The Dead Tracks (3 page)

    I put
the pictures back into my bedside cabinet and got dressed, looking around the
room at the things of hers that still remained. We'd bought the house when we
still had plans to start a family, but as the ink was drying on the contracts,
we found out she had breast cancer. Everything seemed to go fast after that.
She battled on for two years, but our time together was short.

    Some
days I can handle the lack of time, can simply appreciate every moment we had
together and be grateful for it. But some days all I feel inside is anger for
what happened to her — and for the way I was left alone. On those days I find a
way to push that feeling down and suppress it. Because, in the work I do, there
are people who come at you through the chinks in your armour.

    And
people who feed on that weakness.

    The Carvers'
house was an old Saxon church in Dartmouth Park, overlooking Hampstead Heath.
There were three stained-glass windows at the front, and a half-oval oak door
that tapered to a point at the top. It was a beautiful building. Vines crawled
up the steel-grey brickwork, the roof a mass of dark tile and yellow moss. Two
potted firs stood either side of the door. The whole place was set behind
imposing gateposts and an attractive gravel drive that curved around to a back
garden. There was an intercom on one of the posts outside, but James Carver had
already left the gate ajar, anticipating my arrival.

    The
gravel was a useful alarm call. Carver looked up as I moved through the gates,
half bent over a bucket of water, washing down the back of a black Range Rover
Sport with tinted windows and spotless steel rims. In the double garage behind
him was a Ford pick-up with building supplies in the bed and a gleaming red
Suzuki motorbike.

    'David,'
he said, dropping a sponge into the bucket.

    We
shook hands. 'I like the car.'

    I
nodded at the Range Rover, soapsuds sliding down its bumper. He glanced back at
it, but didn't say anything. I figured he was trying to play down the fact that
his supercharged five-litre all-terrain vehicle was worth more than some
people's houses. Or maybe he genuinely didn't care any more. Money didn't mean
a lot when it couldn't buy back the only thing that mattered to you.

    He
ushered me through the front door.

    Inside
it was huge. Oak floorboards and thick carpets. A living room that led into a
diner that led into a kitchen. The kitchen was open plan, steel and glass, the
walls painted cream. Above, the ceiling soared up into an ornate cove, and
there was a balcony that ran across three sides of the interior wall, with a staircase
up to it. Off the balcony, I could make out two bedrooms and a bathroom.

    'You
designed this?'

    He
nodded. 'Well, the balcony portion of it. The church has been here a lot longer
than any of us.'

    'It's
beautiful.'

    'Thank
you. We've been very fortunate.' A pause. The significance of what he'd said
hit home. 'In some ways, anyway.'

    I
followed him across to the kitchen.

    'You
want some coffee?'

    'Black
would be great.'

    He
removed two mugs from a cupboard. 'I don't know what you want to do,' he said,
filling both. 'Megan's room is upstairs. You're welcome to head up there and
have a look around. Or, if you prefer, I can show you.'

    'I
might have a look around by myself,' I said, taking the coffee from him. 'But I
do have some questions for you.'

    'Sure.'
He smiled, and I realized it was a defence mechanism. A way to hide the pain.
'Whatever it takes.'

    We
moved through to the living room. At the back of the room, the Carvers' son
Leigh was on all fours directing a plastic car under a telephone stand. He
looked up as we entered, and when his father told him to say hello, he mumbled
something and returned to the car.

    I
removed a pen and pad. 'So let's talk a little more about 3 April.'

    'The
day she went missing.'

    'Right.
Did you always drop her off at school?'

    'Most
mornings.'

    'Some
mornings you didn't?'

    'Occasionally
Caroline did. If my business has a contract further afield I like to go along
to the site for the first couple of weeks. After that, I tend to leave it to
the foreman to take care of, and do all the paperwork from home. That's when I
took…' He paused. 'When I take Megan to school and drop Leigh off at nursery.'

    'So
you had a site visit on 3 April?'

    'Yes.'

    'Which
is why Caroline dropped her off?

    'Correct.'

    'Did
she pick Megan up as well?'

    'No,
that was me.'

    'What
happened?'

    'I
parked up outside,' he said. 'Same spot, every day. But Megan never came out.
It was as simple as that. She went in, and never came out.'

    I
took down some notes. 'What was Megan studying?'

    The
sciences — Physics, Chemistry, Biology.'

    'Did
you ever meet her teachers?'

    'A
couple of times.'

    'What
were they like?'

    'They
seemed nice. She was a good student.'

    He gave
me their names and I added them to my pad.

    Then
I changed direction, trying to keep him from becoming too emotional. 'Did Megan
have a part-time job anywhere?'

    'She
worked at a video store on alternate weekends.'

    'Did
she like it?'

    'Yeah.
It earned her some money.'

    'Who
else worked there?'

    'Names?
I don't know. You'd have to go and ask.'

    'What
about places she used to go?'

    'You
mean pubs and clubs?'

    'I
mean anything,' I said. 'Anywhere she liked to go.'

    'You'd
have to ask her friends about the places they used to go on a weekend. When
they all got paid, they'd often go into the city. But I'm not sure where they
used to go.'

    'What
about places you used to take her?'

    'We
often used to head up country - the Peak District, the Lake District, the
Yorkshire Dales. Caroline and I love the open spaces there. London suffocates
you after a while. We started taking Meg up north as soon as she was old enough
to walk.'

    'Do
you think she could have gone to one of those places?'

    He
shrugged. 'I don't know whether she would have gone north when I don't know why
she left in the first place.'

    I'd
asked them both about boyfriends the day before, but I wanted to ask them again
individually. What you learned quickly in missing persons was that every
marriage had secrets — and that one half of the couple always knew more than
the other, especially when kids were involved. 'As far as you know, she didn't
have a boyfriend?'

    'As
far as I know.'

    'What's
your gut feeling?'

    'My
gut feeling is it's a possibility she met someone.' He moved a little in his
seat, coming to the edge of it. 'Do you think that's our best hope?'

    'I
think it's worth pursuing. Kids Megan's age tend to disappear for two reasons:
either they're unhappy at home, or they've run away with someone - probably
someone their parents don't approve of. It doesn’t sound like she was unhappy
at home, so that's why I'm asking about boyfriends. We may find out Megan
hasn't run off with someone.' I paused, looked at him. 'Or we may find out she
has.'

    'But
if she'd run off with someone, wouldn't she have seen the press conferences we
did? The Megan I know wouldn't have ignored them. She wouldn't have ignored the
pain she was putting us through. She would have called us.'

    I
looked at him, then away - but he'd seen the answer, and it wasn't the one he
wanted. It was the one where she didn't come home alive.

    Megan's
room was beautifully presented and had barely been touched since her disappearance.
A big bay window looked out over Hampstead Heath, wardrobes either side of it.
A three-tiered bookcase was on the right, full of science textbooks. Opposite
the window, close to the door, was a small desk with a top-of-the-range MacBook
sitting on it, still open. Photographs surrounded the laptop: Megan with her
friends; Megan holding Leigh when he was a baby; Megan with her mum and dad.
There was also a rocking chair in one corner of the room, soft toys looking
out, and a poster of a square-jawed Hollywood heart-throb on the wall above
that.

    I
booted up the MacBook and went through it. The desktop was virtually empty,
everything tidied into folders. Homework assignments. Word documents.
University prospectuses as PDF files. Clicking on Safari, I moved through her
bookmarks, her history, her cookies and her download history — but, unless you
counted a few illegal songs, nothing stood out. There was a link to her Face-
book profile in the browser — the email and password automatically logged — but
the only activity in the last seven months was the creation of a group
dedicated to her memory. Judging by the comments, most people were assuming she
wasn't coming home.

    Both
wardrobes were full of clothes and shoes, but the second one had a couple of
plastic storage boxes stacked towards the back. I took them out and flipped the
lid off the top one: it was full of pictures. The younger Megan got in the
photographs, the less like her father she became. As a young girl, she was a
little paler with strikingly white hair, and without any of the similarities
that were so startling in more recent pictures. Later pictures were less worn
by age, her parents older, her face starting to mirror some of the shape of her
father's.

    I
opened up the next box.

    A
digital camera was inside. I took it out, switched it on and started cycling
through the photographs. There were twenty-eight in all, mostly of Leigh. A
couple near the end were of Megan and what must have been her friends, and in
the final one she was standing outside what looked like the entrance to a block
of flats. I used the zoom and moved in closer: the entrance doors had glass
panels in them that reflected back the day's light in two creamy blocks. A
sliver of a brick wall on the right-hand side. Nothing else.

    I
returned to her MacBook and booted up iPhoto, hoping to find a bigger version —
but none of the pictures on the camera were on the computer. She hadn't got
around to downloading them. I checked the date on the camera: 6 March. Twenty-eight
days before she disappeared. Zooming in again, I studied the photo a second
time, but the reflection in the glass would have been the most useful
identifier of where she was and it was full of light. Then, when I came back to
her face, I noticed something.

    Her
smile.

    It
was a smile I hadn't seen in any of the other pictures of her. For the first
time, she didn't look like a girl. She looked like a woman.

    
Because
she's posing for someone she's attracted to
.

    'Find
anything?'

    I turned.
Carver was standing in the doorway.

    'I'm
not sure,' I said, and held up the camera and the storage box. 'Can I take
these?'

    'Of
course.' He came further in. 'I've been through those pictures hundreds of
times. So have the police. Some days you feel like you've missed something. You
think you've let something slip by. Then, when you go back, you only find what
you found before. But maybe this whole thing needs a fresh pair of eyes.'

    He
moved further in and picked up an early photograph of Megan. I watched his eyes
move across the picture, soaking up the memories. When he finally looked up, I
could see he was trying to prevent his eyes filling with tears.

    'Do
you know where this is?' I asked him, handing him the camera.

    He looked
at the picture and studied it; shook his head.