Authors: Tim Weaver
'No.'
'You
didn't take it?'
'No.'
'Any
idea who might have?'
He
shrugged. 'Maybe one of her friends.'
The
phone started ringing downstairs. Carver apologized and disappeared. After he
was gone, I went through the rest of the box. More photos, some letters, old
jewellery.
Every
trace of a life Megan had left behind.
It
was almost lunch by the time I left. The sun had gone in, clouds scattered
across the sky. In the distance I could see rain moving up from the heart of
the city.
I
opened my old BMW 3 Series, threw my pad on to the passenger seat and turned
back to Carver, who had walked me out.
'I'd
like to speak to your wife,' I said.
Alone.
'Of
course. It's just, I'm out on a site visit tomorrow…'
'That's
fine. I'd like to keep things moving if possible, so if you can tell her that
I'm going to call in, that would be great.'
'Sure.
No problem.'
Afterwards,
as I drove off, I watched him in the rear- view mirror disappearing back
through the gates of his house. He looked like he'd had the wind knocked out of
him. Give it a few weeks, and it might look like he'd had his heart ripped out
too.
There
was a diner half a mile down the road from Megan's school. I sat at the window,
ordered a bacon sandwich, then took out Megan's Book of Life. The previous
night, when I'd glanced at it, it had been difficult to gain any kind of
clarity. It was just sixty pages of random notes. The book was sectioned
alphabetically, but none of her entries corresponded to the relevant letter.
Where names should have been, there were phone numbers. Where phone numbers
were supposed to be, there were names.
I
flipped back to the start. On the first page she'd written her name and
Megan's Book of Life
in red ballpoint.
Contact Me! had
been
scribbled underneath that, with two numbers alongside: one I recognized as her
home phone number, the other her mobile. The police would have been through her
phone records, and checked her last calls, incoming and outgoing. They would
have been through her email too. I'd need to get hold of her phone records
through my contacts, but the police had passed on login details for Megan's
email to her parents, presumably at the Carvers' request. They, in turn, had
passed them on to me. If there was anything worth finding there, or anything
crucial to the investigation, it was hard to believe the police would have been
giving the login out, even to her parents, but — like her phone records — it
was something else that needed to be ticked off the list.
Midway
through the book, I spotted a name I recognized.
Kaitlin.
Carver had
mentioned her over lunch the day before. She was the girl Megan was supposed to
have met up with on the way to her Biology class. Except Megan never arrived.
Kaitlin's name was in a big heart, as was a third — Lindsey Watson. I wrote
down the names and phone numbers for both of them.
When
I was done, a waitress with a face like the weather appeared at my table and threw
my plate down in front of me without saying anything. Once she was gone, I took
a bite of the sandwich and watched a news report playing out on a TV in the
corner of the diner. A camera panned along the Thames. It looked like London
City Airport.
..
taken to intensive care with hypothermia. Her condition was originally
described as critical, but she has continued to improve, and hospital staff
told Sky News they expected her to be released tomorrow. Police still haven't
issued personal details for the woman, but sources have told us they believe
her to be in the region of forty- five to fifty years of age. In other news, a
farmer in…'
I
finished my sandwich and moved through the book again, front to back. There
were a lot of names. Maybe as many as thirty. Only six were male. I added the
guys to the list, then paid the bill and headed for Megan's school.
Newcross
Secondary School was a huge red-brick Victorian building midway between Tufnell
Park and Holloway Road. I left the car out front, and headed for the entrance.
Inside, the place was deserted. I passed a couple of classrooms and saw lessons
had already started, kids looking on, half interested, inside. The main
reception was at the far end of a long corridor that eventually opened up on to
big windows with views of the school's football pitches. The interior decor had
time-travelled in from 1974. A couple of thin sliding glass panels on a chunk
of fake granite separated three secretaries from the outside world. They were
all perched at teak desks on faded medical-green chairs.
I
knocked on the glass. All three were fierce-looking women. Two of them paid me
no attention whatsoever, the other glanced in my direction, eyed me, then decided
I was at least worth getting up for. She slid the glass panel back, glancing at
the pad in my hands. Her eyes — like Carver's the day before - drifted across
my fingernails. What no one got to see were the other, even worse scars from
the same case. It had been almost ten months and, although I'd made a full
recovery, some days I could still feel the places I'd been beaten and tortured.
My back. My hands. My feet. Perhaps a dull ache would always be there, like a
residue, reminding me of how close I'd been to dying and how I was going to
make sure it never happened again.
I got
out a business card and placed it down on the counter in front of the woman.
'My name's David Raker. I'm doing some work for the parents of Megan Carver.'
The
name instantly registered. Behind her, both women looked up.
'What
do you mean, "work"?'
'I
mean I'm trying to find out where she went.'
They
all nodded in sync. I had their attention now.
'Is
the headmaster around?'
'Did
you make an appointment?'
I
shook my head. 'No.'
She
frowned, but being here because of Megan seemed to soften her. She ran a finger
down a diary.
'Take
a seat while I page him.'
I
smiled my thanks and sat down in a cramped waiting area to the right of the
reception. More medical-green chairs. Posters warning of the dangers of drugs.
A vase of fake blue flowers. Some kids passed by, looked at me, then carried
on. Everything smelt of furniture polish.
A
telephone rang; a long, unbroken noise. One of the receptionists picked it up.
The glass panel was now closed, but she was looking at me as she spoke. 'Okay,'
she said a couple of times, and put the phone down. She leaned forward, and
slid open the glass. 'He'll be five minutes.'
Fifteen
minutes later, he finally arrived.
He
walked straight up to the reception area, a hurried, flustered look on his face
— like he'd run full pelt from wherever he'd come from — and followed his
secretaries' eyes across the hall to where I was sitting. He came over. 'Steven
Bothwick.'
I
stood and shook his hand. 'David Raker.'
'Nice
to meet you,' he said, using a finger to slide some hair away from his face. He
was losing what he had left, and not doing a great job of disguising it.
'I'm
here about Megan Carver,' I said.
'Yes,'
he replied. 'A lovely girl.'
He
directed me to a door further along the corridor with his name on it. His
office was small, crammed with books and folders. A big window behind his desk
looked out over the football pitches. Bothwick pulled a chair out from the wall
and placed it down on the other side of his desk. 'Would you like something to
drink?'
'No,
I'm fine, thanks.'
He
nodded, pushing some folders out of his immediate way and shuffling in under
the desk. He was in his fifties and barely scraping five-eight, but had an
intensity about him, a determination, his expression fixed and strong.
I
reached into my pocket and got out another business card. 'Just so you're
clear, I'm not a police officer. I used to be a journalist.'
A
frown worked its way across his face. 'A journalist?'
'Used
to be. For two years, I've been tracing missing people. That's my job now. The
Carvers came to me and asked me to look into Megan's disappearance for them.'
'Why?'
'Because
the police investigation has hit a brick wall.'
He
nodded. 'I feel so sorry for her family. Megan was a fantastic student with a
bright future. When the police came here, I told them the same.' He took my card
and looked at it. 'Yours is quite a big career change.'
'Not
as big as you might think.' I watched him look at what was written on it
— DAVID RAKER, MISSING PERSONS INVESTIGATOR - and across the desk at me.
He
handed me back my card. 'So what can I help you with?'
'I've
got a couple of questions.'
'Okay.'
I
took out my pad and set it down on the desk.
'Her
parents told me they dropped her off on the morning of 3 April, and she never
came out again that afternoon. Do pupils have to sign in?'
'Well,
we take a register first thing in the morning and again after lunch, yes. But
only for those in years seven through to eleven.'
'That's
eleven to sixteen years of age, right?' 'Right.'
'So
Megan was too old?'
'Yes.
Our A-level students are treated more like adults. We encourage them to turn up
to class - but we won't come down on absences.'
'So
say I missed a couple of days of school — would anyone notice? And who would it
get reported to — you?'
Yes.
If a pupil was continually missing lessons, the teacher would inform me.'
'But
a few absences here and there…?'
He
shrugged. They may get reported, or they may not. It depends on the student. Some
contribute so little to lessons that their presence may be felt less. I guess a
teacher may not, in that instance, notice them as quickly. But Megan… I think
we'd have seen straight away if she'd been missing a lot of school time.'
'She
was a good student?'
'In
the top three per cent here, yes.'
'And
never got into any trouble?'
He
shook his head. 'Absolutely not.'
'I
understand she had Physics and then Biology for the last two periods of the
day, and that she attended the Physics part of that?' 'Right.'
'Her
teacher confirmed that?'
'Yes.
And the fifteen other students who were in there with her.'
'How
long's the walk between classrooms?'
'No
walk at all. They're in the same block. Chemistry's on the top floor, Physics
on the second and Biology on the ground.'
'There's
no CCTV in that part of the school, right?'
'Sadly
not. We have cameras, but we can't afford to have them in every building — not
on the budget we're handed.' He turned in his chair and pointed to a diagram on
the wall. It was a plan of the school campus with tiny CCTV icons scattered
across it. 'Those are the cameras we have. One at the entrance, one on the car
park, one at reception, one outside the English and Maths block, and one
trained on the playing fields.'
'Why
only English and Maths?'
'It's
the block furthest away from here.'
'Are
there multiple entrances to the school?'
'Not
really. Well, not
official
entrances, anyway. Some of the students live
in the estates beyond the football pitches, so they climb over the fence and
come across the fields. There's a rear car park behind the Sixth Form block as
well, where some of the students in Years 11 and 12 park their cars, if they're
lucky enough to have them. That's fenced off too, but only to about waist
height.'