Read Online Never Coming Back by Tim Weaver - Free Book Online

what if they sent Rocastle because they needed someone experienced at the Lings’ house, because there was something that required his nous? A family going missing was unusual, worrying, but until it became a kidnapping or a murder—and this disappearance never had—it wouldn’t require a DCI.
    I set the pen down. “You said the family lived in Buckfastleigh?”
    â€œJust west of it, yes. A development called Harbourne Lake.”
    She gave me their address. I didn’t know the area all that well, but I knew it was about twenty miles away, along some slow, narrow roads. Maybe not quite an hour, but close to it.
    â€œOkay.” I paused for a moment, staring down at the notes I’d made. Five months ago I was lying dead on a trolley. Now I was on the brink of returning to my old life, to the world of the lost. Somehow I expected to feel conflicted about it; instead all I felt was a subtle, magnetic pull. “Okay,” I said again. “I’ll take a look at the house tomorrow.”
    A smile broke on her face. “
Thank you
, David.”
    I held up a hand and the smile immediately dissolved again. “I’m not in the kind of condition you need someone to be in when they’re finding the person you love. It’s only been four weeks since my bandages came off.” I paused, looked at her: she’d bowed her head slightly, perhaps because she thought this was all about to end in rejection. “I’ll do some asking around,” I said, and she looked up at me again, hope sparking in her eyes. “I’ll find out as much as I can about what happened to Carrie,Paul and the girls. But five months ago, doctors were busy reviving me. I’m still recovering. And if things go . . .”
    I stopped.
    If things go bad.
    Emily was frowning at me, trying to figure out what it was I’d been about to say, and for a second I realized how much I’d changed in the four years I’d been doing this, how much I’d come to learn about the darkness in men. In her weakest moments she probably saw her sister’s family dead in a ditch somewhere, inside a car that had never been found. Victims of an accident. Victims of fate, destiny, or whatever she believed in.
    But I didn’t see any of that.
    I saw devils and executioners, men who felt nothing for the people they took, and even less for the families left behind. And the thing that frightened me the most was that I didn’t even have to try hard to remember them.
    I just had to close my eyes.

Roots
    Tuesday,
3 May 2011 | Eighteen Months Ago
    The taxi came up the road, sun glinting in its windshield, a silver crucifix dangling from its rearview mirror. The doctor sat on the porch and watched its approach. At first he couldn’t see the women inside, both of them hidden behind the gray tint of the windows. But then, as the cab bumped on to the sidewalk at the bottom of the driveway, he spotted them, side by side in the backseat, and recalled again how different they both were.
    Getting to his feet, he walked down to meet them, sun pressing against his back, beads of sweat instantly forming along his hairline. The day was hot—as hot as it had been all year—without even a hint of a breeze. Somewhere further out, in another part of the city, he could hear the distant wail of police sirens, but otherwise the only sound was the unending buzz of insects coming from the folds of the mountains behind the house.
    As he got to the car, the rear doors opened on both sides and the women got out. On the side closest to him, Carrie Ling emerged from the cab, smiling at him. “Good morning,” she said brightly and, as he greeted her back, the doctor moved around and opened the door for her daughter. Annabel Ling, crutches already in her hands, slid out of the car, smiling at him. He smiled back, held an arm out for her, and she used it to hoist herself up and out of the car, readying her