The Dead Tracks (6 page)

    I
shrugged. 'I don't know. You don't recognize it?'

    'No,'
Lindsey said, shaking her head.

    'Kaitlin?'

    'No,'
she said.

    I
nodded, took the camera back and briefly glanced at Kaitlin. Her eyes had left
mine, and she'd gone cold again. Shut down.

    Something
was definitely up.

    Bothwick
wasn't there when I got back. I glanced at the reception where one of the
secretaries was taking a phone call, and then quickly moved inside his office,
pushing the door shut behind me. I didn't have much time.

    Two
files were perched on the edge of the desk, where he'd left them. Kaitlin and
Lindsey. I left Lindsey's where it was and picked up Kaitlin's. A school
photograph of her, probably a couple of years younger. Below that, a list of
the subjects she was taking and an attendance record. At a quick glance, it
looked pretty good. No long absences, no comments in the spaces provided. On
the next page was her home address in Tufnell Park, and on the final one her
last school report. At the bottom: A for Drama.

    So
she definitely wasn't shy.

    I
snapped the file closed, placed it back on the desk and opened up the top
drawer of the filing cabinet. The Bryant file was about eight in. Inside was a
photo of him. He was a handsome kid; dark hair, bright eyes. Underneath was a
top sheet with his address on. He lived with his father near Highgate Wood.

    Then,
outside, I could hear footsteps.

    Bothwick.

    I
closed the file, dropped it back into the cabinet drawer and closed it as
quietly as I could. A second later, he appeared in the doorway. Ah!' he said.
'Sorry about that.'

    'No
problem.'

    'Did
you get everything you needed?'

    I smiled,
briefly eyeing the files again to see they were definitely where he'd left
them. Then I shook his hand and told him I did.

    Lindsey
was right: the video store Megan used to work in was shut. Not just shut for
the day. Shut for good. I drove past it and headed along Holloway Road to the
Bryant home in Highgate, a three-storey townhouse with a double garage and a
wrought-iron porch.

    There
wasn't a single light on anywhere inside.

    I rang
the doorbell and waited. Nothing. No movement. No sound from inside. As rain
started to fall, spitting at first, then coming harder, I stepped down from the
porch and wandered around to the side. A path led parallel to the property,
behind a locked gate. I could see a sliver of garden but not much else. Walking
back to the front door, I rang the doorbell again — but when no one answered
for a second time, I headed back to the car in the rain.

    Three
weeks after Christmas, a leaflet got posted through my door. It was advertising
a support group for widows and widowers under forty-five. I wasn't a great
believer in fate. In fact, I hardly believed in it at all. But I understood why
people might when that leaflet landed on my doormat. At the time I was fresh
off a case that had almost killed me, and I'd spent Christmas alone watching
old home movies of Derryn. Physically and emotionally, I was low. So in the
second week of January, I decided, on the spur of the moment, to go along, not
expecting it to make much of a difference. Nine months later, it was still part
of my weekly routine.

    Most
Tuesdays we met in a community college in Acton, in a room that smelt of stale
coffee. But once a month, we all chipped in and went for a meal somewhere. If I
hadn't already agreed to go, I might have cancelled it to concentrate on the
Carver case, but it was too late to back out now. Instead, I headed from the
Bryant house to my office in Ealing, picked up a change of clothes and some
deodorant, and then drove to the restaurant. It was a Thai place in Kew, close
to the river.

    Something
sizzled in the kitchen as I entered, the smell of coconut and soy sauce filling
the air. There were fourteen of them sitting at a big table by one of the
windows. The woman who ran the group was a short, dumpy 32-year-old called
Jenny. Her husband had suffered a heart attack running for a train at King's
Cross. She saw me, came over and pecked me on the cheek. I'd liked Jenny pretty
much from the first time I'd talked to her. She was lively, quick-witted and
fun, but she had an understanding of people; an ability to read and connect
with them. We walked to the table together, and I apologized to everyone for
being late, shaking hands and saying hellos to some of the regulars. There were
two spaces left: one was in the middle next to an accountant called Roger, who,
after a couple of glasses of red wine, always started talking about the brake
horsepower of his Mazda RX-8; the other was right at the end, next to two faces
I hadn't seen before.

    'David,
we've got a couple of new arrivals tonight,' Jenny said. She leaned in to me as
we walked towards them. 'I was hoping you could keep them entertained for me.'

    Jenny
introduced them as Aron Crane and Jill White. They'd both lost their partners,
and had got to know each other by sharing a morning coffee-shop routine. I
wondered whether they'd since got together, but they sat apart from one another
at the table, and — as we got talking — reminisced about their partners in a
way that made it obvious they weren't a couple.

    We
ordered, and spent the next half an hour drifting through polite conversation:
the weather, the traffic, a local MP who had been caught with a rent boy and
his trousers round his ankles in a toilet in Bayswater. Both of them seemed pleasant
enough. She was closer to my age, maybe just the wrong side of forty, and had
deep blue eyes — how you imagined the sea would look in places you couldn't
afford to go — slight imperfections in her skin, like acne scars, and a small
mark just above the bump of her chin. Both she was acutely aware of. When she
talked, her hands automatically went to her face, the fingers of one hand
resting against the curve of her jaw, the other tucking her blonde hair behind
her ears. It was an appealing quality: a kind of underlying shyness.

    He
was in his mid-to-late thirties, dark brown hair, the same colour eyes and a
slightly bent nose, as if it had once been broken and not reset properly. He
was dressed conservatively — collared shirt, grey trousers, plain jacket - and
if I'd had to take a guess, I would have said he was a City suit, burning in
the fires of middle-management hell. He had a put-upon look, as if he could
never quite get his head above water.

    'So
what is it you do, David?' he asked as the food arrived.

    'I
find missing people.'

    'Like
an investigator?'

    'Yeah,
a bit like one.' I smiled. 'Except I don't have a badge to flash and I don't
get to kick down doors. Much.'

    Aron
laughed. Jill gave a thin smile, as if I'd just offended her. I tried to work
out what I'd said.
Maybe the police comment.

    Aron
looked at her, then back at me. 'Jill's husband used to be a policeman. He
was…' He looked at her again and she nodded, giving him permission to tell the
story. 'He died while on duty. Shot.' He paused. 'And she's still trying to
find out who did it.'

    'Oh,
I'm really sorry,' I said.

    She
held up a hand. 'It's okay. It's been nearly a year — I really should be better
at hiding my emotions.' She smiled for real this time.

    The conversation
moved back into more general subjects — films, sport, more on the weather —
before it led to why we were all in London. Jill was in marketing, and had only
recently moved to the city after her husband got a job with the Met; Aron
confirmed what I'd suspected — that he was in finance — and worked for an
investment bank in Canary Wharf. Eventually, things came full circle and
returned to my work.

    'So
do you enjoy what you do?' Jill asked.

    'Yeah,
most of the time.' I held up my left hand and wiggled the fingers where the
nails were damaged. Though not always. Sometimes it just hurts.'

    'How
did you do that?'

    I
paused, looking down at my fingers. 'Some people just prefer to remain hidden,'
I said, trying to make light of it, trying to deflect any further questions.

    It
was just easier that way.

    Outside,
while a couple of them — including Aron - were sorting out the bill, I got
talking to Jill on her own. The night was cold. Above us, the skies opened for a
moment and the moon moved into view; then it was gone again behind banks of
dark cloud.

    'Thank
you for keeping us company tonight, David,' she said. 'I realize it's probably
not fun being lumbered with the new people.'

    'It
was good to meet you both.'

    'I'm
really glad Aron persuaded me to come along. I wasn't sure about it, I must
admit. But I think this'll be good for me. As you know, we were fairly new to
the city when Frank died; I mean, we have friends dotted all around the
country, but not too many here in London. And I've basically spent the last
year not going out.'

    'Everyone
here will understand that part.' I glanced inside at Aron and then back to
Jill. 'So did you two just bump into each other?'

    'Pretty
much. Aron gets his morning coffee from the same place as me. I just said hello
one day and then, after that, we gradually started chatting and, well… here we
are.' She stopped. Studied me, as if turning something over in her head.
'Actually, we were thinking of going out for a drink Friday night. You're quite
welcome to come.'

    She
looked at me, her eyes dancing in the light from the restaurant. I looked
inside at Aron, laughing at something Jenny had said to him, then back to Jill.

    'I
don't want to step on any toes.'

    Her
eyes followed mine. '
Aron
?'

    I
nodded.

    'Oh,
no - we're just friends. I'm not ready for anything like that.' She glanced
inside. Why don't I take your number? I can drop you a text, or give you a
call, and if you decide you'd like to come along, then you can. But there's no
pressure.'

    I
gave her my number. As she was putting it into her phone, she looked in at Aron
again. Maybe she wasn't ready. Maybe he wasn't either. But they definitely felt
something for one another, even if it was only a kinship. And I didn't want to
get in the way, because I knew a little of how that felt; of finally finding a
connection with someone in the shadows left behind.

    My
parents had been gone for three years by the time Derryn died, and I'd been an
only child. No brothers. No sisters. I'd relied mostly on friends at first, and
— for a while - they would drop in on rotation. But then things gradually
started to change. Before Derryn died, we'd all joke around, laugh at each
other, get into beer-fuelled arguments about football and films. After I buried
her, none of that seemed to matter any more.

    Only
one person ever understood that.

    When
I got home just after eleven, I looked across the fence into next door's front
room and saw my neighbour Liz leaning over her laptop. Liz had been different
from everyone else, despite the fact she'd never had any right to be. She'd
moved in three weeks after Derryn died and didn't know me at all. But, as we
started to talk, she became the person who would sit there and listen to me -
night after night, week after week — working my way back through my marriage.

    About
three or four months in, I started to realize she felt something for me. She
never said anything, or even really acted on it. But it was there. A sense
that, when I was ready, she would be waiting. When I had needed it, she'd given
me practical help too. She was a brilliant solicitor, running her own firm out
of offices in the city. When my case before Christmas had gone bad, she'd sat
with me in a police interview room as they tried to unravel what had happened
and why. In the aftermath, I'd lied to the police and, deep down, I knew Liz
could tell. But she never confronted me, and never mentioned it. She understood
how the loss of my wife had changed the need for me to confide in someone, and
seemed willing to ride it out.