The Dead Tracks dr-2

by Tom Weaver

  'Black would be great.'

  He removed two mugs from a cupboard. 'I don't know what you want to do,' he said, filling both. 'Megan's room is upstairs. You're welcome to head up there and have a look around. Or, if you prefer, I can show you.'

  'I might have a look around by myself,' I said, taking the coffee from him. 'But I do have some questions for you.'

  'Sure.' He smiled, and I realized it was a defence mechanism. A way to hide the pain. 'Whatever it takes.'

  We moved through to the living room. At the back of the room, the Carvers' son Leigh was on all fours directing a plastic car under a telephone stand. He looked up as we entered, and when his father told him to say hello, he mumbled something and returned to the car.

  I removed a pen and pad. 'So let's talk a little more about 3 April.'

  'The day she went missing.'

  'Right. Did you always drop her off at school?'

  'Most mornings.'

  'Some mornings you didn't?'

  'Occasionally Caroline did. If my business has a contract further afield I like to go along to the site for the first couple of weeks. After that, I tend to leave it to the foreman to take care of, and do all the paperwork from home. That's when I took…' He paused. 'When I take Megan to school and drop Leigh off at nursery.'

  'So you had a site visit on 3 April?'

  'Yes.'

  'Which is why Caroline dropped her off?

  'Correct.'

  'Did she pick Megan up as well?'

  'No, that was me.'

  'What happened?'

  'I parked up outside,' he said. 'Same spot, every day. But Megan never came out. It was as simple as that. She went in, and never came out.'

  I took down some notes. 'What was Megan studying?'

  The sciences — Physics, Chemistry, Biology.'

  'Did you ever meet her teachers?'

  'A couple of times.'

  'What were they like?'

  'They seemed nice. She was a good student.'

  He gave me their names and I added them to my pad.

  Then I changed direction, trying to keep him from becoming too emotional. 'Did Megan have a part-time job anywhere?'

  'She worked at a video store on alternate weekends.'

  'Did she like it?'

  'Yeah. It earned her some money.'

  'Who else worked there?'

  'Names? I don't know. You'd have to go and ask.'

  'What about places she used to go?'

  'You mean pubs and clubs?'

  'I mean anything,' I said. 'Anywhere she liked to go.'

  'You'd have to ask her friends about the places they used to go on a weekend. When they all got paid, they'd often go into the city. But I'm not sure where they used to go.'

  'What about places you used to take her?'

  'We often used to head up country - the Peak District, the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales. Caroline and I love the open spaces there. London suffocates you after a while. We started taking Meg up north as soon as she was old enough to walk.'

  'Do you think she could have gone to one of those places?'

  He shrugged. 'I don't know whether she would have gone north when I don't know why she left in the first place.'

  I'd asked them both about boyfriends the day before, but I wanted to ask them again individually. What you learned quickly in missing persons was that every marriage had secrets — and that one half of the couple always knew more than the other, especially when kids were involved. 'As far as you know, she didn't have a boyfriend?'

  'As far as I know.'

  'What's your gut feeling?'

  'My gut feeling is it's a possibility she met someone.' He moved a little in his seat, coming to the edge of it. 'Do you think that's our best hope?'

  'I think it's worth pursuing. Kids Megan's age tend to disappear for two reasons: either they're unhappy at home, or they've run away with someone - probably someone their parents don't approve of. It doesn’t sound like she was unhappy at home, so that's why I'm asking about boyfriends. We may find out Megan hasn't run off with someone.' I paused, looked at him. 'Or we may find out she has.'

  'But if she'd run off with someone, wouldn't she have seen the press conferences we did? The Megan I know wouldn't have ignored them. She wouldn't have ignored the pain she was putting us through. She would have called us.'

  I looked at him, then away - but he'd seen the answer, and it wasn't the one he wanted. It was the one where she didn't come home alive.

  Megan's room was beautifully presented and had barely been touched since her disappearance. A big bay window looked out over Hampstead Heath, wardrobes either side of it. A three-tiered bookcase was on the right, full of science textbooks. Opposite the window, close to the door, was a small desk with a top-of-the-range MacBook sitting on it, still open. Photographs surrounded the laptop: Megan with her friends; Megan holding Leigh when he was a baby; Megan with her mum and dad. There was also a rocking chair in one corner of the room, soft toys looking out, and a poster of a square-jawed Hollywood heart-throb on the wall above that.

  I booted up the MacBook and went through it. The desktop was virtually empty, everything tidied into folders. Homework assignments. Word documents. University prospectuses as PDF files. Clicking on Safari, I moved through her bookmarks, her history, her cookies and her download history — but, unless you counted a few illegal songs, nothing stood out. There was a link to her Face- book profile in the browser — the email and password automatically logged — but the only activity in the last seven months was the creation of a group dedicated to her memory. Judging by the comments, most people were assuming she wasn't coming home.

  Both wardrobes were full of clothes and shoes, but the second one had a couple of plastic storage boxes stacked towards the back. I took them out and flipped the lid off the top one: it was full of pictures. The younger Megan got in the photographs, the less like her father she became. As a young girl, she was a little paler with strikingly white hair, and without any of the similarities that were so startling in more recent pictures. Later pictures were less worn by age, her parents older, her face starting to mirror some of the shape of her father's.

  I opened up the next box.

  A digital camera was inside. I took it out, switched it on and started cycling through the photographs. There were twenty-eight in all, mostly of Leigh. A couple near the end were of Megan and what must have been her friends, and in the final one she was standing outside what looked like the entrance to a block of flats. I used the zoom and moved in closer: the entrance doors had glass panels in them that reflected back the day's light in two creamy blocks. A sliver of a brick wall on the right-hand side. Nothing else.

  I returned to her MacBook and booted up iPhoto, hoping to find a bigger version — but none of the pictures on the camera were on the computer. She hadn't got around to downloading them. I checked the date on the camera: 6 March. Twenty-eight days before she disappeared. Zooming in again, I studied the photo a second time, but the reflection in the glass would have been the most useful identifier of where she was and it was full of light. Then, when I came back to her face, I noticed something.

  Her smile.

  It was a smile I hadn't seen in any of the other pictures of her. For the first time, she didn't look like a girl. She looked like a woman.

  Because she's posing for someone she's attracted to.

  'Find anything?'

  I turned. Carver was standing in the doorway.

  'I'm not sure,' I said, and held up the camera and the storage box. 'Can I take these?'

  'Of course.' He came further in. 'I've been through those pictures hundreds of times. So have the police. Some days you feel like you've missed something. You think you've let something slip by. Then, when you go back, you only find what you found before. But maybe this whole thing needs a fresh pair of eyes.'

  He moved further in and picked up an early photograph of Megan. I watched his eyes move across the picture, soaking
up the memories. When he finally looked up, I could see he was trying to prevent his eyes filling with tears.

  'Do you know where this is?' I asked him, handing him the camera.

  He looked at the picture and studied it; shook his head.

  'No.'

  'You didn't take it?'

  'No.'

  'Any idea who might have?'

  He shrugged. 'Maybe one of her friends.'

  The phone started ringing downstairs. Carver apologized and disappeared. After he was gone, I went through the rest of the box. More photos, some letters, old jewellery.

  Every trace of a life Megan had left behind.

  It was almost lunch by the time I left. The sun had gone in, clouds scattered across the sky. In the distance I could see rain moving up from the heart of the city.

  I opened my old BMW 3 Series, threw my pad on to the passenger seat and turned back to Carver, who had walked me out.

  'I'd like to speak to your wife,' I said. Alone.

  'Of course. It's just, I'm out on a site visit tomorrow…'

  'That's fine. I'd like to keep things moving if possible, so if you can tell her that I'm going to call in, that would be great.'

  'Sure. No problem.'

  Afterwards, as I drove off, I watched him in the rear- view mirror disappearing back through the gates of his house. He looked like he'd had the wind knocked out of him. Give it a few weeks, and it might look like he'd had his heart ripped out too.

  Chapter Three

  There was a diner half a mile down the road from Megan's school. I sat at the window, ordered a bacon sandwich, then took out Megan's Book of Life. The previous night, when I'd glanced at it, it had been difficult to gain any kind of clarity. It was just sixty pages of random notes. The book was sectioned alphabetically, but none of her entries corresponded to the relevant letter. Where names should have been, there were phone numbers. Where phone numbers were supposed to be, there were names.

  I flipped back to the start. On the first page she'd written her name and Megan's Book of Life in red ballpoint. Contact Me! had been scribbled underneath that, with two numbers alongside: one I recognized as her home phone number, the other her mobile. The police would have been through her phone records, and checked her last calls, incoming and outgoing. They would have been through her email too. I'd need to get hold of her phone records through my contacts, but the police had passed on login details for Megan's email to her parents, presumably at the Carvers' request. They, in turn, had passed them on to me. If there was anything worth finding there, or anything crucial to the investigation, it was hard to believe the police would have been giving the login out, even to her parents, but — like her phone records — it was something else that needed to be ticked off the list.

  Midway through the book, I spotted a name I recognized. Kaitlin. Carver had mentioned her over lunch the day before. She was the girl Megan was supposed to have met up with on the way to her Biology class. Except Megan never arrived. Kaitlin's name was in a big heart, as was a third — Lindsey Watson. I wrote down the names and phone numbers for both of them.

  When I was done, a waitress with a face like the weather appeared at my table and threw my plate down in front of me without saying anything. Once she was gone, I took a bite of the sandwich and watched a news report playing out on a TV in the corner of the diner. A camera panned along the Thames. It looked like London City Airport.

  .. taken to intensive care with hypothermia. Her condition was originally described as critical, but she has continued to improve, and hospital staff told Sky News they expected her to be released tomorrow. Police still haven't issued personal details for the woman, but sources have told us they believe her to be in the region of forty- five to fifty years of age. In other news, a farmer in…'

  I finished my sandwich and moved through the book again, front to back. There were a lot of names. Maybe as many as thirty. Only six were male. I added the guys to the list, then paid the bill and headed for Megan's school.

  Newcross Secondary School was a huge red-brick Victorian building midway between Tufnell Park and Holloway Road. I left the car out front, and headed for the entrance. Inside, the place was deserted. I passed a couple of classrooms and saw lessons had already started, kids looking on, half interested, inside. The main reception was at the far end of a long corridor that eventually opened up on to big windows with views of the school's football pitches. The interior decor had time-travelled in from 1974. A couple of thin sliding glass panels on a chunk of fake granite separated three secretaries from the outside world. They were all perched at teak desks on faded medical-green chairs.

  I knocked on the glass. All three were fierce-looking women. Two of them paid me no attention whatsoever, the other glanced in my direction, eyed me, then decided I was at least worth getting up for. She slid the glass panel back, glancing at the pad in my hands. Her eyes — like Carver's the day before - drifted across my fingernails. What no one got to see were the other, even worse scars from the same case. It had been almost ten months and, although I'd made a full recovery, some days I could still feel the places I'd been beaten and tortured. My back. My hands. My feet. Perhaps a dull ache would always be there, like a residue, reminding me of how close I'd been to dying and how I was going to make sure it never happened again.

  I got out a business card and placed it down on the counter in front of the woman. 'My name's David Raker. I'm doing some work for the parents of Megan Carver.'

  The name instantly registered. Behind her, both women looked up.

  'What do you mean, "work"?'

  'I mean I'm trying to find out where she went.'

  They all nodded in sync. I had their attention now.

  'Is the headmaster around?'

  'Did you make an appointment?'

  I shook my head. 'No.'

  She frowned, but being here because of Megan seemed to soften her. She ran a finger down a diary.

  'Take a seat while I page him.'

  I smiled my thanks and sat down in a cramped waiting area to the right of the reception. More medical-green chairs. Posters warning of the dangers of drugs. A vase of fake blue flowers. Some kids passed by, looked at me, then carried on. Everything smelt of furniture polish.

  A telephone rang; a long, unbroken noise. One of the receptionists picked it up. The glass panel was now closed, but she was looking at me as she spoke. 'Okay,' she said a couple of times, and put the phone down. She leaned forward, and slid open the glass. 'He'll be five minutes.'

  Fifteen minutes later, he finally arrived.

  He walked straight up to the reception area, a hurried, flustered look on his face — like he'd run full pelt from wherever he'd come from — and followed his secretaries' eyes across the hall to where I was sitting. He came over. 'Steven Bothwick.'

  I stood and shook his hand. 'David Raker.'

  'Nice to meet you,' he said, using a finger to slide some hair away from his face. He was losing what he had left, and not doing a great job of disguising it.

  'I'm here about Megan Carver,' I said.

  'Yes,' he replied. 'A lovely girl.'

  He directed me to a door further along the corridor with his name on it. His office was small, crammed with books and folders. A big window behind his desk looked out over the football pitches. Bothwick pulled a chair out from the wall and placed it down on the other side of his desk. 'Would you like something to drink?'

  'No, I'm fine, thanks.'

  He nodded, pushing some folders out of his immediate way and shuffling in under the desk. He was in his fifties and barely scraping five-eight, but had an intensity about him, a determination, his expression fixed and strong.

  I reached into my pocket and got out another business card. 'Just so you're clear, I'm not a police officer. I used to be a journalist.'

  A frown worked its way across his face. 'A journalist?'

  'Used to be. For two years, I've been tracing missing people. That's my job now. The Carvers came to
me and asked me to look into Megan's disappearance for them.'

  'Why?'

  'Because the police investigation has hit a brick wall.'

  He nodded. 'I feel so sorry for her family. Megan was a fantastic student with a bright future. When the police came here, I told them the same.' He took my card and looked at it. 'Yours is quite a big career change.'

  'Not as big as you might think.' I watched him look at what was written on it — DAVID RAKER, MISSING PERSONS INVESTIGATOR - and across the desk at me.

  He handed me back my card. 'So what can I help you with?'

  'I've got a couple of questions.'

  'Okay.'

  I took out my pad and set it down on the desk.

  'Her parents told me they dropped her off on the morning of 3 April, and she never came out again that afternoon. Do pupils have to sign in?'

  'Well, we take a register first thing in the morning and again after lunch, yes. But only for those in years seven through to eleven.'

  'That's eleven to sixteen years of age, right?' 'Right.'

  'So Megan was too old?'

  'Yes. Our A-level students are treated more like adults. We encourage them to turn up to class - but we won't come down on absences.'

  'So say I missed a couple of days of school — would anyone notice? And who would it get reported to — you?'

  Yes. If a pupil was continually missing lessons, the teacher would inform me.'

  'But a few absences here and there…?'

  He shrugged. They may get reported, or they may not. It depends on the student. Some contribute so little to lessons that their presence may be felt less. I guess a teacher may not, in that instance, notice them as quickly. But Megan… I think we'd have seen straight away if she'd been missing a lot of school time.'

  'She was a good student?'

  'In the top three per cent here, yes.'

  'And never got into any trouble?'

  He shook his head. 'Absolutely not.'

  'I understand she had Physics and then Biology for the last two periods of the day, and that she attended the Physics part of that?' 'Right.'

  'Her teacher confirmed that?'