The Dead Tracks

Chapter Forty-two

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.'