Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

'Yes, I'm good. I just…' She faded off.

'Just what?'

'Oh, nothing. I guess I just got spooked again, that's all.'

'About what?'

A pause. 'I don't know. This house, being on my own.'

'What's the matter?'

She didn't reply. 'Jill?'

'It's…' She stopped. 'It's just…'

'What?'

'I'm sure I just saw someone.'

'What do you mean?'

'The same man from before. The man in the red Ford. The one who was watching my place when you came round that night. I'm sure he keeps passing the house.'

I glanced at Healy. He had turned his head slightly in my direction, shifting closer as he listened to what she was saying. But he made a show of looking at his watch, so he could remind me that our priority was sitting inside a house about five hundred feet away.

'Can you call Aron?'

'No. He's in Paris.'.

I remembered him saying he was flying out earlier in the day.

'Okay, listen. I'm going to call a friend of mine and send him around. His name's Ewan Tasker. I'll get him to sit with you until I can get there.'

'Oh, thank you, David.'

'Okay. Sit tight.'

I hung up, didn't bother even looking at Healy as he glanced at his watch again, and dialled Tasker's number. He answered on the third ring. I told him what I needed him to do and he agreed immediately to drive around to Jill's. I thanked him, gave him her number just in case, then hung up and got out of the car. Healy looked across at me.

'Well,' I said. 'What are you waiting for?'

Chapter Fifty-nine

The houses in Sona's complex were built into a square, with the front doors facing on to a courtyard. They were two-storey homes, a separate flat on each floor, a stairwell leading to the top-floor flat in each of them. Everything was exactly the same: whitewashed windowsills, blue doors, grey-slate roof.

We moved through the arch and into the courtyard. It was large and overgrown, a huge oak tree spiralling up into the night from the centre. Dull cream street lamps ran in a line, tracing the right angles of the buildings all the way along. Each collection of ten houses had been given a different name: flats 1—20 were Randall; flats 21—40 were Chance. It looked like flats 41—60 were called Wren, but by the time we'd got to numbers 26 and 27, Healy had stopped.

'This is it?'

'Yeah, this is it,' Healy replied, and started moving up the stairwell to the top floor. He looked left and right, and then knocked four times on the door. Paused. Then knocked again. 'Just follow my lead,' he whispered. 'And don't act surprised.'

I frowned at him.

'Just don't act surprised,' he repeated.

A knock on the door, from the inside.

Healy leaned in further, as if he'd been expecting it.

'Charlie, Hotel, Alpha, November, Charlie, Echo. Case number 827-499.'

There was no reply. Healy looked at his watch and back at me, nodding as if this was how things were supposed to go.

'Winter.'

A female voice. So quiet, for a second I wasn't sure if it had come from another house. Healy leaned in again. 'Wintergreen,' he said.

'Spring,' the voice said again.

'Springboard,' Healy replied.

Then everything went quiet again. As we waited, I realized I could hear a TV beyond the door, muffled but audible. Two people were arguing. Healy turned to me, then back to the door. The code confirmed he was part of the task force, even if he wasn't. The responses to her would have been words only known by those intimate to the investigation: the trusted members of the task force Healy had described.

'What do you want?'

Her voice. A little louder now, but still small.

'My name is Detective Sergeant Colm Healy,' he said, adding a softness to his voice that I hadn't heard before. 'I'm part of Operation Gaslight. We haven't met before but I was hoping I might be able to speak to you for a few minutes. We've had some further developments in the case and I'd like to run a couple of things past you.'

I thought I heard something: paper being leafed through.

'You're not one of the names on my list.'

'I know.' He looked at me. There was an expression in his face that suggested this wasn't going according to plan. 'If you come to the window, I will hold up my ID.'

More pages being turned. Then the sound of footsteps. Healy backed away and stepped towards the window, which was adjacent to the door. He held up his warrant card at the glass. The curtain twitched and opened. In the V-shaped gap, we could see a woman, mostly just silhouette, arms on the curtains either side of her. Her eyes moved from the warrant card to Healy, and then to me. The curtain fell back into place. More footsteps.

'Who's he?'

'His name's David Raker. He's a missing persons investigator. He's been trying to trace the whereabouts of Megan Carver.'

'He's not on the list either.'

'Megan Carver was taken by the same man who took you.'

More silence. Even to my ears, even knowing that Healy was basically telling the truth, it sounded suspicious. Two men, neither of whom was on the list of contacts she'd been given by the task force, turning up on her doorstep at ten o'clock at night. Only one with ID. One not even employed by the Met. If she'd refused to let us in, it wouldn't have been a surprise. Instead there was a noise, like a lock sliding across, and the door opened a fraction on a chain.

In the gap, we could see blonde hair and a sliver of face. An eye. Part of the nose. Some of the cheek. Her eye darted between us and then out into the courtyard.

'Can I see your ID again, please?' she said.

Healy nodded. 'Of course.'

He took out a small black wallet and removed his warrant card, handing it to her through the gap in the door. She took it, disappeared for a moment as she checked it, then gave it back to him. She looked at me. 'And you?'

I got out my wallet, slid out my driver's licence and a business card, and handed it to her. She studied it, then disappeared out of sight. Somewhere in the background I could hear a gentle tap tap. About a minute later, she reappeared. Eye flicking between the licence and me. Then, finally, she handed it back and pushed the door closed. The sound of the chain being removed. Healy looked at me once again, this time not saying anything, the same message as earlier etched on his face: Don't act surprised.

The door opened.

Framed by the doorway, Sona looked between us. She'd been beautiful. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. A sculpted face that swept through a thin nose and high cheekbones. She was dressed in tracksuit trousers and a vest, her arms exposed. Even as forty approached, she was still slender, the skin on her arms a pale pink, her fingers long and graceful, as unblemished and smooth as a twenty-year- olds. In her file, I remembered reading she was once a catalogue model. It was easy to imagine.

Except, now, imagine was all you could do.

Glass had been halfway through surgery when she'd woken up. Pale blotches covered much of her face, like dye spreading beneath her skin. Both cheeks were entirely bleached. Even whiter lines had formed in the creases in her forehead and in the gentle cleft of her chin, as if something had run across her face and collected there. And it had spread to her neck too, along the ridges of her throat. A scar followed her hairline on the right side of her face, and a second one in the same position on her left. There was bruising too, where the blotches hadn't formed: at the bridge of her nose it was almost black, like the advanced stages of frostbite; and under both eyes purple-blue smears moved down into her cheeks. Her eyes fell on me, chips of blue stone, narrowing slightly as if waiting for me to react to the sight of her. I nodded once, smiled, but didn't break my gaze. She stepped back from the door, glanced at Healy and invited us both in.