Broken Heart: David Raker #7

by Tim Weaver

  He’s not following me.

  I stopped, my pulse starting to quicken. I should have been able to see him by now. Edging to the corner of the next turn, I looked along it. It ran for a long way, perhaps two hundred feet, endless vehicles stacked up on either side. At the end was an opening, a yellow flash of a crane and the side of another machine. The crusher. Long bits of metal poked out from a gap close to the top of it, like arms reaching for help. As I kept my eyes on both directions – the way I’d come, and the path down to the crusher – I got out my phone again and returned to the map.

  It had loaded.

  I was on an industrial estate in a barren patch of land three miles west of Ealing. It was why I could hear cars but no domestic life: to the south was the M4, to the east was the River Brent, to the west were patches of park and woodland. It was a smart place to bring me: no one lived close enough to hear anything, and as it was a bank holiday weekend, the whole industrial estate was a ghost town.

  I put the phone away and listened. There were gaps in vehicles that I could see through, windows without glass, and bodywork punctured with jagged holes. I could hear the popping and groaning of the cars, a choir of old frames creaking and expanding under the sun, as they climbed their way to the sky. But I couldn’t see Egan, and I couldn’t hear him either.

  Quickly, I searched for something I could use, and found what looked like a drive shaft with part of the transmission still attached, sitting discarded under the shell of a purple Vauxhall Cavalier. It was black and flecked with rust, but it was heavy. Gripping it tightly, I began moving in the direction of the crusher.

  More puddles littered this area of the yard, collecting in the grooves of the track like spores. I tried not to land in them, to disturb the water, to give any sense of where I was located. Despite the heat, goosebumps scattered across my back and the throbbing pain of my left arm faded in, reminding me that I was carrying an injury; if it came to it, I couldn’t rely on my left being as strong as my right. I looked down at the paper towels, bound to my arm with an elastic band, and tore them away. Blood was caked to my skin, the gash raw and angry, but it had dried.

  I got closer to the crusher. It was huge and ugly, like a shipping container with a mouth torn along it. To its left was the gap in the maze that I’d seen earlier.

  It led through to a small car park.

  This, I started to realize, was why Egan hadn’t followed me. He knew I’d end up here. As I stood there, I thought briefly about a retreat, but mostly all I could think about was getting the hell out of there as fast as possible. I needed to regroup, reorganize.

  If there was a car park, then it was a safe bet I was somewhere close to the exit. But it was also a safe bet that Egan was waiting for me, that – familiar with the layout of this place – he’d made it look like he was coming after me, then made a beeline for this end of the yard instead. I might have been closer to the exit here, but one bad decision and I’d be leaving with a knife in my back.

  I paused there, trying to think through my next move, my arm throbbing, the drive shaft greasy and becoming more difficult to hold – and then I clocked movement through the gap. I took a couple of steps back, trying to seek refuge in the shadows, expecting to see Egan emerging into view.

  But it wasn’t Egan.

  45

  It was a man I didn’t recognize. He was dressed in blue overalls, the front stained with a mix of engine oil and mud. He must have been in his fifties, was grey-haired and corpulent, and wore a pair of glasses too small for his face.

  He had an odd gait, his right arm hidden from me and pressed to his body on that side. I wasn’t sure whether it was due to his weight, his caution, or some injury that he’d never fully recovered from. I shifted left, behind a column of cars, using a window to look over to where the man was. That was when I saw his right hand. It wasn’t his weight or an accident that was making him walk that way. It was what he was holding close to his leg.

  A gun.

  He stopped. I felt my heart shift as his eyes zeroed in on a spot close to where I was hiding. The silence seemed absolute for a second: no hum from the motorway, no birdsong, no pops or groans from the cars piled up around us. It took everything I had not to make a break for it, the instinct to take flight was so powerful. But I couldn’t outrun a bullet. Instead, I stayed exactly where I was, gripping the drive shaft harder than ever, and watched as the man headed right, in the direction of the cabin.

  Wait until he’s out of sight – and then run.

  He was almost completely gone from view when, somewhere above me, I felt a change in the stillness of the air – and then a low, doughy moan, as if one of the cars was about to come loose.

  I looked up.

  Egan seemed to come from the sky somewhere, his entire weight behind the leap. I had a split second to realize he’d got on top of the crusher without me ever noticing him – and then he smashed into me and everything became a blur.

  He took me with him, his knees in my ribs, in my stomach, and – as we landed, him on top of me – every ounce of air exploded out of my body. Egan fell away from me, unbalanced from the landing, and I knew I had to stand, to fight back, to prepare for whatever he was going to throw at me next. But when I tried to get up, when I staggered to my feet, it felt like I was going to vomit. I dropped forward again, back on to my hands and knees, winded, shaken, and another wave of nausea crashed into me. I began retching – my throat like an overfilled balloon – and just about managed to spot Egan scrambling to his feet beside me, blood streaked across his face, his hand trying to grasp at his waist, where the rubberized grip of his hunting knife showed above his beltline. I started to see him more lucidly: teeth clenched, jaw tight, his face coloured.

  ‘I’ve got him!’ he screamed.

  There were footsteps, dull at first but then louder. Looking around on the ground, I tried to find the drive shaft and saw it an arm’s length away from me, to my right. I scrambled across to it, battling my nausea, and shifted on my knees, gripping the drive shaft as tightly as I could.

  Egan came at me again. He crossed the distance between us in two or three strides. I rocked back as his knife whipped through the air in front of my face and nicked the very tip of my chin. As the momentum carried Egan to my left, I desperately swung the drive shaft at him, trying to hit whatever part of him I could.

  The steel tube reverberated hard in my hands.

  Egan staggered away from me, his legs quickly giving out from under him, the knife pinging against the shell of one of the nearest vehicles as his arm flailed around at his side. He hit the floor. I heaved myself up, feeling like a drunk: there was blood on my chin, saliva on my lips, and my vision was blurring in and out. I readied myself for Egan’s attack.

  But it never came.

  He was belly down, arms splayed, his face battered and bloodied. I’d got him in the side of the head. One of his eyes was already closing up. I wasn’t sure if he was breathing or not.

  Shit. Shit.

  Almost immediately, the other man appeared, the quickness of his movement belying his size. I swung the drive shaft around again, catching him in the top of the arm. The gun spun out of his hands and the impact forced him into a series of quick sidesteps, his foot landing in the cleft of a puddle, unbalancing him. I darted towards him and took a second swipe at him, this time catching him in the neck. He jolted, as if he’d suffered an electric shock, landed against one of the cars with a crunch, and slid down into the mud.

  Silence.

  I stayed rooted to the spot, waiting for him to come at me again. But he didn’t. Neither of them did. I doubled over, trying to catch my breath, feeling a twist of guilt at the damage I’d caused. I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, but I’d been left with no choice. It was survival. They’d been armed with a knife, with a gun, and wouldn’t have spent a single second feeling sorry for me as I bled out at their feet. But the thought didn’t make me feel any better. I found no pleasure in hurting people.
<
br />   That was what made me different from them.

  I started to check them both over, bending down next to Egan, his skin slick with blood and sweat, trying to find a pulse. I found one, but it was faint. The old man was conscious but groggy – so much so that he put up no fight as I tossed his gun away and started to go through his overalls.

  I found his wallet first, a faded, dog-eared business card inside revealing that his name was Geoffrey Barneslow, the scrapyard was called Barneslow Scrap, and he was the owner. He had a pre-touchscreen mobile phone, the last number that had called it matching the number for the Barneslow Scrap landline on the business card. I’d taken Egan’s phone with me when I left the Portakabin, which meant Egan must have called Barneslow from a landline inside, requesting back-up. There was no way to tell for sure, because there was no one left to ask, but I could guess at what arrangement they had: Egan brought people here when it was closed and then cleaned up after himself; Barneslow cashed the cheques and didn’t ask questions.

  I stood again, then headed out in the direction of the car park. I needed to find my keys. I needed to find my car.

  I needed to get out of there.

  46

  I found my car a minute later. As I looked at it, I recalled what Alex Cavarno had said to me: My brother will make you disappear, like the people you find. You, any trace of the life you lived, your car, your belongings, this case. It’ll all be gone. You’ll be gone. There’ll be nothing. The BMW was in the crusher, completely destroyed.

  For a second, I felt an odd, irrational sense of loss. I’d bought the BMW at a time in my life when I’d never thought I’d be anything other than a journalist; a time when Derryn had been alive, when I’d spent nights beside her on the sofa, in front of the TV, not handcuffed to a radiator in a Portakabin in a corner of London where no one would ever find me. Derryn and I had travelled miles in that car, been all over Europe in it, to the north of Scotland, to Ireland; it had been just one small part of my life with her, insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but a constant nonetheless. I’d lived through her death and then slowly emerged out the other side – and the car had remained a part of my existence the entire time.

  Now, like her, it was a memory.

  I thought of everything that I’d left inside it – my laptop, my rucksack full of case notes, the photos of the angel, the true-crime book, the DVDs of Lynda Korin at Stoke Point – and then, next to the crusher, spotted a caravan.

  I headed for it.

  Inside it was a mess. A bed, the sheets twisted and unmade; evidence of food, of things having been cooked, of dishes in the sink. There were clothes in the wardrobe, a tablet, a toilet that stank of urine. Barneslow lived on-site.

  Next to the caravan was Egan’s Mercedes – and, between where the car had been left and the main gates of the scrapyard, under half a tin roof that looked like a collapsing bus shelter, I spotted two big oil drums.

  They were still smoking.

  On the floor, beside them, was my discarded rucksack – unzipped and emptied. Inside the drums, I found the melted remains of my laptop and the DVDs. I saw what was left of my notepad’s leather covers. But as I tried to look for the true-crime book and the two pictures of the angel among all the rubble, I realized it was too late for both. They’d long since turned to ash.

  I felt for my wallet and my phone and took them both out. So why hadn’t he burned these too? He must have been planning to go back through my calls and texts, my search history, the life that existed in the cards and receipts of my wallet, to make sure there was no link back to him, to Zeller, to Alex. After that, he would have thrown them into the fire, just like the rest of it.

  Grabbing my empty rucksack, I went back to the Mercedes, slid in at the wheel, started it up and headed east out of the scrapyard. My left arm was still sore, so I tried to avoid using it as much as possible, perching it against my thigh. I could smell sweat and blood on myself, and could see grime in my skin that would only come out with soap. I needed a shower and a change of clothes.

  I needed a pharmacist too. The inside of my arm down to my wrist throbbed, the cuts like strips of red ribbon. Halfway down Uxbridge Road, my prayers were answered. I found a chemist with a bank holiday service operating out of a slide window. I bumped up on to the pavement and rang the buzzer.

  While I waited, I took a look at Billy Egan’s phone – but it didn’t take me long before I realized it was a dead end. He’d been smart. He had no numbers in his address book, he’d cleared out his Recent Calls list, and he’d deleted texts as he’d sent and received them. There was no Internet history either. The phone was a shell; a hollow piece of plastic. I could have called Spike again and got him to go hunting around at Egan’s network, because there would be a record of the calls and texts on a server somewhere, a browser history too. But it was complicated work. It would take time.

  Time I didn’t have.

  Stuck in traffic a couple of minutes later, I tried phoning Melanie Craw, but it went to voicemail. I left a message for her, promising that I’d call her again later. I’d missed a call from a central London number too, one I didn’t recognize, so I dialled that as well. It just rang and rang without anyone answering.

  After that, I started going through the navigation system on the Mercedes. I was trying to trace back Egan’s routes over the past couple of days, to see where he’d been. Instead, I came across a reference to a satellite tracking system.

  They can find me through the car.

  Pulling off Uxbridge Road and heading south, I made for the northern fringes of Ravenscourt Park. Finding as conspicuous a spot as I could, right outside a bank of shops, I bumped up on to the pavement. It was double yellows for as far as the eye could see. I locked the Mercedes, tossed the keys and Egan’s mobile into a nearby drain, and made a call to the police from a phone box to tell them that an illegally parked car on Goldhawk Road was creating havoc.

  If everything went to plan, the next time Egan saw his vehicle it would be clamped or impounded.

  I headed to the Tube.

  47

  An hour after dumping Egan’s Mercedes, I emerged into the heat of the afternoon at Lewisham station, the air thick with exhaust fumes. About eighty yards down the high street, between the back of the police station – a huge red-brick building, with cream render and blue-framed windows – and a grim piece of 1970s architecture, which now housed a shuttered bowling alley, was Prendegast Avenue.

  Number 47A was halfway along. It was the bottom floor of a three-storey terraced house, each floor split into flats – A, B and C. I made my way down some stone steps, and although I wasn’t able to see much through the only window at the front, I could see enough: a living room with old film posters on the wall and, towards the back, the shadows of a man in a kitchen, sitting at a small table.

  Microscope.

  I pushed the buzzer and made sure I wasn’t visible to him at the window, so he’d have to open up to see who it was. Before getting the train, I’d found a public toilet and washed myself down, cleaning the blood and grime from my arms and dressing my wounds properly. I’d bought some fresh clothes too – a long-sleeved T-shirt, a new pair of jeans, a cheap watch. In the shade of the front porch, I hoped the cuts on my face would be less noticeable to him.

  The door opened.

  Rafael Walker was dressed in a pair of red shorts and a white T-shirt with a faded American Werewolf in London film poster on it. He was just over six feet tall, and had black hair that was greying around the ears. Tall and skinny, he’d grown a beard in the time since the photograph of him on the BFI site had been taken. He ran a hand through it, gathering it into what was almost a tail at the front, and then briefly looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on a cut at my cheekbone.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said.

  ‘Mr Walker?’

  He automatically went on the defensive. ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name’s David Raker.’

  I removed a business card
from my wallet and handed it to him. He took it. I was cold-calling him at home on the Monday of a holiday weekend and had no idea how much time I had before Egan woke up and crawled to a phone to call Alex and Zeller. The fact that Egan had asked me about Rafael Walker at the Portakabin made things worse because it meant Walker was on his radar now, however obscurely. It meant Egan could come here. That might give me three or four hours with Walker, or it might give me thirty minutes. I didn’t have time to dress this up as something it wasn’t. I needed him to answer my questions.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, still studying the card.

  ‘I find missing people.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I’m looking for Lynda Korin.’

  His expression changed instantly, his frown dissolving, surprise taking hold. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘As in Robert Hosterlitz’s wife?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘She’s missing?’

  ‘It wasn’t really reported in the press, but yes, she is. She’s been missing since the end of October last year. I think you might be able to help me.’

  He didn’t respond for a moment, as if his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Mr Walker?’

  ‘Help you how?’ he said.

  ‘Help me find her.’

  The frown returned. ‘I’m not sure how you think I can help.’

  He had an elegant accent. There was a hint of mainland European to it – perhaps Spanish or Italian – but it was hard to tell. His English was immaculate.

  ‘You work at the BFI, right?’

  He didn’t seem disturbed by the fact that I knew. Perhaps he just figured it was a by-product of an investigator turning up unannounced on your doorstep.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ he said.

  ‘I’d like you to tell me about the horror films Robert Hosterlitz made in Spain between 1979 and 1984. I’m particularly interested in the way they end.’