The Dead Tracks

    We
met in a restaurant on the Thames called Boneacres. They were sitting in a
booth at the back. Rain was running down the windows and both of them were
staring out at a queue of people waiting in line for the Eye. The woman looked
up first. Caroline Carver. She'd been crying. The whites of her eyes were stained
red, and some of her makeup had run. She was slim and well dressed, in her mid
forties, but didn't wear it well: there were lines in her face — thick and dark
like oil paint - that looked as if they'd been carved with a scalpel, and
though she smiled as I approached, it wasn't warm. She'd been past warm. Most
of the parents I dealt with were like that. The longer their kids were missing,
the colder their lives became.

    She
slid out from the booth and we both shook hands, then she made way for her husband.
James Carver. He was huge; a bear of a man. He didn't get up, just reached
across the table and swallowed my hand in his. I knew a little about them
already, mostly from Caroline's initial phone call a couple of days before.
She'd told me they lived in an old church — converted into a four-bedroom home
— from which he ran his building firm, a business he'd built up over fifteen
years. Judging by the property's two-million-pound price tag, the name brands
they were sporting and some of his celebrity clients, it was keeping them
pretty comfortable.

    He
smiled at me, more genuine than his wife, and gestured to the other side of the
booth. I slid in. The menu was open. The restaurant had been their suggestion,
and when I looked at the prices, I was glad they were paying.

    'Thanks
for coming,' Carver said.

    I
nodded. 'It seems like a nice place.'

    Both
of them looked around, as if they hadn't thought about it before. Carver
smiled. Caroline's eyes snapped back to the menu.

    'We used
to come in here before we were married,' he said. 'Back when it was a steak and
seafood place.' His wife glanced at him, and he reached over and took her hand.
'Caroline tells me you used to be a journalist.'

    'Once
upon a time.'

    'Must
have been interesting.'

    'Yeah,
it was fun.'

    He
glanced at my left hand. Two of my fingernails were sunken and cracked, a blob
of white scarring prominent in the centre where the veneer would never grow
back.

    Those
your battle scars?' he asked.

    I glanced
at the nails. 'No. They got added more recently.'

    'So
why did you give it all up?'

    I
looked at him, then across to Caroline. 'My wife was dying.'