What Remains (23 page)

His eyes flicked to my pad. ‘Anyway, I’m rambling. Sorry. It just constantly amazes me that people can be so negative about the pier, because
look
at it. It’s
history
. It’s part of the city’s DNA, its biography. We even have our own ghost!’

‘Is that right?’

East smiled. ‘The Devil of Wapping.’

Unexpectedly, he got up from his seat and looked out of the window behind his desk. He beckoned me over.

‘That bit down there,’ he said, pointing a pudgy finger at the paved area in front of the pier entrance, ‘was where they found one of his victims. The Devil had a taste for old women. He killed nine in all, and the one he left here was the oldest. Eighty-three. Anyway, when they finally caught Samuel Brown, aka “The Devil”, they hanged him here in 1674 – right where the paving slabs are now – and they say his ghost haunts this part of the river, and possibly the pier too.’ He turned to me, eyes wide, as if he’d mistaken our conversation for another part of his tour. ‘A cleaner on the pier in the ’70s said she thought she saw someone walking through the pavilion, dressed in a coat, breeches and stockings. Whoever it was had a noose around his neck.’

‘Maybe he was on a stag night.’

East smiled politely but looked hurt, as if I’d spoilt the
mood, or the tour, or whatever this was. I returned to my seat and waited for him to do the same.

‘So,’ I said, ‘I was looking for some information.’

I dug around in my jacket pocket and took out a picture of Healy, setting it down on the desk in front of East. The picture was about eight years old, taken by Gemma in the garden of their house in St Albans.
Different time, different life
.

‘I wondered if you recognized this man?’ I asked him.

East picked up the photograph.

It was harder to see his expression now, his head slightly bowed, his eyes hidden behind the rim of the glasses. He began shaking his head. ‘No. Should I?’

‘He might have come here himself, back at the start of the year.’

‘He’s missing now?’

‘Yes,’ I said, unsure exactly why I was lying.

He looked up, Healy’s photo pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and returned his glasses to the bridge of his nose – a habit he repeated at least once every sixty seconds – his eyes fixed on me, his expression neutral. He’d crossed his legs under the desk, which tilted his body slightly to the left, and I could see one of his shirt tails had escaped the beltline on his trousers, revealing a shelf of pale white fat at his waist. I recalled, then, the photograph of him I’d seen downstairs, caught on the edges of the picture of Gary Cabot the day he had bought the pier from Arnold Goldman. Calvin East had been at least two stone lighter in 2001, but in the thirteen years since, clearly that hadn’t been the only change. That one picture of him, out there on the periphery of a celebration – nervous, intimidated – had captured
something true about his personality at the time, something about his nature that was impossible to articulate, but very clearly on show. Yet here, in his early forties, that wasn’t who he was any more. Now he watched me from behind those big lenses, quiet, suddenly a little aloof, as if he was trying to do the same to me as I was doing to him: figure me out.

‘What’s this man got to do with the museum and the pier?’ he asked.

Briefly, there was a flash of something else in his face –
panic?
– there and then gone, and I thought again about how the years might have changed him.

Or maybe they haven’t changed him at all.

Maybe he’s just become better at disguising who he is
.

‘I found a book among his belongings,’ I said. ‘
A Seaside in the City: The History of Wapping Grand Pier
, by Carla Stourcroft. Are you familiar with it?’

‘Yes. I’ve read it.’

‘He made some notes in the back of it.’

Another lie
.

He came forward in his seat, shrugging off his jacket and unbuttoning his waistcoat. ‘Interesting. I wonder why he would be looking into the pier.’

‘That’s what I’d like to find out.’

‘I see.’ His gaze lingered on me for a second. ‘We always get people in here asking questions about historical items of interest – the pier itself, Victorian and Edwardian Britain. I mean, last week I was filling someone in on quack remedies, for example – specifically the ones that had cocaine in them.’ He laughed a little too hard. ‘Most of those remedies were outlawed by the early twentieth century, certainly by the start of the First World War.’

‘So you don’t recognize him?’

‘This man?’

‘He wasn’t one of the people you described?’

‘Described?’

‘The people you just talked about – coming in here and wanting to know about the history of this place, and of the pier.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, definitely not.’

I glanced at my notes. I’d written nothing down.

When I looked up again, East was out of his seat. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you a coffee? I think I’m going to make myself some fruit tea.’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

He headed out.

I went back over the last ten minutes. There wasn’t much to go on. Scraps. Maybe not even scraps. What bugged me more than that was why I’d felt compelled to lie to him. Was it that second of panic I’d seen in his face? That brief glimpse of the cowering boy inside him, the one I was positive I saw in the picture of him downstairs?

A noise out in the corridor.

I looked over my shoulder and then got up, walking to the door of East’s office. I looked left, down towards the staffroom.

‘Mr East?’

When there was no response, I headed towards it, pausing in the doorway. It was small. A table, four chairs. A counter with a microwave, a kettle and a toaster.

No exits.

Turning, I looked back to the other end of the corridor, to the door I’d first come in. I could hear noise from the
other side: a laughing sailor, the tinny sound of Amberolas, the tannoy from the maze on the next floor above.

Because the door’s ajar
.

East had made a break for it.

31

I headed out into the first-floor arcade.

It was five minutes to closing time and completely empty. I looked across the tops of the machines, along the canyons of cabinets, a familiar feeling passing through me. I’d felt it out front, at the gates to the pier; I’d felt it as I’d stood here earlier, alone, surrounded by the wooden skeletons of long-forgotten machinery.
A mechanical graveyard.

Movement on my left.

Feet on the stairs, heading up.

I followed, taking two steps at a time. As soon as I hit the second floor, I stopped again, looking around, trying to spot him. On the other side, the shop wasn’t manned, the girl I’d seen earlier no longer behind the counter. I could see a wall lined with T-shirts, a different Victorian advert on each. Elsewhere there were pens, erasers, plastic beakers, replica coins, doorstops, mill photographs, old maps, countless junk.

More movement.

In the mirror maze this time: in one of its panels, reflecting a point much further in, I’d seen something – a man, dark clothes – there and then gone again.

It was East.

Or was it?

My eyes darted to the shop, to the vacant till, and then out at the room behind me, the machines as perfectly
aligned and as silent as rows of corn. And then, out of nowhere, I started to feel unsteady on my feet, unsure of whether I’d actually seen anyone at all, my head thumping, a fuzz forming behind my eyes.

What the hell’s the matter with me?

Suppressing a ripple of alarm, I headed into the maze, under the warped, bleached sign, my reflection emerging on one of the panels in front of me. Ten paces in, the maze dog-legged right, although it was difficult to tell, identical panels under identical coving making it seem as if the maze went on for ever. My reflection appeared on a panel next to me, then on one in front, then on both at the same time. I stopped just short of mistaking a solid glass wall for the next part of the maze, my face inches from making an impact. At another time, I might have seen the humour in my situation, the absurdity of all of this.

But not this time.

More movement
.

Ahead of me: a flash, a shadow.

I upped my pace, hands out, unsure until I was almost upon it what was a reflection and what was the next turn. I glimpsed the exit somewhere in front, then realized it wasn’t in front at all, it was behind me, and I was looking at another pane of glass. I stopped, rounded the corner, double-backing on myself, a sense of panic starting to grip me. The worse it got, the more the walls seemed to close in. Suddenly, my breathing stuttered, my knees giving out from under me.

And, like someone hitting a switch, I blacked out.

The noise of my phone brought me around.

I’d fallen forward, cracking my head against a glass
panel, the ripple still passing along adjacent panes as I started to wake up. I watched the impact go on for ever, repeated over and over, as the maze reflected ahead, into infinity. The more lucid I became, the louder my phone seemed to get, still ringing on the floor next to me. I looked down at the display. It was Craw.

I ignored it.

‘Hello?’

A female voice from somewhere else.

I felt saliva spill from my lips. When I’d hit the mirror, I’d punctured something on my face, and now my blood was warm and slick against my skin.

‘Hello? Is everything okay in there?’

I tried rolling on to my back, and as I did, I thought I saw a brief, blurred impression of someone in a glass panel to my left. East. Maybe someone else. But then it was gone again.

I lay there, alone, at the centre of the maze, until the girl from the shop found me a couple of seconds later. It was her voice I’d heard. She knelt down, trying to help, telling me she’d popped to the toilet while the place was quiet, which is why it had been unmanned, and returned to hear a crash from here.

I was slumped against one of the glass walls, blood running from a cut on my right cheek. She fired a series of questions at me –
What happened? Are you all right? Do you want me to call a doctor for you?
– and then something seemed to click and she began trying to negotiate instead, pleading with me not to tell her boss that she’d left her station unattended. I told her she didn’t need to worry and tuned her out, trying to regain my composure. But as my nerves settled and the blood began to clot, I realized something: I was dazed, in pain, disconcerted.

And I was scared.

What the hell had just happened?

I shuffled out of the maze and straight to the toilets, cleaning myself up. At my hip, I could feel a lump forming, tender and bruised. The cut on my cheek was small and manageable, but my head throbbed, a pounding bassline that made me feel woozy.

When I got back down to the ground floor of the building, there were a couple of staff milling around, one cashing up in the restaurant, one sweeping.

‘Uh, sir, it’s past closing time now,’ the older of the two said.

‘I know. Is Calvin around?’

‘He’s already gone home.’

‘You saw him leave?’

She looked at the cut on my face. ‘Yes.’

My hip was agony now, my face throbbing. Touching a finger to my cheek, I noticed the cut had opened again, a trail of blood worming towards my chin.

Dabbing at it with the sleeve of my jacket, I felt a subtle change in the spaces around me, as if the air had shifted. Looking out to the entrance, back the way I’d come, I became aware of one of the staff asking me if I was all right.

I headed for the entrance, stumbling, nauseous. Was this what exhaustion felt like? What a month of broken sleep did to you? Or was it the blow I’d taken when I’d blacked out? Was I in danger?

Was I dying?

At the bottom of the steps, I backed up against the wall of the paper mill and closed my eyes.

Calm down
.

I regulated my breathing, relaxed my muscles and turned
my thoughts away from my body, back to East; to where he may have gone, to how I was going to pick up his trail – and why he might run in the first place. By the time I opened my eyes again, I felt better, clearer, back in control of myself.

Forget it. Move on.

Healy’s all that matters now
.

What Remains

0 days, 0 hours, 4 minutes
before

It was late on Friday night, with Gail and the girls already in bed, when Tom Ruddy called Mal. He’d been dozing in front of the
TV when his mobile erupted into life and started travelling across the sofa towards him. He looked down at the display, saw it was Ruddy and thought about not answering: the last time he’d seen Tom was five months ago, when they’d both ended up on the same stag weekend, and the conversation had inevitably returned to that day at the lake, when he’d rescued Tom’s son from the water.

He let it go to voicemail, picked up the remote control and started flicking through the channels. Sixty seconds later, his phone beeped again and the display revealed that Tom had left a message. He picked it up, dialling into his voicemail.

‘Hey, it’s Tom.’ It sounded like he was in a pub somewhere. ‘Sorry to call so late. Haven’t seen you for a few months, so thought I’d check in. Just, you know … seeing how things are. Uh, anyway, give me a call back sometime.’

Mal deleted the message, dropping the phone back on to the sofa.

Maybe another time, Tom.

Three hours later, he stirred, not having realized he’d dropped off to sleep in the first place. On the
TV, the channel he’d been watching was now replaced by a title card telling him its programmes would return at six the next morning. When he checked his watch, he saw that it was after 3 a.m. He edged forward on the sofa, head throbbing, hands slick with sweat. He felt a little disorientated, fuzzy-headed, as if he’d woken up somewhere he didn’t know and wasn’t familiar with.