The Dead Tracks (8 page)

    'Sure.'

    'I
need names and addresses for each. Anything else you come up with, you can
chuck in there too as part of the fee.'

    'This
isn't gonna be a quick job.'

    'That's
fine. Just get what you can and give me a call back. I'll be out and about
tomor—' I stopped, looked at my watch '— today, so just give me a shout on my
mobile, okay?'

    'You
got it.'

    I
hung up, and looked back at Megan's face on the monitor. I'd never failed to
find a missing person. I suppose, in some ways, I had a gift for it, some sort
of magnetic pull that drew them to me, even if their bodies were the only thing
left to find. I studied her face, her features, and hoped she would be luckier
than that, just as I hoped all of them would be when I took on their cases.
Because the worst moment of all was returning to the nest, sitting down
opposite the people who had hired me, and having to tell them the child they'd
brought into this world had just been pulled back out again.

    Tiko's
— Megan, Kaitlin and Lindsey's favourite night out - was squeezed between a gay
pub called Captain S and a tattoo parlour, just off Charing Cross Road. Beyond
a door decorated in Aztec masks and dark wood, I was met by a bone-breaking
R'n'B bassline and a thousand televisions blasting MTV into my eyes. There was
one barman and a single customer. The customer had two beer bottles in front of
him and both were already finished. It had just gone 11 a.m.

    'Morning,'
the barman said as I approached.

    At the
bar there was a sign saying they served breakfast.

    'Morning.
What's on the menu?'

    'Anything
you want.' He looked around him as he dried a glass. 'The chef ain't exactly
rushed off his feet.'

    'I'll
have egg, bacon, some toast and a black coffee, then.'

    'No
problem,' he said. 'Take a seat.'

    I
slid in at the bar, about five stools away from the guy with the beer bottles.
He looked up, his eyes red and mottled. I nodded. He nodded back. Then he
dropped his head back down and stared into the empty bottles.

    I
took in the club. It was on two floors, with a winding staircase between them
and a cramped balcony above the bar area and dancefloor. There were probably
worse ways to spend a Saturday night, but I wasn't sure what they were.

    A couple
of minutes later, the barman reappeared. The first thing he did was reach into
one of the fridges and take out another bottle of beer. 'Food's ordered,
coffee's on,' he said, flipping the cap off the beer and handing it to the
other guy. 'You want anything else to drink while you're waiting'

    'Yeah,
I'll have an orange juice.'

    He
nodded. I reached into my pocket and got out a photograph of Megan I'd taken
from the box. One of her at home in her school uniform. The photo was probably
a couple of years old, but she didn't look massively different from how she did
in the most up-to-date pictures. Sometimes you had to work the percentages,
though. The younger the victim, the more emotion you generated, and the more
help you were likely to get. I held up the photograph as the barman placed my
juice down in front of me.

    'I'm
not only here for breakfast,' I said. 'I'm doing some work for the family of a
girl who used to come in here a lot.' I placed the picture down and pushed it
across to him. 'Do you recognize her?'

    He
glanced at the photo. 'Judging by that school uniform, looks like she shouldn't
have been getting in at all.'

    'I
won't tell.'

    He
nodded, smiled a little! 'She doesn’t seem familiar.'

    'I
imagine the police came in at one stage, about six months back.'

    He
raised an eyebrow. 'Police?'

    'She
used to come in with a couple of other girls her age.'

    'Is
she missing?'

    'Her
name's Megan Carver.'

    His
eyes widened for a moment. The name rang a bell. 'She was that girl on the
news. The one that disappeared.'

    'That's
her.'

    He
looked at her picture again, as if trying to see something he hadn't managed to
pick out the first rime. Then he shook his head and pushed the photo back
across the counter to me. 'I remember the news stories, but I was still sitting
with my feet up on a beach in Thailand when she went missing. I've only been
working here four months.'

    I
nodded, took the photo. 'I guess I'll just wait for my breakfast then.'

    It
arrived a couple of minutes later and was surprisingly good. The eggs were
runny, the bacon was crunchy and both slices of toast were drenched in butter.
When I was done, I pushed the plate back across the bar and set about finishing
my coffee and juice. The barman was away cleaning tables on the other side of
the room. Five stools down from me, my drinking partner had just finished his
third beer.

    I
glanced at him. He was looking down into the empty bottles, one eye open, one eye
closed. Stubble was scattered across his face. His hair looked like it had gone
weeks without shampoo. But he was dressed in good clothes: Diesel trousers, a
Ted Baker sweater, a Quiksilver bodywarmer and, sneaking out from under his
sleeve, a Gucci watch. Basically the best-dressed drunk in London.

    'Nice
breakfast?' he asked without looking up.

    'Pretty
good, yeah.'

    'You
sound surprised,' he said, his voice quiet.

    'I
am.'

    'You
shouldn't be. It's a good breakfast in here.'

    'I
know,' I said. 'I just tasted it.'

    I
pulled a twenty out of my wallet.

    'Your
girl,' he said, turning on his seat, pushing the bot- des away from him like he
wanted to forget he'd spent his breakfast necking three beers. 'Megan. She
sounded like a nice girl.'

    Now
he had my attention. You knew her?'

    'No,
I didn't know her.' He took one of the bottles and separated it out from the
group. 'But I had the Old Bill in here asking me questions about her a couple
of days after she went missing'

    I eyed
him. He sat up straight, smiled and turned towards me. He could see I was
trying to put it together in my head: the
drunk
owns this place?

    'You're
the manager?'

    'The
owner. I employ a manager.'

    'What
did the police ask you?'

    The same
sort of questions you just asked. Did she come in here? Did I recognize her?
Did she ever get into any trouble?' He paused, pulled the beer bottle back into
the group, then looked up at me again. 'I didn't have any answers for them,
just as I won't have any for you. She could have come in here for years, and
she would have meant as much to me as someone who comes in here for the first
time.' He shrugged, a little regret in his eyes. That's the nature of these
places.'

    'Did
the police take anything away?'

    'CCTV
footage.'

    'How
much?'

    'As
much as we had.'

    'Which
was how much?'

    'We
keep a year's worth. That's what our legal people and security team advise us
to do, in case anything kicks off in here and we have to go to court. We keep
an additional year as well, but only one copy of that, and in a deposit box at
a bank near St Paul's. Anything outside of those two years, we dispose of.'

    'So
the police took a year's worth of footage from you?'

    'No.
They took the six months up to, and including, the date of her disappearance,
and the month after.'

    'Did
they find anything?'

    'You'd
have to ask them that,' he said. 'But as it's sitting in the drawer of my desk
upstairs now, I guess not.'

    He
looked up at me then, and a smile spread across his face like glass cracking. I
realized then that this was a man for whom drinking wasn't enjoyable, or an
addiction, or just something to do. It was a way of finding an exit. For a
brief moment, as we locked eyes across the bar, it was like seeing my
reflection in a mirror.

    'Are
you okay?'

    He
nodded and looked away. 'Maybe I can help you.'

    And
when he looked back, his eyes were filling up. He got down off the stool and
gestured for me to follow him up to the second floor.

    His
name was Paulo Janez, and his office overlooked a tiny London backstreet, full
of townhouse doors and slivers of office space. On one wall was a huge
black-and- white painting of Tony Montana. On the other were a series of photographs.
Paulo was in most of them, as was someone I presumed was his dad. They looked
the same: dark skin, black hair, brown eyes, immaculately dressed. He caught me
looking at them.

    'My
father,' he said quietly, and sat at his desk. He opened one of the drawers and
started going through them. I sat opposite and watched in silence. Eventually
he brought out seven DVDs, bound together with two elastic bands. He closed the
drawer and placed them on the desk in front of me.

    'Be
my guest,' he said, gesturing to them.

    'That's
the seven months the police took?'

    'Correct.'

    I got
out a card and passed it across the desk to him. My guarantee I would return
the DVDs. He took the card, studied it, then nodded that he understood.

    'You
married?' he asked.

    'Not
any more.'

    'Divorced?'

    I
paused. Maybe he could sense something in me, like I could sense something in
him. A connection between us. A sadness that bubbled below the surface of the
skin.

    'My
wife died of cancer,' I said finally.

    He
nodded, seemed almost relieved, as if he'd started to doubt his initial
feelings. 'My father passed away two months ago. The only person I ever really
cared about.'

    'I'm
sorry.'

    A sad
smile wormed across his face, and then he was quiet for a moment. Take the DVDs
and see if you can find anything. I hope you do — for that family's sake.'

    Just
before 3 p.m., Caroline Carver buzzed open the front gates of her house and
watched me pull into the gravel driveway. She smiled. But, as at the restaurant
a couple of days before, it was only a smile in name. Before Megan vanished, I
imagined she had turned a lot of heads, but as she led me into the house, gaunt
and drained, I realized she was only a partial reflection of that woman now.

    We
moved through to the kitchen, where Leigh was sitting cross-legged on the
floor, pushing cars across the lino.

    'Would
you like something to drink?' she asked.

    'Just
water would be great.'

    She
nodded but made no effort to say anything else, and as she filled a glass from
the tap, I realized I was finding it difficult to get a handle on her. Normally
I was pretty effective at reading people. I could see through to what made them
tick. I wasn't sure whether it was a natural talent, or a skill cultivated
through years of watching politicians lie through their teeth. But, either way,
Caroline Carver was different. She wore herself the way you'd expect a grieving
parent to: distant, fragile, the disappearance pulling at the seams. But
sometimes I saw someone else. A woman of strength and steel who could bury her
feelings as deep as they needed to go.

    'How
are things going?' she asked finally, as she led me into the living room. She
touched Leigh's head on the way through and got no reaction in return.

    I
seated myself opposite her. 'At the moment I'm just following the same leads as
the police. I need to make sure they haven't missed anything.'