The Dead Tracks (57 page)

    'Like
what?' Phillips asked.

    I
shook my head. 'I don't know.'

    'This
is highly unusual,' Bartholomew said. Next to him, Hart shuffled in his seat,
two thin hands together on his lap. 'We're not running a circus here.'

    'So I
won't talk to him.'

    Bartholomew
and Phillips looked at one another. The superintendent got to his feet and came
across to me. 'I don't like this, Mr Raker,' he said. 'I don't like any of it.'

    'That
makes two of us.'

    'What
could possibly make you so special to him?'

    'I
don't know,' I said, sipping my coffee and stepping all the way up to the
glass. 'But I've got a feeling I'm about to find out.'

    Aron
Crane looked up as I entered. Behind me, a uniformed officer closed the door.
The room was warm and had no windows. No clocks. No daylight. It could have
been any time of the day. Crane remained perfectly still, both his hands flat
to the table, eyes fixed on me. I sat down. He took a quick sideways glance at
the one-way mirror.

    'Hello,
David,' he said softly.

    I
studied his face. 'What do you want with me?'

    He
looked at me, half smiling, but didn't reply.

    'If
you sit there in silence, I get up and walk out, and I promise you: I don't
come back again.'

    He
started nodding. 'Fair enough.'

    'Where's
Jill?'

    'Why
don't we start at the beginning instead?' He ran his tongue along his lips,
over a cut on the bottom. Then he used his free hand to hoist up his sleeve,
and on the underside of his arm was a scar, almost like a burn mark. 'Isabelle
Connors.'

    
The
first woman he killed
.

    'What
about her? She did that to you?'

    He
looked down at his arm.

    'Sweet
girl, really,' he said, 'but a nasty temper. A bit…
unpredictable.
She
didn't like the whole…' He used his right hand to wave a couple of fingers in
front of his face.

    'Came
out of her anaesthetic a little quicker than I'd hoped and, before you know it,
there's half a bottle of sulphuric acid on my arm.' He stopped. Eyes widened.
'Ouch.'

    He
touched a finger to the scar. It was mottled and dark pink.

    'Lesson
I learned? Never buy Sodium Pentothal from Romania. I switched my anaesthetics
after that. Got some diethyl ether in from Russia, and that was fine for a
while — but eventually I got bored of cleaning up all the puke. It tends to
make you feel a bit green around the gills, that stuff.' He paused, studied me.
'Stop me if I'm boring you, David.'

    I
didn't say anything.

    'So
it was on to halothane, and that worked well until Sona. Sadly, I once again
failed in my job as a part-time anaesthetist. Now you know why they train for
seven years.'

    He
leaned back in his seat as if he was done.

    'Are
you even a qualified doctor?'

    He
nodded. 'Five years at medical school, a year of pre- registration, two years
of general medical training, a year specializing in plastics. I know how to do
a facelift, if that's what you mean. But am I a
qualified
plastic
surgeon? No, I'm not.' He rubbed his fingers against his thumb. 'Opportunities
arose in my second year of specializing that were more rewarding than following
a consultant around and holding a pair of scissors for him.'

    'You
mean organized crime?'

    'You
know how much a plastic surgeon makes a year on the NHS?'

    I
shook my head, all the time trying to work out his play. Trying to figure out
the direction he was headed, and the traps he was attempting to set.

    'Bottom
tier, probably seventy grand. Good ones, eighty or ninety. The best, around the
hundred-grand mark. You know how much I made doing that Russian's face?' He
meant Akim Gobulev. The Ghost. He tilted his head slightly. 'David?'

    'How
much?'

    He
broke out into a smile. 'I thought you'd nodded off for a moment.'

    'How
much?'

    Two
hundred and fifty grand. For
one face.
I made more in seven hours than
the top surgeons in the NHS make in a
year.
They're busy doing
micro-surgery. Worthy procedures like unfucking a guy's leg after a motorbike
accident, or transplanting muscle. I'm making twice that and putting in half
the effort. Taking his jaw back, augmenting his cheekbones, lifting the eyes, tightening
his face, thinning out his nose, moving bones, liposucking and cutting and
filling. It's complicated, but…' He put a finger to his lips and made a
ssshhhhh
gesture. 'He was fucking ugly in the first place, so no one minded
that my work looked like shit.'

    I
stared at him. 'This must feel great.'

    'How
so?'

    You're
just like your hero Milton Sykes now.' I nodded at his hand, chained to the
metal arch on the table. You can both go down in the history books.'

    He
laughed. 'True. Only, he didn't bank one and a half million in a single year.'

    A
smile lingered on his face. One of the nails on his right hand had been torn
away. It looked fresh; puffy bruising on the tip of his middle finger. He moved
his hand across the table like a spider, the finger out in front.

    'It's
good to be rich, David,' he said softly.

    I
ignored him. 'Why the women?'

    'We
all have certain tastes.'

    'Why
operate on them?'

    He
shrugged. Didn't say anything.

    'What
were you hoping to achieve?'

    He
glanced at the one-way mirror again and turned back to me, eyes wide. 'I wanted
to make an army of lookalikes!' He burst into laughter and leaned back in his
seat. Then he stopped, like a light going out. 'No, seriously, I just like
cutting up women.'

    His
words hung in the air, and a silence settled between us. I looked at him. His
face was set like concrete. Nothing to read.

    'So
why didn't you cut up Megan?'

    He
didn't reply.

    'What,
you're happy to murder women, but you draw the line at pregnant teenagers?' A
flicker of something in his face. 'I know that's not true.'

    He
frowned. 'And why's that?'

    'The
container you left behind at Mile End.'

    No
response.

    'One
adult heart. One child's.'

    I
thought of the cask. The police had found it in Healy's car after getting to
the woods. Now it was probably in a forensics lab somewhere.

    'This
ringing any bells with you?' I asked him.

    Again,
no reply. His face was blank now.

    'Who
else was pregnant?' Still nothing. Eventually, when it was obvious he wasn't
going to be drawn, I turned to the one-way glass. 'Did any of the other women
show signs of having given birth? A C-section? Vaginal trauma?' A pause. A
click. Then an echoey response from Phillips:
'No
.' Silence in the interview
room again. I looked at Crane. 'Whose hearts were they?'

    He
watched me, the forefinger and thumb of his left hand brushing together. A
thinking gesture. Finally, he shrugged. 'It's not important to this case.'

    'Which
case?'

    'The
six women.'

    I
studied him. 'Do you mean you've killed more?'

    He
sniffed. The six women, they were all just practice runs. I cut them up because
it felt good. I
like
cutting people. But I did it in the name of
research too.'

    'What
research?'

    'I wanted
to see how faces could be changed. Think of those women as the first of two
canvases. And the second one was the masterpiece.'

    'What
do you mean?'

    He
went to speak then stopped himself. Drummed his fingers on the table. 'I just
like blondes, David — what can I say?'

    'What
research?' I said again, fists clenched.

    'I
guess it's a Marilyn Monroe thing' He flashed a smile again. 'Or maybe they
remind me of my mother.'

    'Why
would you say that?'

    'Isn't
that what we're all about?'

    '"We're"?'

    'Serial
killers.' Another smile drifted across his lips. 'Come on, David. You know as
well as I do that a serial killer has got to stick to his MO. It's
so
important.
Well, the women ticked all the boxes for me. Blonde. Good,
strong features. A few flaws — but nothing that couldn't be rectified with a
quick…' He used his free hand to simulate the slash of a knife. They were
feminine. Pretty. Slim - but not all skin and bone. I don't like them like
that. I like them with a bit of shape. If I wanted skeletons, I'd dig them up.'

    'Where
did you meet them?'

    He
looked at me. Still, except for his eyes, which moved across my face. 'I met
them around and about. Feisty little Isabelle I met at a workshop I was
attending.'

    'A medical
workshop?'

    'No.
I was learning how to make masks. Kind of a part- time vocation. After all, I
didn't have a day job, and there were only so many Ferraris I could buy with
all that dirty money.' His eyes sparkled. 'One of the consultants that I shadowed
during my year of specialist training put the idea into my head. Weird little
man, he was. He used to order in purpose-made latex masks to put on to dummies,
so that we'd always have to look at a face when we were talking about cutting
into something. He thought it would be a way of humanizing everything; even
mounds of plastic. If you always had to look at a face, you'd always tread more
carefully. Except I didn't give a shit about any of that. I just kept looking
at the masks and thinking how it would feel to become someone else.'

    'So
why Sykes?'

    'I
found him interesting.'

    'Because
he killed thirteen women?'

    'No,
because people are still scared of him, even now. You go down to Hark's Hill
and mention his name to the old-timers, and they'll fill their pants on the
spot. You mention him to the kids that live around there and they might not
have heard of him, but they'll know one thing: there's something wrong with
that place. I mean, you've been there, David. You've felt it, right?'

    I
didn't say anything.

    He
smiled. 'Of course you've felt it. He buried thirteen women in those woods, and
no one could find them. And as long as no one found them, that place never lost
its power. And all they could do in the end was put up a concrete wall and a
fence at one end and let nature take over everywhere else. Try to forget about
the bodies, and the house he'd been born in, and the ghosts that wander through
that place.' He paused and leaned forward, dropping his voice to a whisper.
'But I didn't forget about them. I
had
to find those bodies.'

    'Why?'

    'Let's
call it a psychological advantage. Find the bodies, and Sykes has no hold over
that place any more. He's no longer the daddy.' He paused. Winked, '
I
am.'

    'You're
fucking nuts.'

    'Am
I?'

    
'Listen
to yourself.'

    'I'm
listening.' He cupped his free hand to his ear. 'Oh, I think I sound
great,
David. I mean, I'm the man who found Milton Sykes's
victims.
The police
should be thanking me. I solved a hundred-year-old mystery.'

    'How
did you know where they were?'

    He
leaned forward. Brushed a finger against his broken nose. 'The dog found them.'

    'The
greyhound?'