Fall From Grace by Tim Weaver Page B

the technology on his mobile phone. But if you were planning on leaving, if you knew you were about to exit your life for good, would you really head out on to moorland, in the embers of winter, in your slippers?
    It could have been another way of disguising his intentions, and there was nothing stopping him leaving a change of clothes somewhere close by. But something struck me: Ellie had been the one to ask him to leave the house, not the other way around. What if she’d never asked? Or what if the fire hadn’t gone out as fast that night? What if they’d already had enough logs stored inside the house?
    He wouldn’t have gone out at all.
    Either way, having watched the video Craw shot, I could picture the scene more clearly now: Ellie emerging from the kitchen and realizing he hadn’t returned; heading outside and calling his name.
    ‘I know this sounds like a weird question,’ I said to her, ‘but do you remember if, in the days after he disappeared, you noticed that any of his clothes were missing?’
    ‘Missing?’
    ‘Or maybe a backpack? You said you were both walkers, so I’m guessing you’d have a backpack of some description. Did you ever notice that disappearing before 3 March?’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I didn’t. I still have it.’
    That didn’t necessarily discount the idea of him storing a bag somewhere: he could have just bought a new one. ‘So when he didn’t come back, you headed straight outside?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And what did you find?’
    ‘Nothing. He wasn’t at the woodshed. I took a walk all the way around the house, as he has this rickety old toolshed at the back that he sometimes forgets to lock up at night. But when he wasn’t there, I came back inside. I figured I must have missed him.’
    ‘You said the sun hadn’t yet gone down by then?’
    She was lucid enough to see where I was headed. ‘No. The day was overcast, so that made the last hour of the day quite gloomy, but I could see clearly in all directions.’
    ‘Down to the village and up to the tor?’
    ‘In all directions,’ she repeated, more forcefully. Again, I glimpsed Craw in her. She was sitting back on the sofa now, mug in her lap, the last cords of steam escaping past her face. ‘You can hear cars as soon as they get on the dirt road a mile away in Postbridge. On a clear day, you can see people approaching in whatever direction you’re facing. That Sunday was grey, but there was no fog. No mist. The policeman Melanie and I spoke to down in Newton Abbot – Sergeant Reed – asked me if it was possible I might have failed to spot Len, but there’s just no way: wherever he headed, I’d have seen him.’
    I nodded, but the reality was that something had been missed. I’d have a clearer understanding once I’d been to the house and taken in the surrounding land, outside of the boundaries of Craw’s home-made movie. Just because Ellie Franks hadn’t seen her husband in the moments after he’d failed to come back from the woodshed didn’t mean he wasn’t there. In terrain like Dartmoor there were ravines, furrows, clefts, wrinkles, each a place to lay low, waiting for it to get dark.
    There were countless places to hide.
    Or countless places to be hidden.

12
    After I’d thanked Ellie Franks for her time, Craw returned and led me along the corridor off the living room. There were two further doors, both open: one was a study, the other a plain white room that hadn’t been furnished with anything other than a desk and chair.
    Sitting on the desk were two cardboard boxes.
    As we passed the study, I glimpsed two sets of sofas in an L-shape, a glass coffee table, and a PC on a small desk in the corner. There was no chair under it, but there was a stack of books – too far away to make out – piled on top. I wondered if Craw’s husband worked from home – the set-up certainly made me curious as to what he did – but when I thought about bringing it up, a way to show an interest and further smooth