He was tired. It would be nice to go home now, have a cool shower, and curl up in bed with Briony and talk about his day and listen to hers, then make love to her, fall asleep in her arms, and start tomorrow fresh and alert.
Instead, at half past ten on this hot, sticky oven of a
night, he was back at the station, entering the incident room, hoping against hope he could do something for two women he had never met. Tina Mackay and Amanda Capstick. Hoping that, God forbid, if anything ever happened to his beloved Briony Donnelly, some other detective, in some other incident room in some other police station, would work just as hard for her.
The room had an abandoned feeling about it, as if it had been evacuated in a hurry. All six computer screens were still on, unfinished paperwork lay on the desks, a half-eaten Mars bar poked out of its torn wrapper on the top of one in-tray. One filing-cabinet drawer was half open. Busy. Bedlam. He doubted if any of the team had finished before ten tonight. They were a hard-working lot. Caring men and women. Caring desperately for two strangers.
Tina Mackay’s disappearance had been featured on the national television programme,
Crimewatch
, earlier in the week and there had been hundreds of phone calls of possible sightings; there’d be another raft of them next week when Amanda Capstick’s name was put out, if she hadn’t turned up by then.
And she wasn’t going to turn up, not of her own accord, he was pretty certain of that. She was going to have to be found. He just hoped she and Tina would be found alive. He hadn’t told the women’s relatives, or Amanda Cap-stick’s psychiatrist boyfriend, but he didn’t think the chances of finding either alive were good.
He walked across the room, and put the capped Styrofoam cup of sweet black coffee down on the desk he had allocated as his workspace up here, then glanced down at the list of actions completed today by the other five team members. Nothing new on either woman. The cap leaked, a dribble of coffee ran down the side of the cup; he caught it with his finger and sucked it. The sweetness tasted good. He turned pages of the report, touched his keyboard to bring the screen back to life, and the Mandelbrot Set disappeared. It was replaced by a list of cases around the country from the Holmes national crime system, in which attractive, successful career women, within Tina and Amanda’s age
bracket, had disappeared during the past five years. Still no correlations with other case histories.
He listened again to Dr Tennent’s message about Dr Goel on his mobile voice-mail, then sat in front of his computer screen and tried to open the photograph of Dr Goel that the psychiatrist had e-mailed him.
He failed.
He cursed the computer. Photographs were always a problem: the only person in here who had the knack was the systems manager – he’d get him to do it first thing in the morning.
Turning his attention back to his main reason for being here now, Simon Roebuck walked across to a stack of deep cardboard boxes piled against the far wall of the room, all containing files borrowed from Tina Mackay’s office. Simon Roebuck examined their scrawled labels, and found the two boxes he wanted, one marked,
REJECTION LETTERS, JAN-DEC
96, and the other,
REJECTION LETTERS JAN-JUL
97. He heaved both of them back to his desk. Tina Mackay’s secretary had told him a week back that they received over a hundred manuscripts a week, which meant some eight thousand letters in these boxes to go through.
He could have done with another pair of hands – and eyes – and debated whether to call one of the team back out, but thought better of it. They were all exhausted, they would work better after some rest. He was aware that he would also, but that wasn’t an option. He’d already scanned through the entire lot once, some days back.
He popped the lid from his coffee. A phone rang and he answered it. ‘Incident room, Simon Roebuck.’
It was a wrong number. Someone wanting a taxi. He hung up, selected the 1997 box first, and began working through it letter by letter, glancing at the name of the addressee, looking for just the one name blinking away inside his head.
He might be mistaken. The spelling might be different. His brain might be playing tricks. The letters were banded together in wodges of one hundred. He finished the first lot, placed them face down on the floor, then started on the
second bundle. Nothing. Nor the third bundle. A moth flew erratically around the room. Tiny black flies swarmed across the ceiling. A mosquito whined past him and he attempted to swat it, without success. Traffic passed outside.
He phoned Briony, told her he was going to be late and she said she’d wait up for him. He told her to go to bed, he had no idea how late he’d be, he might be all night. She told him she loved him and he told her he loved her too, more than anything in the world, and he did. Then he hung up and concentrated on the rejection letters.
The letters had a sadness about them. They contained bad news, most of them flat, bald statements with empty hope.
Dear Mr Witney,
Thank you for submitting your manuscript,
Twice Nightly
, to us. After careful reading, we regret we are unable to consider this for publication on our lists.
We hope you will be successful with it elsewhere.
Yours sincerely,
Tina Mackay, Editorial Director.
Months, years, maybe even a whole lifetime of work dismissed in three lines. Eight thousand possible suspects, double that if he went back a further year and a half. An impossible task to investigate them, to interview them all on just a long-shot hunch.
But whittle this lot down to just one, and that would be different.
A few had short, handwritten notes at the top, presumably by either Tina Mackay or one of her assistants. Some said the author was a friend or relative of so-and-so in the publishing house. Others were comments about the authors themselves, if they had been pushy, or it was suspected that the manuscript had been plagiarised from somewhere else, anything that might be useful for future reference. He was sure the one he was looking for now had a note at the top.
He flicked on through the names. Page after page of Pelham House Publishing Group headed notepaper. Word-processor typing. All kinds of names, male, female, British, foreign. Some titled names. Simon Roebuck dreamed of writing a book one day. He wondered if he, too, would get letters like this.
Then he stopped. He had found it.
Thomas Lamark,
47 Holland Park Villas,
London W14 8JJ
Dear Mr Lamark,
Thank you for submitting your manuscript,
The Authorised Biography of Gloria Lamark
, to us. After careful reading, we regret we are unable to consider this for publication on our lists.
We hope you will be successful with it elsewhere.
Yours sincerely,
Tina Mackay, Editorial Director.
At the top of the letter, in handwriting he presumed was that of Tina Mackay’s secretary, were the words: ‘Phoned several times, quite aggressive’.
The detective made a photocopy of the letter. He put the original back into the box. He folded the copy and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
Headlights flared through the windscreen, momentarily dazzling Michael. Shadows leaped up at him as if they had torn free from the road. A car driving on full beam, thumping out a bass beat, turned across him then headed off up the wide Cheltenham avenue.
It was a quarter to one in the morning. The traffic light changed to green and Michael drove on, following the town-centre signs. The radio, badly tuned into a station it had found by itself, played hotel-foyer music. He pulled onto a garage forecourt to ask directions; the shop was locked and the attendant, seated behind a bullet-proof window with voice holes, was buried in a book propped against the window – Minette Walters’
The Echo
– and didn’t notice Michael until he tapped on the glass.
With some reluctance he put down the book and produced a map from somewhere beneath him. ‘Royal Court Walk?’
Michael nodded.
The attendant found it, gave him the directions then yawned and returned to his novel.
Michael drove for another mile, as he had been instructed, down a series of wide, almost deserted avenues with silhouettes of Georgian façades beyond their edges. Then he saw the landmark pub the attendant had mentioned and turned left.
The first road on the right was Royal Court Walk. He pulled the Volvo over to the kerb and switched on the map light to check the number: 97. Then he looked up at the elegant terraced houses. On the right he saw number 5. On the left number 4 and then number 6. Odd numbers on the
right. He drove on: 17, 19. Further, then he looked again: 31 . . . 33 . . . 35. Further: 71 . . . 73 . . . Further, 91 . . . 93 . . . 95.
The street ended in a T-junction at 95. Puzzled, he did a U-turn. The last house on the opposite side was numbered 96. Then, just to make sure, he got out of the car and walked round the corner. Sometimes houses on a corner took the smarter address of their neighbouring street. But there was no 97 round the corner either.
Back in the car, he kept the driver’s door open and under the interior light checked once more the number that was on the form. Clearly written. No possibility of either digit being mistaken for anything else. This was deliberate.
Dr Terence Goel had chosen this number because he knew it did not exist.
He switched off the interior light and sat in the shadowy glow of the street-lighting. Amanda had disappeared only days after Goel had first come to see him.
He was now even more convinced that Goel was involved. The man who could help him was here, in Cheltenham, a GP, a man who did not return phone calls.
He tried Directory Enquiries, to see if they had a home address listed for Dr Sundaralingham. They did, but it was ex-directory. Michael pleaded with the operator that he was a doctor and this was an emergency, but her only suggestion was for him to try the police.
He considered calling Roebuck, but it was now after one in the morning. He wasn’t going to get the best out of Roebuck or Sundaralingham at this hour.
Ten minutes later, Michael drove into the tired-looking crescent where, according to the letterhead, Dr Sundaralingham’s practice was located, and pulled up outside number 20.
There was a list of names on a brass panel beside the front door of the building, but no Dr Sundaralingham among them. Or any other doctor.
The crescent was quiet, no traffic, just the warm silence of the night. He took his mobile phone out of his car, walked up close to the building and dialled
Dr Sundaralingham’s number. Moments later, somewhere up above him, he heard a phone ring. Four rings, and then the same recorded voice he’d heard before, through the receiver.
‘Dr Sundaralingham can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message and he’ll get right back to you.’
He hung up, and to make sure, redialled the number. Again, after a few moments he heard ringing above him.
He tried each of the doorbells in turn, twice, but there was no response from any of them. He got back into his car, reversed a few feet until he had a clear view of the imposing columned steps that led up to the front door, then reclined his seat a little, and locked his doors. His body felt dog-tired but his brain was still churning. He would hear footsteps or a car. Anyone arriving here was going to wake him if he did doze off.
He closed his eyes to find his thoughts spinning in a whirlpool. Like a centrifuge, they held him, giddy and helpless, slowly drawing him down into the funnel of pure dark dread that was their centre.
There he slept.
Beneath the Philippe Starck desk lamp, shadows from his fingers prowled over the keys.
Sometimes Thomas felt these were the keys of a Steinway piano, and that he was a great musician playing with all his soul, as he sat in his den, lost to the world, mesmerised by the glow of the monitor, the keys clicking under his fingers, his body swaying to the rhythm of the words that streamed across the screen.
Words that came out of the ether, pouring from his hands as if he was merely the conduit between the creator and the screen.
Surgeon’s hands
, his mother had told him. Yes, slender hands, with long, beautiful fingers, the nails trim and spotless, the cuticles exquisitely manicured.
She had been sad when he left medical school. Sad and angry. ‘
You’re not right in the head, you do know that, Tom-Tom, don’t you?
’
Why had he left?
It was so far in the past, it was hard to remember any more. He was never exactly sure at the time. People at the school were angry with him, yes, but they were constantly angry with him over such petty stuff. Maybe it had been the bitch nurse he’d punched in the face when she’d laughed at him when he asked her to touch his choo-choo. There had been some big anger about that. His mother had been right about her. But was that the reason he’d had to leave? So much went clean out of his mind, and it seemed to be getting worse all the time. But not this morning. His memory was good this morning,
Powered up like a fully charged battery. Cool summer air bathed his body, which was naked beneath his silk dressing
gown. Freshly bathed, shaved, cologned, ready. Busy day today. Cora Burstridge’s funeral in Brighton. Then the mastectomy operation at King’s. Then
he
would operate on Dr Michael Tennent’s bit of fluff.
His supplies chest was light on anaesthetics; he’d used up most of his stock on Tina Mackay and the punky little newspaper reporter, Justin Flowering. Trying to keep them alive long enough to go on experiencing pain. He had forms printed in the name of Dr Sundaralingham but maybe they weren’t necessary. Perhaps he could have more fun if Amanda Capstick remained awake.
Much more fun.
The cursor blinked on the screen in front of him as he sat in the darkness of drawn curtains in his den, responding to an e-mail that had arrived minutes ago from across the world.
Joe,
always quite magical to hear from you. I am coping well with my sad loss, thank you, it is kind of you to be so concerned. It was Gore Vidal, I believe, who said we are all fading to black at different speeds. How true! Bereavement is difficult – I cannot remember, did you tell me that you, too, had lost your dear mother? Too bad you couldn’t make the funeral, it was quite something. We had to have a police presence to control the crowds. Understandable, of course, there was quite extraordinary love for my mother. It is hard to turn on the television at the moment without finding a Gloria Lamark retrospective of some kind, and I find these painful to watch.