The Dead Tracks (39 page)

    '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.'

    Sona
woke with a start, so hard and so fast she felt something rip. Two strips of
tape hung down from her eyelids where they'd been placed over her eyes. She
looked around. She was on a hospital bed. On one side: a metal table full of
surgical instruments and an ECG machine. On the other: a yellow defibrillator,
two metal paddles coiled around a peg at its side. The room had five doors: one
left, one right, three in front of her.

    She
sat up and something pulled at her chest. Wires snaked out from under her gown,
feeding off towards the ECG, and she could feel two electrodes stuck to the
spaces above both breasts. In the top of her right hand was a catheter that led
to a bag of IV fluid hanging from a metal stand. For a second she felt woozy,
as if she'd been torn too suddenly from unconsciousness. But then reality hit.
Fear fluttered in her chest, a chill fingered up her spine. This wasn't how he
worked. He would know when she was supposed to be awake down to the minute. He
watched. He listened.

    So
why hadn't he come for her yet?

    Because
I'm not supposed to be awake.

    She'd
been anaesthetized. He'd left her there because he thought she'd been given
enough to knock her out.

    But
he hadn't. She was awake.

    And
now I need to get out of here.

    She
removed the tape from her eyelids, disconnected the catheter and pulled both
electrodes off her chest. instantly, the ECG flatlined, its steady
beep beep
beep
replaced by one long noise. She stood in the centre of the room and
looked between doors. He
had
to arrive through one of them now. He
had
to come for her. But a minute later she was still waiting.

    She
glanced at the trolley again. There was a pair of scissors about six inches in
length, the ends pointing out at a forty-five-degree angle. Surgeon's scissors.
Next to that was a series of scalpels; a mix of different lengths and weights,
of different blades and designs. More instruments: something that looked like a
hammer; a syringe; and a drill. And finally, a bottle of clear blue liquid.

    The
same stuff he'd made her apply to her face.

    She
touched her cheek. She could feel the waxy sheen of her skin against the tips
of her fingers - but she felt nothing in her face. Not a single thing.
Everything was dead: no nerve endings firing up, no sensation of movement when
she opened and closed her jaw. Nothing. It was completely numb. She reached to
the other side, to see if it was the same, felt nothing and brought her fingers
back — and then a ripple of horror escaped through her chest. Her fingers were
covered in blood.

    Suddenly
a horrible realization
moved like an oil slick inside her
:
He
was using the liquid to prepare my skin for surgery. And he's cutting into my face
right now
.

    Sona
grabbed one of the scalpels.
Come on then, you bastard.
She tried to
force adrenalin through her body, tried to kick-start some sort of response,
but she was halfway across the room when she heard movement.

    Fast
footsteps echoing in a corridor beyond the nearest door.

    Then
static.

    She
stopped, frozen to the spot. No footsteps any more. Just static. She
transferred the scalpel from one hand to the other and held it up in front of
her, in the vague direction of the door. Waited. Waited. Then she realized the
static was coming from inside the room. She glanced to her left, high up into
the corner. Hidden in the darkness was a speaker, built into the wall, painted
the same uniform white to disguise it.

    '
Ssssssssssona
.'

    A
voice from the speaker.

    And
then in front of her the door handle began to turn.

    Heart
shifting in her chest, she stepped sideways and forward, so she was behind the
door as it opened towards her. Swallowed once. Twice. The third time she almost
coughed. She was so frightened now her throat felt like his fingers were
already closing around it. She clamped a hand to her mouth, trying to stop any
sound, any whimper, any breath that might force its way up and form a noise.
Next to her, the door continued opening.
Don't make a sound.
It inched
towards her.
Don't make a —