The Dead Tracks dr-2

by Tom Weaver

  Static.

  To her side: movement.

  'Mark?'

  'You won't feel a thing,' a voice said from somewhere inside the room.

  And then a hand slipped around her face, clamping on her mouth, a tissue pressed against her nose and lips. And within a couple of seconds, she'd blacked out.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Healy and I walked up the path towards Alba, the block of flats in Mile End Daniel Markham had once occupied. The doors were open. Just inside, in the foyer, a woman was mopping floors, big puddles of water scattered around her. She didn't even look up as we moved behind her and into the ground-floor flats.

  It was eight-thirty. Commuting hour. A couple of people left their apartments, dressed for work. At Markham's door we waited, listening to the sounds of the building. Televisions. A conversation next door. But no one about to exit their flat. I pushed at the door to number eight and it swung gently away from its frame. The piece of card I'd used to wedge it shut dropped to the floor. Healy stepped back and let me take in the flat — any changes, any suggestion Markham had been back. But it looked exactly the same.

  Healy headed to the living room. I went back to the bathroom and flicked on the light. The bathroom cabinet remained open, the clasp still broken. Nothing else had been moved. I placed my hands either side of it and lifted the cabinet off the wall. The message emerged. Help me.

  'Healy.'

  He appeared a couple of seconds later, looking at me, then at the message on the wall. "You think Markham wrote that?'

  'You don't?'

  He studied the wall, shrugged. 'Why's he asking for help? And why bother hiding it where no one's going to find it?'

  'I found it.'

  'By accident.'

  'But I found it.'

  'So what's your point?'

  'Maybe he wants to be stopped,' I said, looking at the message again. 'Or maybe he's caught up in something, he's scared, and he wants someone else to be stopped.'

  'Who, Glass?'

  'That's what we've got to find out.' Click.

  A noise from behind me. From outside the bathroom.

  As I moved to the door, a memory formed: standing outside the flat the first time I'd been around, my ear pressed against the door, listening to something click inside.

  I walked out into the hallway and looked around. It was narrow and empty. One painting on the wall of a sunset, but nothing else. Healy passed me and went to the kitchen. I headed into the bedroom. Bed base, no mattress. Empty bedside cabinets. No lampshade. In the living room, Healy was opening and closing cupboards. I walked through and looked around. Exactly the same as everywhere else. Nothing had been moved. Nothing had changed inside the flat since I'd last been in. Healy closed a cupboard, noticed me and looked up.

  'You all right?'

  'Did you hear something?'

  He stood up. 'Like what?'

  There was no sound in the flat now. The only noise was from outside: cars passing on the street below; people next door; distant sirens. I scanned the room.

  'Like what?' Healy asked again.

  'Like some sort of click.'

  'A click?

  Then I saw it above the doorway.

  It was sitting on a small black shelf, obscured by shadows, a wire snaking out of it and up through a tiny hole drilled in the ceiling.

  It was a video camera.

  'Someone's watching us,' I said.

  Before Healy had a chance to fall in alongside me, I redirected him back towards the living room and out of sight of the camera. I hadn't spotted it the first time I'd been in, but I saw it now. Small and compact, black, sitting on an equally black shelf in the darkest part of the room. It was easy to miss. If it hadn't been for the click of the zoom, I might never have thought to look up there. Through the corner of my eye, I followed the wire out of the back of the unit and into the ceiling.

  It leads to the flat upstairs.

  Healy disrupted my train of thought. He was moving across the living room to a stool in the corner of the room.

  'What are you doing?'

  He stopped and looked back at me like I'd asked the dumbest question he'd heard all day. 'What do you think I'm doing? I'm going to get that camera.'

  'That's a bad idea.'

  He let out a snort and rocked back on his heels, as if I'd just surprised him with my stupidity a second time. 'Yeah? And what's a good idea? Standing around here with our dicks in our hands?'

  'We need to leave it where it is for the time being.'

  'And why would we do that?'

  'Because it feeds into the flat upstairs.'

  His eyes drifted to the ceiling and then back to me, as if he thought I might be trying to trick him. 'Then what are we waiting for?'

  'We need to play this right.'

  'Right? He shook his head. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not your apprentice.'

  'Healy,' I said gently, 'cool down.'

  Fire flared in his eyes, and for a moment I wondered whether enlisting his help had been the right thing to do. He'd brought me details of the case I might have spent weeks trying to find. But he also brought a lack of control, and a need for vengeance. I'd sensed it in him the first time we'd met, and I saw it again. For a second, I caught a glimpse of the two of us hours and days from where we were now. And all I could see was me trying desperately to rein him in — and, eventually, not even able to do that.

  'Look,' I said, keeping my voice down, 'if you go off like a rocket, you're going to mess this up for the both of us. I know how you feel, remember that. I know what it's like to lose. But you need to look calm for the camera. You need to turn around and start scouring the flat like you were before, understand? It has to look like we either can't see what's there — or we don't know what to make of it.'

  'And what are you going to do?'

  'I'm going to head upstairs.'

  'You're going to go looking for him?'

  'Yes.'

  'I'm coming with you.'

  I shook my head. 'One of us needs to stay.'

  'Then you stay.'

  'No,' I said, my voice raised for the first rime. You've lost focus. You need to stay here and calm down.' I stopped. 'We need to make it look like we're staying put.'

  His eyes lingered on me. I wondered whether he had come to the conclusion I was right, or was formulating some sort of alternative plan that didn't involve me. I didn't know him well enough to choose between the two. And now I was starting to realize I definitely shouldn't have enlisted his help. Once the anger died down, Healy became a stone wall. No expression. No obvious clue to how he felt. I was good at reading people, but I couldn't read him. And if I couldn't read him, I couldn't trust him.

  'Fine,' he said, his voice even. 'Do what you have to do.'

  He turned away from me. I waited a moment, wondering if I'd handled it the right way. Then I started walking back towards the camera, keeping my eyes off the lens, trying to make it look as if I was heading back to the bedroom.

  But then it all went wrong.

  Chapter Forty-five

  As I got level with the bedroom, Healy appeared behind me and pushed me inside. For a second I was completely off guard: I stumbled into the bedroom, only just staying on my feet, and crashed into the nearest wardrobe. The door shut behind me. Beyond it, I could hear him heading out of the flat. Hard, fast steps. The front door crashing against the wall as he yanked it open. Footsteps in the corridor outside, fading quickly away.

  Healy, you stupid bastard.

  And then more movement, this time from upstairs.

  I sprinted out of the flat and into the corridor. He was disappearing up the stairs, heading for the second floor, the noise of him echoing through the building. I took the steps two at a time, getting to the second-floor landing just as the door to the flat burst open and a figure emerged from inside, heading off in the opposite direction. It was a man. The same one I'd seen in the alleyway outs
ide the youth club. Long dark coat, dark trousers, black boots, dark beanie. Healy was almost within touching distance; I was about ten feet back and closing.

  At the end of the corridor were two doors, left and right. Both opened on to an external stairwell: the left one headed down; the right headed up. The man got to the end and tried the left one. It juddered in its frame, sticking and then coming out - but not far enough. He couldn't get through it. Switching to the right-hand one, he pulled at it hard - it didn't move an inch, his hand slipping from the handle.

  He was cornered.

  A second later, Healy was on him.

  He grabbed the man by the arm, trying to pull him into his body. Face contorted. Coloured. Fierce, violent anger rupturing like a fault line. But the man moved fast. Jabbed twice. Once to the chest. Once to the throat. Healy stumbled back, his hand at his windpipe - but swiped a leg in an arc. It caught the man in the knee, knocking him sideways, back against the left-hand door. It slammed shut.

  This time Healy came at him harder, hands out, teeth clenched. For a second, the size of him was immense. Not fat, not overweight, just powerful. Driven on by all the injustice and the heartbreak and the revenge; everything he'd felt in the past ten months, channelled. A second after that, he was at the man's throat, pushing him back towards the ground, fingers white. Squeezing. Pulling. But then everything slowed down. I was only feet away when something glinted in the sleeve of the man's coat. A syringe. He jabbed it once, up into the nearest piece of Healy he could find. In the split second it took Healy to react, the man had pushed him aside and was on his feet. He glanced back at me.

  It was the man from Tiko's.

  The man who looked like Milton Sykes.

  He dropped the syringe into a coat pocket and reached into the opposite pocket for something else. A blade emerged. It was a hunting knife: about eight inches long with a rubberized handle and a guthook built into the end of the stainless-steel blade. He swivelled it inside his palm, so the right angle of the guthook was facing out in front of him, then swiped it across the air in front of me. I stepped back. My heels hit the door to someone's flat. But I didn't take my eyes off him. In the periphery of my vision, I could see Healy off to the side of me. He was slumped against a wall, his hand clutching an area above his heart where the needle had gone in. A speck of blood was soaking through his shirt. He looked like he was on the edges of consciousness, his eyes drifting in and out like a television reception.

  The man started to edge around me, back towards the only way out, the knife up in front of him. As he glanced between the two of us, I noticed something weird: his eyes were moving fast, but the rest of his face was still. Completely still. Almost paralysed. It was a weird, detached kind of look. When I stepped towards him, he jabbed the blade forward again. A warning. He did it again as he passed beyond me. He'd come all the way around. Now all he had to do was turn and run.

  I inched towards him.

  'I wouldn't do that,' he said.

  His eyes flicked to Healy, then back to me. His speech was quiet, but sharp and clipped, as if he was trying to disguise his voice.

  'Where are you going to run?' I said, taking another step. He jabbed the knife at me a third time, his forefinger stretched along the edge of the handle and on to the metal of the blade. He was holding it like a scalpel. Like a surgeon. 'You can't get away.'

  Something glinted in his eyes. You and me,' he said, glancing at Healy, but using the knife to indicate he was talking to me. 'We have something in common.'

  'Put down the knife.'

  'We have a connection.' A smile. Small and tight. 'Did you hear me?'

  I studied him. 'Come on, put the knife down.'

  'Did you hear me?'

  'Put the knife down.'

  He jabbed it towards me again. Another small smile.

  'You can't outrun me,' I told him.

  'I know.' He glanced between Healy and me. Healy was almost unconscious now. 'That's why you're going to stay here.'

  'That's not going to happen.'

  'Oh, it is.'

  'No, it's not.'

  He swished the blade, left to right. Whoosh. Yes, it is. You're going to stay where you are…' He stopped, looked down at Healy. 'Or his daughter gets her throat cut, ear to ear.'

  Healy's eyes fluttered. Fixed on the man. Where is she?' he croaked, holding his chest. The man glanced at him and smiled again.

  'You've got to get to her first,' I said.

  'Wrong,' he replied, and jabbed the knife towards me. You don't control anything here, David. I'm in control. I always have been. If I don't make it back, I've made sure things are set into motion and his daughter…' He made a cutting gesture across his throat. 'She bleeds out like a stuck pig.'

  Healy groaned from the floor.

  The man didn't look at him this time, just stared at me. Then he seemed to hesitate for a moment, his eyes flicking back to the flat he'd come out of.

  'It doesn’t have to be like this,' I said.

  He was still staring at the open door.

  'Just give me the knife —'

  'Shut the fuck up!' he screamed.

  Suddenly he was on edge, angry about something. His eyes pinged from me, to the flat, and back again. Another step. More hesitation.

  And then I realized what was wrong.

  He'd forgotten something.

  A trace of emotion passed across his eyes and, as he got level with the flat, he took another last, lingering look inside. Edged closer to the door, as if wondering whether he could take the risk. Then he turned back to me and realized he couldn't.

  And he ran.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Five minutes later, Healy was starting to come around, but' his speech was slurred and one side of him — his foot, his leg, his arm, his fingers - lifeless and unresponsive. I propped him up against the wall and then looked into his eyes.

  'How are you feeling?'

  He glanced at me. 'Okay.'

  'Good. And one other thing: don't ever stab me in the fucking back again like that, understood?' He nodded and massaged an area in the middle of his chest where the needle had gone in. 'I'm going to have a look around the flat.'

  I didn't wait for the reply.

  The flat was an exact replica of Markham's but completely empty. Naked walls, naked floorboards, no curtains, no furniture. A flat that had never been moved into. From the ceiling a white cord hung down, but there was no bulb attached; the windows in the living room were the only light. Right in the middle of the room was a wooden crate and a dustbin, turned upside down.

  On top was a laptop.

  A power lead snaked off to a plug, and another moved off across the floor of the flat to a tiny hole in the corner. It must have fed downstairs to the camera. I walked over to the computer. The desktop was plain, and there were two folders on the right-hand side under the hard-drive icon: one labelled 'Feed Stills', the other 'Pics'. In the centre of the screen, obscuring most of the rest of the desktop, was a loading bar, gradually filling up. It had just hit the ninety-two per cent mark. I stepped in closer.

  Then I realized it wasn't loading.

  It was deleting.

  He was erasing everything on the laptop.

  I clicked Cancel, but nothing happened. Went to Force Quit and hammered the Return key. Nothing. It was a waste of time; the deletion had been locked, and the more time I spent trying to figure out how to stop it, the more data disappeared. I clicked on the desktop, and double- clicked on the first folder. 'Feed Stills' opened up. Inside were forty-two photographs. I opened the first one. Healy and me in the flat fifteen minutes before. I closed it. Opened the next one. exactly the same, except this time I was looking up at the camera. Inside the folder, the stills started to delete from the bottom up, but all of them had been modified within the hour, which meant they were all freeze-frames of Healy and me, taken with the video camera.

  Ninety-four per cent.

  I opened up the 'Pics' folder. Inside were ten ph
otographs. I grouped them all, then double-clicked. Slowed down by the deleting process, they opened one by one.

  Ninety-six per cent.

  The first was a shot from the window of Healy and me approaching Alba. I tabbed to the next. Healy picking me up outside my house that morning.

  Ninety-seven per cent.

  The third was a photograph taken from the end of my street the night Phillips and Davidson had arrested me. Rain was falling. I was standing beside my car, behind the police tape, a finger pointing in Phillips's face. To the left of the shot were some people I recognized from the top of my road. He'd been among them the whole time.

  Broken into my house. Set me up.

  Watched it all unfold.

  The next was me outside the youth club the night I'd got inside. Half obscured by shadows, hairpins in the lock.

  Ninety-eight per cent.

  Two photos disappeared from the folder and the desktop simultaneously. I moved more quickly through the remaining pictures. Pictures five and six were of me on the path in the Dead Tracks. I recognized the area. Just past the second length of railway track, close to the clearing. The picture was taken from behind one of the trees, about fifteen feet back from the path. In picture five, I was staring vaguely in the direction of the camera. As if I'd seen him.

  Ninety-nine per cent.

  Another photo disappeared. One left.

  A man with his back to the camera, and a woman facing him. They were talking to one another in front of an entrance to some sort of office building. People were filing out around them. Everything was slightly off, slightly blurred. It had been taken on maximum zoom, and the camera had moved just as the shot had been taken.

  I leaned in closer.

  Looked at the man and the woman for a second time.

  Her face wasn't defined properly. Her outline was smudged. The blur of the picture had turned her eyes into dark blobs. But I still recognized her.

  She was the woman in Healy's eighth file.

  Next to her, back turned, the man seemed immediately familiar. Then I saw the edge of his glasses, the waves of his dark hair, the choice of clothes, the studiousness — and I realized who I was looking at.