Tom Weaver: The Dead Tracks

I returned to her MacBook and booted up iPhoto, hoping to find a bigger version — but none of the pictures on the camera were on the computer. She hadn't got around to downloading them. I checked the date on the camera: 6 March. Twenty-eight days before she disappeared. Zooming in again, I studied the photo a second time, but the reflection in the glass would have been the most useful identifier of where she was and it was full of light. Then, when I came back to her face, I noticed something.

Her smile.

It was a smile I hadn't seen in any of the other pictures of her. For the first time, she didn't look like a girl. She looked like a woman.

Because she's posing for someone she's attracted to .

'Find anything?'

I turned. Carver was standing in the doorway.

'I'm not sure,' I said, and held up the camera and the storage box. 'Can I take these?'

'Of course.' He came further in. 'I've been through those pictures hundreds of times. So have the police. Some days you feel like you've missed something. You think you've let something slip by. Then, when you go back, you only find what you found before. But maybe this whole thing needs a fresh pair of eyes.'

He moved further in and picked up an early photograph of Megan. I watched his eyes move across the picture, soaking up the memories. When he finally looked up, I could see he was trying to prevent his eyes filling with tears.

'Do you know where this is?' I asked him, handing him the camera.

He looked at the picture and studied it; shook his head.

'No.'

'You didn't take it?'

'No.'

'Any idea who might have?'

He shrugged. 'Maybe one of her friends.'

The phone started ringing downstairs. Carver apologized and disappeared. After he was gone, I went through the rest of the box. More photos, some letters, old jewellery.

Every trace of a life Megan had left behind.

It was almost lunch by the time I left. The sun had gone in, clouds scattered across the sky. In the distance I could see rain moving up from the heart of the city.

I opened my old BMW 3 Series, threw my pad on to the passenger seat and turned back to Carver, who had walked me out.

'I'd like to speak to your wife,' I said. Alone.

'Of course. It's just, I'm out on a site visit tomorrow…'

'That's fine. I'd like to keep things moving if possible, so if you can tell her that I'm going to call in, that would be great.'

'Sure. No problem.'

Afterwards, as I drove off, I watched him in the rear- view mirror disappearing back through the gates of his house. He looked like he'd had the wind knocked out of him. Give it a few weeks, and it might look like he'd had his heart ripped out too.

Chapter Three

There was a diner half a mile down the road from Megan's school. I sat at the window, ordered a bacon sandwich, then took out Megan's Book of Life. The previous night, when I'd glanced at it, it had been difficult to gain any kind of clarity. It was just sixty pages of random notes. The book was sectioned alphabetically, but none of her entries corresponded to the relevant letter. Where names should have been, there were phone numbers. Where phone numbers were supposed to be, there were names.

I flipped back to the start. On the first page she'd written her name and Megan's Book of Life in red ballpoint. Contact Me! had been scribbled underneath that, with two numbers alongside: one I recognized as her home phone number, the other her mobile. The police would have been through her phone records, and checked her last calls, incoming and outgoing. They would have been through her email too. I'd need to get hold of her phone records through my contacts, but the police had passed on login details for Megan's email to her parents, presumably at the Carvers' request. They, in turn, had passed them on to me. If there was anything worth finding there, or anything crucial to the investigation, it was hard to believe the police would have been giving the login out, even to her parents, but — like her phone records — it was something else that needed to be ticked off the list.

Midway through the book, I spotted a name I recognized. Kaitlin. Carver had mentioned her over lunch the day before. She was the girl Megan was supposed to have met up with on the way to her Biology class. Except Megan never arrived. Kaitlin's name was in a big heart, as was a third — Lindsey Watson. I wrote down the names and phone numbers for both of them.

When I was done, a waitress with a face like the weather appeared at my table and threw my plate down in front of me without saying anything. Once she was gone, I took a bite of the sandwich and watched a news report playing out on a TV in the corner of the diner. A camera panned along the Thames. It looked like London City Airport.

.. taken to intensive care with hypothermia. Her condition was originally described as critical, but she has continued to improve, and hospital staff told Sky News they expected her to be released tomorrow. Police still haven't issued personal details for the woman, but sources have told us they believe her to be in the region of forty- five to fifty years of age. In other news, a farmer in…'

I finished my sandwich and moved through the book again, front to back. There were a lot of names. Maybe as many as thirty. Only six were male. I added the guys to the list, then paid the bill and headed for Megan's school.

Newcross Secondary School was a huge red-brick Victorian building midway between Tufnell Park and Holloway Road. I left the car out front, and headed for the entrance. Inside, the place was deserted. I passed a couple of classrooms and saw lessons had already started, kids looking on, half interested, inside. The main reception was at the far end of a long corridor that eventually opened up on to big windows with views of the school's football pitches. The interior decor had time-travelled in from 1974. A couple of thin sliding glass panels on a chunk of fake granite separated three secretaries from the outside world. They were all perched at teak desks on faded medical-green chairs.

I knocked on the glass. All three were fierce-looking women. Two of them paid me no attention whatsoever, the other glanced in my direction, eyed me, then decided I was at least worth getting up for. She slid the glass panel back, glancing at the pad in my hands. Her eyes — like Carver's the day before - drifted across my fingernails. What no one got to see were the other, even worse scars from the same case. It had been almost ten months and, although I'd made a full recovery, some days I could still feel the places I'd been beaten and tortured. My back. My hands. My feet. Perhaps a dull ache would always be there, like a residue, reminding me of how close I'd been to dying and how I was going to make sure it never happened again.

I got out a business card and placed it down on the counter in front of the woman. 'My name's David Raker. I'm doing some work for the parents of Megan Carver.'

The name instantly registered. Behind her, both women looked up.

'What do you mean, "work"?'

'I mean I'm trying to find out where she went.'

They all nodded in sync. I had their attention now.

'Is the headmaster around?'

'Did you make an appointment?'

I shook my head. 'No.'

She frowned, but being here because of Megan seemed to soften her. She ran a finger down a diary.

'Take a seat while I page him.'

I smiled my thanks and sat down in a cramped waiting area to the right of the reception. More medical-green chairs. Posters warning of the dangers of drugs. A vase of fake blue flowers. Some kids passed by, looked at me, then carried on. Everything smelt of furniture polish.

A telephone rang; a long, unbroken noise. One of the receptionists picked it up. The glass panel was now closed, but she was looking at me as she spoke. 'Okay,' she said a couple of times, and put the phone down. She leaned forward, and slid open the glass. 'He'll be five minutes.'