Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

He broke out into a smile, stopping. 'David.'

'How you doing, Aron?'

'I'm good.' We shook hands. 'What are you doing in this part of the world?'

'Just having coffee with a friend.' I nodded inside. Healy was leaning against the counter looking out, his eyes flicking between us. 'Well, more of an acquaintance, to be honest.'

Aron glanced at Healy. 'He looks angry.'

'He's smiling on the inside,' I said. Aron laughed. 'So, do you work close by?'

'Yeah. Well, kind of. For the next fortnight, anyway. I'm doing some consultation work for Citigroup and HSBC. It's probably why I've got this thousand-yard stare.'

'I remember you saying you worked in banking.'

'Don't hold it against me.'

I smiled. In the brief silence that followed, we both realized what was sitting between us. 'How's Jill?' I asked finally.

'She's good.' A pause. 'She said you called yesterday.'

There didn't seem to be any animosity in what he said, but as he looked at me, I could see what he was telling me: You upset her. 'I didn't mean to offend her.'

He nodded. 'I know.'

'It's just…' I stopped myself. It was a natural guard against giving out anything more than I had to on a case that was still active. But she would have already told him everything. They're close. He knows what I said to her. 'There were just some unexpected links between what happened to Frank and what I'm looking into at the moment. It seemed too convenient. I needed to ask Jill what she knew, if anything.'

He nodded again and ran a hand through his hair, as if he wasn't sure what to do with himself. 'You don't have to explain.'

'Are you seeing her tonight?'

'No.' He looked at his watch. 'I'm heading over to Canary Wharf to pick up my stuff and flying out to Paris at four for a meeting. It's a pain, and I feel really bad about it. It's obviously the support group tomorrow night, and I promised Jill I'd go, but I'm not going to be back until Wednesday.'

I'd forgotten all about it.

'Are you going?'

'I'd like to,' I said . I'd like a chance to talk to Jill, look her in the eyes and find out what she knows. 'But I think I might have to see how things pan out. I was going to ask you to apologize again for me if you were going.'

'I'm not, but I'll phone her later and tell her.'

I nodded my thanks.

'Okay, well, I better be going,' he said.

We shook hands again, and as he headed off down the street, I got the feeling that he was trying his best to remain neutral but finding it hard. I regretted offending Jill, but I didn't regret asking her the question.

Because something, somewhere, wasn't right.

Chapter Fifty

The coffee shop was small. Stools at the windows looked out at a row of two-storey terraced houses and a brand-new glass and chrome apartment block. I ordered a black coffee and a cheese and pastrami sandwich, Healy a bigger coffee and a beef and mustard roll, and we sat at the window looking out. It was nearly two and had started raining. We had at least three hours before it started to get dark. A lot of time to kill doing nothing.

'This must be home away from home for you,' he said.

I took a bite of the sandwich. 'I was a bit further down the road in Wapping.'

'Reckon you'd have given up journalism if your wife —' he stopped, glanced at me '— if it hadn't have happened?'

'Probably not.' I brought my coffee towards me. Outside, rain began spitting at the glass, and a little of the light fizzled out of the day. I nodded to the water running down the window. 'One reason I might have stuck it out on the paper was being able to get away from shitty weather like this on a regular basis.'

'Did you spend much time abroad?'

I took another bite of my sandwich. It tasted good. 'Yeah, quite a bit. Most of the time I took Derryn with me. She was a qualified nurse, but worked short-term contracts, so she'd come and stay with me, as long as I wasn't in the middle of a war zone. We spent a year and a half in the States, a year in South Africa, but most of the time it was a month here, a month there. She'd just fly out and join me and keep me sane.'

Both of us fell quiet. Within a couple of minutes, the drizzle had eased off again, leaving a fine mist in its place.

'What about you?'

'What about me?'

I looked at him. He was picking the sliced gherkins out of his roll. After a few seconds, he turned to me and shrugged. 'You already know about me.'

'Do I?'

He smiled. 'I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You knew about Leanne, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say you know about my recent history.'

I didn't say anything.

He smiled again. 'I'll take that as a yes.'

'Take it however you want,' I replied, and drained some of my coffee. You tell me or you don't. It's up to you.'

Silence again.

I ate through my sandwich. Healy continued picking at his food and staring at his drink.

'I had this case,' he said eventually. He picked the last of the gherkins out of the roll and placed the bread back on top of the beef. 'Two girls killed down in New Cross. Twins. Eight-year-olds. Neighbour called the police after not hearing anything next door for a week. They'd been raped and strangled. Mother's cold in the next room. Stabbed in the chest. Father… fuck knows where he is. The girls had never met him. He'd never had any part in their lives. Even the mother didn't know his surname. He contributed one thing and one thing only to their lives — and that was nine months before they were born.'

He paused, emptied a packet of sugar into his coffee and started stirring it. 'So, obvious first suspect: the mother's dealer. Girls come home from school, find their mum and the dealer in the flat. Argument kicks off between the two adults. Dealer goes mental, stabs the mum, turns on the girls. Or, beats the shit out of the mum and forces her to watch him with the girls while she bleeds out, until she pays what she owes. Post-mortem put her death before the two girls.' He stopped, shrugged. 'Whether it's one or the other, they both made me feel fucking sick.'

He took a bite of his roll, wiped his mouth and shrugged again. We bring in the dealer, this weaselly piece of shit. He's probably responsible for half the misery in New Cross, but he's not the killer. So it's back to square one again. Forensics — nothing. They come back with fibres and prints, but there are zero matches. We ask around and no one's seen anything or knows anything. A week turns into two. Two into three. Three weeks into a murder investigation, and you start to get a bit twitchy. The doubts start creeping in. You think, "Have I missed something? What have I missed? What aren't I seeing?" And after that, you start going round and round in circles. Back to the scene. Back to the computer. Back to the forensics. Back to the statements. Suddenly, a month in, literally all you can think about is the fact that someone out there has walked away a free man after putting two innocent girls in the ground.'

Healy paused again. 'No one understands the debt you have to the people you stand over in these places. And when they're eight years old … Eight years old, and you can't find a trace of the arsehole who did these things to them anywhere in this worthless fucking city. No one understands what that feels like. Even some of the people I've worked with in the police. And if they don't get it, how the fuck are your family supposed to get it?'

I nodded but didn't say anything.

'It was about a month in when I found out she was seeing someone else,' he said, talking about his wife now. 'If I'd found out any other time, I would have been angry. I would have thrown some furniture around. Put my foot through a door. I know I've got a temper. It's who I am. I'm forty-six. I'm too old to change. But it wasn't just any time. I found out she was screwing around when I was up to my neck in photographs of two eight-year-old girls with injuries to every hole in their bodies. I had the media baying for blood, the chief super crawling up my arse…' He faded out, glanced at me. 'And worst of all, I had zero fucking suspects. No one. The debt I felt for those girls, I'd never had it as bad as that. So when Gemma told me, I just totally lost it.'