The Dead Tracks (11 page)

    I didn't
use it anywhere near as much as I once did. At the start, it had been a way to
separate my home life from my work life. A way to legitimize my career. Now
Derryn was gone, it was just an expensive inconvenience, and I was thirty days
away from watching the lease lapse. Once that happened, I'd work out of the
house permanently, and another little piece of my previous life would have
washed away.

    Swivelling
in my chair, I looked up at the corkboard behind me. A wall full of the
missing. Right at the top was Megan Carver. I stood and pulled the picture out,
then sat down again and studied her.
What's going on, Megan? What's your mum
hiding?
I turned gently in the chair, tracing the shape of her face;
letting my mind turn over.

    A
couple of seconds later, my phone burst into life.

    I
looked at the display, NUMBER WITHHELD. Pulling it towards me, I switched to
speaker phone.

    'David
Raker.'

    No
response.

    'David
Raker,' I said, louder.

    No
sound at all. No static, no background noise.

    I sat
forward in my seat. 'Hello?'

    Just
silence.

    
'Hello?

    'Mr
Raker…' A soft voice. Female. 'It's Kaitlin.' 'Kaitlin?'

    'You
said to call you if I…'

    I
glanced at the photograph of Megan.
Things have changed.
, I should have
said. But then I remembered the way Kaitlin had been when I'd gone to the
school, and realized a part of me wanted to find out what she had to say.

    'I,
uh… There's something…' 'It's okay, Kaitlin.'

    'Something
you should know.' 'Okay.'

    'About
Megan.' A pause. A long one. 'I'm just sick of having to lie.'

    More
silence. For a moment, all I could hear was the slight crackle of her breath
against the mouthpiece.

    Then,
finally, she spoke.

    The
Carvers' gates were closed when I pulled up outside. I'd tried calling ahead,
but no one had answered. I locked the BMW, stepped up to the intercom and
pressed the buzzer. They had a small camera embedded in the number pad. I
looked into it. It was moving from left to right, then — as it got to me - stopped.
A crackle on the intercom.

    'What
do you want?'

    James
Carver.

    'I
need to speak to you.'

    'We've
got nothing more to say to one another.'

    'You're
going to want to hear this.'

    The
camera hummed. This time, in its centre, I could see the lens open up. He was
zooming in on me. I stared straight into the eye of it.

    Then
the gates buzzed open.

    Carver
met me at the door, but didn't offer me anything to drink. Didn't even ask me
in. The two of them stood in the doorway, arms crossed, defensive, waiting for
whatever I had to say. Carver was in front of his wife, protecting her, as if
he thought I might try to start something.

    'I
got a call this morning,' I said, keeping my eyes fixed on him. 'From Kaitlin -
Megan's friend. Did the police ever tell you what she said in her statement?'

    'What's
this got to do with anything?'

    
'Did
they?'

    Anger
flared in his eyes. 'She was the last person to see Megan.' He paused, a flutter
of sadness in among the irritation. 'That's it.'

    For
the first time, I glanced at Caroline. Her eyes were fixed on mine, but there
wasn't any of the animosity of her husband.

    'That's
not it,' I said, glimpsing a little fear in her now.

    'What
are you talking about?'

    'Before
Megan disappeared, she confided in Kaitlin.'

    'About
what?' Carver said.

    'And
I think she might have confided in your wife as well.'

    Carver's
mouth dropped a little, as if he couldn't believe I had the balls to come into
his home and insult his wife again. Then, when Caroline didn't respond, didn't
even attempt to register her disgust, he looked over his shoulder at her.

    'Caroline?'
he said. 'What's going on?' She couldn't look at him.

    'James,'
I said, and waited for him to turn back to me. When he did, the anger had gone
from his face. 'Megan was pregnant.'

    Sona
woke. Next to her, Mark was lying on his stomach, the sheet gathered at the
small of his back, breathing so quietly she could barely hear him. On the floor,
their clothes were scattered everywhere: a blouse, a skirt, a pair of jeans, a
T-shirt, a jacket. Shoes at the door. Underwear still clinging to the ends of
the duvet.

    She
sat up and caught sight of herself in the reflection of the mirror. Naked, and
still a little conscious of it, even though they were nearly six months into
their relationship. It was a feeling that was slowly starting to pass. Mark
made her feel good about herself in a way few men had before. That didn't mean
he complimented her a lot either, but she'd made allowances for that. He was
incredibly shy, so different from the other men she'd known, and she liked that
about him. She'd always had reactive men before. Men who told her she was
beautiful and then ended up tearing her heart out. She found Mark's stillness —
his sense of quiet — new, exciting and secure.

    She
headed to the bathroom and closed the door, looking at herself again in the
mirror. In her twenties she'd done a little modelling and, as she'd passed into
her thirties, she'd lost none of her looks. The blonde hair, blue eyes and high
cheekbones could still turn heads, even if she saw changes elsewhere. Maybe a
little more weight than she should have had. A few more lines at the corners of
her eyes. Some of the definition around her stomach had gone. She'd be
thirty-six in two days, and knew she had imperfections now. But she'd found a
man who was able to look past all of it.

    A man
she was falling in love with.

    They'd
been driving for about twenty minutes when Mark told her she could remove the
blindfold. Sona reached up and pulled the tie away. Her head throbbed slightly.
She wasn't sure if it was the start of a headache, or the sudden switch from
dark to light. Sun poured into the car as she looked around, and saw they were
in a parking space on a narrow residential street. Identical terraced houses
ran along either side of the road. Most hadn't been maintained with any sense
of pride: paint blistered on windowsills, plants were dying in small concrete
yards, broken gutters hung loose.

    'It
gets better,' Mark said, turning to her. 'Promise.'

    'Where
are we?'

    'I
used to come here sometimes.' He pointed a finger towards a small alleyway
running between two houses further down. It was the only break in the
buildings, on either side, for as far as they could see. To the woods down
there.'

    'Woods?'

    Mark
killed the engine.

    'They
used to make munitions in this area during the Second World War, at a factory
further up the road. This whole place was once one of the centres of British
industry. Now look at it…' He studied the houses opposite. When he turned back,
he glanced at Sona and smiled. 'Oh shit, I've just turned into my dad.'

    She laughed.
He smiled, then reached down to the side of his seat. A second later, he
brought out a single red rose. 'Happy birthday, Sona,' he said quietly.

    She
took the rose, a cream ribbon tied to the stem. Something moved across his face
— as if he was on the verge of telling her something important.

    
He
wants to tell me he loves me
.

    She
waited for a moment, and when it didn't come, leaned into him and kissed him
gently on the lips. 'Thank you, baby,' she said. When she drew away, she saw
the same expression. 'Are you okay?'

    He
glanced towards the alleyway, then turned back to her.

    'I
just…' He paused. 'I'm just really…'

    
In
love with you
.

    She
smiled and squeezed his leg, kissing him on the cheek.

    He
nodded to the back seat. 'I hope you're hungry.'

    She
turned. She'd heard him sliding something into the back after he'd blindfolded
her and guided her to the car. Now she could see it had been a hamper.

    'Shall
I take you to our picnic spot?' he asked.

    'Yes,'
she said, her voice trembling a little. 'I'd love that.'

    Mark
led her away from the car, carrying the picnic hamper. They turned into the
alleyway and followed it until it opened up on to a concrete bed with a series
of half-demolished brick walls across it. She realized then that it had once
been a factory. To her left and right were more ruined walls, remnants of
another age; some still just about standing, some nothing but piles of bricks
and dust, grass and weeds crawling through the foundations.

    Rubbish
was dumped everywhere: beer bottles, drinks cans, crisp packets, sweet
wrappers, dustbin liners full of rotting food. The smell was awful.

    'Don't
worry,' he said. 'It really
Does
get better.'

    Ahead
of them, carved like a mouth into a line of huge fir trees, was the entrance to
the woods Mark had talked about. Everything was overgrown. As they moved past a
warped, broken gate and along the path, trees leaned in over them, their
foliage thick and dark. Grass was everywhere, sprouting up waist-high around
the tree trunks, and breaking through the cracks in the gravel path. The
further in they got, the less defined the trail became until, eventually, the
gravel turned into hard mud.

    'Everything's
so thick,' she said.

    'Yeah.
Nothing ever seems to die here.'

    Sona
glanced right. Through a gap in the trees, she could make out huge letters on
the side of another factory: munitions. There was row after row of smashed
windows, jagged glass still in the frames, nothing inside but darkness.

    'I
always think they look a bit like eyes,' Mark said.

    She
nodded. What a creepy old building.'

    He
put his arm around her shoulder and brought her into him. 'Don't worry - I'll
protect you from the scary factory.'

    She
laughed, and gave him a playful slap on the shoulder.

    
Crack
.

    A
noise from behind them. She stopped. Mark walked on a couple of steps, his arm
slipping away, then he paused and turned to look at her.

    What's
the matter?'

    She
looked around her. Wind passed through the trees, whispering gently as the
leaves fluttered against the branches.

    'Sona?'
he said, taking a step closer to her. 'Are you okay?'

    She
took his outstretched hand.

    'Sona?'

    Finally
she looked at him. "Yeah. I guess I'm fine.'

    They carried
on walking. The path was starting to arc left, moving in a gentle curve. Before
long, the hardened mud started to disappear beneath their feet, and in its
place came more grass. But then Sona spotted a clearing about eighty feet in
front of them. The canopy wasn't as thick, and sunlight was punching through
the branches and leaves in hundreds of pollen-filled rectangles. It looked
beautiful.

    'Wow,'
she said. 'Look at that.'

    Mark
smiled. 'That's our picnic spot.'

    When
they reached the clearing, he started to unpack the hamper, laying down a
blanket on the knee-high grass, and removing packets of biscuits and cheese.

    Sona
looked around her. 'How do you know about this place?'