by Tim Weaver
I went to nod again. Then stopped. He was talking about her dress. I’d overlooked the connection, forgotten it in the blur of the last couple of hours.
‘They found her dress behind a board in his kitchen,’ I said.
‘Bingo. And now they’ve found Megan’s blouse behind a board in your kitchen. I think we can safely assume whoever’s pinned this on you has a hard-on for Sykes. He looks like him, and now he wants to be like him.’
‘Maybe the guy wants to be like Sykes. Maybe he’s somehow involved in Megan going missing. But I don’t think he’s the man who took her.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the man who took her worked at the youth club.’
He stopped. Studied me. Looked outside into the corridor then pushed the door shut as far as it would go without fully closing it. ‘Is that the lead you gave Phillips and Davidson?’ He could see the answer in my face: yes. He rolled his eyes. ‘Why?’
‘Because I was screwed.’
He shifted on the spot. Looked out through the door again, then back to me. ‘How do you know this Sykes guy didn’t work at the youth club?’
‘Because if he did, why isn’t he on their records? For a place like that, you have to pass CRB checks. And if he did that, his picture and his details would be on file at the youth club. But he isn’t anywhere near the place.’
‘So if it’s not him, who is it?’
I didn’t answer. Eyed him. ‘Why should I even trust you?’
‘Because I’m your only friend inside this house. And you’re gonna need a friend. Even if you get bail tonight, the evidence won’t go away.’
‘Forensics won’t find anything.’
‘You sure?’
‘My prints aren’t on the photos.’
‘Maybe they’re not,’ Healy said, glancing out to the corridor again. ‘Or maybe they are. Maybe the blood in that blouse is yours. Maybe whoever’s setting you up has been hunting around in your soap and put one of your cock hairs inside the doll. Who the fuck knows? If he’s good enough to set you up, he’s good enough to finish the job. You wanna wait around to find out – or do you want to try and finish this before you get flushed for something you didn’t do?’
‘Finish it?’
He looked at me, but didn’t say anything.
‘What are we finishing, Healy?’
His eyes drifted outside to the corridor again. He was nervous. On edge. It looked like he was about to say something, but then he just cleared his throat.
‘Why aren’t they linking Leanne to Megan?’
He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We both know you’re still working her case on the quiet. You’re still trying to find out what happened to her. Why aren’t they tying Leanne to Megan?’
A lingering look at me. But no response.
‘She worked at the same place as Megan. She even looked a bit like Megan. You know all this already. You know the youth club is what ties them together. Everyone here knows that. So why is Phillips telling me they’re not linked?’
Silence. I studied him, and realized his nervousness wasn’t borne out of being caught; it was out of being caught before he’d had the chance to find out where his daughter had gone. He was fuelled by anger, sadness and revenge. Later on down the line that could become dangerous. But at the moment it was helping him focus. No mistakes. No errors. No slip-ups.
‘Look, I’m neck-deep in shit,’ I said to him. ‘We can both see that. So I have an agenda just like you. You want to find your girl; I don’t want to go down for what they’re trying to pin on me. I need to be ready for what mud they sling in my direction next. I need to be armed. You understand that, don’t you?’
After a couple of seconds he nodded.
‘Good.’ I paused, studied him. It was going to be hard to get beneath his skin. He wasn’t used to giving things up or sharing information. He looked at me and away again. He was telling me I would have to go first. And I knew, at the moment, with the situation I was in, I didn’t have much of a choice. ‘Daniel Markham.’
He flicked a look at me. ‘What about him?’
‘I think that’s the guy who took Megan.’
‘But we interviewed him.’
‘Obviously not well enough.’
‘Why him?’
‘Because Megan was sleeping with him.’
A pause. ‘What?’
‘And she was pregnant.’
‘What?’ He hardly moved. Just stared at me. Then, finally, he rubbed a hand across his forehead and turned away. ‘By Markham?’
‘That’s the assumption.’
Something flashed in his eyes. There and then gone. A moment’s thought that it was Leanne and not Megan who had been pregnant. A young girl, scared and alone with a man she thought she’d known – but hadn’t really known at all.
‘Who told you this?’
‘One of Megan’s friends.’
‘And she didn’t think to tell the police?’
‘She was warned off.’
‘By who?’
‘Charlie Bryant.’
‘The dead kid?’
I nodded. Healy knew the case intimately: all the files, all the names, every word of every interview. He didn’t need me to explain who they were or how they fitted in.
‘How much of this do Phillips and Davidson know?’ he asked.
‘Just that Megan might have been seeing someone at the youth club. They don’t know about the pregnancy.’
‘Why would he warn her off telling the police?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
He looked at his watch. ‘What have you found out about Markham?’
I thought of the flat. The emptiness of it. The message behind the bathroom cabinet. ‘He’s definitely involved.’
‘Meaning?’
‘His flat. He’s not living there any more, but something’s up. I can show you when I get out of here, but I need you to get what you can on him in the meantime. His CRB check came up clean, so there’s nothing on record. But there must be something.’
Healy nodded. His mind was turning things over. Outside in the corridor, a noise. A door opening and shutting. Healy looked out. ‘Where’s PC Harrison?’ said a voice.
It was Davidson.
‘He’s gone to look for you.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Keeping an eye on your suspect.’
A short silence. I could sense the suspicion passing along the corridor. ‘What the hell’s taking so long?’ Davidson asked.
‘He’s having a shit,’ Healy replied.
‘Tell him he’s got one minute.’
‘You’ve got one minute,’ Healy shouted, looking off to his left, where the stalls ran in a line. Outside in the corridor the same sound: a door opening and then closing.
‘I gotta go,’ Healy said.
‘What do you know about Frank White?’
A tiny movement in his face.
‘Healy?’
‘He was one of the coppers killed in that shoot-out down in Bow.’
‘I know Phillips is working another case parallel to this one. I know because he told me. I know Frank White and Megan are connected somehow. Something happened that night at the warehouse.’ Healy didn’t say anything. ‘Am I right?’
Again he didn’t reply, just pulled the door back and peered out into the corridor. When he saw no one was there, he pushed it closed again and looked at his watch.
‘Do you want to find your daughter or not?’ I asked him.
‘What kind of a fucking question is that?’ He shifted on the spot and looked out through the door again, then back to me. ‘I’ll call you. We’ll meet somewhere safer.’
‘This is bullshit, Healy. We had an agreement.’
He opened the door and paused.
And then he left.
About fifty minutes later, I was waiting on the front steps of the police station for a taxi. Kaitlin had come through for me. She’d told them
that there was a guy at the youth club Megan had become friendly with – but that was as much as she knew. I’d been released on bail, without charge. Technically, I was out ‘before charge’, which meant that once forensics had finished their analysis and the police had chased down the lead at the youth club, they’d be back for me. Healy was right: I had a couple of days to try and find out the truth, or they’d be pulling my life apart and coming at me even harder.
I called Liz. She was stuck on the motorway, about ten miles out of London. When she answered, she sounded surprised and confused.
‘I’ve been released,’ I said.
She paused. ‘How come?’
‘On bail.’
‘Yeah, but how come?’
‘When you get back, when I’ve sorted out a few things, I’ll take you for a drink,’ I said to her. She didn’t reply. ‘And I won’t leave anything out.’
Again she didn’t reply, but I could sense a change, even along the phone line. She could hear my last words for what they were. A confession. I’d lied before; told her things that weren’t true and hidden things that were. And all the time she’d sat at my side and defended me in front of the law, knowing there were parts of my life, decisions I’d made, that might never break the surface.
But now I was signalling a change.
I was telling her things would be different; and in a strange way, perhaps admitting that next time we were together I wouldn’t pull away from her. I wouldn’t have doubts. I’d take her hand, and I’d step off the cliff.
And I wouldn’t look back.
40
An hour after they’d come for me at the house, a separate team had been through my office. As I opened up and walked inside, I could see mud on the carpet and damp footprints where detectives had stood at filing cabinets and been through the drawers of my desk. My computer had been left on, the screensaver – a blue cube – bouncing back and forth across the monitor. I walked around, trying to figure out if they’d taken anything, but nothing had been removed.
I filled the percolator and then dropped into the chair at my desk. As coffee started to soak through the filter, I let my mind turn over, back to everything they’d found at the house; to the interview; to Healy hanging me out to dry.
I’d given him Markham. He’d given me nothing.
That wasn’t how it worked.
As soon as I left the station, I’d called Spike and asked him to track down Healy’s home address and mobile number. I didn’t mind how it played out: with Healy, or without him, it didn’t bother me. But I was going to get what I was owed.
Pulling my keyboard towards me, I brought up Google. Megan had disappeared on 3 April. I put the date into the search engine and punched Return. Over 115 million hits. Encyclopaedias, blogs, newsletters, press releases, Facebook posts, Flickr albums. I moved through the first few pages, trying to spot anything remotely connected to the case. But apart from news stories posted in the aftermath of her disappearance, there was nothing. Flipping back to the first page, I went to a site that listed every major historical event – births, deaths and everything in between – that had taken place on 3 April. I was hoping something would leap out from somewhere, a spark. But instead I got more of the same: nothing.
My eyes drifted from the monitor to some paperwork on my desk. Hard copies of the pages from the London Conservation Trust site. I’d printed them out for reference. Alongside that was the email the LCT had sent Megan six days before she disappeared. It was dated 27-03-11. I traced a finger along the numbers and, as I did, a feeling stirred in me, as if I’d drifted close to something. A recollection. A memory. I stopped, brought the paper closer to me. Studied the numbers.
Was there something in the date?
I let the feeling go for a moment and did a search for the date Leanne had gone missing: 3 January 2011. It took about thirty seconds to realize it wouldn’t lead anywhere. It was exactly the same story as the Google search for Megan – except there was no major press this time. Megan had ticked all the right boxes: white, wealthy, bright, beautiful. Leanne was different. Physically not quite as attractive, educationally middling, working-class background and – unlike the Carvers – with parents who didn’t have a picture-postcard marriage. Leanne was mentioned once in the Evening Standard and once in the Metro. I clicked on both stories, one after the other. Both were two paragraphs long, and both had the same quote from Healy asking Leanne to come home. At the end it listed the number for a missing persons helpline.
What am I overlooking here?
For a second time, I stared at the printouts on my desk. The date. The way it was written: 27-03-11. That same feeling blossomed. Maybe it was something I’d seen, or heard, and not fully taken in at the time. Or maybe it wasn’t even the date.
Maybe it was the format.
Ripping a piece of paper from my notepad, I wrote down the dates the girls had gone missing – 3 April 2011 and 3 January 2011 – then, underneath that, the numerical equivalent: 03 04 11; 03 01 11. I leaned back in my chair, rolled my pen back and forth across the desk. Listened to the clock on the far wall ticking over. The whole time I didn’t take my eyes off the numbers. There was something in the date.
Something I’d missed.
I leaned forward, pressing a finger against the date of Megan’s disappearance: 03 04 11. Grabbing the pen, I scribbled out the zeros and the year: 3 4.
Three and four.
Or thirty-four.
Then it hit me. I pulled my phone across the desk and went to the photos. There, right at the top, was the last one I’d taken: the wall in the police station, the first time I’d been in. Slightly blurred, Megan’s picture looked out at me, pinned to a board in the CID office. Next to that was the map and more photographs. And then seven stickies, running in a vertical line, a separate number on each. I could only make out three of them, the first, sixth and seventh: 2119, 3111 – and 34.
They hadn’t been numbers.
They’d been dates.
The first one – 2119 – was four digits. They’d included the year after it, so they’d know all the others followed in sequence, through 2010 and into 2011. I turned back to the computer and this time typed ‘2 November 2009 missing’ into Google and hit Return.
Four links down I found what I was looking for.
It was a missing persons site, profiles of men, women and kids decorating the front page. Picture after picture. Face after face. So many missing people, all of them lost somewhere – or worse than lost. The Google search had taken me straight to the page corresponding to the people who’d vanished on 2 November 2009. I was thirty-two pages and almost three hundred profile pictures in. And bang in the centre was the woman I was looking for.
In her photograph, she was smiling at the camera, her blonde hair cascading down her face in long, thin strands. She was pretty. Slim but not skinny.
And she looked like Megan and Leanne.
I clicked on her profile.
Missing | Case Ref: 09-004447891
Isabelle Connors
Age at disappearance: 28
Isabelle has been missing from Finchley, north London, since 2 November 2009. She was last seen in Lemon Street in Islington getting into her car after a work function. She later spoke to a friend on the phone to confirm she had got home. It is believed she disappeared that evening or the next morning as she failed to turn up to work, where she was employed as a graphic designer.
There is great concern for Isabelle as her disappearance is out of character. She is 5ft 8in tall, of slim-to-medium build with blue eyes and blonde hair. When last seen she was wearing a pair of blue jeans, black heels, a white vest and a long black coat.
Another missing woman. And she was the same as Megan and Leanne. Same hair. Same eyes. Same shape. The only difference was their age. I looked away and tried to picture the list of numbers on the wall of the office. Tried to recall the second, third, fourth or fifth stickies. I’d taken the dates in, but not realized their importance. The
y were just a random list of numbers then. A blur among the maps and the photographs and the paperwork.
I slowly started tabbing back through the pages, closely examining every female picture. Six pages later, I found her. Blonde. Blue eyes. She’d disappeared on 8 January 2010. I looked at the picture on my phone: although it was blurred, I could instantly make out what looked like 8110. The second number on the wall.
Missing | Case Ref: 09-004447958
April Brunel
Age at disappearance: 45
April has been missing from Hackney, east London, since 8 January 2010. Her whereabouts remain unknown. She called friends on the evening of 7 January to say she couldn’t join them for a drink as she was feeling unwell. There is growing concern for April as her disappearance is out of character. She is 5ft 6in tall, of slim build with blue eyes and blonde hair. She was last seen at work that day, where she was employed as an accountant.
In the pit of my stomach, there was a growing sense of unease. Four missing women now, and it was obvious there were three more to come. It took me ten minutes to find them, and another five to scan their profiles. Jayne Rickards, thirty-three; 4 April 2010. She had been number 44. Kate Norton, twenty-nine; 12 July 2010. She had been number 127. Erica Muller, twenty-three; 4 October 2010. She had been 410. All slim-to-medium, with blonde hair and blue eyes. All gone.
And all connected.
41
The pub was small, with low lighting and ambient music. A series of booths, decked out in black leather and walnut, ran along one side, next to windows that looked out over Camden High Street. I found a seat right at the back with virtually no lighting and only a partial view in and out. The barman said, as it was so quiet, he’d come to my table. I ordered two beers and waited.
Ten minutes later, Healy arrived.
He squinted and scanned the room. Then his eyes fell on me. He cast a glance around him – making certain there were no faces he recognized – and made his way across. He slid in at the booth without saying a word.
I pushed one of the beers towards him. He scooped it up and emptied it in about half a minute. When he was done, he swivelled in his seat, trying to catch the barman’s eye. ‘Just do me a favour,’ he said when he’d finally put his order in for a second. ‘Keep your eyes on the door. Because if anyone even vaguely familiar comes in, we’re both in the shite.’
