by Tim Weaver
‘No.’
‘You didn’t take this?’
‘No.’
Phillips flipped over the fourth photograph. It was a picture of Derryn’s shoebox – the one I’d seen a crime-scene tech leaving with – taken from above, bathed in the white of a flashlight. It was full of her stuff: photographs of us, photographs of her, some jewellery, a notebook. On top, right in the centre of the box, was the photo of the woman Phillips had just shown me; in situ. Dirty, drugged face. Blonde hair. Bruise.
They’d found it in the shoebox.
‘That’s not where it was,’ I said.
‘That’s where we found it.’
‘I’ve never even seen that –’
‘We found that photograph in the shoebox in your cupboard at your home,’ Phillips said. ‘This woman …’ He looked from me to Davidson. ‘We believe you abducted and tortured her.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
‘No, David,’ he said. ‘I’m deadly serious.’
‘I don’t even know her. I’ve never seen this woman in my fucking life. I don’t know who she is, or how her picture got into that shoebox, but it’s nothing –’
A blink of a memory formed in my head. The night I got back from Jill’s at four o’clock in the morning. I’d forgotten all about it, but now it was coming back to me. The rubbish bin at the front of the house had been tipped over, and the bin liners had spilt across the pathway. And the porch had been left slightly open.
‘Somebody broke into my house,’ I said quietly, almost to myself.
‘David –’
‘Somebody broke into my house.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. I was at a friend’s. When I got back it was the early hours of the morning and there were bin liners all across the path, and the door to my porch had been left open. I didn’t leave it open that night.’
‘Did you report it?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t think about it.’
‘Or you just lied to us again,’ Davidson offered.
‘Why would I lie?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Why would you?’
‘I’m not lying.’
‘You’re lying,’ Phillips said.
I stopped. Looked at him. It was more definitive coming from Phillips, more of a statement than if it had come from Davidson. Phillips had played everything out on an even keel. No posturing. No promises. No showboating. Now he was accusing me of lying in a police interview.
‘I’m not lying,’ I repeated.
Phillips watched me for a moment, and something flickered in his eyes; maybe a little disappointment, as if he’d expected more from me.
Then he flipped the final photograph over.
It was a picture taken in my kitchen. An evidence marker had been placed on the floor at the base of some varnished wooden panels that ran for about six feet under one of the counters. The very top one had come away on the right side. I’d noticed it a couple of nights before while making myself dinner and had vowed to reattach it, but then forgotten. In the space behind the panel there was a nail in the cavity wall.
And something was hanging from it.
I pulled the photograph towards me. It was a piece of white clothing, the cotton speckled with blood.
‘What’s that?’
‘That,’ Phillips said, thumping a finger against the picture, ‘is what Megan was wearing the day she disappeared.’
38
The first thing I thought about was how far away Liz would be now. There were no clocks inside the interview room, and though Phillips wore a watch, it was hidden beneath his shirt cuffs. It was maybe an hour since I’d called her. That would put her somewhere north of Oxford if she’d left the moment I put the phone down. I looked between Phillips and Davidson and considered asking for the free legal advice I was entitled to. It wouldn’t stop the interview altogether if they thought Megan was alive somewhere and in immediate danger, but it would break the two of them up and complicate the interrogation. By the time they were back on track, Liz would be that bit closer.
‘You going to deny you put it there?’ Phillips asked.
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘You suggesting someone’s setting you up?’
I nodded again. ‘Yes.’
Davidson shook his head. ‘This is bollocks. You know where Megan Carver is. You’ve got her clothes in the walls of your fucking house. Where is she?’
I looked at him. ‘Think about it. Why would I take on her case if I’d abducted her? Why would I risk the exposure? Someone’s trying to put this on me. Whoever it is broke into my house and planted all this shit for you to find.’
‘You’re just digging yourself in deeper here, David,’ Phillips said.
‘I’m not digging myself in anywhere. Someone thinks I’ve got too close to the truth, and now they’re trying to screw me to the wall.’
‘Got too close?’ he replied. ‘But earlier on you said you hadn’t found anything more than we did. Are you saying that’s not the case?’
He tilted his head a little, like I’d just slipped up.
‘No,’ I said, and began to weave another lie: ‘I’m saying I may have inadvertently hit on something I haven’t managed to figure out yet – or drifted too close to him somehow.’
‘Him? Who are we talking about here?’
I sighed. ‘Everyone in this room knows it’s a man.’
‘Yeah,’ Davidson said. ‘You.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not me. But every stat on the planet will tell you this is a man. It’s not a leap of faith.’
Davidson shook his head again.
‘How did you even know to look in my house in the first place?’ I asked him. ‘How did you know this stuff was there? Six months along the line, you suddenly decide I look good for this? No way would a judge sign off on that.’
‘Maybe it’s the fact that the first time we met you you’re stumbling out of a house that ain’t yours with two dead bodies inside,’ Davidson said, leaning in to me. ‘And to up the ante, one of them’s just a kid and, four inches from his body, we find a piece of plastic – which turns out to be from that.’ He punched a finger at the photograph of the doll. ‘Oh, and you know who that doll belongs to, David?’
I didn’t – but his question had just told me.
‘Megan,’ Phillips said.
It was Megan’s doll. Shit. I was struggling to keep my head above water.
‘The police investigation is over,’ I said, trying to maintain the control in my voice. ‘You know it, I know it. If you had anything on Megan’s whereabouts, any leads, I wouldn’t have been hired by the Carvers. Whoever it is that’s doing this knows you aren’t a threat to him any more.’
‘And what?’ Davidson smirked. ‘You are?’
‘Why else would he leave this stuff in my house? He’s setting me up. I’ve hit on something somewhere, and he’s trying to protect himself.’
‘So what have you hit on?’ Phillips asked.
‘I told you. I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know because you won’t tell us?’ he fired back. ‘Or you don’t know because you’ve just made up a load of shite and are hoping we’ll buy it?’
‘You want alibis?’
‘Sure, why not?’ he said, his voice simmering. ‘Give us your alibi for the day Megan disappeared. And why not deliver a few witnesses too while you’re at it? One for when the doll magically turns up on your lawn. And another who can back up your story of someone breaking into your house, taking out a board in the kitchen, hammering a nail into the wall and placing an item of Megan’s clothes on there.’ He shook his head. ‘You better start dancing with us, David.’
I realized then that I’d have to give them something. Something to get them thinking.
‘The youth club.’
Phillips had been looking away, at the photos. He turned back to face me, as if sensing the conversati
on was about to shift. Davidson’s eyes narrowed again, his default expression. If I wasn’t on the defensive, he immediately got suspicious. He leaned forward a little, waiting to see what I had.
‘You went to the youth club, right?’
Phillips nodded.
‘Whoever abducted Megan met her through there.’
Neither of them spoke. Phillips glanced at the photos, at his partner and then back to me. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Something one of her friends said. Kaitlin Devonish. She told me Megan used to really like this guy who went there. That they may have even dated.’
Phillips studied me. ‘She never mentioned that to us.’
‘Maybe you never asked her.’
He pursed his lips. He looked like he was trying to figure out where I was going with this. Whatever conclusion he came to, it had temporarily altered the dynamic. For a moment, both of them had lost forward motion. Now they were on the back foot.
‘Who was the guy?’ Davidson asked.
‘Kaitlin didn’t know. Maybe that’s why she didn’t mention it. I mean, why would she report as suspicious someone who made Megan happy?’
‘Because we asked her if Megan was dating.’
‘They may not have even dated officially.’
Silence now. Phillips began turning his wedding band again, and Davidson was watching me like I was a waxwork in his least favourite part of the museum.
‘Megan’s parents didn’t know about it,’ I continued, ‘and they knew about the other guys she’d dated. If she went out with this guy, it was on the quiet. Even Megan’s friends might not have known. I think Kaitlin was speculating that they dated, rather than knowing for sure.’
‘And Kaitlin will back this up?’ Phillips asked.
I nodded. ‘One hundred per cent.’
Listen to me, Kaitlin, I’d said to her when she’d first mentioned the youth club, and the guy who’d got Megan pregnant. If, for whatever reason, the police come calling, don’t tell them about the pregnancy … The first thing we need to do is protect you … Tell them about the youth club, and that you think she might have been seeing someone there, but leave it at that, okay?
Eventually I’d expected the police to take an interest in what I was doing. Maybe not this way, but when you worked the periphery of an unsolved, you stepped on toes and you pissed people off. I didn’t want to involve Kaitlin. She was just a kid, and a scared one at that, but I had to rely on her not telling them about the pregnancy and being convincing enough to steer the course of the interview, and the evidence, away from me.
There was an added problem too: the youth club. They’d see it had been broken into over the weekend. And although I’d been careful not to leave prints, and the pictures I took from the club were next to the spare wheel in the back of the BMW, not lying around at home, it would open up another line of enquiry, adjacent to the Carver disappearance – and the seams would come apart a little more. The only thing I could do was continue pushing back at them. Because I wasn’t about to go down for this. Not now. Not ever.
I turned to Phillips. ‘Did you get an anonymous tip-off ?’
‘When?’
‘Today. Is that the reason you were at my house?’
The two of them looked at each other. Phillips turned back to me. ‘I’m not at liberty to discuss that.’
I nodded at the photographs. ‘Put the photo of that woman’s face through your labs and see if you can find any of my prints on it.’
‘Maybe we put the photos through forensics,’ Phillips said, voice taut, eyes fixed on me. ‘Maybe we find your prints, maybe we don’t. But you’re mixed up in this somehow, we both know that. And when I find out how, I will bring you down.’
I didn’t reply. He was as angry as I’d seen him, colour prickling in his skin. The lead I’d given them for the youth club hadn’t been enough. It had stalled the interview, but it hadn’t stopped it. They’d filed it away as an interesting line of enquiry, but it hadn’t changed anything. I was in this up to my neck.
Then I thought of something.
Something Phillips had said in the first interview. The only reason I can give you is that, by you sticking your nose in here, you’re jeopardizing a parallel investigation. ‘Have you officially tied Leanne Healy’s disappearance to Megan’s?’ I asked.
There was a long pause. ‘Leanne Healy?’
‘Colm Healy’s daughter.’
‘I know who she is.’
‘She worked at the youth club. The same one as Megan. Even if you didn’t know about the man Megan might have met there, you would have seen that the youth club connected Megan and Leanne.’ Another pause. Davidson turned away from me. A flicker of something. Next to him, Phillips didn’t move. ‘So is her disappearance being tied to Megan’s?’
Nothing from either of them.
Then Phillips: ‘David, you don’t know what you’re talking –’
‘They’re both blonde. They both look vaguely similar. They both worked part-time at the same place. They both disappeared and never came home.’
Davidson glanced at Phillips. Phillips looked back.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re not tying the two together.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘You must know something about Leanne then.’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because you’d link them otherwise.’
‘Would we?’
‘You know you would. You’d have two girls. And then you’d have a pattern.’ I looked between them. I was building the theory as I went, adding together everything I’d learned as I tried to push back at them. ‘And, eventually, you’d have more.’
‘More what?’
‘More women. If there’s a pattern, there’s a man responsible. And if he’s magicked two of them into thin air, you can bet he’ll do it again and again until he’s stopped.’
Phillips shook his head and started turning his wedding band. ‘This isn’t CSI, David. You don’t get a Hollywood ending.’
A parallel investigation.
I looked between them again. I’d given them the youth club. I’d told them I knew about Leanne. Now it was time to make a leap of faith.
‘So where does Frank White fit in?’
Davidson’s eyes flicked to me and then away. A moment of surprise, followed by a ripple of alarm. Phillips stopped turning his wedding band momentarily. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said evenly.
‘You remember him though, right?’
Phillips nodded. ‘Of course I remember him.’
‘They’re linked.’
‘Who are linked?’
‘Frank White and Megan.’
‘Everyone’s linked according to you.’
‘Something happened at that warehouse the night he was murdered. You dig far enough in, and you’ll find a connection to Megan.’
They both looked at me. I couldn’t decide if it was disbelief or panic in their faces. I decided it was panic. I was on to something.
‘His death is connected to Megan, isn’t it?’
Phillips started collecting up the photographs, feeding them back into the Manila folder. He looked at me. ‘We ask the questions around here, David.’
‘Is it something to do with the surgeon?’
A brief pause. Then Phillips leaned over, spoke into the recorder to confirm the time and the fact that he was taking a break – and they both got up and left.
39
As they were walking out, I requested a toilet break. Phillips asked Davidson to show me where it was, and disappeared through a security door that connected the interview rooms to the main office. Davidson didn’t say anything, just led me past the other doors into an L-shape kink in the corridor. There were two further doors around the corner: one for men, one for women. ‘I’ll wait here,’ he said.
Inside, it was cold and sterile. Old metal-framed windows, with iron mesh over the glass. China basins
screwed to the floor. No soap. No hot water. Grey-green cubicles minus the toilet seats. Basically nothing you could rip off and use as a weapon. There was the overpowering stench of urinal cake and, as I moved into one of the cubicles, I realized I could see my breath in front of my face. It couldn’t have been more than five degrees.
After about half a minute, I heard Davidson start talking to someone. Above the traffic noise from outside, and the constant gurgle from the cistern, I could only make out a few words, but it sounded like Davidson was asking a uniform to stand guard.
I flushed and walked across to the basins. As I was washing my hands, I heard another voice. Male. Low. Almost a whisper.
He was sending the PC off on an errand.
A couple of seconds later, I watched the door open in the mirror above the basin. It squeaked on its hinges. A foot appeared. Then a face.
Colm Healy.
He looked at me, our eyes meeting in the reflection. Then he glanced over his shoulder, out into the corridor again. Ran a hand through his red hair and rubbed one of his eyes. He had the chewed nails of a man who sat up all night unable to sleep – and the yellowing fingertips of a smoker.
I swivelled to face him, flicking my hands dry.
‘We’ve got ten minutes tops, so I’ll spare you the small talk,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you did it. I’ve read your file. I’ve heard about you. No record. No blips on the radar. Two years back, your wife dies. And now I’m supposed to believe you’re on some kind of … of what? Revenge mission? No. You’re not this guy. So you’re going to tell me what I want to know, and then I’ll help you out in return. Okay?’
‘You said all you needed to say last time.’
‘Yeah, well …’ He faded off. Stood there with his hand on the door. ‘That guy you had in that photo you showed me. Milton Sykes. Who is he really?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Why’s he look like Sykes?’
I shrugged again. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, let me give you a head start,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna give you enough credit to assume you’ve read up about Sykes.’
I nodded, trying to figure out where he was headed.
‘So you remember how the police pinned the murder of Jenny Truman on him, right?’