Chapter 28 - Birdy
BIRDY
I stop reading the transcript and shut my laptop.
The walls of the pub fold in on me, the floor seems to tilt, and I grab the sticky, wooden table for balance.
I close my eyes and the world is dark. Sunday whimpers, somehow knowing that something is wrong.
My head fills with a sound I can only describe as storm clouds colliding with each other, and I reach inside my satchel for some pills.
I take two to take the edge off, and wash them down with the remains of my virgin mojito.
Until recently, I had never even heard of Thanatos.
Now I’m reading a transcript of an interview with the man who runs the company.
A company that claims to have predicted the day I will die.
It’s hard to explain why I wanted to be here at the end.
I’m sure most people would think it is crazy to start a new job at a time like this, and they might be right.
All I know is it felt like Hope Falls was calling me home.
I haven’t told anyone that I’m dying, or when; I don’t know if the date Thanatos predicted will really be my last or if it will turn out to be nonsense.
But Harrison Woolf must know if he is the CEO of the company.
I think he knows more than he is letting on about a lot of things.
All of which are somehow linked; my grandmother’s house, Thanatos, Hope Falls, Eden Fox … I’m sure of it.
I open my laptop again and google Harrison Woolf.
A few results come up, but I know none of them are the man I’m looking for.
I search Harrison Woolf and Thanatos, but again, nothing.
No social media. No LinkedIn profile. Not a bean.
The guy is a ghost online—a lot like me—which can only mean two things in my experience.
Either he values his privacy or he has something to hide.
Or both. I close the laptop again and slip it inside my satchel.
The internet might not be able to tell me what I want to know, but I bet someone else can.
“I wonder if you might be able to do me a favor?” I say to the pretty barmaid sitting behind the bar.
With her long red hair and big green eyes, she reminds me of someone, but I can’t remember who.
Maddy was here when I first arrived at The Smuggler’s Inn, and said I could have any room upstairs I wanted given the place is empty.
Sunday—who is an excellent judge of character—liked her straight away, and so did I.
She’s thirty-something, beautiful, bookish, and has an emotional intelligence that is hard to find in people these days.
I can’t help thinking she should be doing more with her life than working in an empty pub.
“Do you mind keeping an eye on my dog if I leave him here for a while?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says. “Not like I’m rushed off my feet doing anything else.”
“Be good,” I tell Sunday, and he tilts his head as though butter wouldn’t melt.
Then I send a text.
MEET ME OUTSIDE MY OFFICE.
Quickly followed by another.
PLEASE.
Then a third.
AND HURRY UP.
I am aware that the last text I sent Carter was a smidgen rude, but I think it is important to start any working relationship the way you mean to go on.
He pulls up outside the pub in his silly little police car a few minutes later.
The thing is spotless, as though he just had it professionally cleaned.
I’m sure it didn’t look like this earlier; I can even see an air freshener shaped like a tree dangling from the mirror.
“What took you so long?” I ask through the open window.
“Are you joking?”
“I rarely joke. And I’m not getting in this tin can. I’ll meet you up there,” I say, taking the Vespa keys out of my pocket.
“Meet me where?”
“Spyglass, of course. Do try to keep up.”
“You didn’t say … Never mind. You know that Spyglass is just at the top of the hill?”
“I do know that. I used to own the place, remember? Albeit briefly.”
“What I meant is that we could walk there just as quickly.”
“We could but we’re not going to.”
“I’ve already questioned Harrison Woolf—”
“Yes, but you didn’t ask the right questions.
Think about it, Carter. Use that brain of yours.
From what I know so far, we have a woman claiming she is the real Eden Fox who has now disappeared.
And a woman who you say was the real Eden Fox, who has also disappeared.
One of them was lying, we don’t know why yet, but we do know that the common factor in all this is the husband.
” I climb onto the scooter. “Meet you there.”
“Let me do the talking,” I say a few minutes later as we crunch along the gravel driveway toward the front door at Spyglass.
I notice the bird-shaped knocker has been replaced with a shiny fox head one, and wonder what else the new owners have changed about the place.
I feel a little out of sorts and off-balance again just as I’m about to knock on the door, but I do my best to hide it.
I don’t know whether it is my health, this situation, or this house causing me to wobble.
But I do believe Hope Falls called me back here for a reason.
When nobody comes to answer the door straight away I knock again.
A man in his early fifties eventually opens it.
He doesn’t look surprised—or happy—to see me.
But people rarely smile when they find police officers on their doorstep.
I know it’s Harrison Woolf without needing to ask—he looks exactly how I expected him to.
I take in the expensive-looking suit, the black shirt and tie, the neat salt-and-pepper hair, the clean-shaven, chiseled chin.
He looks well put together, confident, calm.
Not exactly how you would expect a man who just possibly lost his wife to look.
“Hello, Mr. Woolf. I’m DCI Olivia Bird. I believe you’ve already had the misfortune of meeting my colleague, Carter, and I wanted to apologize for his conduct earlier today.”
Carter shoots me some serious side-eye, but I ignore him and his hurt feelings and continue with my prepared speech.
“It was completely unacceptable for Sergeant Carter to question you the way that he did. I wanted to reassure you that now I am here, nothing like that will happen again. I understand what a difficult time this must be, and going forward we will be putting all of our efforts into finding out what happened to your wife.”
“Thank you,” Harrison says, already starting to close the door.
“Would it be okay if we came in for a moment?”
“I’m actually right in the middle of an important Zoom call for work…”
On the day his wife might have committed suicide.
“That’s okay,” I tell him, sidestepping my way into the house. “It’s a bit chilly out today, we can wait inside until you’re ready.”
He does a terrible job of hiding his irritation and I watch him wrestle with how to respond. Eventually he bites his tongue and says, “Of course. Come on in.”
We follow him through to an impressive kitchen at the back of the house.
It didn’t look like this when my grandmother owned the place.
Everything is stylish and spotless now, so devoid of personality it’s almost unrecognizable.
Harrison’s laptop is on the granite kitchen counter facing away from us, so I can’t see who he was talking to, but he wasn’t lying about a Zoom.
“Everything okay?” asks a female voice coming from his computer.
“I have to go,” is all he says to the screen before closing his laptop. Then he looks up and fixes his eyes on me. “Have you found her?”
If he means his wife there is very little emotion in his voice.
“Not yet. Please take a seat,” I tell him, sitting down at his kitchen table without waiting to be invited. “Can you make us a cup of tea, Carter?”
Carter pulls a face, as though I just asked him to wipe my arse, but reaches for the fancy kettle anyway.
Harrison glares at me before sitting down.
He looks reluctant. Defiant. Guilty. I notice how Carter seems to know exactly where to find everything; mugs, tea, sugar, spoons, but decide to focus my attention on the other man in the room. Harrison Woolf.
“I wonder if we could start again?” I ask, and Harrison stares at me. “Sometimes it helps to go back to the beginning. How long have you been married?”
His face does something strange, as though I asked a difficult question.
“Your colleague already asked me that—”
“He doesn’t have any thoughts of his own so tends to borrow mine,” I say, and Carter shakes his head. “If you don’t mind just answering some questions again.”
“I presumed you were here because you had something to tell me—”
“This won’t take long, and it might help us find Eden. I know that’s what we all want. You and your wife lived in London until recently, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“So why the move to Hope Falls?”
“Eden always dreamed of living by the sea. She had this strange obsession with the ocean, nothing made her happier than staring at it and painting it. This house came on the market and seemed perfect. She was happy here.”
Past tense.
“And, despite the move to Cornwall, you still work for a company in London?”
“Yes.”
“A company called Thanatos? Is that right?”
He stares at me and his reaction is surprisingly hard to read.
A curious mix of shock, contempt, and defiance, with a side order of simmering rage.
I get the impression Mr. Woolf is normally the person asking the questions, not answering them.
He soon recovers, his handsome features resetting to neutral.
“Yes. I’m the CEO.”
“And what kind of company is Thanatos?”
“Is that relevant?”
“Might be.”
He folds his arms across his chest. “Pharma tech.”
“Sorry, you might need to explain that—”
“It’s a little complicated.”
“Enlighten me.”
Harrison shifts in his seat. “We deal with high-end pharmaceutical research and scientific technology.”
“What does that mean? AI?”
He sighs, visibly losing patience. “Artificial intelligence is a key part of any scientific endeavor these days, but Thanatos is a future-thinking company focused on research and studying human frailty, with an emphasis on comfort when there is no cure.”
It sounds like a company motto he memorized.
I think on his words for a moment, trying to translate them into something I can understand, but it doesn’t work.
And it doesn’t matter. As CEO of the company, I doubt he gets involved in individual client cases.
I don’t think I’m going to learn anything new about Thanatos today, and I’m not going to bring up my diagnosis in front of Carter.
This is just about seeing how far I can bend the man before he snaps.
I stare at him and he stares at me and we wait to see who can stay silent the longest.
I win.
Harrison leans forward, puts his elbows on the table, steeples his fingers.
“I understand why you are asking about my job. But I loved my wife, and I’ve already told you everything I know.
I have experienced grief before, and the only cure for heartbreak is hard work.
You might think my commitment to my work is strange or suspicious at a time like this, but it’s just my way of coping with what may or may not have happened. ”
The man can read my mind.
Like most people, Harrison Woolf seems like a contradiction of himself.
Confident but scared.
Wise but foolish.
One of my former colleagues at the Met Police once described me as a human lie detector.
I liked that, and I wish it were the case, but I can’t always tell when someone is lying.
I’ve caught and interviewed some of the biggest, cleverest, and most dangerous criminals during my time as a detective in London.
I thought I’d seen and heard it all, because I have.
But the thing that surprises me most so far about Harrison Woolf is that I believe every word he said just now is true.
Carter places a mug of tea in front of Harrison and another in front of me. Neither of us touches them. He doesn’t even look at his, just stares at me with an unnerving intensity.
“I was told that you found your wife’s phone,” I say, and Harrison nods. “Would you mind if I took a look? It might help shed some light on her whereabouts and state of mind these last few days.”
His jaw clenches but he nods. “Of course.”
“And would it be possible for me to take a quick look at your phone too?”
He stares at me again but doesn’t answer.
I’m about to politely explain that I can ask his phone company for records any time I want, and that they can send me everything, even deleted texts, but then he reaches inside his pocket and puts an iPhone on the table.
Unlike mine, it looks brand-new. Him handing it over like that without any further protest surprises me, and I am rarely surprised.
I quickly scroll through his final messages with his wife.
Thurs, 30 Oct at 15:05
Leaving London now, will be home soon.
Thurs, 30 Oct at 17:10
Is everything ready for the exhibition?
Thurs, 30 Oct at 23:56
I’m so proud of you tonight. Love you x
She didn’t reply to any of his messages and I think that looks suspicious.
He said they came back here together after the exhibition, so why not just tell her?
Why would you text someone that you loved them if you were with them?
Wouldn’t you just say it to their face? Unless he knew his wife was going to disappear and wanted it to look as though everything had been fine between them before she did.
“Thank you for that,” I say, giving the phone back to him. “Would it be okay if we just took a quick look around the house?”
“Happy to help in any way. I don’t have anything to hide,” Harrison replies.
And there it is: his first lie.