Four in the morning.
That wasn't like her. The whole time we'd been together, she was almost always in bed for half-nine, ten at the latest, and not up again until the last possible moment in time for work. There'd only ever been a handful of times when I'd had texts from her in the early hours, and the explanation had always been the same. She was with a guy.
That had always made me uneasy too, but this morning there was something more to the feeling than plain jealousy. Something else was wrong with the message. I re-read it, trying to work out what it was.
When I did, it became all I could see.
The offices for Anonymous Skeptic consisted of one small room on the first floor of a rather plush block in the city centre. Everything in the building was uniform and new, from the wooden fittings in the offices, via the neat carpets and paint jobs in the hallways, all the way to the potted plants and bland, abstract watercolours on the walls. There was secure parking out back, meeting rooms available upstairs, and magazines and water-coolers in the corridors. In the reception downstairs our nameplate rested, a little uneasily, between those of web designers, translation agencies and accountants. Most of them earned more money in a day than we saw in a month. We couldn't really afford it, but it was good to have a base.
It was almost one o'clock when I finally arrived. Rob was on the phone, but he acknowledged my presence with a wave of his pen and a disapproving look at his watch. I was busy sipping coffee from a small plastic cup when he finished the call.
'Good afternoon,' he said loudly. 'Did you enjoy the gig last night? I spoke to Nathan this morning, and he said that it all went according to plan with Andrew and the necklace. Dead on, you might say.'
'Yeah. We got him.'
'Nathan also said you weren't around at the end. You were supposed to meet up, weren't you? Get a few quotes. I thought we agreed?'
'Yeah, we did.' I'd forgotten about that. 'I'm sorry. Something happened.'
'Something? What kind of something?'
I glanced over. He had that look on his face: the expression that said he would go on and on until he got the truth out of me, and that he suspected he wouldn't like it much when he did.
'Here,' I said.
The digital recorder was on the desk in front of me. I'd already listened to it again that morning, and I selected the right file now and played it. The sound of Thom Stanley's final performance before the interval filled the office. The recording was pretty good - you could hear every word - and as it played out I kept an eye on Rob to check for his reaction. He held a pen between his hands, using his heels to slowly rotate the chair back and forth. Giving away nothing. Except when Sarah asked if I was okay, at which point he grimaced.
'That's rubbish,' he said at the end. 'I hope you know that.'
'Yeah. But it got to me at the time.'
'I warned you about this.'
'There's something else. I got a strange text from her.'
'From Tori? Like the strange phone calls you get from her?'
'No, not like them.'
I walked across and showed him the message.
'She's never up at that time,' I said. 'Plus, she always signs her texts off in the same way. 'Tor xx'; with a double kiss. In all the time I've known her, every single text, she's finished it like that.'
That was what was wrong with it.
In the early days of the magazine, Rob and I had attended a Ouija-board session that was more convincing than most. We'd attracted a 'spirit' that claimed to be the grandfather of a girl who was present, but she was unconvinced by it and got very frightened. It wasn't that she didn't believe in the spirit; it was that she didn't believe it was her granddad. She thought it was something else, pretending to be him.
Rob had taken the piss out of her in private afterwards, but I couldn't quite bring myself to. I knew it was rubbish, but the idea of it unnerved me. You don't have to believe to find it creepy. What she said had got my mind working: if it wasn't her grandfather, then what was communicating with her? And where was her granddad?
I'd had that same feeling looking at my mobile.
But if so, who was it, and where was Tori?
Rob looked up from the phone and stared at me. Was I kidding him?
'Am I being ridiculous?'
'Yeah, you are.'
He handed the phone back and sighed.
'I don't know what you expect me to say. Have you texted her again?'
'Of course. I left a message asking her to get in touch. I've tried ringing her too, but the phone's switched off. I tried her work. The girl in the office says she's off sick.'
He spread his hands. 'Well, there you go.'
'I called her house and there was no answer.'
'Jesus Christ, Dave. You're a hair's breadth from stalking her, you know? Maybe she's asleep. Or perhaps she's having one of her episodes. Have you phoned the hospital?'
'Not yet.' I hadn't thought about that. 'But she wouldn't be allowed her mobile in there.'
'Maybe you should try anyway.'
I walked back over to my desk. 'Maybe I will.'
I found the number for Staunton Hospital online, studiously ignoring Rob as he made ostentatious head-shaking gestures on the other side of the office. When the hospital answered, I asked to be put through to Ward Eight.
A woman answered. 'Reception. How may I help?'
'Could I speak to Tori Edmonds, please?'
'Just a moment. Is she a patient here?'
'I think so, yes.'
I heard her sorting through paperwork. Then she picked the phone back up.
'I'm sorry. We don't have anyone here by that name. Are you sure you've come through to the right department?'
I hung up.
'Should we call the police?' Rob asked himself.
I ignored him, wondering what to do next. On the way over here, I'd decided I had to do something. My mind kept returning to that phone call I'd had when she was in hospital. At the beginning of all the mistakes I made, the first was very clear: I'd promised to be there for her, and I hadn't been. No matter what I told myself now, that feeling - that urge - wasn't going to go away on its own.
I gathered my things together and stood up.
'I need to get some fresh air.'
'What? You only just fucking got here.'
I shrugged my coat on.
'Dave--'
'I need to be sure, Rob. Okay?'
He looked at me for a second, as though unable to believe I was putting us both through this, then dropped his pen loudly on the desk. Dismissing me.
I closed the door and headed downstairs.
I've just got to be sure.
Chapter Seventeen
Friday 2nd September
At half past one, for the second time in as many weeks, Currie and Swann drove up the hill into the Grindlea estate.
'This is going to be interesting,' Swann said.
Currie nodded. When they'd come here to interview Frank Carroll, he'd thought about how volatile the neighbourhood was - that if the residents wanted, they could barricade the bottom of the hill and keep the police out. The fact that Charlie Drake and his crew all lived here.
One fewer now, if reports were to be believed.
One of the locals had called the incident in a little over an hour earlier. The man had heard a disturbance during the night, but thought little of it until later on this morning, when he was leaving for work and noticed his neighbour's door was ajar. Out of concern - he claimed; Currie had his doubts - he'd gone inside, where he'd found the occupier dead in the living room.
Alex Cardall.
There was a time - not even very long ago - when Sam Currie would have exchanged his career, possibly even his life, for five minutes alone with Charlie Drake or Alex Cardall. After Neil had died and Linda had moved out, when he was left with that sagging house full of spaces, it eventually reached the point where it was all he could think about.
The drug dealers who'd supplied his son.
The people who were responsible.
One night, he'd driven into the Grindlea Estate and parked halfway up the hill. He'd been drinking - but only a little, and his head was sharp and focused. He kept his thoughts clear, free from the emotions boiling below the surface. Although he hadn't articulated to himself what he was going to do, he'd allowed his body to follow its course and come here, fooled his mind into believing this was something happening to him rather than an action he was carrying out. He'd sat in his car a little way down from Charlie Drake's home, teetering on a precipice. And finally, after a period of time that could have been minutes or hours, and hadn't really felt like time at all, he'd started the engine and driven home again, unable to go through with whatever he'd been considering.
At first, he'd felt like a coward - that his inability to act was yet another example of failing his son - but in later months he looked back and saw the event in a different light. Currie understood violence very well, along with the motives behind it. People hurt others for many reasons, but the most common one by far was because of weakness and feelings of inadequacy. Violence was often about stamping your authority on the world: about being unable to land a punch on the shadows inside you and so hitting outwards instead. The man who starts a fight in a bar probably doesn't know the person he beats up, and doesn't care about them at all, and each angry punch is directed at something far more nebulous than the person in front of him. Currie understood that, just as he would understand, months later, when he met Mary Carroll, that the wounds on her leg were something similar.
And he knew his failure to kill Charlie Drake - the half-thought he hadn't allowed himself to consider - had come down to that recognition. Currie did not want to be that kind of man. He refused to turn away from his own failings, his own guilt, and strike out at others. Instead, he would take responsibility: admit his mistakes and learn from them. He wouldn't blame others for the things that went missing from his house over the years.
Right now, though, he didn't know what to feel. He was glad to have moved on a little from that hate, towards himself and others, because those emotions weren't ones he wanted to associate himself with. But as they drove up the hill, he was aware this was going to feel different from other crime scenes. He wasn't thinking of this as a tragedy. At the moment, in fact, his mind was occupied with more practical issues, such as containment.
They approached the base of the nearest tower block in the Plug. When the portable had phoned it in, the scene had already been receiving attention. Currie had immediately requested a back-up team to the flats to contain it as far as possible until they got there. And from first appearances now, they had their work cut out for them. There were four police vans here, with several officers distributed around the entrances to the tower. Others were standing with bunches of angry, gesturing residents, talking calmly, trying to placate them and keep them under control. Most of them probably thought it was a raid.
They got out of the car into the ice-cold air and did the ritual.
'Gum?' Swann offered.
'Thanks.'
'Means you go first, though.'
'Oh yeah?' That bit was new. 'How does that work?'
Swann shrugged. 'I don't know how my TV works either, but it does.'
Currie led the way, moving quickly through the bunches of people, showing his ID to a rather nervous young officer on the main door of the tower. Then they made their way under the tape and up to the fifth floor, their footfalls echoing around the skeletal stairwell. There were officers guarding the corridor, and when they arrived at Cardall's flat, two more waited by the door.
Currie glanced between them. 'Helliwell?'
One of them nodded: 'That's me, sir.'
'Nobody else has been in? Is that right?'
'Yes, sir. I cleared the other rooms, and then I've been standing out here since.'
'Good job.'
He turned to Swann. We ready?
His partner nodded.
Since Helliwell said he'd checked the other rooms to ensure nobody else was present, they limited themselves to the front room. Later, the entire flat would be picked to pieces, and a number of officers would be very interested in the findings. Currie was one of them, but for now he reminded himself . . . priorities.
'Jesus,' Swann said.
They found Cardall lying on his back on the far side of the room, arms and legs resting slightly away from his body, like some kind of snow angel. A couple of his fingers had obviously been broken, but most of the damage was from the neck up: his face looked like the features had been beaten off it onto the cheap carpet underneath. As they stepped around the body, Currie saw the white glint of an eye beneath the blood.
'I'm pretty sure it's him,' Currie said.
His partner nodded grimly. 'Someone obviously didn't think very much of him.'
'The line forms to the left.'
'Sam, even you didn't dislike him this much.'
'No,' Currie said. 'Not even me.'
He turned his attention from the body to the front room itself. It was almost bare: old, threadbare furniture; a carpet too small to reach the walls. There was a set of open drawers at an angle to the wall, the clothes from inside strewn on the floor. A tiny television and music centre had both been smashed open.
'Looks like someone tossed the place,' he said.
The smell of marijuana lingered beneath the aroma of blood, and his thoughts turned to Cardall's occupation. It was a possible explanation for what had been done here, but it didn't seem enough.
Swann's phoned buzzed. He picked it out and held it to his ear.
'Yep?' He listened for a few seconds. 'Downstairs? Don't let them anywhere near . . . I don't know. I guess we'll be down when we're down. Do your fucking job.'
He flipped the phone shut.
'Drake?' Currie guessed.
'Outside. With most of his crew.'
'Shit.' It had only been a matter of time, though. 'We need to talk to him anyway.'
'We should get out of here,' Swann said. 'Let's get SOCO on site. Maybe hand it over to someone else, too. We've not got time for this. It's got ''war'' written all over it. What do you think?'