The Dead Tracks (49 page)

    'What
did he look like?'

    'Dark
hair, dark eyes, kind of… ugly, I guess. He had this big forehead, and this
horrible smile that looked like it could never… I don't know, form properly.'

    Healy
and I glanced at each other. The Milton Sykes mask.

    'Did
he speak to you at all?'

    Yes.
But always through this microphone thing. There was always static when he
spoke. Feedback. He had a series of speakers hooked up inside the place he kept
me, and his voice would always come through those. It was…' She paused. 'It was
frightening. Why do you think he did that'

    'So
he could always communicate,' I said. 'He could talk to you, scare you, tell
you whatever he wanted, and he wouldn't even have to be in the same room as
you.'

    She
nodded.

    'How
did you escape?' Healy asked.

    'I
woke up,' she said. 'I wasn't meant to. He'd put me under anaesthetic and was…'
A pause. Cutting me open. 'But I woke up.' She peered off behind her for a
moment, into the bathroom. 'Some days I look at myself in the mirror and wish I
hadn't.'

    In
the file Healy had given me earlier, it said she had hypopigmentation — a
complete loss of skin colour - as a result of a chemical peel that had gone too
deep. Phenol and small traces of croton oil had been found in her skin, both of
which were used in cosmetic surgery as an exfoliant. Removing the outer layers
of skin helped revitalize the face, smoothing out wrinkles in the process. But
the peel had burned away too much of Sona's face and gone much too deep,
eliminating colouring and freckles. He'd been preparing her skin for treatment
for weeks, asking her to apply a liquid moisturizer twice daily. But the end
result had gone horribly wrong.

    And
that bothered me.

    Glass
may have been a surgeon-for-hire but nothing he'd done so far was amateur. He
was meticulous. Exact. Covered his tracks. He would know how far to go when
performing a face peel, even if the end results weren't as good as you'd find
for five figures at a west London clinic. So why go as deep as he did? And why
perform the surgery in the first place? Did he just like cutting women up?
Somehow I doubted it. A man like this had a plan. He operated on women because
it served some wider purpose.

    I
watched Sona run a finger across her face, over the bridge of her nose and then
along the scar at her hairline. Her nose looked horrific but would recover. The
scarring at her ears was a blood red, but would do the same. Her file had
called the injuries 'the early stages of rhinoplasty and a rhytidectomy': a
nose job and facelift. For the nose job, he'd been cutting from the inside and
rasping down the hump. It explained the bruising at the bridge. For the
facelift, he'd cut in along her hairline, down past the ear and around the ear
lobe to the back. The idea was to separate the skin from the tissue and tighten
its appearance. Except he'd never got that far because Sona had woken up. She
probably knew how lucky she was. A facelift was the most complicated procedure
of them all. Hit a nerve, and the next time you open your eyes it looks like
you've had a stroke.

    'What
happened after you escaped?'

    She
turned back to me. 'I just ran.'

    'Can
you describe the place he was keeping you?'

    'By
that time, my face was…' She shook her head. 'It was on fire. And I was scared.
I don't think I've ever felt so much pain in my life. One of the doctors at the
hospital told me a deep peel like that should be performed under anaesthetic.
But I woke up from mine. By the time I found my way out, I didn't feel numb any
more. I felt everything. I could hardly put one foot in front of the other.'

    She
looked between us, then took a moment, holding up her hand to apologize. 'All I
remember about the place that he kept me was that it looked like a sewer —
except there was nothing running through it. It was all dry. Cleaned out. It
looked like it might have been adapted somehow, and he'd built a series of
rooms inside it, with big glass windows.'

    'Rooms?'

    'There
was a girl in one of them.'

    'Did
you get a look at her?' Healy asked, shuffling across the sofa towards her.

    'No.'

    'Was
she alive?'

    'Yes.'

    'Did
you see anyone else?'

    She
shook her head. 'No. No one else.'

    Healy
leaned back in his seat, his mind ticking over. I picked up the conversation,
trying to keep the momentum going. 'So, you were underground?'

    'Yes.
I escaped through a manhole cover — almost like some kind of service tunnel -
into the kitchen of this old house. The walls were all decayed and cracked.
Everything was a mess. There was an upstairs, but there was no floor. It was
just one big room. The roof had broken too, and there was graffiti on the walls
and glass all over the place.'

    'Any
sign it was lived in at all?'

    'No,'
she said. 'No way. It had been abandoned a long time ago.'

    'Anything
else you remember?'

    There
were trees overhead - in the space where the roof should have been. They were
kind of crawling through the roof and into the house. But apart from that, I
don't remember much. I'm sorry, I just got out of there and ran.'

    'Ran
where?'

    'Towards
the river.'

    'So
the house was on the edge of a river?'

    'Yes.'

    'What
did the house look like from the outside?' I asked.

    'Concrete.
There were trees and vines and stuff all over the roof and the outside walls.'

    'What
was around it?'

    'Not
much.' She shook her head, and I could see the emotion was starting to take
over. She brushed a finger to her eye. 'I was just running.'

    'To
the river?'

    'Yes.
As fast as I could.'

    'Anything
else close to the river you remember?'

    'The river
was narrow. Like, seriously narrow. More like a canal, I guess. Maybe only six
feet across. On the other side there was just a concrete wall: high, with no
path in front of it.' She wiped an eye again, but the memories were starting to
flow now. 'On my side, there was a path, but it was uneven; full of holes and
mud. But I didn't take in much after that.'

    'Why?'

    'He
came after me.'

    'He
chased you?'

    Yes.'

    'But
he obviously didn't catch you?'

    'No.'

    'Because
you fell into the river?'

    She
nodded. 'I was barefoot. But that path… it was so uneven. So dangerous. I was
either going to break my ankle or fall into the water - and I fell into the
water.' Sona leaned forward. With her fingers, she parted her hair at the crown
of her head. A blood-red line wormed its way across her skull, stitching still
visible in it. 'I cracked my head open and must have blacked out for a second
before I came to again.'

    'What
happened then?'

    There
was a current in the water. I remember him watching me as the river took me
away. He ran after me at first, then when he saw I was going too fast, he
stopped. Everything was fuzzy, like I was looking through gauze. I could make
out trees and I remember the path finishing after a while, and there just being
more concrete and more trees. Oh, and there must have been a slight bend
because -' Sona paused and rubbed at the scar on her scalp '— after a while, he
disappeared from sight.'

    'Anything
else?' Healy asked.

    Her
eyes narrowed, trying to fish for memories.

    'It's
okay, Sona,' I said, keeping the expectation out of my voice. 'If that's it, if
that's all you can remember, that's really good.'

    'There
was maybe a warehouse,' she continued softly, 'but I just remember the current
being really fast, and — as it took me away — the pain starting to seriously
kick in. After that, I must have blacked out again.'

    'You
were found near the Royal Docks, right?'

    She
nodded. They reckon the gown he'd dressed me in blew up and acted as a makeshift
buoyancy aid. The current carried me out into the Thames.'

    Out
from a tributary — which narrowed it down to two possible creeks: Barking or
Bow. Both opened out on to the Thames, either side of where she was found.
Barking would have made for a simpler investigation: it cut through the city,
bisecting Creekmouth and Beckton before roughly following the North Circular
through to Ilford. Once it got to Barking itself, it moved in one, relatively
straight line north. Bow Creek was different: a two-mile tidal estuary that
then fed into the River Lea and became miles and miles and miles of waterways.
Her vague description wasn't likely to help: the closer to the Thames you got,
the more industry started tracing the path of the water. Eventually all it became
was the corrugated iron of warehouse walls and brand-new property developments
built on the bones of old ones. If the house was abandoned that might help —
but the city's river system was a maze. It would take months to walk it all,
even if you narrowed down the distance Sona would have travelled given tidal
currents.

    I
turned to Healy. 'Police haven't found the location of the building yet?'

    He
looked between Sona and me. Shook his head. 'No. They're not close to finding
it.' In his face, I could see what he was saying to me:
And that's because
this is the most she's talked since she was found
.

    When
I turned back to Sona, she looked tired. She covered one side of her face with
a hand - then her mobile phone started buzzing. It was on the sofa next to her.
She looked down at it. 'It's Jamie Hart.'

    'You
should probably answer it,' I said.

    'I
don't think that's a good idea,' Healy replied.

    I
turned to him. 'Why do you think they're calling her? Because they guessed we'd
come and find her. They're probably already on their way. It's too late.' I
turned back to her. 'It's fine to answer it, Sona.'

    She
picked up the phone. 'Hello?'

    'Sona,
it's Jamie Hart.'

    We
could hear him. She looked back at me. I smiled and nodded for her to continue.
'Hello,' she said quietly.

    'I
just wanted to let you know that we're on our way over.'

    I
looked at Healy, then back to Sona.

    Healy
got to his feet and went straight to the window that looked out into the courtyard.
Inched the curtains across. Leaned in closer to the glass so he could see along
the pathway that led from the main road into the courtyard.

    'We're
about two minutes out,' Hart said to her.

    'Fine.'

    'We'll
see you in a moment.'

    The
call ended.

    'We
need to leave,' Healy said. I glanced at Sona: she was starting to wonder what
she'd got herself into now, whether she should have trusted us.

    'I
just need to ask one more question.'

    '
Raker,
'
Healy said. We need to go.'

    I held
up a hand. 'I know. One question.'

    She
looked between us.

    'You
said you couldn't make sense of the things you heard after Markham attacked
you, after you blacked out. What did you mean by that?'

    Healy
was looking at his watch.

    She
frowned. 'I mean, I heard things. Out-of-place things.'

    'Like
what?'

    Silence.

    Then:
'After Mark said "I can't do this any more," everything was black.
But…' She paused. 'But I swear I could hear something. I swear I could hear
whimpering.'

    As we
were jogging down the steps of the house, we saw Hart and Davidson pass the
entrance to the complex in an unmarked Ford Focus. They were headed for the car
park. 'He'll see my car,' Healy said, panting already.