Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

To the side of the building was a thin alleyway. I made my way along it, all the way through to a car park at the back. The entrance to it was from a road running parallel to the one I'd parked on. Everything was badly lit: a nearby street light was flickering on and off and there was a square of light from the kitchen of the restaurant next door.

The rear doors of the youth club were set back in an alcove. I took out my phone, flipped it open and used the light to examine the entrance. Double doors. A cylinder lock. No handle on the outside. I backed up and examined the building. There had been no alarm on the front and there didn't look like there was one on the back either. But everywhere had an alarm these days. If there was no box, it probably meant the alarm was wired up to an old-fashioned open-circuit system; an alarm built with magnets that reacted to the doors opening, but turned off again when they closed and the circuit realigned.

I looked both ways, back across the car park, then took out a couple of straightened hairpins that I kept in the car. Picking locks was an art. You had to get the pins in exactly the right place, and apply the right amount of tension. You had to know the sounds and be able to feel the slightest of movements travelling back from the pins to your hand. I avoided picking locks if I could. Not because it was illegal, but because it was hard. As if to prove the point, it took me twenty frustrating minutes before I heard the pins finally falling into place.

I pressed the door shut for a moment while I readied myself - and then, as fast as I could, yanked it towards me, stepped inside and pulled it shut again. There was a brief noise: a high-pitched squeal lasting a second. I gripped the handle and waited. Placed an ear to the door. The alarm hadn't lasted long, but it might have been long enough to get someone's attention. I gave it five minutes to be certain, and then flipped open my phone and directed its light into the darkness of the building.

Immediately inside, on the left, was a kitchen and a serving hatch. Opposite, in a small anteroom, were some wheelchairs. I moved along the corridor and into the main hall. A stage to my left, a set of double doors to my right and the main entrance in front of me. Next to the entrance, nailed to the wall, was a planner. As I got closer, I could make out the names and photos of everyone who attended the youth club; above that, dressed in identikit green polo shirts, were the people who ran it.

I illuminated the pictures with my phone light. Neil Fletcher was at the top: the man in charge. Caroline had mentioned his name earlier. He was in his forties, black and grey hair, bright eyes, beard, trim. He wasn't the man in Tiko's — but neither was anyone else on the board. There was a woman below him, then two other men: Connor Pointon and Eric Castle. Both looked the same, without obviously being related. Mid twenties, square jaws, same hair, genetically good-looking. Neither fitted the age group of the man Megan had been seeing. But I made a mental note to double-check both.

Swinging the light round, I walked across the hall to the doors at the far end, my footsteps echoing, the door squeaking on its hinges as I pulled one of them open. On the other side were toilets and an office. The office was sparsely decorated and cold. There was a desk up against one wall, a seat pushed in under it. A computer on the desk that looked at least five years old. Behind the desk, right in the far corner, was a filing cabinet.

I opened it up. Inside were files on every kid who had ever attended the youth club, set out by surname. I went through them, just in case, but nothing stuck out. In the next drawer down were the files on anyone who had ever worked there. Each had undergone an extensive Criminal Records Bureau check, which meant — if the man Megan had met had actually worked at the club — he wouldn't have had a record.

I pulled the files, set them down at the desk and turned the lights on. It was a windowless office, so no one would see me from the outside.

In all, there were seventeen files. I went through those on the three men who worked at the youth club first. The more I read about Fletcher, the less like a potential suspect he seemed. Forty-eight, married with two kids — one almost seventeen herself. Of the other two, Pointon was married, with a young daughter; and Castle was Australian, here on an ancestral visa, and wasn't even in the country when Megan first went missing.

I looked through the rest of the files.

The next eleven were female volunteers. Two I recognized immediately: Megan Carver and Leanne Healy. Megan was working part-time in the evenings at the club when she disappeared. Leanne had left two months before she vanished to concentrate on getting a full-time job, though a couple of entries on some kind of attendance form suggested she'd returned several times to help out. There was nothing else to add to what I already knew.

That left the nine other women. If I was assuming Whoever had taken Megan had also taken Leanne, then I had to assume any female that had ever passed through the doors of the club was a potential victim. I wrote down the names of the women, and made a note to cross-check them with disappearances.

The last three files all featured men.

I laid them out in front of me. One was in his early fifties. I immediately dropped that on to the pile with the women. According to Kaitlin, the man I was looking for was in his thirties or - at a stretch - early forties. The two remaining were good fits. Both thirty-five. Neither was married. Both had clean bills of health from the CRB, and both had worked at the youth club in the period when Megan and Leanne went missing. I looked at their names. Daniel Markham. Adrian Carlisle. According to their files, Carlisle had left the youth club three months ago. Markham, though, still worked on a Monday afternoon. His CV listed his full-time job as 'consultant', whatever that meant.

There were phone numbers and addresses for both. I put them into my phone, and ripped out the pictures of the men attached to the files. From the surrounds of a five-centimetre-high photo, Carlisle looked like the kind of guy who'd perfected the art of smiling without meaning it, but was the better-looking of the two: slick, tanned, nice hair, expensive teeth. Markham seemed friendlier. He was also good-looking but in a studious kind of way, with sensible hair and horn-rimmed glasses. I went through both files again and tried to see if there was any mention of where Carlisle went after he left the club. Spike would probably be able to find out for me if I fed him the details when I got home. I collected all the files together and put them back into the cabinet.

Then I heard something.

Two short beeps. Then silence.

Was that the alarm ?

Quietly, I pushed the filing cabinet closed and killed the lights. Stepped back from the door and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. After a couple of seconds, I moved into the corridor and up to the doors into the hall, sliding down the wall until my backside touched the floor. I opened the doors about half an inch. Stopped. Listened again. Pulling one of the doors all the way back, I slipped through the gap and into the hall. Paused. Let it fall back gently into place behind me. Without the light from my phone, the room seemed huge and endlessly black. I waited, crouched down, one knee against the floor. I tried to force myself to see things: shapes, doorways, any sign of movement.

But nothing stood out.

Slowly, I moved across the hall. I studied the anteroom with the wheelchairs in it. Then the door into the kitchen. Then the serving hatch.

Now I could see something.

I moved closer. Got out my phone again.

Shone the light towards it.

At first I wasn't sure what I was looking at. It was pink and misshapen, its front turned away from me. Then, as I took another step closer, I realized what it was.