Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

Immediately inside was a thin hallway that opened out into a living room, three other rooms leading from it. The first was the kitchen. Plates were piled in the sink, one on top of the other. The next was a bedroom with only a bed and a stand-alone wardrobe. The last was the bathroom. The extractor fan was still on as we came in, condensation on the mirrors and her towel lying in the middle of the floor.

The living room was sparse: two sofas, both of which looked about five years past their sell-by date, and a television on a cardboard box, leads snaking off to a Sky decoder on the floor behind it. There was a small coffee table in the corner. Books were stacked up on it, in two piles: ones that looked as if they'd been read, and ones that looked new. A magazine lay on the floor between one of the sofas and the TV, a crossword puzzle half filled in. There was a laptop as well. It's where the tap tap had come from. On the screen I could see she'd done a Google search for my name. The first hit had taken her to the BBC website, where a news report recounted what had happened on my case before Christmas. There was a photo of me leaving a police station, flanked by Liz.

She dropped back on to one of the sofas. Next to her was a remote control. She picked it up and turned off the TV.

We both sat.

'How are you feeling?' Healy asked, smiling again. It was weird seeing him like this. Smiling didn't seem to come easily to him, but he was a convincing Mr Nice Guy.

'Okay,' she said quietly.

She looked between us, waiting for us to react to her face. When no reaction came, she nodded at a sheet of paper on top of the TV. It was the list of names she'd been referring to. From where I was sitting, it looked like there were only about six. At the top were the words Operation Gaslight. At the bottom, in the same handwriting: These people ONLY.

'Why aren't you on the list?' she said to Healy.

Healy looked at me, and then back at Sona. He sat forward. 'Okay, truth time. I'm on the task force, but I'm on the outside. Not as far in as I'd like to be.'

A flash of fear in her face.

'It's all right,' he said, holding up a hand. He paused, glanced at me. Another pause, as if unsure whether to commit himself. 'Nine months ago, my daughter was taken — just like you.'

Her expression changed; the embers of the fear fading, replaced by a flicker of surprise. She looked between us but didn't say anything.

'I know the man who took you, took her. I knew it as soon as we got to you. I knew it was the same prick…' He stopped. 'Sorry.'

Sona just nodded.

'Anyway, a week ago, David was approached by the family of Megan Carver to look into her disappearance. When that happened - when I found out some of the things he'd discovered — I realized it was time to do something. It was time to find this guy. Because no one else cared about finding my girl. They think she ran away from home because…' He paused again, took a sideways glance at me. 'Because we weren't getting on so well as a family.'

I turned to Healy as he was talking, surprised he was being so honest. Maybe he figured Sona had been lied to enough. Everything Markham had fed her. Everything Phillips and Hart were making her believe. Or maybe he saw it as the best way to get her to talk. Problem was, Sona wasn't an ordinary victim, and Healy wasn't an ordinary detective. He was personally invested in her answers, and he needed her much more than she needed him. She was quiet and introspective, driven into her shell by the man who had taken her, and bringing her back out again could take weeks. We had hours.

'So,' he said, picking up the conversation again, 'in order to find him, in order to stop this, I was wondering whether we could go over some of what happened to you.'

He got the reaction I expected: nothing. She looked away, over to the laptop, where the picture of Liz and me still showed.

Healy leaned forward, trying to soften his face. 'Sona?'

'I can't remember,' she said.

He glanced at me. 'Okay.' He readjusted himself, preparing to come at it again. 'Maybe we could start with the man who took you. Daniel Markham. I think you used to call him Mark?'

She flinched a little. But didn't reply.

'Could you tell me about him, do you think?'

Nothing.

'Sona?'

'I can't remember,' she said.

Healy leaned further forward, but this was going nowhere. The secret was to find the chip in her shield that you could slowly open up in order for everything to pour out. Firing a succession of questions at her, or rephrasing the same one, wasn't going to work.

'So, do you remember anything about the day you were taken?' he asked.

She was looking off into space.

'Any detail, however small?'

She shook her head.

'Even if you think it's unimportant?'

Another prolonged silence. Healy paused. Moved in his seat. I could sense he was getting frustrated, but only because we were really short on time. He'd done thousands of interviews. He could pace himself, or he could go in hard and fast, but normally he didn't have to keep an eye on the minute hand. The danger here was that the harder he tried to dig in, the less he'd get out of her, and the more the frustration would build. He shuffled right to the edge of the sofa.

'Sona, we just need to stop this guy.'

She looked down into her lap. We both watched her for a moment, but when she didn't make a move to engage us, Healy glanced at me. I shook my head. Don't say anything else. He gave me the look, the one that told me I was overstepping whatever mark he'd made for me in his head. But he was too close to what was happening — he was relying too heavily on her answers — to see why she'd gone back into her shell. In another place, on another case, he may have seen it clearly. But not now.

'You don't have to feel alone,' I said.

She looked up at me. I didn't take my eyes off her, and she didn't take hers off mine. This was the chip in her shield.

'It won't always be like this,' I continued. You feel betrayed, I understand that. You feel abandoned, and not just by Daniel Markham — by the police as well. You've been left here, and you've been forgotten about, and all anyone ever seems to want from you are answers.'

Her eyes flicked to Healy, and then back to me. She leaned forward, crossing her arms, almost hugging herself.

'Meanwhile, you can't go to sleep at night without fearing that he's going to come back for you. Because that's what the police have told you.'

Finally I moved closer to her, right to the edge of my seat so that our knees were only inches apart. She glanced down and then back up to me.

'But, Sona, let me tell you something: he doesn’t know where you are. He isn't coming back for you. And you're completely and absolutely not alone.'

I moved away from her. She looked at Healy, and then back to me, but didn't speak. I eyed Healy, telling him not to jump in.

'How do you know he's not coming for me?'

Her voice seemed small after the quiet of what had preceded it. Healy leaned forward again. 'Sorry, I didn't catch that,' he said.

But she was looking at me.

'How do you know he's not coming for me?'

'He doesn’t know where you are,' I replied. 'And he's not about to find out.'

She hesitated for a moment, as if the thought of going back would be too painful. Her fingers moved together, sliding around her knee and pulling it into her. An action of protection; subconsciously forming a barrier between us. She glanced off for a second, into the space of the living room. Then her eyes came back to us.

'Okay,' she said quietly. 'I guess we should start with Mark.'

Chapter Sixty

Gradually — very gradually — Sona began to tell us about how she met Markham. She was a receptionist at St John's Hospital, where Markham had worked, and he'd gone up and started talking to her. He told her he hated the name Daniel, and that most people at the hospital just called him Mark. He wouldn't have been trying to conceal his identity - everybody at the youth club already knew his real name - so it was likely that when he told Sona about his name he was, for once, telling her the truth.