It had just gone nine in the evening when I called Mary and told her I’d take the case. She started crying. I listened to her for a few minutes, her tears broken up by the sound of her thanking me, and then I told her I’d drive out to her house the next morning.
When I put the phone down, I looked along the hallway, into the bowels of my house, and beyond into the darkness of our bedroom, untouched since Derryn died. Her books still sat below the windowsill, the covers creased, the pages folded at the edges where she couldn’t find a bookmark. Her spider plant was perched above it, its long, thin arms fingering the tops of the novels on the highest shelf.
Since she’s been gone I haven’t spent a single night in there. I go in to shower, I go in to water her plant, but I sleep in the living room on the sofa, and always with the TV on. Its sounds comfort me. The people, the programmes, the familiarity of it — they help fill some of the space Derryn used to occupy.
4
I got to Mary’s house, a cavernous mock-Tudor cottage an hour west of London, just before ten the next morning. It was picture-perfect suburbia, right at the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac: shuttered windows, a wide teak-coloured front porch and flower baskets swinging gently in the breeze. I walked up to the door and rang the bell.
A few moments later, it opened a sliver and Mary’s face appeared. Recollection in her eyes. She pulled the door back and behind her I could see her husband, facing me, on the stairs.
‘Hello, David.’
‘Hi, Mary.’
She moved back, and I stepped past her. Her husband didn’t move. He was looking down at a playing card, turning it over in his hands. Face up. Face down.
‘Would you like some coffee or tea?’
‘Coffee. Thanks.’
She nodded. ‘Malcolm, this is David.’
Malcolm didn’t move.
‘Malcolm.’
Nothing.
‘Malcolm.’
He flinched, as if a jolt of electricity had passed through him, and he looked up. Not to see who had called him but to see what the noise was. He didn’t recognize his name.
‘Malcolm, come here,’ Mary said, waving him towards her.
Malcolm got up, and shuffled across to us. He was drawn and tired, stripped of life. His black hair was starting to grey. The skin around his face sagged. He was probably only a few years older than Mary, but it looked like more. He had the build of a rugby player; maybe once he’d been a powerful man. But now his life was ebbing away, and his weight was going with it.
‘This man’s name is David.’
I reached out and had to pull his hand out from his side to shake it. He looked like he wasn’t sure what I was doing to him.
When I let go, his hand dropped away, and he made his way towards the television, moving as if he was dosed up. I followed him and sat down, expecting Mary to follow. Instead, she headed for the kitchen and disappeared inside. I glanced at Malcolm Towne. He was staring at the television, the colours blinking in his face.
‘You like television?’ I asked him.
He looked at me with a strange expression, like the question had registered but he didn’t know how to answer it. Then he turned back to the screen. A couple of seconds later, he chuckled to himself, almost guiltily. I could see his lips moving as he watched.
Mary returned, holding a tray.
‘Sorry it took so long. There’s some sugar there, and some milk.’ She picked up a muffin, placed it on to a side plate and handed it to her husband. ‘Eat this, Malc,’ she said, making an eating gesture. He took the plate from her, laid it in his lap and looked at it. ‘I wasn’t sure how you took it,’ she said to me.
‘That’s fine.’
‘There’s blueberry muffins, and a couple of raspberry ones too. Have whichever you like. Malcolm prefers the raspberry ones, don’t you, Malc?’
I looked at him. He was staring blankly at his plate. You can’t remember what muffin you prefer when you can’t remember your own name. Mary glanced at me, as if she knew what I was thinking. But she didn’t seem to care.
‘When did Malcolm first show signs of Alzheimer’s?’
She shrugged. ‘It started becoming bad about two or three years ago, but I guess we probably noticed something was wrong about the time Alex disappeared. Back then it was just forgetting little bits and pieces, like you or I would forget things, except they wouldn’t come back to him. They just went. Then it became bigger things, like names and events, and eventually he started forgetting me and he started forgetting Alex.’
‘Were Alex and Malcolm close?’
‘Oh, yes. Always.’
I nodded, broke off a piece of blueberry muffin.
‘Well, I’m going to need a couple of things from you,’ I said. ‘First up, any photos you can lay your hands on. A good selection. Then I’ll need addresses for his friends, his work, his girlfriend if he had one.’ I nodded my head towards the stairs. ‘I’d also like to have a look around his room if you don’t mind. I think that would be helpful.’
I felt Malcolm Towne staring at me. When I turned, his head was bowed slightly, his eyes dark and half hidden beneath the ridge of his brow. A blob of saliva was escaping from the corner of his mouth.
‘Stop staring, Malc,’ Mary said.
He turned back towards the TV.
‘Was Alex living away from home when he disappeared?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. But he’d come back here for a holiday for a few weeks before he left.’
‘Where was he living?’
‘Bristol. He’d gone to university there.’
‘And after university?’
‘He got a job down there, as a data clerk.’
I nodded. ‘What, like computer programming?’
‘Not exactly,’ she replied quietly. The disappointment showed in her eyes.
‘What’s up?’
She shrugged. ‘I asked him to come back home after he graduated. The job he had there was terrible. They used to dump files on his desk all day, and he’d input all the data, the same thing every single day. Plus the pay was awful. He deserved a better job than that.’
‘But he didn’t want to come back?’
‘He was qualified to degree level. He had a first in English. He could have walked into a top job in London, on five times the salary. If he had moved back here, he’d have paid less rent and it would have been a better springboard for finding work. He could have devoted his days to filling out application forms and going for interviews at companies that deserved him.’
‘But he didn’t want to come back?’ I asked again.
‘No. He wanted to stay there.’
‘Why?’
‘He’d built a life for himself in Bristol, I suppose.’
‘What about after he disappeared — you never spoke to him?’
‘No.’
‘Not even by telephone?’
‘Never,’ Mary reaffirmed, quieter this time.
I made her run over her story again. Where she saw Alex. When. How long she followed him for. What he looked like. What he was wearing and, finally, where she lost him. It didn’t leave me a lot to go on.
‘So, Alex disappeared for five years, and then died in a car crash —’ I glanced at my pad ‘— just over a year ago, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Where did he crash the car?’
‘Just outside Bristol, up towards the motorway.’
‘What happened with the car?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘No personal items were retrieved from it?’
‘It was just a shell.’
I moved on. ‘Did Alex have a bank account?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he withdraw any money before he left?’