The Dead Tracks dr-2

by Tom Weaver

  I headed down the stairs and outside, pulling the hood up on my jacket. The boxes I'd already moved were stained darker with rain. I took out my pocket knife and stabbed the blade down through the top of the nearest box, edging it around in an L-shape and peeling it away. Inside were woks, each separated by a layer of foam. I pushed the box aside and went for the next one. Porcelain dishes. The next one along: frying pans. I stepped back and looked further into the pile, under the plastic sheeting. A wind carved in from behind me and lifted the tarpaulin away. Right in the middle, surrounded on all sides, was a tall, thin box, with a small black symbol in the corner.

  Shoving boxes aside, I moved further into the centre of the pile, trying to create a space where I could drag the box back out with me. When I got to it, I tried to move it.

  It was heavy. At least forty or fifty pounds. I dug the knife blade into each side and cut out a couple of finger holes, then tightened my grip again and pulled the box out. As it moved, even as the rain pelted down and the wind howled, I could hear something moving around inside. Liquid sloshing.

  Back inside the warehouse, Healy looked down, a frown on his face. I could see Drayton trying to turn.

  'What's that?'

  I pulled the box to the bottom of the steps, so they could both see. Then I set it straight. Drayton stared at it, something in him receding, as if a great secret had just been blown away in the wind. There had only been a small movement in his eyes before. But it was enough for me to realize he was hiding something. Eyes weren't just the doorway to the soul. They were the ultimate polygraph test.

  'What's that?' Healy said again.

  I jabbed my knife down through the top of the box and cut out a hole. 'Formalin,' I said, prodding a finger against the symbol on the outside. This is the number eighty in Cyrillic. 'Just like the pi symbol. I'd seen it before on the cardboard boxes in the background of the photo I'd found in the doll. The photograph that had been used to help frame me. 'There are about eighty canisters of the stuff in here. And I'm willing to bet that Whoever drew that map for Drayton was hoping to take delivery of them.'

  Drayton made no noise.

  I made my way back up the steps.

  'So,' I said, and picked up the map off the desk. Where's this?'

  He looked at me and I could see he was just as involved in all this as his father; as good a liar as his father too. The problem was, he wasn't as organized and he wasn't as good at covering his tracks. He'd got sloppy, keeping the goods he'd imported on his premises rather than shipping them off to another storage unit. He'd thought hiding them among the imported kitchenware would be enough. And maybe it would have been if I'd never spoken to Spike and found out what the symbol in the photograph meant.

  Healy reached over and tore off the gag.

  'He said he had information on the business,' Drayton said. 'He said he would send evidence of deliveries, of goods we'd imported, to the police. He said he would finish us.'

  'Who was he?'

  'I don't know' Drayton replied, his voice tearful. 'I can't run this business like my dad. I can't do it. I hate it. But I promised him I could meet his expectations. I promised him I would look after the family I promised him I would never let him down. But I can't even do that one thing for him.'

  I pointed at the map. 'Where's this?'

  'Walthamstow. Pine Terrace. Number 29.'

  'You were supposed to drop the formalin off there?'

  Drayton nodded. 'When?'

  'Tomorrow.'

  'What were your instructions?'

  Drayton glanced down. 'Leave the box on the front steps of the house.'

  'That's it?'

  'That's it,' he said. 'The same instructions every time. I've been importing things for him for months now. When he comes here, he tells me the same thing. Memorize the road name. Don't write it down. Don't photocopy it. Keep the map secure. Tell anyone anything and he buries the business.'

  'Is he home when you drop off the package?'

  Drayton shook his head. 'The house is vacant. They had a fire there. Half of it's boarded up, but you can see in through one of the broken windows. The living room has been burned to shit. No carpet. No furniture. The back garden's like a jungle, and out front it's just a dumping ground. Cans and wrappers and dog shit all over the place.'

  'You ever stick around after the drop-off?'

  'No. He tells us to deliver the package and leave immediately.'

  I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and took out a picture I'd torn from one of the youth club personnel files. I held it up for him.

  'Is this the man who comes to see you?'

  Drayton studied the picture. 'Yeah, that's him.'

  It was Daniel Markham.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Pine Terrace was a narrow, forgotten row of houses that looked like its best days weren't just behind it, but had never arrived in the first place. Each home had the same uniform white-bricked garden wall, but the actual houses were painted a mish-mash of clashing colours, like a work of modern art gone wrong: reds, creams, peaches, greens, all visible even under subdued street light and lashing rain. Halfway down, stained with soot and ash, was number twenty-nine. Drayton had been right about its appearance: its concrete path had turned to rubble; its door was blistered and warped; glass was scattered across what lawn there was left; and someone had spray-painted the walls. Council notices warning against entering, once stuck to the front door, had peeled away over time.

  Healy pulled up a little way down the street. I got out, turning the collar up on my jacket, and studied the road. If Markham was asking Drayton to drop the box off on the front steps, then he was confident enough about getting to the package before any passers-by took an interest. That meant that when Drayton — or the people who worked for him - turned up at the house, Markham had to be watching. I looked across the street to the houses opposite. They were buildings without life. The whole road had a depressed air about it, a lack of internal light. It was obvious why Markham had chosen this street.

  'What a shitheap,' Healy said as he passed me, studying the dark front window of the house. In his hands was a torch he'd got from the back of the car. He made his way up the driveway, the concrete beneath his feet crumbling, and looked in through a hole in the glass. A few seconds later, he flicked the torch on and directed it inside. In the cone of light, I could see blackened walls, a fireplace and — at the back - patio doors.

  'You know how long this has been unoccupied?' He shone the torch at the council notice on the front door, then directed the light back into the living room. 'Three years. No wonder it smells like someone shat themselves to death in there. Half the tramps in London have probably used it as a bed and breakfast.'

  I followed Healy, checking the houses opposite. The windows across the street would be the obvious place to watch the delivery being made: high position, clear view, good cover. If he used either of the places that flanked number twenty-nine, he'd have to be more careful, but he'd have an even better view of the drop-off. Neither seemed likely, though: in the one to the right, through a pair of net curtains, I could see an old couple sitting in front of their TV; in the house on the left, children's toys were on the windowsill and behind the closed curtains a light was on.

  Healy looked at me. 'Better hold your breath.'

  Along the edge of the door frame the council had once run luminous yellow tape in an attempt to keep people out. He tore some of it away, stepped back from the door and kicked it open. It juddered and shifted, then swung back into the darkness.

  The hallway was small and narrow, and as black as the outside of the house. As we stood and looked in, rain swept in from behind us. It ran down the blistered, seared walls and formed puddles in the glass that lay, sparkling in the torchlight, at the entrance.

  The smell hit us about three feet inside. The thick stench of fire. The stink of urine, sweat, alcohol and vomit. Healy shone a torch into the living room. Two men were lying on the floor under
blankets, one facing us, one facing away. They were both drunk. He whistled at them. The one facing us opened his eyes; the other didn't even move. He looked vaguely in our direction, unable to focus, then his pupils rolled back in his head. A second later, he was still again.

  There were patches of carpet on the floor beneath them, but mostly it was exposed floorboards and - in some places - black holes where the fire had eaten its way through. Beyond the men, tucked away on the other side of the room, was the staircase. The steps were destroyed, and more council tape had been placed across the entrance to them. Close to the staircase was a fireplace, and beyond that was the kitchen.

  Both men on the floor stirred, one mumbling, one making a sound like he was suffering his last, dying breath. Between them were a succession of empty cans and bottles. One of them had wet himself.

  'Bloody hell,' Healy said quietly. 'It's like St Patrick's Day in here.'

  We moved back across the living room. Healy headed straight for exit, but I stopped to look up the stairs. I could see some of the landing: walls were burned through and full of cracks, and holes came right the way through the ceiling into the living room.

  The torch swung back in my direction. 'You coming or what?'

  I ignored Healy and moved towards the fireplace.

  'Give me the light,' I said.

  He held out the torch. I glanced at him, not moving, waiting for him to bring it to me. Finally, he shook his head and moved across the glass shards and broken wood, to the fireplace. He slapped it into my hand.

  'You after a new fire?'

  I ignored him for a second time and used the torch to light it up. It was a standard gas fire: fake lumps of coal sitting in a tray, inside a once-smart silver surround. It wasn't plumb to the wall. A half-inch gap ran all the way around, and when I directed the light in behind, it looked like it was just an empty space. No fire interior. No wall cavity. No insulation. Just space.

  'Give me a hand,' I said, and Healy went to the other side of the fire. We both fed our fingers into the gap and pulled the silver surround away from the wall. It stuck at first, making a dull scratching noise as we dragged it. Then it popped free, the coal tray coming with it.

  I picked up the torch again.

  There was a hole in the wall about three feet high and four feet long. I shone the light into it. Through the hole, the bricks, insulation and wall cavity had all been knocked through.

  On the other side was the house next door.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  I got down on to my hands and knees and crawled through the space, through plaster and dust, glass and chunks of brick. Healy followed.

  On the other side, the layout was exactly the same as number twenty-nine. It was sparsely furnished: a tall lamp across from us, currently on and plugged into a timer; a worn sofa; a brand-new TV in the corner on a cabinet, with a DVD player and a very old VCR; VHS tapes underneath that. The kitchen had cutlery on the worktops and food packets half open. The stairs were uncarpeted.

  By the front windows were two mannequins. Both were naked, though an arm was missing from one — and something was hanging off its face. It looked like a sheet of thin plastic, part of it glued to the side of the mannequin's head.

  I stepped closer and touched a finger to the plastic.

  But it wasn't plastic.

  It was latex.

  One side of it was smooth and creamy, almost polished. The other side had more colour and texture. I pulled it across the face of the mannequin and Healy came around behind me, looking over my shoulder.

  'What the hell is that?'

  I smoothed it down, over the ridges of the mannequin's head. 'It's a face.'

  We stepped back, children's toys scattered along the windowsill behind us, teddy bears and plastic animals poking out between the curtains. Everything was here to create silhouettes. To make people outside think normality existed on the inside.

  But it didn't.

  In front of us the mannequin looked back, its dead gaze peering through the eyeholes in the thin latex mask. Small, pursed lips were visible through the mouth slit. The mask started to slip away again, the glue not strong enough to hold it any more. But not before both of us had realized who was looking back.

  Milton Sykes.

  I ripped the mask away from the curved plastic dome of the dummy's head. Healy stood beside me, both of us looking down at the latex approximation of Sykes.

  It was a skilled piece of work. Not perfect by any means - some of the colouring had run and there was glue and globules of varnish on parts of the skin — but it was good enough to convince. The mask ran from the top of the forehead to either ear and down to just below the chin. Whoever made it had ensured that the forehead was thicker than the rest of the mask to match up with Sykes's most prominent feature. The depth of the latex at the forehead was almost four times as thick as it was on the rest of the face. If anyone had managed to get close enough they might have been able to tell that something was off. But through the glitchy, staccato black-and-white of the CCTV camera in Tiko's, it had looked perfectly lifelike.

  I remembered the man at Markham's flat. The weirdness of his face: how his mouth and eyes had moved, but the rest of him had remained perfectly still.

  Now I could see why.

  We searched the living room. No clay. No sculpting tools. No liquid latex. No paints. No reference materials or pictures of Sykes. There was nothing to suggest the mask had been created inside the house. With something as complex and time-consuming as moulding and styling a latex mask, there would be evidence. Instead, the house was half empty. So it must have been brought here.

  Healy walked across the room and looked up into the darkness of the staircase. He flicked on the torch, waving it up and down the steps to check they weren't in the same state of disrepair as the ones next door. Then he tried the light switches next to him on the wall. None of them did anything. He glanced at me and nodded that he was going to have a look around upstairs. I nodded back. As he disappeared into the shadows, just a cone of light as his guide, I headed to the rear of the house.

  Clackclackclack.

  Something moved in the darkness of the kitchen. Left to right. I side-stepped and leaned left, trying to get a better view around the counter. But there was nothing now. No movement. No sound other than Healy moving around upstairs, the floorboards creaking under his weight.

  I took a step forward.

  Clackclackclack.

  Then there was a faint squeak, like a rusty hinge moving.

  I took out my phone, flipped it open and directed the light from the display into the space on the other side of the worktop. A rat scurried away, its claws making a clack- clackclack noise on the linoleum. It headed through a hole between one of the cupboards and the cooker.

  As I went around the worktop I saw a second rat, its fat pink tail visible, the rest of its body hidden by one of the units. It wasn't squeaking and it definitely wasn't moving, but there was still a noise. A different one: moist, wet, like it was chewing on something. To my left I spotted Healy coming down the stairs, the torch in front of him. He looked at me and shook his head. Nothing upstairs. Then a fly buzzed past my face. As I went to swat it away I felt another, dozy and unresponsive. A second later, I could hear more.

  They were everywhere.

  And then my senses opened up: animals, blood — and decay.

  I flipped open my phone again, swinging the blue light around to the space behind the counter. The rat moved this time, following the path of the other one.

  Clackclackclack.

  Except this one left a trail: a series of tiny red marks.

  Footprints.

  Lying on the floor, half slumped against the kitchen units, was the body of a man. His arms were at his sides, palms up, fingers curled into claws. His eyes stared off into the night, wide and pale, and his clothes, and the lino around him, were covered in blood. His T-shirt had been torn open about halfway down, and on the skin of his chest I could s
ee a series of knife wounds, probably made with a serrated blade: long and thin, thrust in so deep and pulled out so quickly that flesh, muscle and fat had come with it. His trousers were riding up either leg, and one sock was on the other side of the kitchen, among blood spatters that looked like arterial spray.

  'So what the fuck are we supposed to do now?' Healy said from behind me, shining the torch into the face of the man on the floor.

  We'd found Daniel Markham.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Healy traced Markham's dead body with the torch, careful not to disturb the crime scene. Eventually we'd have to call it in, but first we had to clear our heads. Press Reset. Our best lead was lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor of a derelict house.

  'Difficult to tell how long,' Healy said, 'unless you want to shove a thermometer up his arse and take his temperature.'

  He moved the torch beam down Markham's arm, blue veins prominent below the skin. The blood that hadn't left his body through his chest had pooled in his legs, his feet and the small of his back. Healy used the torch to signal one of his calves. The area directly in contact with the lino hadn't filled with blood. The area just above it had.

  'That's hypostasis,' he said.

  Once gravity kicks in, your red blood cells head south and settle; but the skin that's in direct contact with a surface won't fill up because the capillaries are compressed.

  He swung the torch around the kitchen.

  'The body hasn't been moved,' he continued. 'Once the red blood cells drop, they stay dropped. If he'd been turned over from his front, the blood would be in his shins, knees, top of his thighs and the front of his chest - not where it is now.'

  'Looks like he's got rigor mortis too,' I said.

  Healy stopped, turned to me, eyes narrowing. 'So what else am I telling you that you already know?' He was angry that we'd hit another dead end, and he needed someone to offload on. 'You going to tell me how it is you're a part- time pathologist as well as a part-time policeman?'