The Disappeared (30 page)

They
sat in stationary traffic outside what had once been a cattle market. Their
damp coats were steaming up the windows, making Jenny feel increasingly
claustrophobic. She wanted to take a pill but didn't dare in front of McAvoy:
she already felt as if she had no secrets from him, as if he had an unnatural
ability to detect her weaknesses and work his way into them.

He
broke the silence which had persisted since they'd left the garage. 'You don't
want to pay this man a visit now you're out here?'

'I'm
not a detective,' Jenny said flatly.

'But
you'll have to ask him to make a statement saying where he was that night.'

'I'll
send my officer.'

They
crept forward several feet. The lights ahead flicked back to red.

'If
you ask me, you should show your face, let him know you mean business.
Politely, of course.'

Jenny
tapped her thumbs nervously on the wheel, keeping her eyes fixed on the road
ahead, fighting the feeling that the sides of the car were closing in on her.

'If
you don't,' McAvoy said, 'he might just slip through your fingers. Those
Latvian guys have seen him a few times. The boy in the car-rental place will
already have called his boss, the mechanic might even have tipped him off, we
don't know. If it were any other case, you might say to yourself the police can
always help me out, but I doubt that's an option here.'

'What's
it to you anyway?' Jenny said. 'Why this case? You're not even getting paid for
it.'

He
nodded towards the distant tower of the cathedral, poking above the faux city
wall surrounding a supermarket on the far side of the lights. 'Same reason they
built that - seems like the right thing to do.'

'The
spirit moved you, huh?'

'If
you like.'

Jenny
said, 'Why do I feel cynical?'

'Why
wouldn't you - a man with my history?'

'Well,
there you are. You can see why I'm not about to drive you out to say hello to
Mr Tathum.'

McAvoy
wiped his window with his cuff. 'You know, Jenny, I don't believe it's me
you're frightened of, or Tathum - whoever he may be. I think the person who
scares the living shit out of you is you.' He looked at her sideways across his
shoulder, studying her face with a quizzical frown. 'I followed that case you
did last year, the kid who died in custody. That must've taken some guts. And
you know what I believe?'

Jenny
closed her eyes and shook her head. He'd done it again, cut right through her.

'That
we find ourselves in these situations for a reason. I bet you learned something
about yourself. Took on those principalities and powers without even thinking.
I'll bet it's only afterwards you thought to be scared.'

'Not
quite true.'

'What
I'm saying is you know as well as I do what it is to be moved. It's not
comfortable. The first time you're swept up on the wave. Each time after that
you tend to have a choice.'

The
address was that of a small stone farmhouse in the shadow of the Black
Mountains. From the village of Peter- church they threaded along three miles of
narrow lane, which dissolved into a further half mile of rough track. It was
fully dark by the time Jenny pulled up at the gate to an untidy yard littered
with tools and building materials. The house, which looked like two cottages
joined together, was in the process of being renovated. One half looked
inhabited and had lights in the downstairs windows, the other was still a
roofless shell. She made McAvoy promise, swear on the Holy Mother herself, that
he would stay in the car. He told her to please herself and reclined his seat a
touch, settling back for a nap.

She
lifted the latch on the heavy gate and picked her way across the pot-holed yard
by the light of a miniature torch on her key fob, passing the elderly Land
Rover with its smart new aluminium hard top. Before raising the heavy iron
knocker on the front door she looked back at her Golf to check: in the darkness
McAvoy was invisible. He'd better stay that way.

A
man dressed in jeans and a paint-spattered sweatshirt answered. Dogs barked
excitedly from behind an inner door. He was the right age, but his skull was
shaved in a tight crew cut. He looked fit and muscular, an outdoors man. More
nervous than she had expected, Jenny asked him if he was Christopher Tathum. He
confirmed that he was, with no trace of anxiety or apprehension, she noticed,
just a man living out in the country doing up a house.

She
felt guilty saying it, her heart in her throat, but regretfully told him that
his name had arisen as a possible witness in a case she was investigating.

'Really?
What case is that?' he said. 'I don't think I know anyone who's died recently.'
His voice was educated but not overly so. It had a quality Jenny found familiar
but couldn't place. His eyes were intelligent, his expression patient but
questioning.

The
words tripped out of her mouth without conscious thought. 'Two young Asian men
went missing from Bristol in late June 2002. We have a sighting of them in the
back seat of a vehicle we believe you may have been renting at the time.'

Tathum
smiled, nonplussed. 'Where did you get that from?'

'I'm
afraid I can't tell you at the moment. What I need is for you to give a
statement saying where you were at the time, 28 June to be precise.'

He
seemed amused. 'And if I can't remember?'

'Have
a think. See what comes back to you.' She offered him the last business card in
her wallet. 'Maybe you could set it down in the form of a signed letter and fax
it through to my office over the weekend? Or I can send my officer over to take
a statement if you'd prefer.'

He
peered at the card by the light of the dim bulb in the open porch in which they
were standing. 'I don't know anything about any Asians. I'm a builder.'

'Was
that your job at the time, sir?'

'I
thought you wanted me to write a letter.' There was a hint of threat in his
expression now, his facial muscles tightening into a defensive mask.

Jenny
said, 'If you could. Thank you.' She stepped away from the door and started
across the yard.

Tathum
said, 'Hold on a minute. What is it I'm being accused of here?'

She
stopped and glanced back. 'You're not being accused of anything. A coroner's
inquest merely pieces together facts and events surrounding a death, or in this
case a presumed death.'

'I
know nothing about your case. You're wasting your time.'

'Then
that's what you should write. Set down where you were working, who you were
with, and I can discount you from my inquiries. Goodnight, Mr Tathum.'

She
turned back towards the gate.

'You
come all the way out here and won't even tell me what I'm meant to have done?'

An
instinct told her not to stop.

'Hey,
lady. I'm talking to you.' She heard his footsteps coming after her.

She
wheeled round to face him. Away from the lights of the house, he was nothing
more than an angry shadow.

'It's
very simple, Mr Tathum, I'm just asking you to account for your whereabouts on
a particular night: 28 June 2002.'

'You
know what?' He stepped closer. Jenny moved back and found herself pressed
against the gate.

'Mr
Tathum —’

Where
was McAvoy now she needed him?

Tathum
glared at her and seemed to swallow the abuse he was ready to hurl at her. She
flinched at a sudden movement of his head towards hers, but there was no
contact, only a violent jolt to her nerves. He marched back to the house. She
fumbled for the latch on the gate, made it through and tumbled into the car.

When
she'd got her breath, McAvoy said, 'That was more like it.'

It
was McAvoy's idea to pull over at the pub. If she hadn't been desperate to
swallow a pill she would have put up more resistance. She retreated to the
sanctuary of a draughty ladies' room and thanked God for the opportunity to medicate
herself. She had got it down to a fine art: just enough to soothe her nerves
without making her dopey. She had asked him for tonic water and had drunk most
of the contents of the glass before she realized the feeling of well-being
spreading through her wasn't only due to the log fire in the inglenook or the
relief of having escaped her encounter with Tathum unscathed. There was vodka
in it. Six months of sobriety up in smoke. She should have told him, but part
of her thought:
what the hell? I've been longing to feel this good. Where's
the harm in just one drink
? Instead, she sipped the rest of it slowly,
telling herself it would hardly touch her that way. Like McAvoy said, she
didn't want to go through life frightened. Having a drink was part of learning
to handle herself again.

He
was funny and contagious, sensitive and witty. He told her stories about his
courtroom adventures that made her laugh until she cried, and tales of the
tragic characters he'd met in prison that moved her to tears. And the more he
drank, the warmer and more poetic he became. She began to see the complex
layers of his contradictory character and to understand his moral code: his
acceptance of people, both good and bad, with equal humanity because
'ultimately we're all God's creatures'. In her mildly intoxicated state she
found him a beguiling mixture of humility and creativity, of wilful
independence and thoughtful submission. His guiding philosophy as a lawyer, he
said, had always been, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' It didn't mean - as
most people thought - that judging others was sinful, but that all who cast
judgement would one day be judged, and by far more demanding laws than any
contrived by man.

'And
that's where I find my grain of solace,' he said, his fingers cradling his
tumbler a whisker away from hers. 'I've done some wicked things in my life,
mixed with some truly evil men in this fallen world, but I've never doubted for
a moment that I'll be judged as harshly as the next.'

'Do
you think you'll get through the strait gate?' Jenny said, with a smile.

'I'd
like to think I might squeak it . . . who knows?' He sipped his whisky, his
gaze drifting inwards.

Jenny
watched him, wondering what he was thinking, what sins he was hoping this
crusade might wash away.

She
was tempted to ask, but something stopped her. She didn't want to know, didn't
want to be forced into judgement. She was learning from him, that was enough,
drawing down some yet to be defined wisdom.

From
deep in his reverie, McAvoy said, 'Do you think those kids really were
terrorists?'

Jenny
said, 'Does it matter?'

'What's
done in the dark must always come to the light,' McAvoy said. He tipped back
the rest of his whisky. 'We should be going.'

'Mum . . . You OK?'

Jenny
rose out of a leaden, dreamless sleep, her limbs too heavy to move. Ross's
anxious voice was coming from the foot of the bed.

'Mum?'

'Mmm?'
she said, turning her eyes away from the shaft of light streaming through the
partially opened curtains.

'I
thought you might be ill . . .'

Something
felt wrong, constricted. Barely awake, she tried to move to a sitting position
and realized she was dressed in her skirt and suit jacket.

'You
weren't well when you came home last night,' Ross said. 'I didn't know what was
wrong.'

She
blinked, her vision slowly coming to focus. Her sleepy gaze wandered around the
room. She saw her shoes lying near the door, her handbag on the floor at the
side of the bed, the contents - including her two bottles of pills - spilling
out on the rug.

'How
are you feeling?'

'Fine
. . . just tired. What time is it?'

'Just
gone nine. It's all right, it's Saturday.'

He
glanced down at the pills then back at her with the same questioning eyes he'd
had as a young child. 'What happened?'

She
didn't have a clue. Didn't remember going to bed or even arriving home. A dim
memory surfaced of driving out of Bristol on the motorway, jerking awake at the
sound of a rumble strip under her tyres, a loud horn sounding behind her . . .

'I'll
be right down,' she said weakly. 'Just give me a moment.'

She
moved to the edge of the bed and swung her legs out onto the floor to prove the
point. Unconvinced, Ross withdrew and went downstairs.

'You
could make some coffee,' Jenny called after him.

It
took several minutes under a cool shower to get any life back into her muscles.
As the blood started to flow, the previous evening's events gradually drifted
back to her. She remembered driving back from the pub to Bristol feeling fine.
She and McAvoy were laughing and listening to music. Nearing the city, she'd
become drowsy - that would be the alcohol combining with her beta blocker,
slowing her heart. She had dropped him off outside his office. He told her to
look after herself, then reached out and brushed her cheek with his hand. There
had been a moment when he might have leaned forward and kissed her, but he did
it with a look instead. She relived a feeling of near elation as she drove back
through Clifton, crystal white fairy lights glittering on trees outside the
cafes and boutiques like star dust. Then it went hazy . . . drooping at the
wheel . . . crossing the Severn Bridge . . . her shoulder dragging against the
wall as she climbed the stairs, Ross following behind her.