The Dead Tracks

Chapter Fifty

The coffee shop was small. Stools at the windows looked out at a row of two-storey terraced houses and a brand-new glass and chrome apartment block. I ordered a black coffee and a cheese and pastrami sandwich, Healy a bigger coffee and a beef and mustard roll, and we sat at the window looking out. It was nearly two and had started raining. We had at least three hours before it started to get dark. A lot of time to kill doing nothing.

'This must be home away from home for you,' he said.

I took a bite of the sandwich. 'I was a bit further down the road in Wapping.'

'Reckon you'd have given up journalism if your wife —' he stopped, glanced at me '— if it hadn't have happened?'

'Probably not.' I brought my coffee towards me. Outside, rain began spitting at the glass, and a little of the light fizzled out of the day. I nodded to the water running down the window. 'One reason I might have stuck it out on the paper was being able to get away from shitty weather like this on a regular basis.'

'Did you spend much time abroad?'

I took another bite of my sandwich. It tasted good. 'Yeah, quite a bit. Most of the time I took Derryn with me. She was a qualified nurse, but worked short-term contracts, so she'd come and stay with me, as long as I wasn't in the middle of a war zone. We spent a year and a half in the States, a year in South Africa, but most of the time it was a month here, a month there. She'd just fly out and join me and keep me sane.'

Both of us fell quiet. Within a couple of minutes, the drizzle had eased off again, leaving a fine mist in its place.

'What about you?'

'What about me?'

I looked at him. He was picking the sliced gherkins out of his roll. After a few seconds, he turned to me and shrugged. 'You already know about me.'

'Do I?'

He smiled. 'I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You knew about Leanne, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say you know about my recent history.'

I didn't say anything.

He smiled again. 'I'll take that as a yes.'

'Take it however you want,' I replied, and drained some of my coffee. You tell me or you don't. It's up to you.'

Silence again.

I ate through my sandwich. Healy continued picking at his food and staring at his drink.

'I had this case,' he said eventually. He picked the last of the gherkins out of the roll and placed the bread back on top of the beef. 'Two girls killed down in New Cross. Twins. Eight-year-olds. Neighbour called the police after not hearing anything next door for a week. They'd been raped and strangled. Mother's cold in the next room. Stabbed in the chest. Father… fuck knows where he is. The girls had never met him. He'd never had any part in their lives. Even the mother didn't know his surname. He contributed one thing and one thing only to their lives — and that was nine months before they were born.'

He paused, emptied a packet of sugar into his coffee and started stirring it. 'So, obvious first suspect: the mother's dealer. Girls come home from school, find their mum and the dealer in the flat. Argument kicks off between the two adults. Dealer goes mental, stabs the mum, turns on the girls. Or, beats the shit out of the mum and forces her to watch him with the girls while she bleeds out, until she pays what she owes. Post-mortem put her death before the two girls.' He stopped, shrugged. 'Whether it's one or the other, they both made me feel fucking sick.'

He took a bite of his roll, wiped his mouth and shrugged again. We bring in the dealer, this weaselly piece of shit. He's probably responsible for half the misery in New Cross, but he's not the killer. So it's back to square one again. Forensics — nothing. They come back with fibres and prints, but there are zero matches. We ask around and no one's seen anything or knows anything. A week turns into two. Two into three. Three weeks into a murder investigation, and you start to get a bit twitchy. The doubts start creeping in. You think, "Have I missed something? What have I missed? What aren't I seeing?" And after that, you start going round and round in circles. Back to the scene. Back to the computer. Back to the forensics. Back to the statements. Suddenly, a month in, literally all you can think about is the fact that someone out there has walked away a free man after putting two innocent girls in the ground.'

Healy paused again. 'No one understands the debt you have to the people you stand over in these places. And when they're eight years old… Eight years old, and you can't find a trace of the arsehole who did these things to them anywhere in this worthless fucking city. No one understands what that feels like. Even some of the people I've worked with in the police. And if they don't get it, how the fuck are your family supposed to get it?'

I nodded but didn't say anything.

'It was about a month in when I found out she was seeing someone else,' he said, talking about his wife now. 'If I'd found out any other time, I would have been angry. I would have thrown some furniture around. Put my foot through a door. I know I've got a temper. It's who I am. I'm forty-six. I'm too old to change. But it wasn't just any time. I found out she was screwing around when I was up to my neck in photographs of two eight-year-old girls with injuries to every hole in their bodies. I had the media baying for blood, the chief super crawling up my arse…' He faded out, glanced at me. 'And worst of all, I had zero fucking suspects. No one. The debt I felt for those girls, I'd never had it as bad as that. So when Gemma told me, I just totally lost it.'

'We've all done things we regret.'

A smile without humour. 'You don't seem the wife- beating type.'

'We've all done things we regret,' I said again.

He turned to me. 'So what have you done?'

I looked at him. I've killed people. People who deserved it. People who would have taken my life if I hadn't taken theirs. But I've still killed. I'll still be judged the same as them.When I didn't respond, he stared out of the window. In front of him, his food was virtually untouched and his coffee had lost its warmth.

'You never really know anyone,' he said finally, 'even the ones you love. She thought she knew me, and I thought I knew her. But we didn't know each other at all.'

A couple of minutes passed. I watched the thumb and forefinger of his right hand rub together; he would have taken a cigarette now. After a while, he returned to the counter and ordered a fresh cup of coffee, then disappeared to the toilet. A few minutes later he came back, added some sugar to his coffee and took a long drink from it. I could see his mind turning over, and I wondered what he was thinking about. His wife. The night she told him about the other man. The moment he hit her. The twins. Leanne.

'When do you accept someone is finally gone?' he said quietly.

I turned and studied him. The question surprised me, but I tried not to show it. I hadn't expected it from him. I hadn't expected emotion like that to exist so close to the surface.

'It's different for everyone. But there's no shame in hanging on. There's no shame in believing they might walk through the door at any moment.'

Healy didn't respond.

I let him have a moment of silence and then pushed on. 'So, you going to tell me then?'

He looked at me. 'Tell you what?'

'About the woman in the eighth file.'

He faced out at the street. Movement and light played in his eyes, the world beyond the window reflected. 'Sona,' he said.

'That's her name?'

He nodded. It was an unusual name. I liked it, but I'd never heard it before. Healy started fiddling in his pocket for something. 'I think her mother was born abroad somewhere,' he said. 'Eastern Europe.' He brought out a piece of folded paper and handed it to me. It was the same page I'd seen earlier inside the file — except this time there was nothing blacked out. All the information was there.

'So where Does she fit in?'

He looked at me. 'She's the one that got away.'