Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

'Morning,' the barman said as I approached.

At the bar there was a sign saying they served breakfast.

'Morning. What's on the menu?'

'Anything you want.' He looked around him as he dried a glass. 'The chef ain't exactly rushed off his feet.'

'I'll have egg, bacon, some toast and a black coffee, then.'

'No problem,' he said. 'Take a seat.'

I slid in at the bar, about five stools away from the guy with the beer bottles. He looked up, his eyes red and mottled. I nodded. He nodded back. Then he dropped his head back down and stared into the empty bottles.

I took in the club. It was on two floors, with a winding staircase between them and a cramped balcony above the bar area and dancefloor. There were probably worse ways to spend a Saturday night, but I wasn't sure what they were.

A couple of minutes later, the barman reappeared. The first thing he did was reach into one of the fridges and take out another bottle of beer. 'Food's ordered, coffee's on,' he said, flipping the cap off the beer and handing it to the other guy. 'You want anything else to drink while you're waiting'

'Yeah, I'll have an orange juice.'

He nodded. I reached into my pocket and got out a photograph of Megan I'd taken from the box. One of her at home in her school uniform. The photo was probably a couple of years old, but she didn't look massively different from how she did in the most up-to-date pictures. Sometimes you had to work the percentages, though. The younger the victim, the more emotion you generated, and the more help you were likely to get. I held up the photograph as the barman placed my juice down in front of me.

'I'm not only here for breakfast,' I said. 'I'm doing some work for the family of a girl who used to come in here a lot.' I placed the picture down and pushed it across to him. 'Do you recognize her?'

He glanced at the photo. 'Judging by that school uniform, looks like she shouldn't have been getting in at all.'

'I won't tell.'

He nodded, smiled a little! 'She doesn’t seem familiar.'

'I imagine the police came in at one stage, about six months back.'

He raised an eyebrow. 'Police?'

'She used to come in with a couple of other girls her age.'

'Is she missing?'

'Her name's Megan Carver.'

His eyes widened for a moment. The name rang a bell. 'She was that girl on the news. The one that disappeared.'

'That's her.'

He looked at her picture again, as if trying to see something he hadn't managed to pick out the first rime. Then he shook his head and pushed the photo back across the counter to me. 'I remember the news stories, but I was still sitting with my feet up on a beach in Thailand when she went missing. I've only been working here four months.'

I nodded, took the photo. 'I guess I'll just wait for my breakfast then.'

It arrived a couple of minutes later and was surprisingly good. The eggs were runny, the bacon was crunchy and both slices of toast were drenched in butter. When I was done, I pushed the plate back across the bar and set about finishing my coffee and juice. The barman was away cleaning tables on the other side of the room. Five stools down from me, my drinking partner had just finished his third beer.

I glanced at him. He was looking down into the empty bottles, one eye open, one eye closed. Stubble was scattered across his face. His hair looked like it had gone weeks without shampoo. But he was dressed in good clothes: Diesel trousers, a Ted Baker sweater, a Quiksilver bodywarmer and, sneaking out from under his sleeve, a Gucci watch. Basically the best-dressed drunk in London.

'Nice breakfast?' he asked without looking up.

'Pretty good, yeah.'

'You sound surprised,' he said, his voice quiet.

'I am.'

'You shouldn't be. It's a good breakfast in here.'

'I know,' I said. 'I just tasted it.'

I pulled a twenty out of my wallet.

'Your girl,' he said, turning on his seat, pushing the bot- des away from him like he wanted to forget he'd spent his breakfast necking three beers. 'Megan. She sounded like a nice girl.'

Now he had my attention. You knew her?'

'No, I didn't know her.' He took one of the bottles and separated it out from the group. 'But I had the Old Bill in here asking me questions about her a couple of days after she went missing'

I eyed him. He sat up straight, smiled and turned towards me. He could see I was trying to put it together in my head: the drunk owns this place?

'You're the manager?'

'The owner. I employ a manager.'

'What did the police ask you?'

The same sort of questions you just asked. Did she come in here? Did I recognize her? Did she ever get into any trouble?' He paused, pulled the beer bottle back into the group, then looked up at me again. 'I didn't have any answers for them, just as I won't have any for you. She could have come in here for years, and she would have meant as much to me as someone who comes in here for the first time.' He shrugged, a little regret in his eyes. That's the nature of these places.'

'Did the police take anything away?'

'CCTV footage.'

'How much?'

'As much as we had.'

'Which was how much?'

'We keep a year's worth. That's what our legal people and security team advise us to do, in case anything kicks off in here and we have to go to court. We keep an additional year as well, but only one copy of that, and in a deposit box at a bank near St Paul's. Anything outside of those two years, we dispose of.'

'So the police took a year's worth of footage from you?'

'No. They took the six months up to, and including, the date of her disappearance, and the month after.'

'Did they find anything?'

'You'd have to ask them that,' he said. 'But as it's sitting in the drawer of my desk upstairs now, I guess not.'

He looked up at me then, and a smile spread across his face like glass cracking. I realized then that this was a man for whom drinking wasn't enjoyable, or an addiction, or just something to do. It was a way of finding an exit. For a brief moment, as we locked eyes across the bar, it was like seeing my reflection in a mirror.

'Are you okay?'

He nodded and looked away. 'Maybe I can help you.'

And when he looked back, his eyes were filling up. He got down off the stool and gestured for me to follow him up to the second floor.

His name was Paulo Janez, and his office overlooked a tiny London backstreet, full of townhouse doors and slivers of office space. On one wall was a huge black-and- white painting of Tony Montana. On the other were a series of photographs. Paulo was in most of them, as was someone I presumed was his dad. They looked the same: dark skin, black hair, brown eyes, immaculately dressed. He caught me looking at them.

'My father,' he said quietly, and sat at his desk. He opened one of the drawers and started going through them. I sat opposite and watched in silence. Eventually he brought out seven DVDs, bound together with two elastic bands. He closed the drawer and placed them on the desk in front of me.

'Be my guest,' he said, gesturing to them.

'That's the seven months the police took?'

'Correct.'

I got out a card and passed it across the desk to him. My guarantee I would return the DVDs. He took the card, studied it, then nodded that he understood.

'You married?' he asked.

'Not any more.'

'Divorced?'

I paused. Maybe he could sense something in me, like I could sense something in him. A connection between us. A sadness that bubbled below the surface of the skin.

'My wife died of cancer,' I said finally.

He nodded, seemed almost relieved, as if he'd started to doubt his initial feelings. 'My father passed away two months ago. The only person I ever really cared about.'

'I'm sorry.'

A sad smile wormed across his face, and then he was quiet for a moment. Take the DVDs and see if you can find anything. I hope you do — for that family's sake.'