‘Half of his trust fund.’
‘Which was how much?’
‘Five thousand pounds.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Did you check his statements?’
‘Regularly — but it was pointless. He left his card behind when he went, and he never applied for a replacement as far as I know.’
‘Did he have a girlfriend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Down in Bristol?’
Mary nodded.
‘Is she still there?’
‘No,’ Mary said. ‘Her parents live in north London. After Alex disappeared, Kathy moved back there.’
‘Have you spoken to her at all?’
‘Not since the funeral.’
‘You never spoke to her after that?’
‘He was dead. We had nothing to talk about.’
I paused. Let her gather herself again.
‘So, did he meet Kathy at university?’
‘No. They met at a party Alex went to in London. When he went to uni, she followed him down there.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She worked as a waitress in one of the restaurants close to the campus.’
I took down her address. I’d have to invent a plausible story if I was about to start cold-calling. Alex had been dead for over a year.
As if reading my mind, Mary said, ‘What are you going to tell her?’
‘The same as I’ll tell everyone. That you’ve asked me to try and put a timetable together of your son’s last movements. There’s some truth in that, anyway. You would like to know.’
She nodded. ‘I would, yes.’
Mary got up and went to a drawer in the living room. She pulled it open and took out a letter-sized envelope with an elastic band around it. She looked at it for a moment, then pushed the drawer shut and returned, laying the envelope down in front of me on the table.
‘I hope you can see now that this isn’t a joke,’ she said, and opened a corner of it so I could see the money inside.
I laid my hand over the envelope and pulled it towards me, watching Mary as she followed the cash across the table.
‘Why do you think Alex only took half of the money with him?’
She looked up from the envelope and for a moment seemed unsure of the commitment she’d just made. Perhaps now the baton had been passed on, she’d had a moment of clarity about everything she’d asked me to do — and everything she believed she’d seen.
I repeated the question. ‘Why only half?’
‘I’ve no idea. Maybe that was all he could get out at once. Or maybe he just needed enough to give him a start somewhere.’ She looked around the room and quietly sighed. ‘I don’t really understand a lot of what Alex did. He had a good life.’
‘Do you think he became bored of it?’
She shrugged and bowed her head.
I watched her for a moment, and realized there were two mysteries: why Mary believed she had seen Alex walking around more than a year after he’d died; and why Alex had left everything behind in the first place.
His room was small. There were music posters on the walls. His A Level textbooks on the shelves. A TV in the corner, dust on the screen, and a VCR next to it with old tapes perched on top. I went through them. Alex had had a soft spot for action movies.
‘He was a big film buff.’
I turned. Mary was standing in the doorway.
‘Yeah, I can see. He had good taste.’
‘You think?’
‘Are you kidding?’ I picked up a copy of Die Hard and held it up. ‘I was a teenager in the eighties. This is my Citizen Kane.’
She smiled. ‘Maybe you two would have got on.’
‘We would have definitely got on. I must have watched this about fifty times in the last year. It’s the best antidepressant on the market.’
She smiled again, then looked around the room, stopping on a photograph of Alex close by. Her eyes dulled a little, the smile slipping from her face.
‘It’s hard seeing everything left like this.’
I nodded. ‘I know it is.’
‘Do you feel the same way?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Exactly the same.’
She nodded at me, almost a thank you, as if it was a relief to know she wasn’t alone. I looked towards the corner of the room, where two wardrobes were positioned against the far wall.
‘What’s in those?’
‘Just some of the clothes he left behind.’
‘Can I look?’
‘Of course.’
I walked across and opened them up. There wasn’t much hanging up, but there were some old shirts and a musty suit. I pushed them along the runner, and on the floor I could see a photograph album and more books.
‘These are Alex’s?’
‘Yes.’
I opened up the album and some photographs spilled out. I scooped them up off the floor. The top one was of Alex and a girl who must have been his girlfriend.
‘Is this Kathy?’
Mary nodded. I set the picture aside and looked through the rest. Alex and Mary. Mary and Malcolm. I held up a photograph of Malcolm and Alex at a caravan park somewhere. It was hot. Both of them were stripped down to just their shorts, sitting next to a smoking barbecue with bottles of beer.
‘You said they were close.’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t think Malcolm would remember anything?’
‘You can try, but I think you’d be wasting your time. You’ve seen how he is.’ She glanced back over her shoulder, and then stepped further into the room. ‘There were times when I felt a bit left out, I suppose. Sometimes I would get home and the two of them would be talking, and when I entered the room they’d stop.’
‘When was that?’
‘For a while before Alex disappeared, I guess.’
‘Right before he disappeared?’
She screwed up her face. ‘Maybe. It was a long time ago. All I know is, the two of them, most of the time, were attached at the hip.’
I looked around the room again, my eyes falling upon a photo of Malcolm and Alex. The one person who knew Alex the best was the one person I had no hope of getting anything from.
5
I left Mary’s just after midday. Once I hit the motorway, the traffic started to build; three lanes of slowly moving cars feeding back into the centre of the city. What should have been an eighty-minute drive to Kathy’s family home in Finsbury Park turned into a mammoth two-hour expedition through London gridlock. I stopped once, to get something to eat, and then chewed on a sandwich as I inched through Hammersmith, following the curve of the Thames. By the time I had finally parked up, it was just after two.
I locked the car and moved up the drive. It was a yellow-bricked semi-detached, with a courtyard full of fir trees and a small patch of grass at the front. A Mercedes and a Micra were parked outside, and the garage was open. It was rammed with junk — some of it in boxes, some just on the floor — and shelves full of machinery parts and tools. There was no one inside. As I turned back to the house, a curtain twitched at the front window.
‘Can I help you?’
I spun around. A middle-aged man with a garden sprayer attached to his back was standing at the side of the house, where an entrance ran parallel to the garage.
‘Mr Simmons?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘My name’s David Raker. Is Kathy in today, sir?’
He eyed me suspiciously. ‘Why?’
‘I’d like to speak with her.’
‘Why?’
‘Is she in today, sir?’
‘First you tell me why you’re here.’
‘I was hoping to speak to her about Alex Towne.’