Tom Weaver: The Dead Tracks

'No. It was difficult for them at the beginning' He paused. We put out that reward for information, so they had to field a lot of calls. Jamie Hart told us he didn't want to give us false hope, so he said he and his team would sort through the calls and collate the paperwork and then come back to us.'

'Jamie Hart was heading up the investigation?' 'Right.'

The waiter arrived to take our orders as I wrote Hart's name on my pad. I'd heard of him: once during my paper days when he'd led a task force trying to find a serial rapist; and once in a Times news story I'd pulled out of the archives on a previous case.

'So, did Hart get back to you?' I asked after the waiter was gone.

Carver rocked his head from side to side. The answer was no but he was trying to be diplomatic. 'Not in the way we would have hoped.'

'How do you mean?'

'At the beginning, they were calling us every day, asking us questions, coming to the house and taking things away. Then, a couple of months into the investigation, it all ground to a halt. The calls stopped coming as often.

Officers stopped coming to the house. Now all we hear is that there's nothing new to report.' His mouth flattened. A flicker of pain. 'They would tell us if there was something worth knowing, wouldn't they?'

'They should do.'

He paused for a moment, his hand moving to his drink.

‘What was the date of Megan's disappearance?'

'Monday 3 April,' Carver said.

It was now 19 October. One hundred and ninety-nine days and they hadn't heard a thing. The police tended not to get interested for forty-eight hours after a disappearance, but in my experience the first couple of days were crucial in missing persons. The longer you left it, the more you were playing with percentages. Sometimes you found the person five days, or a week, or two weeks after they vanished. But most of the time, if they didn't resurface in the first forty-eight hours it was either because they'd disappeared for good and didn't want to come home again — or their body was waiting to be found.

'When was the last time anyone saw her?'

‘The afternoon of the third,' Carver said. 'She went to her first class after lunch, but didn't make the next one. She was supposed to meet her friend Kaitlin at their lockers because they both did Biology. But Megan never arrived.'

'Biology was the last lesson of the day?'

'Yes.'

'Does the school have CCTV?'

'Yes - but very limited coverage. Jamie told us they checked all the cameras, but none of them revealed anything'

'Have you told him you've come to me?'

Carver shook his head. 'No.'

It was better that way. The best approach was going to be cold-calling Hart. The police, understandably, didn't like outsiders stepping on their toes — especially on active cases - and if they picked up my scent, they'd close ranks and circle the wagons before I even got near.

'So what's the next stage?' Carver asked.

'At a time that's convenient for you, I'd like to come and speak to you at the house; have a look around Megan's bedroom. I don't expect to find anything significant, but it's something I like to do.'

They nodded. Neither of them spoke.

'After that, I'll start working my way through this,' I said, placing a hand on her Book of Life. 'The police have had a look at this presumably?'

'Yes,' Carver said.

'Did they find anything?'

He shrugged. They gave it back to us.'

Which meant no. A moment later, the waiter returned with our meals.

'Do you think there's a chance she's alive?' Caroline asked after he was gone.

We both looked at her, Carver turning in his seat, shifting his bulk, as if he was surprised and disappointed by the question. Maybe she'd never asked it before. Or maybe he didn't want to know the answer.

I looked at her, then at him, then back to her.

'There's always a chance.'

Yes,' she replied. 'But do you think she's alive?'

I looked down at my meal, a lobster broken into pieces, not wanting my eyes to betray me. But I had to look at her eventually. And when I did, she must have seen the answer, because she slowly nodded, then started to cry.

Outside, James Carver shook my hand and we watched his wife slowly wander off along Victoria Embankment, the Houses of Parliament framed behind her. Boats moved on the Thames, the water dark and grey. Autumn was finally clawing its way out of hibernation after a warm, muggy summer.

'I don't know what you want to do about money,' he said.

'Let's talk tomorrow.'

He nodded. 'I'll be around, but Caroline might not be - she's got some work at a school in South Hackney.'

That's fine. I'll catch up with her when she's free.'

I watched Carver head after his wife. When he got to her, he reached for her hand. She responded, but coolly, her fingers hard and rigid. When he spoke, she just shrugged and continued walking. They headed down to Westminster Pier and, as they crossed the road towards the tube station, she looked back over her shoulder at me. For a second I could see the truth: that something had remained hidden in our conversation; a trace of a secret, buried out of her husband's sight.

I just had to find out what.

The day had started to darken by five-thirty. I stopped in at the office on the way back from the restaurant. I'd left some notes in there, including some I'd made that morning on Megan Carver. By the time I got home, at just gone seven, the house was black. I hadn't set the alarm, so when

I got in the sensors beeped gently as I moved around: first in the kitchen, then in the living room, then in the main bedroom at the end of the hall. I dumped my stuff, showered, and then spent a moment on the edge of the bed, looking at some photographs of Derryn and me.

One, right at the bottom of the pile, was of the two of us at the entrance to Imperial Beach in San Diego, back when I'd been seconded to the US to cover the 2004 elections. I was pulling her into the crook of my arm, sunglasses covering my eyes, dark hair wet from the surf. In the wetsuit I looked broad, well built and lean, every inch of my six-two. Next to me, Derryn seemed smaller than she really was, as if relying on me to keep her protected from something off camera. I liked the photo. It made me remember what it felt like to be the person she needed.

I put the pictures back into my bedside cabinet and got dressed, looking around the room at the things of hers that still remained. We'd bought the house when we still had plans to start a family, but as the ink was drying on the contracts, we found out she had breast cancer. Everything seemed to go fast after that. She battled on for two years, but our time together was short.

Some days I can handle the lack of time, can simply appreciate every moment we had together and be grateful for it. But some days all I feel inside is anger for what happened to her — and for the way I was left alone. On those days I find a way to push that feeling down and suppress it. Because, in the work I do, there are people who come at you through the chinks in your armour.

And people who feed on that weakness.

Chapter Two

The Carvers' house was an old Saxon church in Dartmouth Park, overlooking Hampstead Heath. There were three stained-glass windows at the front, and a half-oval oak door that tapered to a point at the top. It was a beautiful building. Vines crawled up the steel-grey brickwork, the roof a mass of dark tile and yellow moss. Two potted firs stood either side of the door. The whole place was set behind imposing gateposts and an attractive gravel drive that curved around to a back garden. There was an intercom on one of the posts outside, but James Carver had already left the gate ajar, anticipating my arrival.

The gravel was a useful alarm call. Carver looked up as I moved through the gates, half bent over a bucket of water, washing down the back of a black Range Rover Sport with tinted windows and spotless steel rims. In the double garage behind him was a Ford pick-up with building supplies in the bed and a gleaming red Suzuki motorbike.