Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

'What's the matter, Liz?'

Her eyes flicked back to her laptop.

'Liz?'

Finally she looked up. 'You remember the last time we were in a room like this?'

'Sure.'

'Last year, on that case up north. You remember that?'

I held up my hand and showed her my nails. 'I've got the scars here to remind me,' I said, smiling, trying to cut through whatever it was that had settled between us.

'After we were done with that, I thought about what you did, about how far you were prepared to go to finish what you started on that case.' She glanced at me. 'I know you weren't completely honest with me about what went on. I know that. But that's fine. You gave me enough to work with, and we got you off, and that was all that mattered. I kind of filed it away as something that we might need to revisit later on down the line, if anything ever… happened between us.'

She traced a finger along her bottom lip.

'But even if you never did tell me what happened there, it wouldn't really bother me if it was just a one-off.' She faced me. 'But it's not going to be a one-off.'

'Liz, it's my job. This is what I do. I don't…' It was my turn to pause this time. I reached across the desk and took her hand. She pulled it away. 'I find people.'

'You find screwed-up people, David. You put yourself on the line, your body on the line, and you hope, somehow, you're going to come out the other side still breathing. And I don't care about the lies and the details you leave out. What I care about is why you do it.' She stopped and looked at me for a long time. 'Why do you do it?'

'I have other cases.'

' Do you?'

'Of course I do.'

'How many since that last one?'

'Four.'

'In ten months?'

'That last one…' I looked down at my fingernails. 'It took a lot out of me. I needed time to recover. But cases like that, cases like this…' I smiled. They're unusual.'

'But you still take them on.'

'I can't predict how they're going to turn out. If I could do that I wouldn't be finding missing people, I'd be doing the Lottery every week.'

'Yeah, but most people would turn around and walk away when things started going south,' she said. 'Do you think anyone else would have teamed up with Healy, stuck two fingers up at the police and headed right into the lair of a psychopath like Glass?'

'He needed to be stopped.'

'By the police.'

I reached for her, and this time didn't let her wriggle away. 'Sometimes you need to do things because they're right — even if they're not legally right.'

She had her head down, facing the table, hair spilling past her ears. I squeezed her hands, trying to get her to look at me. But she didn't. She stayed still. Silent.

'Liz?'

Then she looked up. 'I can't compete with her.'

I frowned. 'What are you talking about?'

'Derryn. I can't compete with her, David.'

'What? You don't have to compete with —'

'You don't have that mechanism that tells you when enough is enough. You don't know when to stop. You're trying to plug holes in the world because you know what it's like to lose someone, and you think it's your job to stop anyone else suffering the same way. You're doing this for her, David. That case up north was for her. And this one is too. You're plugging the hole she left behind by taking on other people's pain. And I can't compete with that.'

I let go of her hands. She looked at me, a tear breaking free, a watery streak of mascara following in its wake. I stared back, unable to articulate. Unable to come back with any argument.

Because I knew, deep down, she might be right.

Chapter Seventy

The interview took two and a half hours. Liz sat beside me the whole time, stopping me if she felt I needed to be redirected away from something harmful. Hart and Davidson came at me hard, like attack dogs, trying to catch me out, trying to lead me into blind alleys and oneway streets. They both played on my relationship with Healy. They tried to make it sound stronger and more purposeful than it was. They used the moment outside the safe house when Healy had pulled a gun to underline their case, Hart making mention of how I'd done nothing to dissuade Healy.

'I told him to put the gun away.'

'Once,' Hart said. 'Half-heartedly. The second time, when you saw what I was telling you to do, you ignored me. Then you ran off into the sunset with him.'

'I felt—'

'You felt a kinship for him, David.'

'No.'

'You believed what he was doing was right.'

'No.' I sighed.

'Then why did you do it?'

I paused, glanced at Liz and then back to them. 'I felt his actions were wrong — but his reasons were right.'

Davidson snorted. 'How do you figure that?'

'I think he was frustrated.'

'With who?'

'With you.'

Silence descended. It was hot in the room, and the only sound now was the whirr of an air-conditioning unit.

'Look at it from his point of view,' I continued. 'You brushed his daughter's disappearance under the carpet with the other seven, but you didn't even have the decency to link her to Glass.'

A tremor passed across the room.

Davidson whitened. Hart crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. 'What are you talking about, David?'

'You know what I'm talking about.'

No reply. They didn't want anything committed to tape. In their faces, I could see they were trying to figure it out. How I knew. Whether Healy had told me. How he'd found out so much. I had them by the balls and there was no backing out now.

'I get it,' I said. 'Deny all knowledge, maintain the silence. Trouble is, your circle of trust has been breached. You're not the only people who know what really happened any more. The rest of the world might think it's a one-in-a-million chance that we stumbled across seven women in that place, but all of us here know different.'

Davidson looked away. Hart maintained eye contact, but his hand was hovering close to the tape recorder, desperate for this to end. I nodded for him to push the button.

He stopped the tape.

Liz leaned forward. 'Okay,' she said. 'Here's the deal: David walks out of here, without charge. You leave him alone. You don't come back for him. Anything to do with his part in this investigation is over. In return, he maintains a dignified silence.'

They looked between us.

Finally, Hart nodded. 'Let me make some calls.'

They left me alone in the interview room with a cup of coffee and a bland ham and cheese sandwich. Liz disappeared to call the office and see what she'd missed out on. She smiled as she left - touching my arm and telling me I'd done brilliantly - but she didn't mention anything we'd talked about earlier. I was too tired, too drained, to figure out if the fissure that had opened between us could ever be pushed back together again. But I was glad, at least, to have got some kind of reaction out of her.

There was no clock in the interview room, but it felt like about fifteen minutes had passed when the door opened again. I turned, expecting to see Liz.

But it was Phillips.

He looked at me, closed the door behind him and walked around to the other side of the table. I felt like grabbing him by the collar and smashing his face through the wall.

'How are you, David?' he asked, sitting down.

I smirked. 'Oh, just great.'

'Can I get you anything else?'

'Yeah,' I said, pushing the coffee cup across the table. 'Another one of those — and an explanation of what the hell you were doing at Jill's.'

He nodded as if he'd expected that straight off the bat. 'She called me.'

'Why would she do that?'

'Because Frank and I went way back. We came up through the ranks together and then I basically got him the job here at the Met. I've known Jill for years.'