The Dead Tracks (17 page)

    I
stared at Healy across the interview room. 'What are you talking about?'

    He
glanced at the door, then back to the photo on the desk in front of me. 'You
ever heard of Milton Sykes?'

    I
frowned. 'The serial killer?'

    'Right.
Old school. Kidnapped and killed thirteen women just over a hundred years ago
and buried them so well no one's ever been able to find them. Sat there happily
admitting he'd taken them, but wouldn't tell the police where he put the
bodies. Probably thought he was Jack the Ripper — all smoke and mirrors and
mystery — but all he really was, was a fucking arsehole.'

    I
glanced at the photo. 'So?'

    'So
if someone's given that to you, they're taking the piss.'

    'It's
not Milton Sykes.'

    'It
looks exactly like him.'

    'It's
not Sykes.'

    'It's
Sykes.
Open your eyes.'

    I
shook my head. Short of screaming in his face, he was unlikely to understand
how certain I was. 'I'm telling you now, this isn't Milton Sykes.'

    'Face
it. You've been taken for a ride.'

    This
is a still from CCTV footage taken six months ago.'

    He
took a step back towards me, the smell of aftershave and coffee coming with him
again. His eyes flicked across the photograph, as if satisfying himself he was
right. Then he shrugged. 'Look, believe whatever you want to believe. I don't
care whether it is or it isn't. It doesn’t help me either way.'

    'So
what helps you?'

    'What?'

    'You're
not interested in Megan. So what
are
you interested in?'

    He was
at the door now, fingers wrapped around it. He opened it a fraction and looked
out through the gap. When he saw no one was coming, he turned back to me.
Glanced at the photograph. Picked up his pad. Didn't say anything.

    'Come
on, Healy.'

    Two
uniformed officers had stopped outside the door, chatting.

    'Why
are you standing here now?' I asked.

    He
looked out into the corridor again, nodding at the officers. They nodded back,
before saying goodbye to one another and disappearing from view.

    'I
have my reasons,' he said.

    And
then he was gone.

    They
made me wait outside the CID office when we were done. Through the door I could
see Phillips and Davidson at the back of the room, close to a wall full of photographs,
chatting to someone. I recognized his picture from the papers: DCI Jamie Hart.

    He
was thin, gaunt, with closely cropped blond hair, and wore the tired, put-upon
look of a man who spent most of his life inside the walls of the station. His eyes,
though, were different: fast, bright, lively, darting to meet mine every few
seconds as Phillips, perched on the edge of his desk, spoke to him.

    As I
waited for them, I took in the walls of the office: the photographs, most too
small to make out; a map of the city, littered with tacks and scrawled all over
in marker pen; pieces of notepaper pinned adjacent to that; and — off to the
side - a thin, vertical series of stickies with numbers on each: 2119, 8110,
44, 127, 410, 3111, 34. Something next to that also caught my attention: a
blown- up black-and-white photocopy of Megan. It was the same picture I'd found
of her on her digital camera, standing outside the block of flats.
What have
they got on her?

    I
glanced at Phillips and Hart, then removed my mobile phone. The best bit about
voluntary attendance was that you didn't have to sign over your personal
effects. I raised the phone in front of me so it looked like I was texting,
then quickly went to the camera option, zoomed in and took the best shot of the
wall that I could manage. It was blurry and half lit - but it would have to do.

    Seconds
later, Phillips led Hart out towards me.

    'David,'
he said, as he came through. 'This is DCI Hart.'

    We
shook hands. I made a show of pausing briefly, as if to send a message, and
took in Hart properly. Then something else registered with me: Hart and
Phillips were both DCIs. They worked out of the same station. They even worked
out of the same office. Usually there was one ranking officer and a series of
sergeants and constables.

    Here,
the balance was off. Ten officers maximum, two of whom were DCIs. It was top
heavy in a way I'd never seen before.

    'I
understand you're working my case,' Hart said, disrupting my train of thought.
There was a smile on his face. I didn't know him well enough to tell whether it
was genuine or not - but somehow I doubted it.

    'Yeah,
looks that way.'

    You
think this Bryant kid was murdered because he knew Megan?' he asked, launching
straight in.

    'I
doubt it,' I lied.

    'So
what's your take?'

    'Charlie
Bryant had a disrupted last year or so. From what I can tell, he wasn't
spending a lot of time at school, so he had to be spending his time somewhere.'

    'And?'

    'And
maybe he got in with the wrong crowd.'

    'His
father too?'

    I
smiled at Hart. He was trying to corner me. I didn't want to lead myself
anywhere I didn't have to go, so I just shrugged and said nothing.

    'Petty
stealing,' Phillips said, picking things up, 'a little vandalism, underage
drinking - that's the wrong crowd where Charlie Bryant comes from. Having an
eight-inch blade put through your chest? Not so much.'

    I
shrugged again for effect, but Phillips was right. Charlie Bryant wasn't from
the bad part of town. He wasn't even from the okay part. His corner of north
London was affluent and safe. Crime in his road was swearing at old women.
Despite that, I stuck to the argument: 'It's been a while since we were
teenagers, DCI Phillips. It's not the good old days any more. You leave your
back door open now, you come home to no house.'

    Phillips
studied me, eyes fixed, brain ticking over. He didn't look convinced, and I
made a mental note to watch him. He was switched on and bright. That made him
dangerous.

    'So,'
I said, 'if we're done, I'll be off.'

    'Fair
enough,' he replied, and held out his hand. I shook it. 'Remember, the Bryant
murders are a police matter now, David. That means the police are dealing with
it, and we don't need anyone getting in the way. And we absolutely, one hundred
per cent, will
not
be sharing any information until we're ready to do
so.'

    I
nodded. 'Sounds like a plan.'

    'It does,
doesn’t it?' he replied, then jabbed a thumb over his shoulder to the office.
Davidson was sitting at a desk, watching us, an expression like a pitbull. You
have a think about what we discussed. We're all after the same thing here. We
all want to know why Charles Bryant was killed like that -
and
we all
want to find Megan.'

    Inside
the office, I suddenly saw Healy appear, a fresh mug of coffee in his hands. He
glanced towards us, momentarily stopped, then moved away and out of view.

    
Yeah,
we all want to find her
, I thought
.
Just some of us more than
others
.

    Phillips
had someone drop me back at my car, which I'd left outside the Bryant house. A uniformed
officer was still positioned outside the front gates, another one further up
the drive, and lights were on in the living room. Crime-scene tape shone in the
street light.

    On
the drive back home, I placed my phone in the hands-free and made a couple of
calls. The first one was to Liz. It was Friday night, and we were supposed to
be going to the new Italian restaurant her client owned in Acton. I told her we
were still on, but I'd got caught up at work and would have to re-book the
table for eight-thirty. She said that was fine. As I killed the call and
thought about what lay ahead, something bloomed in my stomach. Excitement. Or
doubt. Or both.

    As
the traffic ground to a halt, I reached inside my jacket and took out the
photograph of the man from Tiko's, studying the features of his face: the
lines, the shape, the prominent brow sitting like a shelf of flesh above a pair
of oil-black eyes. It wasn't Sykes. Milton Sykes was long dead. But there must
have been enough of a similarity for Healy to believe it was him. Once I was
home I'd find out more about Sykes - his victims, his crimes, his history —
but, in the meantime, I could start filling in the gaps. I reached across to
the phone and scrolled through to T.

    Terry
Dooley.

    Dooley
was an old contact I'd used during my paper days. His career was twenty-four
hours away from being flushed down the toilet after I'd found out him and three
of his detectives had spent a couple of hours at an illegal brothel in south
London. I stepped in and offered to save his career and his family life all at
the same time in exchange for information when I needed it. He reluctantly
agreed, realizing the trade-off was better for him. Dooley was all bluster and
front, but basically repentant. The one thing he cared about more than his job
was his kids, and the idea of seeing them once a week after his wife had
dragged him to the divorce courts was more terrifying than any crime scene.

    'What
a great end to the day,' he said when I told him who it was.

    'How
you doing, Dools?'

    'Yeah,
fantastic now I've heard from you, Davey. What do you need this time? Your car
cleaned?'

    The
last time I'd called him, I'd got him to sort out a problem I'd had with a
stolen hire car. Dooley's days of dealing with petty crime were about fifteen
years behind him. He'd been working murders ever since.

    'Nothing
like that, Dools - although my kitchen needs painting'

    He
blew air down the line. 'Funny.'

    'This
won't take long.' I glanced at the photograph of the man from the club. You
familiar with anyone from the Megan Carver team?'

    'The
Carver team?' He paused. 'Not really. They mostly worked out of the stations in
and around north London.'

    'How
come?'

    The chief
super wanted things to look like they were focused locally so her family and
the public would think we were on the frontline, asking all the right people
all the right questions. Made it look better in the papers if the teams stayed
local.'

    'It was
all bullshit?'

    He
snorted. 'What do you think? I know a few of the faces up there, but not well.
I've seen Hart around. He used to work Clubs and Vice with one of the boys on
my team. They called him "Skel" - as in "Skeleton". You
seen him?'

    'Yeah.
He's thin.'

    
'Thin?
Dooley laughed. 'I don't trust anyone who looks like they just crawled out the
fucking ground.'

    'Anyone
else?'

    'I
know Eddie Davidson. We came through the ranks together, but I haven't seen the
Burger King for a few years. The others… only what I've heard. There's some
Jock going off like a rocket up there.'

    'Phillips?'

    'Yeah,
that's him.'

    'Any
idea why him and Hart are working out of the same office?'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'I mean,
he's a DCI and so is Hart. There's two of them leading a tiny team of about
eight detectives. I've never come across a set-up like that before — have you?'

    'Can't
say I have.'

    'So
what's your take?'

    'My
take? Sounds like a one-way ticket to a great big shitheap of politics and
personality clashes. I mean, who's the SIO? Who sets out the Policy Log?'

    The
senior investigating officer ran the case and was also responsible for
determining the parameters of the Policy Log, a set of rules unique to every
case, which set out how the investigating team dealt with things like roles,
responsibilities, HOLMES searches and the media. Dooley had a point: who made
those choices when there were two officers of equal rank working in such close
proximity? Something was definitely out of kilter. I just had to find out what.