Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

'Healy?'

'You don't understand,' he replied quietly.

' What don't I understand?'

'What it's like.'

This time I didn't respond. His eyes drifted outside, and for a moment it was like looking right into his head: the anger, the sadness, the need to hit out, bubbling away below the surface.

'You think I don't care about my daughter?' he said finally, still studying the people passing on the street. You think I don't care about finding her? I care. I care so much it's like I'm being eaten up from the inside.' He looked at me, fire in his eyes now. 'I needed to find out what you had on Megan Carver, because I've hit a dead end. I don't know where to go next with Leanne. So that's why I needed you. But what I don't need, what I won't put up with, is you getting in the way. Because I'm going to find the person who took her - and I'm going to fucking kill him. And you aren't going to stop me, and neither are those other pricks.'

He meant Phillips and Hart. He meant Davidson. He meant everyone.

'So are you working her disappearance by yourself?' I asked.

'Yeah.'

'Why?'

'Because no one else cares about her.'

He turned in the booth, back towards the door, as if he didn't trust me to look out for him. Then he faced me again, his eyes focused beneath the ridge of his brow.

'The police don't give a shit.'

'About Leanne?'

'About any of them.'

'Why?'

He went to speak and then hesitated. I'd seen it in him earlier. No mistakes. No errors. No slip-ups. He'd worked his daughter's disappearance for so long, off the books and without the knowledge of his bosses, that he'd completely insulated himself. Everything he knew, anything he'd managed to find out about her, no one else got to hear about. He finished his beer and gestured for the barman to bring him another.

'Okay, here's how I see it,' I said, trying to jump-start the conversation. 'You've got seven women. They all look the same. They've been registered as missing persons, but they've not been linked — at least publicly. Thirty thousand people go missing in London alone each year, so I understand how they've managed to stay off the radar. But what I don't understand is why the police haven't gone public.'

The barman brought Healy's third beer. After he had gone, Healy looked up at me and a look of disgust moved across his face. They're just one part of the jigsaw.'

'And what's the other part?'

He turned his beer bottle around, that same look on his face. No mistakes. No errors. No slip-ups. But then he glanced at me again, and I could see what he was thinking: it was different now. The stakes were as high for both of us. He was illegally pursuing a case under the noses of his bosses. I was out on bail for the abduction and probable murder of a teenager.

'The other part is Frank White,' he said.

I looked at him. 'So I was right?'

'Yeah. You were right.'

'How are Megan and Frank connected?'

Your number-one fan DS Davidson works for Jamie Hart, not Phillips. Hart's in charge of a murder investigation team looking into the disappearances of the women.'

'So it's definitely a murder investigation?'

'We're assuming they're all dead.'

He stopped. Realized what he'd said. He'd just committed his daughter to the ground alongside the others. A flicker of emotion in his face, and then it was gone again.

'Where Does Phillips fit in?'

'Phillips works in the same office as Hart, but not on the same investigation. He's SDC7 - just like White was. He's heading up a task force trying to put the cuffs on Akim Gobulev.'

I frowned. 'Wait a second, Phillips works organized crime?'

'Yeah.'

'So why's he coming after me?'

Healy glanced over his shoulder again, checking the door. And as he did, everything suddenly shifted into focus. The link between Megan and Frank White.

'The surgeon,' I said quietly.

He looked back at me as the connections started to snap together in my head. The links between events — and everything in between.

'They think the surgeon's involved in the women's disappearances?'

'They don't think he's involved,' Healy said. 'They think he's the one taking them.'

Chapter Forty-two

I stared at him, waiting for him to tell me it was a joke. But then I saw the anger in his face - and suddenly felt some of my own, burning in the middle of my chest. I'd been trying to peel away the layers of Megan's disappearance for six days and the whole time the police were sitting on the answers. They'd lied to me. They'd lied to the Carvers.

They'd lied to everyone.

'Why keep them secret?' I said, and - in that moment - I heard the timbre of my voice and saw Healy attach to it. For a second he thought he'd glimpsed a kindred spirit; someone with the same anger and sense of injustice. I realized then that I'd have to reel myself back in again. One of us had to remain in control.

'Phillips has people on the inside and they're all coming back with the same intel. The guy's a freak. Wears a mask to meets. Surgical gloves. Bandages around his arms, so he doesn’t drop fibres or flakes of skin. And he doesn’t even get paid in cash any more. Instead it's medical supplies and hospital equipment. Scalpels, forceps, hooks, retractors, mallets, beds, gurneys. Rumour has it, the Russians even agreed to bring in an ECG for him. He changes their faces and he sews up their wounds, but only so it pays for what he's really into.'

'The women.'

'Right. He's a killer. And now he's got two task forces on his tail. Phillips wants him for his connections to the Russians. And Hart wants him because they think he's got seven dead bodies stored somewhere.'

Even in the noise of the bar, the word dead seemed to hang in the air.

'So that's the reason there's two DCIs in that place?'

He nodded.

'Why hasn't any of this been made public?'

'He put a bullet in White's face, so that immediately promotes him to the top of the shitlist in every department at the Met. It's personal. But that's not what it's really about. What it's really about is Phillips getting the surgeon, squeezing him for everything he's got, and then shutting down the Russians in London.' He looked up. Turned his beer bottle. 'But go public with this prick's sideline in women, and the surgeon goes underground… and his little black book gets flushed down the U-bend.'

It took me a second to realize what he'd just said. 'Wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you even know what you just told me?' When he didn't react, I leaned in to him. 'You're saying closing down the Russians is — what? — the bigger win?'

'You know what I said.'

'Yeah, you're saying it's more important that the police get their nails into organized crime than find seven missing women — one of whom is your own daughter:'

I waited. Nothing from him again.

'That's it?'

'What do you want me to say?'

'This is a conspiracy of silence. The police are sitting on their hands while those women lie dead somewhere.'

'They can close down the Russians.'

'Them is you, Healy. You're the police.'

'I'm not the same as them.'

'But you think what they're doing is all right?'

'I don't think it's all right', he spat, fingers squeezing the beer bottle. 'Why the fuck would I be talking to you if I thought it was all right? They're burying my girl in a fucking filing cabinet. So let me make it clear for you: when I find her, I'm going to kill the piece of shit that took her, and I'm going to rip out his heart and stick it down his fucking throat. Is that clear enough for you?' He eyed me. 'You can come with me, or you can back down. But if you come with me, be prepared for it to get bad.'