The Dead Tracks (34 page)

    'Where
Does Phillips fit in?'

    'Phillips
works in the same office as Hart, but not on the same investigation. He's SDC7
- just like White was. He's heading up a task force trying to put the cuffs on
Akim Gobulev.'

    I
frowned. 'Wait a second, Phillips works organized crime?'

    'Yeah.'

    'So
why's he coming after me?'

    Healy
glanced over his shoulder again, checking the door. And as he did, everything
suddenly shifted into focus. The link between Megan and Frank White.

    'The
surgeon,' I said quietly.

    He
looked back at me as the connections started to snap together in my head. The
links between events — and everything in between.

    'They
think the surgeon's involved in the women's disappearances?'

    'They
don't think he's involved,' Healy said. 'They think he's the one taking them.'

    I
stared at him, waiting for him to tell me it was a joke. But then I saw the anger
in his face - and suddenly felt some of my own, burning in the middle of my
chest. I'd been trying to peel away the layers of Megan's disappearance for six
days and the whole time the police were sitting on the answers. They'd lied to
me. They'd lied to the Carvers.

    They'd
lied to everyone.

    'Why
keep them secret?' I said, and - in that moment - I heard the timbre of my
voice and saw Healy attach to it. For a second he thought he'd glimpsed a
kindred spirit; someone with the same anger and sense of injustice. I realized
then that I'd have to reel myself back in again. One of us had to remain in
control.

    'Phillips
has people on the inside and they're all coming back with the same intel. The
guy's a freak. Wears a mask to meets. Surgical gloves. Bandages around his
arms, so he doesn’t drop fibres or flakes of skin. And he doesn’t even get paid
in cash any more. Instead it's medical supplies and hospital equipment.
Scalpels, forceps, hooks, retractors, mallets, beds, gurneys. Rumour has it,
the Russians even agreed to bring in an ECG for him. He changes their faces and
he sews up their wounds, but only so it pays for what he's
really
into.'

    'The
women.'

    'Right.
He's a killer. And now he's got two task forces on his tail. Phillips wants him
for his connections to the Russians. And Hart wants him because they think he's
got seven dead bodies stored somewhere.'

    Even
in the noise of the bar, the word
dead
seemed to hang in the air.

    'So
that's the reason there's two DCIs in that place?'

    He
nodded.

    'Why
hasn't any of this been made public?'

    'He
put a bullet in White's face, so that immediately promotes him to the top of
the shitlist in every department at the Met. It's personal. But that's not what
it's really about. What it's
really
about is Phillips getting the
surgeon, squeezing him for everything he's got, and then shutting down the
Russians in London.' He looked up. Turned his beer bottle. 'But go public with
this prick's sideline in women, and the surgeon goes underground… and his
little black book gets flushed down the U-bend.'

    It
took me a second to realize what he'd just said. 'Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Do you even know what you just told me?' When he didn't react, I leaned in to
him. 'You're saying closing down the Russians is — what? — the bigger win?'

    'You
know what I said.'

    'Yeah,
you're saying it's more important that the police get their nails into
organized crime than find seven missing women — one of whom is your own
daughter:'

    I
waited. Nothing from him again.

    'That's
it?'

    'What
do you want me to say?'

    'This
is a conspiracy of silence. The police are sitting on their hands while those
women lie dead somewhere.'

    'They
can close down the Russians.'

    'Them
is you, Healy.
You're
the police.'

    'I'm
not the same as them.'

    'But
you think what they're doing is all right?'

    'I
don't think it's
all right',
he spat, fingers squeezing the beer bottle.
'Why the fuck would I be talking to you if I thought it was all right? They're
burying my girl in a fucking filing cabinet. So let me make it clear for you:
when I find her, I'm going to kill the piece of shit that took her, and I'm
going to rip out his heart and stick it down his fucking throat. Is that clear
enough for you?' He eyed me. 'You can come with me, or you can back down. But
if you come with me, be prepared for it to get bad.'

    I
wasn't sure if he was talking about finding Leanne or going up against the
police. 'Do you know why the surgeon was there that night?'

    'At
the warehouse?'

    'Yeah.'

    'Something
came in with the guns. Whatever it was, he made off with it.'

    
Everything's
connected
.

    'It
was the formalin.'

    'The
what?'

    'Liquid
formaldehyde.'

    He
paused. 'Like the tissue preserver?'

    'Yeah,'
I said. 'Like the tissue preserver.'

    He
pressed a hand to his forehead and started massaging it. If the surgeon had
already taken seven women, Healy didn't need me to tell him why he wanted the
chemicals.

    'The
police can't keep this quiet,' I said.

    'Can't
they?'

    'No.'

    'They've
done a pretty good job up until now.'

    'But
the surgeon won't come up for air again until he's absolutely sure it's safe.
He's not going to risk a repeat of what happened that night in the warehouse.'

    Healy
shrugged. 'They're not going to put the women out into the public domain.
Because if the surgeon thinks they're about to collar him, they've lost him,
and they've lost the names and numbers of every Russian arsehole in the city.'

    I
leaned back in the booth. He met my eyes.

    'We
can help each other,' he said. You want to find the Carver girl so you can give
her parents the answers we couldn't get them, right?' His eyes narrowed.
'Right?'

    I
nodded.

    'And
I want to find him so I can…'

    He
trailed off. For a second, I could see some of my own reflection. A man torn
apart by loss. He'd never laid his daughter to rest. He didn't even know where
she was and what had happened to her. His last memory of the two of them
together was a screaming match. The blurred line between what the law told him
he should do, and what he was going to do, was indistinguishable. Maybe there
wasn't even a line now.

    'How
are they pinning the women on this guy?'

    He
looked as if he'd expected me to ask. 'Their necklaces.'

    I
remembered the shoebox containing Megan's belongings. I'd taken it from her
wardrobe. Inside had been photographs, letters and jewellery — and a shard of
smoothed obsidian on the end of a chain.
Glass.
'You mean the glass
necklace?'

    'Yeah.
Because he's wrapped up like the Mummy the whole time, no one knows what he
looks like, or what he's called. So the Russians nicknamed him Dr Glass because
of a chain he wears around his neck. It's a smoothed piece of obsidian with the
inscription
PC
in the back. It's basically the only thing they know
about him.'

    Megan's
had
MC
carved into it.

    'Are
they his initials?'

    Healy
shrugged. 'Who knows? But all the women had one in their possessions, with
their initials inscribed in the back, so it's a fair assumption.' He stopped. A
flicker of sadness passed across his eyes. 'All the women… except for Leanne.'

    'She
didn't have one?'

    He
looked down at the table. 'Phillips lied to you about a lot of stuff today. But
he didn't lie about Leanne. They can't one hundred per cent link her to Megan,
or to any of the others.'

    'Because
she didn't have a necklace?'

    'Right.'
He stared at me. 'There were a lot of problems at home too. We used to fight a
lot. On paper… Leanne was a good candidate for a runaway.' A pause. More
sadness - and then steel. 'But I know he took my girl. I
know
it.'

    I
nodded, let him have a moment. 'Is that it?'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'That's
how they're pinning seven women on this guy?'

    I
looked at him. He didn't reply.

    'It's
a link, but it's tenuous. What happens if they're on sale in Asda? Suddenly,
him and fifty thousand other people have got one.'

    A
moment of silence settled between us.

    'What
else aren't you telling me, Healy?'

    He glanced
over his shoulder to the door. Looked like he was about to say something, then
stopped. When he turned back, he held up a finger. 'There's more,' he
whispered. 'But…' He paused again, checked his surroundings a second time.
'I'll tell you. But not here.'

    'You've
told me everything else.'

    'I
need to show you,' he said.

    I let
my mind tick over for a moment, trying to figure out what he meant. 'Have any
of the other missing women got connections to the youth club?'

    'No.
Just Leanne and the Carver girl.'

    'Which
means you need to get some background on Daniel Markham,' I said. 'Because, at
the moment, he's the best hope we've got of finding out what happened to them.'

    Healy
picked up me at seven o'clock the next morning. It was still dark. He had a
Vauxhall estate with straw all over the back seats and muddy paw prints on the
inside of the doors. The car stank of wet dog. It looked like he was dressed in
the same clothes as the night before, apart from the tie. He had the seat all
the way back, but his belly still almost touched the wheel, and his legs were
arched under it. He wasn't exactly fat, but he was a big man, and thirty pounds
of extra weight added a lot of bulk.

    The
drive over to Mile End was about fourteen miles. Neither of us said much for
the first half-hour. It was slow going, and I got the sense that, like me,
Healy was mulling things over: everything we'd discussed the night before, and
everything that awaited us. At one point he started fiddling around in the side
pocket of the door, and after a couple of seconds brought out a file. He handed
it to me.

    'You
want a coffee?'

    I
looked at him. 'You a coffee fan?'

    We were
moving east through Paddington, and there was a Starbucks ahead. He bumped up
on to the pavement outside and switched on his hazards. 'I need it to function
in the morning,' he said, and pointed towards the file. 'And you'll need some
to get through that.'

    I
looked at the folder and flipped it open. Inside were missing persons files for
all seven women.

    'How
do you take it?' he asked.

    'Black.'

    He
got out and headed into the shop.

    I
opened up the folder and pulled out the files. Megan's was on top. I read
through it. The investigation added up to very little. They'd identified the
email from the London Conservation Trust as a potential line of enquiry, and
made mention of the map on the website, but both leads had hit dead ends. As I'd
suspected, without pinpointing the guy in Tiko's, they didn't have Sykes, and
they didn't have the connection to the woods. Attached were interviews with
everyone who had ever worked at the youth club. I searched for Daniel Markham's
and read over it. It was bland enough not to raise any alarms, and the answers
he gave were solid and believable. Like the file at the youth club, it listed
him as single - but this time it said he was divorced from his wife Susan.