Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

He flicked a look at me. 'What about him?'

'I think that's the guy who took Megan.'

'But we interviewed him.'

'Obviously not well enough.'

'Why him?'

'Because Megan was sleeping with him.'

A pause. ' What?'

'And she was pregnant.'

' What?' He hardly moved. Just stared at me. Then, finally, he rubbed a hand across his forehead and turned away. 'By Markham?'

'That's the assumption.'

Something flashed in his eyes. There and then gone. A moment's thought that it was Leanne and not Megan who had been pregnant. A young girl, scared and alone with a man she thought she'd known - but hadn't really known at all.

'Who told you this?'

'One of Megan's friends.'

'And she didn't think to tell the police?'

'She was warned off.'

'By who?'

'Charlie Bryant.'

'The dead kid?'

I nodded. Healy knew the case intimately: all the files, all the names, every word of every interview. He didn't need me to explain who they were or how they fitted in.

'How much of this do Phillips and Davidson know?' he asked.

'Just that Megan might have been seeing someone at the youth club. They don't know about the pregnancy.'

'Why would he warn her off telling the police?'

'I don't know yet.'

He looked at his watch. 'What have you found out about Markham?'

I thought of the flat. The emptiness of it. The message behind the bathroom cabinet. 'He's definitely involved.'

'Meaning?'

'His flat. He's not living there any more, but something's up. I can show you when I get out of here, but I need you to get what you can on him in the meantime. His CRB check came up clean, so there's nothing on record. But there must be something'

Healy nodded. His mind was turning things over. Outside in the corridor, a noise. A door opening and shutting. Healy looked out. 'Where's PC Harrison?' said a voice.

It was Davidson.

'He's gone to look for you.'

'What are you doing here?'

'Keeping an eye on your suspect.'

A short silence. I could sense the suspicion passing along the corridor. 'What the hell's taking so long?' Davidson asked.

'He's having a shit,' Healy replied.

'Tell him he's got one minute.'

'You've got one minute,' Healy shouted, looking off to his left, where the stalls ran in a line. Outside in the corridor the same sound: a door opening and then closing.

'I gotta go,' Healy said.

'What do you know about Frank White?'

A tiny movement in his face.

'Healy?'

'He was one of the coppers killed in that shoot-out down in Bow.'

'I know Phillips is working another case parallel to this one. I know because he told me. I know Frank White and Megan are connected somehow. Something happened that night at the warehouse.' Healy didn't say anything. 'Am I right?'

Again he didn't reply, just pulled the door back and peered out into the corridor. When he saw no one was there, he pushed it closed again and looked at his watch.

'Do you want to find your daughter or not?' I asked him.

'What kind of a fucking question is that?' He shifted on the spot and looked out through the door again, then back to me. 'I'll call you. We'll meet somewhere safer.'

'This is bullshit, Healy. We had an agreement.'

He opened the door and paused.

And then he left.

About fifty minutes later, I was waiting on the front steps of the police station for a taxi. Kaitlin had come through for me. She'd told them that there was a guy at the youth club Megan had become friendly with - but that was as much as she knew. I'd been released on bail, without charge. Technically, I was out 'before charge', which meant that once forensics had finished their analysis and the police had chased down the lead at the youth club, they'd be back for me. Healy was right: I had a couple of days to try and find out the truth, or they'd be pulling my life apart and coming at me even harder.

I called Liz. She was stuck on the motorway, about ten miles out of London. When she answered, she sounded surprised and confused.

'I've been released,' I said.

She paused. 'How come?'

'On bail.'

'Yeah, but how come?'

'When you get back, when I've sorted out a few things, I'll take you for a drink,' I said to her. She didn't reply. 'And I won't leave anything out.'

Again she didn't reply, but I could sense a change, even along the phone line. She could hear my last words for what they were. A confession. I'd lied before; told her things that weren't true and hidden things that were. And all the time she'd sat at my side and defended me in front of the law, knowing there were parts of my life, decisions I'd made, that might never break the surface.

But now I was signalling a change.

I was telling her things would be different; and in a strange way, perhaps admitting that next time we were together I wouldn't pull away from her. I wouldn't have doubts. I'd take her hand, and I'd step off the cliff.

And I wouldn't look back.

Chapter Forty

An hour after they'd come for me at the house, a separate team had been through my office. As I opened up and walked inside, I could see mud on the carpet and damp footprints where detectives had stood at filing cabinets and been through the drawers of my desk. My computer had been left on, the screensaver — a blue cube — bouncing back and forth across the monitor. I walked around, trying to figure out if they'd taken anything, but nothing had been removed.

I filled the percolator and then dropped into the chair at my desk. As coffee started to soak through the filter, I let my mind turn over, back to everything they'd found at the house; to the interview; to Healy hanging me out to dry.

I'd given him Markham. He'd given me nothing.

That wasn't how it worked.

As soon as I left the station, I'd called Spike and asked him to track down Healy's home address and mobile number. I didn't mind how it played out: with Healy, or without him, it didn't bother me. But I was going to get what I was owed.

Pulling my keyboard towards me, I brought up Google. Megan had disappeared on 3 April. I put the date into the search engine and punched Return. Over 115 million hits. Encyclopaedias, blogs, newsletters, press releases,

Facebook posts, Flickr albums. I moved through the first few pages, trying to spot anything remotely connected to the case. But apart from news stories posted in the aftermath of her disappearance, there was nothing. Flipping back to the first page, I went to a site that listed every major historical event — births, deaths and everything in between - that had taken place on 3 April. I was hoping something would leap out from somewhere, a spark. But instead I got more of the same: nothing.

My eyes drifted from the monitor to some paperwork on my desk. Hard copies of the pages from the London Conservation Trust site. I'd printed them out for reference. Alongside that was the email the LCT had sent Megan six days before she disappeared. It was dated 27-03-11.I traced a finger along the numbers and, as I did, a feeling stirred in me, as if I'd drifted close to something. A recollection. A memory. I stopped, brought the paper closer to me. Studied the numbers.

Was there something in the date?

I let the feeling go for a moment and did a search for the date Leanne had gone missing: 3 January 2011. It took about thirty seconds to realize it wouldn't lead anywhere. It was exactly the same story as the Google search for Megan — except there was no major press this time. Megan had ticked all the right boxes: white, wealthy, bright, beautiful. Leanne was different. Physically not quite as attractive, educationally middling, working-class background and - unlike the Carvers — with parents who didn't have a picture-postcard marriage. Leanne was mentioned once in the Evening Standard and once in the Metro. I clicked on both stories, one after the other. Both were two paragraphs long, and both had the same quote from Healy asking Leanne to come home. At the end it listed the number for a missing persons helpline.