Harrington, and Annabel opened the door wide and led the way into the living room.

‘Ah!’ said Weathers to Harrington. ‘Thank God, cooler in here.’ She looked to Annabel. ‘Car air con’s given up, apologies if we’re sweaty.’

Annabel found herself smiling and was glad of it. ‘Sweat away,’ she said. ‘But cut to it.’

The officers sat and shared a glance. Harrington spoke: ‘Your father’s case has been escalated, Miss Harker.’

‘Annabel. Please.’

Harrington nodded. ‘Annabel. We found withdrawals from your father’s bank account. One was from an ATM at a gas station in Greensboro, North Carolina. This was six days ago, 11.23 p.m. Five hundred dollars. A second in Atlanta two days later. Nothing else, and no credit card usage. Just those cash withdrawals.’ Harrington paused, seeming to gather himself. He glanced at his colleague, and Annabel felt cold. ‘Security camera footage at the gas station clearly shows your father’s car.’

At this, Weathers produced a photograph, CCTV from the station forecourt, two vans and one car, a silver Volvo. Then an enlargement showing the car licence plate, clear enough to make out.

Annabel’s voice was trembling: ‘So have you found him?’

Weathers produced another photograph, a still from inside the station. She handed the picture to Annabel. ‘This man was the only known occupant of the vehicle,’ Weathers said.

A tall man, scrawny, plain white tee shirt and jeans. Thinning hair. He could have been anywhere from his twenties to his forties. Wearing sunglasses at night.

‘Who is he?’ said Annabel.

Weathers didn’t flinch, but Harrington’s face registered disappointment.

‘You don’t recognize him?’ said Harrington. ‘A friend of your father’s?’

Annabel looked again. ‘I don’t know him.’ She felt empty. ‘What is this? What’s happening?’

‘Your father’s a rich man, Annabel,’ said Harrington, and the ground lurched under her.

*   *   *

They sent a forensic team before five that evening. Annabel watched every move, aware that they must have been cursing her – cursing the time she’d spent in the house, tainting every part of it. But there had been no signs of struggle when she’d first arrived, nothing to indicate that her father had been assaulted there.
Kidnapped
still seemed so bizarre to her. No motive necessary other than greed.

With no contact and no demands for payment, the police were working on the theory that Daniel was being forced to transfer his own money. There had been no movement in any of her father’s ordinary bank accounts. The police spoke of the possibility of offshore funds, and of private accounts with daily transfer limits that would require any kidnapping to extend over time. They seemed too certain, Annabel thought. Neither she nor her father’s accountant knew of any such accounts, but the police insisted. Then she realized that it was the only scenario they had with a positive outcome. Of course that was what they would tell her.

She was left alone again by ten that night. It would be better to keep the story quiet, they told her, while investigations proceeded. She would be informed of progress.

Whatever the reason he had been taken, and wherever he was, her father would be frightened and alone. Even if he was returned safe, he would be forever changed.

She sought out the alcohol she’d hidden the day before and retreated, surrounded by the ghosts of her family. The days passed, and she took her cue from her father, calling nobody. When the phone rang, it was always the police, to inform her that nothing had changed.

But things
had
changed. She knew it, because she had no more hope left. Each day that passed made the outlook more bleak. She told the police not to call again until they had something to tell her.

And so eight nights after leaving England, Annabel sat in the darkening house, staring at a phone that refused to ring.

She knew that it would ring soon enough.

12

It was late afternoon on Sam Deering’s last day at the FRS, and Never was sitting at his desk writing up the first of three in-house revival reports he had to complete before the day’s end. The prospect of Sam’s retirement party that evening was buoying him.

Sam had been buzzing around the office constantly, increasingly agitated, desperate to tie up loose ends. He headed Never’s way.

‘You got a minute?’ asked Sam.

‘Yep.’

‘I’m going to sign off on that hardware request you gave me last month.’

‘The one you said stood zero chance?’

‘The same. It’s a going-away present. You want?’

‘You kidding?’ said Never. ‘I want.’ Sam nodded and smiled, but Never could see how tired he looked. ‘You OK?’

‘I’ve got, what…’ He checked his watch. ‘Less than two hours. Then Hugo’s in charge, and I’m retired. Nothing to do.’

‘You’ll be fine, Sam. You have the symposium in a few weeks, and I’ll bet that’s not all you’re down for.’

Sam smiled. ‘Yes … but the occasional conference is hardly the same. And Helen won’t approve when she finds out. She’s expecting her husband to be a man of leisure from now on.’

A moment of silence. The air between them had been frosty since Jonah had taken on the Wood case, but not today. Time running out, Never thought.