The Dead Tracks (35 page)

    There
wasn't much space in the car, but I attempted to lay the seven different files
out on the dashboard, next to one another. Then I discovered there weren't
seven.

    There
were eight.

    The
eighth file was thin and different from the others. Inside was a single sheet
of A4, all the pertinent details blacked out. No name. No address. No personal
information, other than the place of birth and family status. Mother dead.
Father still alive. One sister. The only other thing that faced out at me was a
photograph. Female. Blonde hair. Blue eyes.

    I set
the file aside and started to move through the others one by one. Photos of the
women looked out at me. None of them had a record, so the pictures were all
personal, taken by friends and family members. Megan, at seventeen, was the
youngest by a clear three years. The rest fluctuated between twenty and
forty-five.

    It
was unusual for serial crime to cover such a wide age range, but he was picking
victims based on appearance, not age. What criteria did blonde, blue-eyed,
medium- build women fill for him? And what else tied them together? I read on a
little further and discovered that all the women were single or not dating
seriously, and most were pursuing careers rather than jobs that just paid the
mortgage. They were intelligent, attractive and well educated. Even Megan,
still at school, could be put into that bracket. The only one who looked out of
sync was Leanne: average at school, plainer than the others.

    So
where did Daniel Markham fit in? Megan - and presumably Leanne - he'd got to know
through the youth club, but the others had no connection to Barton Hill, and
judging by the files, no connection to each other. But they weren't random
victims. This was an utterly methodical man. One who plotted, planned and
scoped out. He was organized and sociable, he was intelligent and he didn't
look out of place. Maybe that was Markham. Maybe that was Glass. Maybe it was
both of them, and they were working together — or maybe they were one and the
same.

    For a
second, I thought of the families, most of whom were still praying for
sightings or — in their darkest hour — perhaps even hoping a body would be
found so they could at least get some closure. But the police knew things ran
deeper. Phillips, Hart, Davidson, they all knew. Anger worked its way up from
my stomach.

    Seconds
later, Healy emerged from Starbucks, two giant coffee cups in a cardboard tray.
I took the files down from the dashboard, collected them together and took the
cup he handed me.

    'Right,'
he said, bouncing the car off the pavement. 'Time to go.'

    We
moved past Hyde Park to the south, and Regent's Park to the north. But then,
two minutes further along Euston Road, we hit traffic. Healy braked gently,
leaned over and turned up the heaters. It was cold. Mist had started crawling
in across the windscreen, and rain had begun dotting the glass. With his foot
on the brake, he peeled the lid off his coffee and looked down at it.

    'You
find out anything more about Markham?' I asked.

    'Maybe.
He's not on the National Computer, but - like you said — if he cleared a CRB
check, he won't have any kind of record anyway. His home address is listed as
the one we already know about at Mile End.'

    'No
other addresses?'

    'No.
The guy's Mr Average. You read his interview, right?'

    'Yeah,
it listed him as a consultant.'

    'Over
at St John's.'

    'The
hospital?'

    'It's
about a mile from his flat.' Healy paused, looked at me. 'I called them to ask
about him. He's a psychiatrist.'

    'That's
not much like a plastic surgeon.'

    Healy
nodded. 'I don't think he's Glass.'

    'I
was thinking the same.'

    'So
where Does he fit in?'

    'Were
any of the women patients of his?'

    'No.'

    I
drummed my fingers on the dash. 'He was divorced.'

    'Yeah.'

    'Did
anyone try to find his ex-wife?'

    'She
wasn't too hard to find.'

    'How
come?'

    'She
got placed in a psych facility up in Hertfordshire a couple of years back.
Markham tried treating her himself, but couldn't work his magic. When he got
given the all- clear after the first round of interviews, it was decided she
was a line of enquiry not worth pursuing.'

    'So
have you looked since?'

    'I
pulled her records after you made bail yesterday. She had some sort of Grade A
nervous breakdown after the divorce. Ended up getting fired from her job, got
sick, then spent a year trying to kill herself. Markham had to have her
committed.'

    'Is
she still at the hospital?'

    'No.'

    'Where
is she?'

    'Looks
like she was released in May last year.'

    'She
might be worth talking to.'

    'If
you can find her. I called the hospital yesterday to try and get a last known
address but she never turned up to any of the post-release support groups, and
they never saw her again.'

    'At
all?'

    He
shook his head. 'At all.'

    We
both looked at each other, and I could see we were thinking the same thing: it
wasn't coincidence that another woman connected with Markham had disappeared into
thin air. 'Did he have an alibi for the day Megan disappeared?'

    'He
was working.'

    'Did
you ask the hospital if he was working today?'

    'Yeah.
They told me that he'd been off ill for two days.'

    'Really?'

    'Really.
Some sort of flu virus.'

    'There
wasn't much Lemsip at his flat yesterday. In fact, there wasn't much of
anything. The place looked like it had been cleared out.'

    'Maybe
that's why he's been off work.'

    Except
his flat didn't have the look of somewhere completely abandoned. Items remained
in place. Furniture. The heating was still firing up. The lights still worked.

    Finally,
the traffic started to move. I looked at Healy.

    'There's
an eighth file,' I said.

    He
brought the cup up to his lips and swallowed some coffee. When he put it down
again, his fingers twitched, just as they had the day before. He'd definitely
been a smoker once, but not any more. He didn't carry the smell and neither did
the car. There were no cigarette packets inside, and — in over an hour of being
on the road — he hadn't expressed the need to smoke once. But it still ate away
at him, and his fingers still reacted to having nothing to hold.

    'Healy?'

    The
files were stacked on my lap, the photograph of the woman in the eighth facing
out at me. Healy looked at me, then down at her photo.

    'Later,'
he said quietly.

    
Static

    When
Sona opened her eyes, everything was filled by light. She immediately closed
them again, rolled over and crawled across the floor to the wall of the hole.
Except the wall wasn't there. And she wasn't in the hole.

    She
gradually opened her eyes for a second time and, around her, shapes started to
form. The four white walls of the room she was in. Two thin strip lights above
her, buzzing constantly. A glass panel built into one of the walls, running
halfway down from the ceiling. When she looked more closely, she saw it was a
one-way mirror: everything in the room was reflected back at her; nothing
visible on the other side.

    She
sat up. There was a door in the wall, adjacent to the mirror, and — next to
that — a table with a glass of water. Next to the glass was a small piece of
card folded in half: an arrow pointed to the water, and the message
Drink
this
had been written underneath. Along from that, hung across the table,
was a medical gown. A second card sat on top of it:
Put this on,
it
read. For a second, she thought of her mother reading
Alice in Wonderland
to her when she was a child. Then a creeping sense of dread washed away the
memory.

    Standing,
Sona examined herself in the glass. She wasn't sure how long she'd been kept in
the hole. She'd started to lose count after a week. But she could see a change
in herself. She had a bruise on her face where he'd come for her last time. One
of her eyes looked a little puffy too; the kind of look insomniacs wore. She'd
slept most nights, but never well. Part of her was always switched on so she'd
hear him approach.

    But
it wasn't the bruise, or her eyes, that was changing.

    It
was her skin.

    She
stepped up closer to the mirror and touched a finger to the glass. On the
hardness of her cheekbones, on the bump of her chin, at the tip of her nose,
little blobs of light formed, dull and matte. Her skin was waxy. When she touched
it, it left a trace of itself on her fingers.

    Then
something moved.

    She
stepped back and gazed at the window. A flicker behind the glass. Or had she
imagined it? Fear blossomed in her chest, prickling, moving through her blood
and her muscles and her bones. 'Hello?' she said quietly.

    Nothing.

    
Drink
this. Put this on.

    She
pulled the medical gown off the table. It was thin cotton, and there were ties
at the neck and midway down the back. Then she picked up the water and drank
some. Gown in hand, she moved to the far corner of the room. Turned, so her
back was opposite the glass. Then started undressing. She'd been in the same
clothes for however long she'd been kept in the hole. But although she could
smell sweat on herself, some of her other scents remained. Perfume.
Moisturizer. She could even smell a little of the shampoo she'd used on her
hair the day Mark took her to the woods.

    When
she was naked except for her underwear, she glanced back at the window. Another
brief movement. A tiny blur, like the outline of a shadow. She studied it for a
while longer, her own thoughts
{he's watching me)
sending a shiver down
her spine, then slid her arms into the gown and began to tie it at the neck and
back. When she was finished, she faced the door.

    Something
had changed.

    She
looked around the room, spinning on her heel. Walls. Window. Table. Water. Her
clothes on the floor. In the mirrors, the only thing she could see was the room
and herself.

    Then she
realized: it wasn't something she could see.

    It
was something she could hear.

    She
looked up. The strip lights above her had stopped buzzing.

    Suddenly,
the first one blinked, like a flash of lightning, then cut out altogether. The
walls lost their brightness. The floor lost its shine. She backed up a couple
of steps, her eyes fixed on the only remaining working light, fear squeezing at
her throat. There was a pregnant pause. A long, terrible moment where she
silently begged it to stay on. Then it blinked once, mirroring the first strip
light - and went out.

    Dark.

    She
moved in the vague direction she remembered the door being, and when she
couldn't find it, she started to panic. Breath shortened. Heart pumped harder.

    'Please,'
she said, tears forming in her eyes.

    
Crank
.

    A
noise from her left. Then a line of light opened up in the darkness. The door.
A shape filled the gap. Behind its shoulders was a white corridor, lit by a
dull bulb.

    'Please
don't hurt me.'

    A
tremor passed through her voice as she backed away from the door. The shape,
still in the corridor, stepped into the room. And then it pushed the door shut.

    'Please,'
she said again.

    No
response. No sound of movement.

    Nothing
until, about five seconds later, a crackling sound started to emerge from
somewhere.