Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

'You know we can't do that, Aron,' Phillips said.

Crane shrugged. 'Then I guess I don't talk.'

'Why do you want to talk to David Raker?'

Nothing.

'Aron?'

Zero. Crane's head had dropped again, and he was looking down at the table. A couple of seconds later, the video froze. The clip was finished.

'What Does he want to talk to you about?' Bartholomew asked.

'I've no idea.' I looked back at Crane. 'But he seemed to think we had some kind of a connection. Something in common.'

'Like what?' Phillips asked.

I shook my head. 'I don't know.'

'This is highly unusual,' Bartholomew said. Next to him, Hart shuffled in his seat, two thin hands together on his lap. 'We're not running a circus here.'

'So I won't talk to him.'

Bartholomew and Phillips looked at one another. The superintendent got to his feet and came across to me. 'I don't like this, Mr Raker,' he said. 'I don't like any of it.'

'That makes two of us.'

'What could possibly make you so special to him?'

'I don't know,' I said, sipping my coffee and stepping all the way up to the glass. 'But I've got a feeling I'm about to find out.'

Chapter Seventy-two

Aron Crane looked up as I entered. Behind me, a uniformed officer closed the door. The room was warm and had no windows. No clocks. No daylight. It could have been any time of the day. Crane remained perfectly still, both his hands flat to the table, eyes fixed on me. I sat down. He took a quick sideways glance at the one-way mirror.

'Hello, David,' he said softly.

I studied his face. 'What do you want with me?'

He looked at me, half smiling, but didn't reply.

'If you sit there in silence, I get up and walk out, and I promise you: I don't come back again.'

He started nodding. 'Fair enough.'

'Where's Jill?'

'Why don't we start at the beginning instead?' He ran his tongue along his lips, over a cut on the bottom. Then he used his free hand to hoist up his sleeve, and on the underside of his arm was a scar, almost like a burn mark. 'Isabelle Connors.'

The first woman he killed .

'What about her? She did that to you?'

He looked down at his arm.

'Sweet girl, really,' he said, 'but a nasty temper. A bit… unpredictable. She didn't like the whole…' He used his right hand to wave a couple of fingers in front of his face.

'Came out of her anaesthetic a little quicker than I'd hoped and, before you know it, there's half a bottle of sulphuric acid on my arm.' He stopped. Eyes widened. 'Ouch.'

He touched a finger to the scar. It was mottled and dark pink.

'Lesson I learned? Never buy Sodium Pentothal from Romania. I switched my anaesthetics after that. Got some diethyl ether in from Russia, and that was fine for a while — but eventually I got bored of cleaning up all the puke. It tends to make you feel a bit green around the gills, that stuff.' He paused, studied me. 'Stop me if I'm boring you, David.'

I didn't say anything.

'So it was on to halothane, and that worked well until Sona. Sadly, I once again failed in my job as a part-time anaesthetist. Now you know why they train for seven years.'

He leaned back in his seat as if he was done.

'Are you even a qualified doctor?'

He nodded. 'Five years at medical school, a year of pre- registration, two years of general medical training, a year specializing in plastics. I know how to do a facelift, if that's what you mean. But am I a qualified plastic surgeon? No, I'm not.' He rubbed his fingers against his thumb. 'Opportunities arose in my second year of specializing that were more rewarding than following a consultant around and holding a pair of scissors for him.'

'You mean organized crime?'

'You know how much a plastic surgeon makes a year on the NHS?'

I shook my head, all the time trying to work out his play. Trying to figure out the direction he was headed, and the traps he was attempting to set.

'Bottom tier, probably seventy grand. Good ones, eighty or ninety. The best, around the hundred-grand mark. You know how much I made doing that Russian's face?' He meant Akim Gobulev. The Ghost. He tilted his head slightly. 'David?'

'How much?'

He broke out into a smile. 'I thought you'd nodded off for a moment.'

'How much?'

Two hundred and fifty grand. For one face. I made more in seven hours than the top surgeons in the NHS make in a year. They're busy doing micro-surgery. Worthy procedures like unfucking a guy's leg after a motorbike accident, or transplanting muscle. I'm making twice that and putting in half the effort. Taking his jaw back, augmenting his cheekbones, lifting the eyes, tightening his face, thinning out his nose, moving bones, liposucking and cutting and filling. It's complicated, but…' He put a finger to his lips and made a ssshhhhh gesture. 'He was fucking ugly in the first place, so no one minded that my work looked like shit.'

I stared at him. 'This must feel great.'

'How so?'

You're just like your hero Milton Sykes now.' I nodded at his hand, chained to the metal arch on the table. You can both go down in the history books.'

He laughed. 'True. Only, he didn't bank one and a half million in a single year.'

A smile lingered on his face. One of the nails on his right hand had been torn away. It looked fresh; puffy bruising on the tip of his middle finger. He moved his hand across the table like a spider, the finger out in front.

'It's good to be rich, David,' he said softly.

I ignored him. 'Why the women?'

'We all have certain tastes.'

'Why operate on them?'

He shrugged. Didn't say anything.

'What were you hoping to achieve?'

He glanced at the one-way mirror again and turned back to me, eyes wide. 'I wanted to make an army of lookalikes!' He burst into laughter and leaned back in his seat. Then he stopped, like a light going out. 'No, seriously, I just like cutting up women.'

His words hung in the air, and a silence settled between us. I looked at him. His face was set like concrete. Nothing to read.

'So why didn't you cut up Megan?'

He didn't reply.

'What, you're happy to murder women, but you draw the line at pregnant teenagers?' A flicker of something in his face. 'I know that's not true.'

He frowned. 'And why's that?'

'The container you left behind at Mile End.'

No response.

'One adult heart. One child's.'

I thought of the cask. The police had found it in Healy's car after getting to the woods. Now it was probably in a forensics lab somewhere.

'This ringing any bells with you?' I asked him.

Again, no reply. His face was blank now.

'Who else was pregnant?' Still nothing. Eventually, when it was obvious he wasn't going to be drawn, I turned to the one-way glass. 'Did any of the other women show signs of having given birth? A C-section? Vaginal trauma?' A pause. A click. Then an echoey response from Phillips: 'No .' Silence in the interview room again. I looked at Crane. 'Whose hearts were they?'

He watched me, the forefinger and thumb of his left hand brushing together. A thinking gesture. Finally, he shrugged. 'It's not important to this case.'

'Which case?'

'The six women.'

I studied him. 'Do you mean you've killed more?'

He sniffed. The six women, they were all just practice runs. I cut them up because it felt good. I like cutting people. But I did it in the name of research too.'

'What research?'

'I wanted to see how faces could be changed. Think of those women as the first of two canvases. And the second one was the masterpiece.'

'What do you mean?'

He went to speak then stopped himself. Drummed his fingers on the table. 'I just like blondes, David — what can I say?'