What Remains (6 page)

I took a long breath. ‘I’ve got to go.’

Healy glanced at the file again and then opened both his hands out in a
Do what you want
gesture. It annoyed me, but this time I refused to rise to the bait.

‘I need you to be at that interview tomorrow,’ I said.

Before he could reply, I headed for the exit.

7

When my wife, Derryn, died of breast cancer in 2009, I gave up all hope of becoming a parent. But one moment of immaturity a quarter of a century ago, with a girlfriend I’d had at school, had eventually returned to the surface and changed my life.

For Annabel and I, the first six months of our relationship had been hard: there was a will to know one another better on both sides, but she was mourning the loss of people she thought had been her parents, and I was trying to come to terms with not only being a father, but being a father to a woman more than half my age. But as soon as I saw her in the hospital waiting room, I felt an indelible pull towards her, an obligation, a certainty that being here with her, and dropping everything at the motel, was the only choice I could have made. This was what a father did for his daughter.

Healy, of all people, should have known that.

It was hard to see Olivia in such a state, her tiny, nine-year-old body wired up to breathing apparatus, an ECG, a drip, bandages at her breastbone and along her right side. The staff were good enough to let Annabel and me stay and, overnight, we sat with Olivia on rotation: while one of us perched at her bedside, the other tried to get some rest in a faded blue nursing chair on the other side of the room. Fortunately, she held steady, and when we talked
to the doctor in the morning, he said things were looking positive but there was a long way to go.

At lunchtime, I went to get us both some food and coffee, and when I returned, I found Annabel sobbing, the events of the previous day, and a long night of fitful sleep, finally getting on top of her. In fourteen months, I hadn’t seen her cry much, and not only because she lived two hundred and fifteen miles from me. The lies of her past, the loss of the people she’d thought of – and loved – as her mum and dad, a sister who had basically become like a daughter – those things had slowly set like concrete, and although she was never difficult or remote with me, she’d become phlegmatic, perhaps inevitably.

‘Sorry,’ she said after a while.

‘Why are you apologizing?’

‘I’m a mess.’

I touched a hand to her shoulder, and she took it in hers, using her other hand to dab at her eyes with a tissue. When she was done, I handed her a coffee and placed a pre-packaged sandwich on the edge of the bed.

‘Did I pull you away from something?’ she said.

I looked down at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘A case. It’s just, you look tired.’

‘Do I?’

‘And I don’t mean from trying to sleep upright in a hospital all night.’ She smiled and I didn’t reply, hoping that would be the end of it. ‘Are you on a case?’

‘I’ve just finished one.’

‘Was it tough?’

‘No, it was pretty straightforward.’

It’s the last seven days with Healy that have been tough.

She started opening her sandwich packet. ‘I don’t mean to pry,’ she said. ‘Sorry if it seems that way. You just look like you might need a break from it all.’

‘Maybe we could all do with a break.’

She nodded, but I got the sense that this line of questioning hadn’t been put to bed yet. And I understood the reasons why: a few months before, she’d been dragged into a case I’d worked, and although neither she nor Olivia had been in any danger, it hadn’t seemed like it at the time. I felt a pang of guilt for that, for the fact it was still playing on her mind, and for what lay behind her asking: her need to be reassured that I wasn’t going to put them at risk again.

‘Everything’s quiet at the moment,’ I said.

I called Healy from the front of the hospital.

It was cold, snow thick on roofs and sills, on a patch of grass in the middle of a turning circle directly in front of me. I found his number in my address book and then paused for a moment, taking a breath, stealing myself for a fight. But I needn’t have bothered: after eleven unanswered rings, his voicemail kicked in.

‘Healy, it’s me. Give me a call when you get this.’

I hung up and headed back inside – but then the phone started buzzing in my hand again. On the display was a central London number I didn’t recognize.

I answered it. ‘David Raker.’

‘David, it’s Simon Quinn.’

Quinn ran the builders’ merchants in Deptford where Healy was supposed to have gone for an interview that morning. I’d met him five years ago at a charity golf tournament organized by a friend of mine, and we’d kept in touch – on and off – ever since.

‘Simon. How’s things?’

‘Yeah, okay,’ he said, but as soon as I heard the hum of annoyance in his voice, I knew what was coming: ‘I thought you’d want to know about your friend.’

‘Let me guess: he didn’t turn up.’

‘No,’ Quinn said, ‘Colm turned up.’

‘So what was the problem?’

Quinn paused. ‘The problem was that he was drunk.’

8

Healy finally called me at seven o’clock.

I was in the hospital foyer checking my emails, and as I looked at the display, at the number of the mobile phone I’d bought for Healy, I paused, trying to douse my anger. I’d been calling him all afternoon, had texted him, left more messages, spent ten minutes apologizing to Simon Quinn for wasting his time, and another ten defending Healy to him. It had become such an involuntary action, something I did so often, it was almost like a reflex kicking in.

‘It’s me,’ he said after I answered.

‘How is it possible to be drunk at nine in the morning?’

He didn’t respond.

‘Healy?’

‘I told you last night that I wasn’t going –’

‘You
embarrassed
me.’ A few people glanced in my direction, so I moved to a quieter corner. ‘Why couldn’t you just turn up and answer their questions?’

‘I did.’

‘Sober.’

‘Look, I went to that interview today like you asked, and I answered all their stupid fucking questions, and then one of them accused me of lying to her.’

‘About what?’

He sighed, the noise crackling down the phone line. It sounded like he might still be drunk, the edges of his words soft, his exasperation amplified.

‘About
what
, Healy?’

‘ “Why haven’t you included anyone from the Met as a reference?” ’

‘That’s what she asked you?’

‘Yep. So, I made up some story about it being a mistake on the CV, and she saw through it. She actually sat there googling me during the interview, and then steamrollers me with all the details she found online about the day I got sacked.’

‘I told you to include Melanie Craw’s name on there.’

‘
Craw?
Is that a
joke
?’

‘She’s a DCI at the Met. She’s prepared to give you a reference.’

‘Craw was the one that
fired
me.’

‘Listen. I’ve spoken to her. I told you a week ago to put her name on your CV. I’ve told you
every bloody day this week
. Why won’t you just listen to –’

‘Don’t you get it? All these interviews, these morons I’ve got to pretend to be nice to – and for what? For some two-bit job in a builders’ merchants?’

‘Healy –’

‘We should be finding out who killed that family.’

That stopped me. The file was still in the back of my car, untouched from the day before. ‘I promised I’d help you, and that we’d find out what happened to that family. And I will. I’ll do that, Healy. But I also asked you to do two things for me in return. One of them was to let me help you get a job, and the other was –’

‘I bet you haven’t even looked at it.’

‘And the
other
was you had to stay off the booze.’

‘I bet you haven’t even
looked
at that file.’

I sighed. ‘Come on, Healy. My daughter is –’

‘
Your
daughter,
your
daughter – what about
my
fucking daughter? She’s in the cemetery now because some piece of shit took her from me. What about the daughters of Gail Clark? What about them? The arsehole who cut their throats is still out there somewhere, walking around without a care in the world.’

‘I told you: we’ll find him.’

‘Yeah? When are we going to do that?’

‘When I get back.’

‘Which is when?’

I tried to clear my head.

‘Which is
when
?’ he repeated.

‘I don’t know yet –’

‘
Exactly
. You don’t know yet. You’re sitting around in hospital with a girl that doesn’t belong to you, and another you didn’t even realize was yours until a year ago. I had to
bury
my daughter. I was there when she was born, I was there when she died, and I remember everything from the twenty years in between. You’re there because you
think
you should be there. You’re not there because you
feel
it. How can you? You don’t even know them. They’re strangers.’

‘That’s enough, Healy,’ I said, trying to sound calm.

‘Don’t patronize me. I know what –’

‘You were living in a homeless shelter seven days ago – are you capable of thinking back that far? I’m helping you find a job. I’m putting petrol in your car so you can get to interviews. I’m paying for a motel while you organize somewhere else to stay. Do you know what that means? Have you got even the faintest
idea
?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘What does it mean?’

‘It means I’m the only person you’ve got left.’

No reply.

‘Call me back when you’ve sobered up.’

‘You think I’m a charity case, is that it?’

‘Just call me back tomorrow, Healy.’

‘How about I don’t?’

This time I said nothing, not wanting this conversation to spiral any further out of control – but my lack of reply only seemed to make him angrier.

‘How about I
don’t
?’

‘I’m ending this call before you say something you
really
regret.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like to mourn
anything
. Not properly. You’d barely even buried your wife before you were balls-deep in your next-door neighbour. You probably couldn’t wait to get your missus in the fucking ground.’

‘
What?
’

‘Were you glad she got cancer?’

‘What the fuck did you just say?’

‘You heard what I said.’

I was so angry I could feel it tremoring through my chest, clawing at my throat, the heat like a fog in my head. ‘Don’t ever speak about her like that,’ I said, barely able to force the words out. ‘You haven’t got a clue what it was –’

‘You and me, Raker …’

‘What, Healy? You and me
what
?’

He paused for a long time. ‘You and me are done.’

The words pulsed along the line.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘at least you’ve finally got something right.’

I hung up.

I wouldn’t see him again for nine months.

Part Two

2 OCTOBER 2014

9

The restaurant was in a converted textile factory, west of Walthamstow Marshes. Perched right on the banks of the River Lea, it was a red-brick, single-storey building with a series of identical windows, each one framed under individual gables. At the nearest end to the car park was the entrance, an ornate, wood-carved doorway with a blackboard leaning against one of its walls, and a faux-Victorian welcome sign. Two lines of six tables were on the gravel outside, matching umbrellas standing sentry at each one.

Two days into October, and with summer showing no signs of waning, the restaurant was packed, people at every table, more on the banks of the river watching boats glide past. At first I couldn’t see her among the crowds, and wondered whether she was inside. But then she came into view at the furthest table away from me, staring into space, hand clamped around a glass of water.

‘Afternoon,’ I said as I reached her.

DCI Melanie Craw turned, removing her sunglasses. She looked out at the crowds around her, at the people queuing up for a table, and then her gaze returned to me. ‘Afternoon,’ she replied, the merest hint of a smile on her lips.

‘There are some paparazzi watching us from the boats.’

She rolled her eyes and put her sunglasses back on.

I sat down. ‘What are you doing out in this neck of the woods?’

‘Waltham Forest has got a suspect I might be interested in.’ She looked at her watch, then out at the crowds again. ‘Weaselly piece of shit. You’d like him.’

It was my turn to smile this time.

Craw was forty-four, slim, understated, immaculately dressed in a grey trouser-suit. Ten months ago, she’d asked me to find her missing father. In coming to me, she’d not only gone against protocol, she’d employed someone whom the Met viewed with deep suspicion. I didn’t seek out the running battles I’d had with them – far from it – but the conflict was a consequence of my work. Most of the time, when families came to me, it was in the months after the official trail had gone cold.