Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

I frowned, 'Why?'

Phillips ignored me and spun the folder around, so it was facing me. He slowly opened it up. Inside were five photographs, face down, one on top of the other.

'Why do you think?' he asked.

He flipped the top picture over. Crime-scene photography. It was a picture of the doll I'd found at the youth club, sitting on my living-room table, just as I'd left it. He turned the next one over. The photograph I'd discovered inside it — the woman's shoulders and neck — in a transparent evidence sleeve.

'Those were left for me.'

'Where?'

'In my front garden,' I lied.

'By whom?'

I looked at him. 'I don't know.' 'When?'

'I don't know.'

'Do you know where the doll came from?'

'No.'

'Do you know who the female in the picture is?'

'No.'

He leaned back in his seat. 'There's a lot you don't know.'

'Would you rather I made up an answer?'

Phillips shook his head. 'No. No, I don't want that, David. But let me remind you: you're in trouble here.'

'Because some nut left a doll on my lawn?'

He studied me for a moment, then looked down at the rest of the photographs. A couple of fingers tapped the table. He started playing with his wedding band. Turning it. Turning it. 'Do you know what the number two signifies on that photograph?' Phillips asked, placing a fingertip on the scrawled two in the corner of the picture of the woman.

'No.'

'I think you do.'

He slid a finger under the third photograph and turned it over. It was another picture of a photograph, this one bagged as evidence, sitting on the kitchen counter in my house. It had been taken in the same location as the previous picture of the woman's neck. Same subdued light. Taken either seconds before, or seconds after. In the corner was the number one, written in exactly the same way. And looking out was a woman I didn't recognize. Not Megan, but not dissimilar to her. Blonde hair, tied up behind her head. Blue eyes open, but slightly glazed. She wasn't dead, but it looked like she might be drugged. She was pretty, but her skin was grimy and it looked like there might be a faded bruise to the side of her right eye.

'Who's that?' I asked.

'You don't know?'

'No.'

'You didn't take this?'

'No.'

Phillips flipped over the fourth photograph. It was a picture of Derryn's shoebox — the one I'd seen a crime- scene tech leaving with — taken from above, bathed in the white of a flashlight. It was full of her stuff: photographs of us, photographs of her, some jewellery, a notebook. On top, right in the centre of the box, was the photo of the woman Phillips had just shown me; in situ. Dirty, drugged face. Blonde hair. Bruise.

They'd found it in the shoebox.

'That's not where it was,' I said.

'That's where we found it.'

'I've never even seen that —'

'We found that photograph in the shoebox in your cupboard at your home,' Phillips said. 'This woman…' He looked from me to Davidson. 'We believe you abducted and tortured her.'

'You've got to be kidding me.'

'No, David,' he said. 'I'm deadly serious.'

'I don't even know her. I've never seen this woman in my fucking life. I don't know who she is, or how her picture got into that shoebox, but it's nothing —'

A blink of a memory formed in my head. The night I got back from Jill's at four o'clock in the morning. I'd forgotten all about it, but now it was coming back to me. The rubbish bin at the front of the house had been tipped over, and the bin liners had spilt across the pathway. And the porch had been left slightly open.

'Somebody broke into my house,' I said quietly, almost to myself.

'David—'

'Somebody broke into my house.'

Who?'

'I don't know. I was at a friend's. When I got back it was the early hours of the morning and there were bin liners all across the path, and the door to my porch had been left open. I didn't leave it open that night.'

'Did you report it?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'I didn't think about it.'

'Or you just lied to us again,' Davidson offered.

'Why would I lie?'

'I don't know,' he replied. Why would you?'

'I'm not lying.'

'You're lying,' Phillips said.

I stopped. Looked at him. It was more definitive coming from Phillips, more of a statement than if it had come from Davidson. Phillips had played everything out on an even keel. No posturing. No promises. No showboating. Now he was accusing me of lying in a police interview.

'I'm not lying,' I repeated.

Phillips watched me for a moment, and something flickered in his eyes; maybe a little disappointment, as if he'd expected more from me.

Then he flipped the final photograph over.

It was a picture taken in my kitchen. An evidence marker had been placed on the floor at the base of some varnished wooden panels that ran for about six feet under one of the counters. The very top one had come away on the right side. I'd noticed it a couple of nights before while making myself dinner and had vowed to reattach it, but then forgotten. In the space behind the panel there was a nail in the cavity wall.

And something was hanging from it.

I pulled the photograph towards me. It was a piece of white clothing, the cotton speckled with blood.

'What's that?'

'That,' Phillips said, thumping a finger against the picture, 'is what Megan was wearing the day she disappeared.'

Chapter Thirty-eight

The first thing I thought about was how far away Liz would be now. There were no clocks inside the interview room, and though Phillips wore a watch, it was hidden beneath his shirt cuffs. It was maybe an hour since I'd called her. That would put her somewhere north of Oxford if she'd left the moment I put the phone down. I looked between Phillips and Davidson and considered asking for the free legal advice I was entitled to. It wouldn't stop the interview altogether if they thought Megan was alive somewhere and in immediate danger, but it would break the two of them up and complicate the interrogation. By the time they were back on track, Liz would be that bit closer.

'You going to deny you put it there?' Phillips asked.

I nodded. 'Yes.'

You suggesting someone's setting you up?'

I nodded again. 'Yes.'

Davidson shook his head. 'This is bollocks. You know where Megan Carver is. You've got her clothes in the walls of your fucking house. Where is she?'

I looked at him. 'Think about it. Why would I take on her case if I'd abducted her? Why would I risk the exposure? Someone's trying to put this on me. Whoever it is broke into my house and planted all this shit for you to find.'

'You're just digging yourself in deeper here, David,' Phillips said.

'I'm not digging myself in anywhere. Someone thinks I've got too close to the truth, and now they're trying to screw me to the wall.'

'Got too close?' he replied. 'But earlier on you said you hadn't found anything more than we did. Are you saying that's not the case?'

He tilted his head a little, like I'd just slipped up.

'No,' I said, and began to weave another lie: 'I'm saying I may have inadvertently hit on something I haven't managed to figure out yet - or drifted too close to him somehow.'

'Him? Who are we talking about here?'

I sighed. 'Everyone in this room knows it's a man.'

Yeah,' Davidson said. You.'

'No,' I said. 'Not me. But every stat on the planet will tell you this is a man. It's not a leap of faith.'

Davidson shook his head again.

'How did you even know to look in my house in the first place?' I asked him. 'How did you know this stuff was there? Six months along the line, you suddenly decide I look good for this? No way would a judge sign off on that.'