The Dead Tracks (56 page)

    No
reply. They didn't want anything committed to tape. In their faces, I could see
they were trying to figure it out. How I knew. Whether Healy had told me. How
he'd found out so much. I had them by the balls and there was no backing out
now.

    'I
get it,' I said. 'Deny all knowledge, maintain the silence. Trouble is, your
circle of trust has been breached. You're not the only people who know what
really
happened any more. The rest of the world might think it's a
one-in-a-million chance that we stumbled across seven women in that place, but
all of us here know different.'

    Davidson
looked away. Hart maintained eye contact, but his hand was hovering close to
the tape recorder, desperate for this to end. I nodded for him to push the
button.

    He
stopped the tape.

    Liz
leaned forward. 'Okay,' she said. 'Here's the deal: David walks out of here,
without charge. You leave him alone. You don't come back for him. Anything to
do with his part in this investigation is over. In return, he maintains a
dignified silence.'

    They
looked between us.

    Finally,
Hart nodded. 'Let me make some calls.'

    They
left me alone in the interview room with a cup of coffee and a bland ham and cheese
sandwich. Liz disappeared to call the office and see what she'd missed out on.
She smiled as she left - touching my arm and telling me I'd done brilliantly -
but she didn't mention anything we'd talked about earlier. I was too tired, too
drained, to figure out if the fissure that had opened between us could ever be
pushed back together again. But I was glad, at least, to have got some kind of
reaction out of her.

    There
was no clock in the interview room, but it felt like about fifteen minutes had
passed when the door opened again. I turned, expecting to see Liz.

    But
it was Phillips.

    He
looked at me, closed the door behind him and walked around to the other side of
the table. I felt like grabbing him by the collar and smashing his face through
the wall.

    'How
are you, David?' he asked, sitting down.

    I
smirked. 'Oh, just
great.'

    'Can
I get you anything else?'

    'Yeah,'
I said, pushing the coffee cup across the table. 'Another one of those — and an
explanation of what the hell you were doing at Jill's.'

    He
nodded as if he'd expected that straight off the bat. 'She called me.'

    'Why
would she do that?'

    'Because
Frank and I went way back. We came up through the ranks together and then I basically
got him the job here at the Met. I've known Jill for years.'

    'So,
what - you just hang around outside her house?'

    'She
left a weird message on my phone. She didn't say anything — it was just ten
seconds of silence - but when I called her back she didn't answer.'

    And
then it all shifted into focus: the night before, she phoned and didn't answer,
and then she'd been odd when I'd called her on the landline.
Because Crane
had come for her at home.
The first one had been a distress call. She must
have made the same call to Phillips as well. But Crane had found out — and the
next time I rang her, Crane had made her tell me everything was fine. Probably
with a knife at her throat.

    'I
didn't like it,' Phillips continued. 'So I went round there…' He glanced behind
him, even though the door was closed. 'And I managed to get into her house'
.
Just like Ewan Tasker had suspected.
'But she wasn't there. She was gone.'

    I
looked at him. 'She called me in a panic one night and said she thought someone
had been watching her place. It was you. She saw your car.'

    'It
was me. It was my car.' He paused. A long-drawn- out breath. 'Frank and I had a
kind of… arrangement. A promise we made.'

    'You'd
look out for each other.'

    'Right.
If either of us…' He stopped briefly. 'Look, when I made that promise to Frank,
when we made that promise to each other, it was one I never believed I'd have
to see through. But now I do. So from time to time, I check in on Jill. I went
past her place a couple of times on the way to the station yesterday evening.
That night you're talking about, when you went round, I guess I didn't hide
well enough. It had been a long day.'

    I
didn't say anything. Just stared at him.

    'You're
pissed off,' he said. 'I get it.'

    
'Do
you?'

    He
nodded, trying to defuse the situation. 'Believe it or not, I do.'

    'So
where's Jill?'

    'We
don't know.'

    'She
wasn't in his place in the woods?'

    'No.
Seven dead women were recovered from there - none of them her.'

    'Seven?'

    'We
found Susan Markham's body in a wall cavity.'

    She
hadn't been placed with the others. No coffin. No formalin. Which meant he
obviously didn't see her as part of his plan. She was just bait to reel Markham
in. The other women — even Leanne — were something else. All blonde. All
blue-eyed.

    All
worth keeping.

    'Anyway,'
Phillips said. 'Jill wasn't there. We tore that place apart.'

    'She's
not back home?'

    'Hasn't
been back. Hasn't been anywhere as far as we can tell. Not home, not to work,
not with her family.'

    Crane
knows where she is.
'He won't tell you?'

    'He's
not said a word. But we found photos of her in his hideout. Pictures of her,
her house, her friends. You were in some of them.' His fingers drifted to his
wedding band and he leaned back in his chair. 'He took her, I think we both
know that.' Finally his eyes moved back to mine. 'Look, David…'

    I
knew what was coming, and I wasn't about to make it easy for him.

    'I
know you could use what you know against us.'

    'You're
damn right I could. What you did with those women…' He didn't say anything,
just looked at me. I felt the anger prickle beneath my skin as I watched him,
waiting for him to justify what he'd done. 'It was wrong.'

    'Agreed.'

    'But
you did it anyway?'

    'By
keeping Glass unaware we were on to him, we were within touching distance of
the Russians. That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t erase those women. But
now we have
everything,
murders, drugs, prostitution,
people-trafficking, gunrunning, money-laundering. Was it a sacrifice worth
making?' He shrugged. 'It depends where you're standing.'

    'You
had a legal
and
moral obligation to tell their families.'

    'Try
standing next to the body of a ten-year-old prostitute who has had every hole
in her body ripped to shreds. Or at the back of a van that's just brought
seventeen women and kids into the country, all of whom have suffocated to death
because the van has no ventilation. Or next to the imported guns or the shitty
drugs that are killing people, day after day. Things aren't so clear.'

    'They
look clear.'

    He
leaned forward. 'Seven women, or seven ten-year-olds?'

    'It's
not about choosing — it's about doing it all.'

    Phillips
smiled. You're an idealist.'

    'Maybe
so. But you were wrong.'

    Phillips
started turning his wedding band again. Then he glanced at his watch. We
haven't got time for this. We need to find Jill.'

    'So
find her.'

    He
eyed me again but didn't speak.

    
What's
going on here
?

    'Hart
tells me we should cut a deal with you,' he said eventually, 'and, given what
you know, I think he's right. But what about your new friend Healy?'

    'What
about him?'

    'You
willing to help him?'

    'Help
him how?'

    'He's
going down, David. Once he's well enough to walk out of that hospital, it'll be
in a set of cuffs. Then he'll be up in front of a judge. Then he'll be behind
bars. You know what they do to bent coppers on the inside?'

    'So?'

    'So,
we're willing to go easy on Healy in return for a favour.'

    'Which
is?'

    Phillips
paused. 'We need you to interview Aron Crane.'

    Phillips
led Liz and me to a small room with a metal shelf full of electronic equipment
and a huge one-way mirror. Through it, I could see Aron Crane seated in the interview
room, alone, handcuffed to a metal arch welded into the table. He was staring
at the wall, his nose broken and bruises dotted down the side of his face where
I'd connected with the shovel. If nothing else, it made me feel good to have
hurt him.

    Next
to the audio equipment an officer sat at a computer, headphones on, a live
colour CCTV image onscreen. Also inside the room were Jamie Hart and a
uniformed superintendent. I recognized him from the last time I'd been brought
in for questioning. He stood and came across to meet us. Shook hands with Liz,
but not with me. He introduced himself as Ian Bartholomew. The top cop at the
station. He thanked me through gritted teeth for my co-operation, but didn't
seem keen on the idea of turning a blind eye to what had happened with Healy
and me. It was obviously Hart and Phillips who had persuaded him to go this
route. After Bartholomew was done, he seated himself at the back of the room
and nodded at Phillips.

    'He's
only spoken for about a minute since we brought him in,' Phillips said.

    The
door to the room opened up and a uniformed officer brought a trayful of
shop-bought coffees in. I didn't have to put up with machine effluent now they
needed my help. I took one, peeled the lid off it and watched Crane. He was
absolutely still.

    'Play
it,' Phillips said to the man at the computer.

    The
officer clicked a couple of options on the screen, and seconds later a square
of CCTV footage appeared. Phillips and Hart in the interview room with Crane.

    'You
can't stay silent all day,' Hart said.

    Crane
was looking down. He glanced at Hart, held his eye for a moment and then turned
his attention back to the surface of the table. In the corner of the screen was
a counter. 01:57:43. One hour, fifty-seven minutes into the interview and he
hadn't spoken once.

    'You
can contact a lawyer any time you want,' Hart added. 'It's your legal right to
do that.' Nothing. No response. 'Come on, Aron - where's Jill White?'

    Crane
sniffed.

    'Why
don't you tell us about David Raker instead?' Phillips offered.

    I
turned to Phillips. He didn't meet my eye.

    On-screen,
Crane finally looked up. 'Why would I do that?'

    'He
interests you.'

    'Does
he?'

    'In
your hideout you had pictures of him on your wall.'

    Crane
pursed his lips, as if he suddenly realized Phillips was right. 'I'll tell you
what,' he said. You get Raker in here to talk to me, alone, and you get your
confession.'

    'You
know we can't do that, Aron,' Phillips said.

    Crane
shrugged. 'Then I guess I don't talk.'

    'Why
do you want to talk to David Raker?'

    Nothing.

    'Aron?'

    Zero.
Crane's head had dropped again, and he was looking down at the table. A couple
of seconds later, the video froze. The clip was finished.

    'What
Does he want to talk to you about?' Bartholomew asked.

    'I've
no idea.' I looked back at Crane. 'But he seemed to think we had some kind of a
connection. Something in common.'