The rain stopped and a pregnant lull settled around the house: dark, swollen clouds yet to tear themselves apart above us; silence inside; Lee small and frightened and half covered by darkness. He shifted against the bed, then just looked down at the floor.
Carrie saw something she shouldn’t have.
“What did she see?”
“A photograph.”
“Of what?”
He eyed me. “A man.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “But he’s someone bad. If I had to guess, I’d say someone bad enough to bring down Cornell and whatever he’s involved in.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“We had a get-together at the Bellagio in August, three months after the Lings went home. The next morning, a few of the guys said they were staying in town, so we all went for breakfast. One of the guys was Eric Schiltz. Me and him sat at one end of the table, and he started telling me about how his room had been broken into the night before; some woman had stolen his room key and then taken his laptop.”
“The photograph was on the laptop?”
“Yes. Schiltz had scanned a load of old pictures in.”
“And what happened when Cornell found out?”
“You can assume he got the laptop back.”
“Why can you assume that?”
“Because he’s Cornell. That’s what he does.”
I watched Lee. He was scared of Cornell. “So,” I said softly, and he stirred, like he was climbing out of a deep, dark hole, “Cornell got the laptop back—but what about the original photograph?”
“That was at Schiltz’s house in Palm Springs. Cornell told him to burn it.”
“And did he?”
“Yes,” Lee said. “As soon as he got back. But it was too late. Because what Cornell didn’t realize was that, three months before, Carrie had been in Schiltz’s study.”
Then it hit home. “She saw the original.”
Lee nodded.
“And, what, Carrie recognized the guy in the photo?”
“Yes.”
“From where?”
“From her MA.”
I paused, momentarily confused—and then I realized Lee was talking about the History course Carrie was taking at Exeter University. “Her History MA?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the guy in the picture got to do with her MA?”
“I don’t know.”
I remembered the folder on Paul Ling’s PC, the one with her notes in. It had been all about the Soviet Union in the years after the Second World War. “She didn’t tell you?”
“I never spoke to her about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I only spoke to Paul.”
“But Carrie must have told Paul who this guy was. They were married. If she recognized this guy, they would have had that conversation at some point, surely?”
“No. Carrie instantly recognized the guy in the picture, but she never mentioned anything to Paul. Six months passed before Paul found out, and that was by chance.”
“Why didn’t she tell him before that?”
Lee shrugged. “He always thought her MA was a waste of time. He would have preferred that, if she’d wanted to study again, she’d done something more useful, to her, to him, to the girls. I don’t know. This was what he kept saying—that it was a pointless qualification. The type of person Carrie was, that would have just made her all the more determined to see it through. Don’t get me wrong, they were happily married, they got on and agreed about most things—but that MA, that created some conflict.”
“Which is why she never bothered bringing it up with him.”
“Right.”
“So how did he find out about the photo?”
“He’d got home and she’d left her notebook open with this picture in it. It was a photograph of a photograph; she’d taken a picture of the original in Schiltz’s office with her camera phone. Got really close in, so she made sure the guy came out clearly. Paul saw the notebook, was curious, and they started discussing her MA over dinner. She ended up telling him about how she’d taken it at Schiltz’s place.”
“Did he ask why she’d taken it?”
“She lied to him and said Schiltz was helping with research into the history of orthopedics.”
“But Schiltz didn’t know anything about it?”
“No.”
“And Paul? Didn’t he realize she was lying?”
“No.”
“So, if he didn’t know it was a lie, why did he mention it to you?”
Lee took a long, deep breath. “Like I said to you earlier, before I flew them out for Annabel’s operation, I’d told them to keep the trip on the quiet, keep a low profile. I’d asked for that one favor. Carrie was a good person—I doubt she would have deliberately gone against my wishes—but I think maybe she’d decided I was being overly cautious. Maybe paranoid. Maybe weird. That’s why she didn’t think for a moment that taking that photo could hurt. Paul, though, he could see I meant it. He didn’t know why, he didn’t know about Cornell, but he could see I was serious. I think that’s why he chose to tell me about what he saw in the notebook.”
“So did he scan it in and send it to you?”
He nodded. “And in the middle of November, when we had our next get-together at the Bellagio, I got talking to Schiltz and tried to persuade him to tell me what was so damaging about the photo—but he refused. He kept telling me that he was done talking about it, that I should keep my voice down in case Cornell heard. But by that time it was already too late. I looked across the room, and Cornell was just standing there, watching us.” Then he stopped. He gave me a sideways glance, fear in his eyes. “He just stood there. Staring. I swear to you, it was like he could hear everything we were saying. I know it sounds crazy, but it was like he was reading my mind. I just knew. I just knew from that moment I was in deep, deep shit.”
“So what happened after that?”
“I spent the whole night trying to keep out of his way, and the next morning, when everyone started to leave, I found a back entrance and headed out to my car. He was waiting for me outside. He didn’t say anything, just stood there, and I basically fell apart on the spot.” A pause. A smile. But there was nothing in it, just remorse. “You don’t know what Cornell is like, David. The second he looks at you, you see what he is capable of. He’s like . . . I don’t know, like a vessel or something, carrying around all this violence and misery. When he looked at me, I just started talking and the next minute I was showing him the scan I had of Carrie’s notebook, and trying to cut some sort of deal.”
“Deal?”
“The Lings for Schiltz.” He eyed me like I’d accused him of something. But it wasn’t me attacking, it was him. He was hanging himself with his own culpability. “I told Cornell that Schiltz was the reason this had all gone to hell. I tried to play on Eric’s carelessness, on the fact that he should never have had that photograph just lying around.”
“But you didn’t even know who the guy in the photograph was.”
“No,” he said. “I just tried to sound convincing. I said to Cornell, ‘Do whatever you want to Schiltz, but don’t do anything to the family. They’re my responsibility. I’ll take care of Carrie’s copy.’ I tried to play on their innocence: they didn’t know what they were doing, it wasn’t their fault, don’t blame them. The reality was, I never even knew what was so important about that picture. Still don’t. I just knew it could hurt Cornell.”
“So did Cornell take the deal?”
“No.” A tremble passed through him. “All I ended up doing was committing us both to the ground—Schiltz and me. Cornell said the original copy of the photograph was gone, and everything would have been okay if Schiltz and I hadn’t brought the Lings into this. If Carrie had never been in that study, she never would have seen the picture.”
“You’re still alive. What happened to Schiltz?”
Lee looked at me and said nothing, but it was written all over his face; as tears blurred in his eyes he was remembering how Schiltz had saved the life of someone he had cared deeply about—and in return Lee had sent him to his death.
“I just ran,” he said. “I booked the first flight home, I came straight here and I lay low for a couple of weeks. But it was playing on my mind the whole time. Twenty-four hours a day. What if Cornell gets to the Lings? What if he sends people after them? So I called Paul, trying to persuade him to take Carrie and the girls somewhere; book a flight, do anything, just get them all out of the country. I spoke to him three times. Eventually I got so frustrated, I even told him to come here—I compromised my safety so I could plead with him face to face.”
“Why didn’t he listen to you?”
“Something changed. He drove up here on, I don’t know, I think it was January 3, and I swear he left believing everything I was telling him. He could see in my face I wasn’t messing around. But by the time he got home, something had changed.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But he’d changed his mind.”
And then a thought came to me: the spoof call.
It was made on the night of January 3. I’d always assumed it must have been a phone call threatening the Lings because the next day Paul had called the travel agent, albeit for only nine seconds. But maybe it was the exact opposite: maybe it was a call to set Paul’s mind at rest somehow, to tell him everything was going to be fine. That would explain the short call to the travel agency. A call of that duration spoke of a man battling with uncertainty: Lee, his best friend, on the one side, telling him he needed to make a break for it; the anonymous caller, assured, convincing, telling him everything was fine. I wondered briefly how the anonymous call the police received fitted in: it had come two days after the Lings went missing, directing the cops to Miln Cross. Was it the same person? Were they just trying to throw the case team off the scent . . . or was the caller trying to help in some way? Were both calls trying to help the Lings in some way? My head was buzzing with static, so I let it go and moved on: “So, you think Cornell took the family?”
“I know it,” Lee said, a hint of steel returning to his voice.
“Why, though? Who’s the guy in the photograph?”
“I don’t know.”
But there was a flicker in his face.
“You said Carrie had taken a small part of a bigger photograph?”
“Yes,” he said. “She’d focused in on the man.”
“So what was in the rest of the picture?”
He hesitated. It didn’t feel like he was lying because he was deliberately trying to keep something back. It felt like he was lying because he wanted it to all go away. But it was too late for that now. He’d told me too much, and now there was no going back.
“Come on, Lee.”
“You can see Ray, Eric and Carter in the photo.”
I studied him. “Muire, Schiltz and Graham are with this guy?”
“No. He’s way off, in the background. They don’t even know he’s there.”
“But do you think they knew him?”
“I think it might have been someone from their early years. Maybe they came into contact with him and didn’t even realize. I think Cornell was looking for a reason to take Schiltz out. Silence him. Stop him from ever talking about what that photograph meant.”
“And then there was Ray.”
His head dropped.
“Do you think he really fell into the river by himself?” I asked him.
“Maybe I just want to believe he did.”
Suddenly, the conversation I’d had with Martha Muire echoed back to me. I was burgled a month after Ray died, she’d told me over the phone. The only thing they took was a photograph. “It wasn’t an accident,” I said, and Lee looked up at me. “Cornell killed Schiltz. Then, whoever does Cornell’s dirty work here killed Ray too.”
He nodded; a lonely, mournful movement.
I told him about the photograph that was stolen from his mum’s place, and then made the natural leap in logic. “Schiltz scanned in a load of old photos, right? So what’s the betting he e-mailed a version of that photo to Ray—and also to Carter Graham?”
Lee instantly understood. “You think Carter’s next?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
His hands were linked together like he was in silent prayer. “Yes,” he said. “I think Cornell will come for Carter just like he came for everyone else.” He looked at me. “Because Carter’s the only one left who knows who D.K. is.”
I frowned. “D.K.?”
“That’s what was written in Carrie’s notebook.”