The Dead Tracks

Chapter Forty-seven

By twelve, Healy and I were parked in a street in Beckton opposite a row of seven identical warehouses. On one of them, a big red sign was pinned to the front: DRAYTON IMPORTS. It belonged to Derrick Drayton, the man who owned the warehouse in Bow that Frank White had died in. And the man who had brought in the crate of guns for the Russians - and, I was guessing, the formalin for the surgeon along with it.

'If you're hoping Drayton is going to drop out of the sky, you're gonna be waiting a long time,' Healy said, both of us with our eyes fixed on the warehouse. A lorry was parked up, its cab facing out. Inside the warehouse, men were removing boxes from the back and filing off out of sight.

'Drayton's gone. I know that.'

'His family don't know anything.'

I looked at him. 'You seriously believe that?'

'The task force spent three days down here interviewing the entire tribe,' Healy replied. Wife, mum, dad, brother, sister. They looked terrified.'

'Doesn’t mean they don't know something.'

Healy had spent the journey over massaging the spot on his chest where the syringe had gone in. Although he claimed to be feeling fine by the time we left Markham's flat, I wasn't about to take any chances — so I offered to drive. The laptop was on the back seat. The cylindrical cask was at his feet, back in its original container. So far, neither of us had made mention of the contents.

Healy studied me, then turned back to the warehouse, 'What?' I said.

'You think it's her?' He was still looking at the warehouse, at the men removing boxes from the back of the lorry. When I didn't reply, he turned to face me again. 'Do you think it's Megan?'

I glanced down at the metal container. 'It could be, yeah.'

'So the other one…'

'Would be her baby.'

He'd probably seen worse. The darkness in men; the moments in life when murderers and rapists and abusers reached into the earth and pulled a little piece of hell out with their hands. I'd been there too. Walked through blood. Stepped over bodies. Flashes of time when, for a second, you realized humanity had vanished, and no rules remained. We'd both known worse than a heart cut from what housed it. But things changed when a child was involved. And, in this case, maybe not even a child: an unborn baby. Healy carried on massaging his chest.

'Are they preserved in that stuff?'

I looked at him. 'Formalin? I'd imagine so. I'm guessing Drayton sourced all those weapons for the Russians, and the chemicals came in with the guns. That was the currency the Russians paid Glass with: the formalin.'

When I looked at Healy again, his mouth had flattened and his eyes seemed to project his thoughts: Leanne and the formalin, and whether he could bear to imagine the rest.

In the warehouse, someone started closing the rear doors of the lorry. The noise carried across the street towards us; a huge metal clang. We both turned and watched as the driver came around the front and disappeared inside the office door. Two minutes later, he re-emerged, got into the cab of his lorry and pulled out. The lorry was gone within thirty seconds.

Inside we could see people milling around. There was a wall of misty-coloured windows at the back of the warehouse. What little light the day could muster shone through them, turning everyone inside into silhouettes. I counted five people. Possibly six. The interior was hard to make out other than that, but it looked cavernous and empty.

'I hope you know what you're doing here,' Healy said, pressing his fingers against his chest again. 'You're out on bail, remember.'

In the rear-view mirror, a blue Nissan appeared at the top of the street, heading down towards us. 'I know,' I said, watching the car. It slowed up as it got to the warehouse, and bumped up on to the pavement outside. Healy heard the noise and turned to look.

'That's him,' he said.

'Drayton's son?'

'Yeah.'

'What do you know about him?'

Healy shrugged. 'Only what I've heard. I remember Phillips saying he thought the kid might be hiding something. But you know what Phillips is like.'

Drayton's son got out of the car. A couple of the people inside the warehouse waved to him, and then he disappeared through the office door.

'You ready?' I asked.

Healy looked at me. 'Let's do it.'