What Remains (53 page)

‘You look like you need a coffee,’ she said.

I pushed the door shut. ‘I need a shower first.’

After I was done, I returned to the kitchen, and she was
standing at one of the windows, looking out at the front garden. Her car, a red Mini, was parked where my BMW would have been if it hadn’t been parked in a forensics lab.

‘Morning,’ I said, rubbing at an eye.

She turned. ‘Morning.’

She’d clipped her fringe back from her face on the left-hand side, and it had now become long enough at the back to tie into a small ponytail. It gave her slender features a different slant, revealing more of her eyes and cheekbones. I’d spoken to her once since handing myself in, from a payphone inside the station, a conversation that had lasted thirty minutes, and in which I’d told her everything I’d found out. For half an hour she’d just listened, silently, on the other end of the line. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure why I’d been so candid. She couldn’t help me then, and she wouldn’t have been able to help me if I’d been charged, and much of our relationship had been built on an unspoken understanding that we might never feel comfortable giving so much of ourselves away. Yet I’d told her all the same. Perhaps a part of me was just sick of holding on to everything.

‘How are you feeling?’ she said.

I shrugged and picked up the coffee that she’d left for me. ‘I didn’t land you in trouble, did I?’

I’d called her twice before I’d handed myself in – once from Wanstead Flats when I’d still had Calvin East in the boot of my car; and once from St David’s. The second time, she’d called Bishara, her equivalent in the borough of Waltham Forest, and told him he needed to get a team down there. As a result, Craw’s commanding officer would have wanted to know why it was her I’d chosen to contact.

‘I said we had history,’ she said, smiling.

‘Well, that’s not a lie.’

‘They know about Dad, and what you did for me last year. They don’t approve of it, but they know. They assume you chose to call me because of that.’ She eyed me for a moment. ‘So you didn’t answer my question: how are you?’

I shrugged again. ‘Why did they kill those girls?’

‘Life meant nothing to those men.’

‘That wasn’t the reason why.’

‘It’s
a
reason.’

Kids can be duplicitous too
. ‘It’s not
the
reason.’

She studied me. ‘So what’s next?’

I perched myself on one of the stools.

‘Raker?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe nothing’s next.’

‘You’re just going to let it go?’ She said it with an even expression, but it was clear she didn’t believe me. When I didn’t respond, she said, ‘I don’t know if you’re looking for advice, but I’m going to give you some anyway. Why don’t you see what Bishara comes up with? Forensically, I mean.’

‘I don’t think he’ll be calling me in a hurry.’

A half-smile. ‘I’m sure he won’t.’

She didn’t say anything else, although there was a hint of something in her face. ‘Are you offering to help me?’ I said.

In her pocket, her phone started ringing.

She took it out, looked at the display and said to me, ‘I’ve got to go.’ But she didn’t make a move to leave. ‘Look, I know Bishara a little. We went on a course together after he moved down here. We spent four weeks in each other’s company, and after a month you get the measure
of someone. He’s a clever guy, and he’ll pull this investigation together, and everything that needs to be ticked off
will
be ticked off. But the reason why those girls were murdered …’

I got where she was going. ‘That won’t get ticked off.’

She didn’t commit either way, but it was obvious that was what she’d been driving at. ‘It’s a four-year-old case that’s been tainted by a disgraced detective.’

‘The girls don’t have to suffer because Healy –’

‘I’m telling you how it’s viewed at the Met. That’s all. What you’ve got to understand is that no one’s going to prison for this. There’s no conviction on the line here. Korman, Grankin, they’re dead. Bishara’s got the Clarks, the Yosts and Carla Stourcroft to deal with, before you even get into who the DNA in those barrels belongs to. He’s got techs inside those machines at the museum, he’s got a fire-damaged pier and a half-gutted children’s home. He’s got the very real prospect of a suspension in the pipeline too. Fact is, he doesn’t have time to find out
why
the girls had to die – however wrong that seems to you. I mean, maybe there
is
no why. Korman was a depraved psychopath. Is it so surprising that he’d kill them as well as their mother?’

I understood the logic, but it still didn’t feel right.

‘So are you offering to help me?’ I repeated.

She didn’t reply immediately, glancing at her phone again, at whatever was on the display. ‘I’ll keep you up to date with things I feel are relevant.’

‘Which means what?’

‘Which means exactly what I just said.’

I stared at her. ‘It’s not even your borough.’

‘But I know people there.’

‘And you’re prepared to do this why?’

‘Because otherwise you’re going to be chasing around after Healy’s ghost until there’s nothing left of you. And because I’m a parent too, and I can’t let this slip through the cracks. I think you’re right, basically. Maybe you’ve
always
been right.’ She pocketed her phone. ‘Those girls deserve an answer.’

78

After Craw left, I made some calls.

The first one was to Gemma, to see how she was. She didn’t cry this time, her tears for Healy all used up at his funeral, but it was hard to hear the emotion in her voice and sit there in silence, knowing the truth about her husband’s fate. I thought of him a couple of times, as she referenced things they’d done together – days when their marriage had seemed viable, even good – and pictured him in the place he was now: a bland hotel room half a mile away, alone and in pain.

‘Thank you for everything, David,’ Gemma said to me as the call began to fizzle out. ‘Thank you for finding out what happened to Colm, for all your help with the funeral – for bringing Liam and Ciaran,
me
, some sort of explanation.’

My lies stung even more now, sitting right in the centre of my chest, the truth so close to the edges of my tongue, for a moment it felt like I was about to tell her. But I didn’t. I muttered some conciliatory words, said goodbye, then sat there at the windows of the living room, remorseful, troubled, watching the rain.

Eventually, I hauled myself up, made some lunch and then spent an hour chatting to Annabel on Skype. It was a relief to see her, to hear her voice, to think about something else. After ten minutes of filling me in on what had happened at work, and then another fifteen talking about
a parents’ evening she’d been to for Olivia, she stopped, a slight frown on her face, and I knew what was coming.

‘I know I keep saying this, but –’

‘I’m fine, sweetheart.’

She smiled. ‘You look tired.’

‘That’s just old age.’

The smile drifted away. I felt a bubble of annoyance at not being able to deter her, and frustration that I’d been so easily read. I knew her question only came from concern, but I didn’t want to get into the case with her, because then I’d start having to lie to her, and I feared that would be even harder to hide.

‘I just haven’t been sleeping well,’ I offered.

She nodded. ‘Because of Healy.’

I couldn’t look her in the eyes as I replied, ‘Yeah, him. But, you know, not just that. Some work stuff, people, relationships … Plus I miss seeing you both.’

‘Why don’t you come down?’

‘I promised you both that you could come here.’

We’d planned for them to stay for the week during Olivia’s half-term, but all that had fallen by the wayside after I’d found the body beneath Highdale.

That moment seemed so far away now: the warm weather, thinking Healy was dead, realizing that the truth was just another well-concealed lie. Maybe that was what was making me look tired, and adding to my fatigue: all the deception.

And not just other people’s.

‘I’m fine, though,’ I said to Annabel. ‘Honestly. Last night I slept for almost fourteen hours. I’m back on track. Maybe I can come down to Devon in a couple of weeks and see you. We can go crabbing. Last time, I
trounced
you both.’

She laughed. ‘You certainly did not.’

‘I did.’

‘I caught two more than you.’

‘Lies!’

‘Even Olivia hooked more than you did.’

‘Double lies!’

And so it went on, our conversation slowly changing course as I put on a show for my daughter that settled her anxiety and let her know that I was fine.

I maintained my smile for her until after I’d quit out of Skype, and then – as the last frame of her left a ghostly mirror-image on the screen – I let the smile drop away, and sat there staring at my laptop, wondering where I went next.

79

The answer was Neil and Ana Yost.

That night, as I lay sprawled on the sofa, the room lit only by a small lamp on a side table, I realized that of everything I’d uncovered, everything I’d found out, I knew least about them. They were just more victims, seduced by Grankin, their fate hidden by shadows, what I knew of their lives beginning and ending inside the lines of a newspaper story pinned to the walls of a half-melted house.

I put in a search for them, and discovered the same newspaper stories I’d seen already: picture-perfect accounts of a beautiful couple in their twenties, two weeks into marriage, who’d attended a fancy-dress party and never come home.

Collating as many links as possible, including the subsequent search for them, I remembered Bishara’s theory: that if there
were
other victims, they’d be illegal immigrants, to prevent them from being missed, and to make identification even harder. Yet that wasn’t who the Yosts were.

Something about that didn’t sit right with me.

Did the fact that Korman and Grankin took a risk with the Yosts suggest that, in their eyes, Neil and Ana were more like Gail, Stourcroft and Healy? Were they people who could have cost Korman and Grankin their secrecy, through knowing that something was going on at the pier, at the museum? Were they people who were cut down before their investigations could go any further?

The idea was a good one, but as I went through what I could find of their history, I couldn’t see anything to support it. Neil Yost had just qualified as a vet, Ana worked as a campaign manager for an advertising agency in Holloway. I couldn’t find a single thing to connect them to Wapping, let alone to the pier. They lived in Ruislip. His parents were in Durham; hers were from Hounslow. The fancy-dress party they’d attended the night they vanished had been a charity gala, raising funds for disadvantaged kids. Why had Grankin made such an effort to be there that night? What had put Neil and Ana on his radar in the first place? I couldn’t see any clear lines connecting the Yosts to either him or Korman.

And yet he’d been there all the same.

I started to wonder whether, perhaps, he’d met them there by chance and just acted on impulse. Maybe he’d got them back to the pier, put them in front of Korman, but Korman hadn’t liked it, had seen the risk in deviating from their usual choice of victim. It made a certain kind of sense, because – in all of this – Korman was the driving force, the dominant power. He was the real killer.

I continued working through the stories about the Yosts, making some notes, but as the coverage began to wane, so the same old details were repeated: their recent marriage, their dream honeymoon in the Maldives, what eyewitnesses at the party had said about the man in the mask and the fact he’d had an accent. After a while, even the tragic disappearance of a beautiful, newly-wed couple couldn’t keep either of them on the front pages.

I picked up my phone and dialled the number of the spare I normally kept in the bedroom. It wasn’t in the
bedroom now. It was half a mile from my front door, in a hotel room on Uxbridge Road.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me,’ I said.

Healy sounded groggy. ‘What time is it?’

‘Almost 11 p.m.’

There was a risk in putting Healy into a hotel, a chance he might be seen. I felt the risk was lessened by the fact that it was my name in reception, my name on the booking, and I’d told him not to go out unless he absolutely had to. If I was concerned about anything, it wasn’t him being there. It was him being alone.

Was he still suicidal? Would I turn up there in a week and discover that he’d
really
swallowed the pills this time? Four days after Korman had killed himself in front of us, Healy was still living and breathing – and yet I hadn’t been able to relax. It wasn’t just the idea of him taking his own life which continually nipped at me, it was the thought of what we would do if he went the other way and decided to embrace this new existence, to start again. He would always be in the shadows, worried about being exposed. He’d made an irreversible choice – one where he could never maintain a normal life again.

‘I’ve been thinking about Neil and Ana Yost,’ I said.

‘What about them?’

‘Why were they selected?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Police have got traces of two other unidentified people in the oil drums. That’s two other victims, potentially. Then there’s whoever the items in the holdall belong to. The identities of all those victims have been well hidden. On the flip side, you’ve got Gail, Carla Stourcroft and
you, people who were in the process of making, or about to make, waves for Korman and Grankin. You all suspected that something was going on at the pier. So you were dealt with, but in a different way. It was short, sharp. A murder. A murder-robbery. An assault that you weren’t supposed to wake up from. You were never part of the fantasy.’

‘Murders.’

‘What?’

‘Mur
ders
. It wasn’t just Gail.’

He was right, of course: there were two other deaths, perhaps the hardest to take of all, impossible to forget, unexplained, essentially unsolved. It made me wonder what was worse: not seeing the killer face justice – or not knowing his reasons.