The Dead Tracks (27 page)

    'You
do much for them?'

    'Yeah,
a fair bit,' he replied, shrugging. 'Gotta be done.

    'It's
either that or the boys in blue turn up at my front door and slap the chains on
me. And I don't much fancy a bumming in Pentonville.'

    'Really?'

    He
frowned. 'You sayin' I'm bent?'

    I
laughed, but tried not to make too much of it. Ray had never killed anyone in
his life, but he still maintained a strict code of conduct as if he was the
world's most dangerous hitman. And like most criminals, it was a code all
twisted up. No women. No children. Anything to do with drugs was fair game, as
long as the product didn't end up in the hands of kids under sixteen. Guns were
out, but knives were in. And no jokes about him deliberately dropping the soap
in the showers as homosexuality was against God.

    'So,
I need your help.'

    He
nodded. Stepped closer to me.

    'I'm
an importer looking to bring some chemicals into the country on the quiet.
Nothing that's going to flatten a city, but bad enough that they'd be too
difficult to get hold of in the UK.'

    'What
kind of chemicals we talkin'?'

    'Formaldehyde.'

    'Wh
at the hell's that?'

    'It's
what they'll coat you in when you die.'

    'Like
dead people and shit?' 'Right.'

    'Not
ringing any bells.'

    'It
probably came in as a liquid. Would have been called formalin.'

    Ray
stopped jigging about momentarily, his eyes fixing on mine. Then he started up
again, but didn't make a move to say anything.

    'What
is it, Ray?'

    Another
dramatic pause. 'There's this guy. Got a building over in Beckton, near the
airport. He's from up north. Manchester. Somewhere round there.'

    'And
he Does what?'

    'Imports
shit — but ninety-nine per cent of it's legit. He runs a clean company outta
his place. I think he's, like, a supplier for restaurants. Some of the stuff is
actual food, but most of it's plates and engraved bowls and all that kinda
shit.'

    'So
what's the other one per cent?'

    'The
way I hear it, he's got some serious connections. He's like a fixer. You go to
him with what you want and he gets it; brings it in with the bowls and the
china plates.'

    'I'm
still waiting for the bonus ball.'

    He
rolled his eyes. You hearin' anythin' I'm sayin' here? He ain't handin' me a
fuckin' inventory every week. The guy ain't a personal friend of mine. But if
there's chemicals comin' into the city, you can bet your arse they're comin'
through him.'

    I
didn't reply. His eyes flicked to me. His face seemed straight: no movement, no
obvious sign that he was hiding anything.

    'Okay,'
I said. 'What's the name of the business?'

    'Drayton
Imports.'

    'That's
the guy's name as well?'

    'Yeah,
Derrick Drayton.'

    I
took a pen out of my pocket and wrote the names on the back of my hand. 'So,
who's been using him?'

    'I
don't know.'

    I
sighed and looked up at him. 'Stop feeding me bullshit, Ray.'

    'I
ain't.'

    'I
don't believe you.'

    'I
ain't holdin' back!'

    'I
don't believe you,' I said again.

    This
time there was a brief hesitation and then that movement in his face I'd been
waiting for. He knew something.

    'Ray?'

    Another
pause. 'Okay. I shouldn't be tellin' you this.'

    'Telling
me what?'

    'The
police came askin' about all this shit a few months —'

    'Wait
a sec, wait a sec. The police?'

    'Yeah.'

    'What
were they asking about?'

    'If
I'd heard anythin' about this Drayton guy.'

    'They
tell you why they were asking?'

    'No.'

    'What
did they say?'

    'Nothin'.
Just asked me if I'd heard anythin' about this guy, Drayton, who ran it. When I
told 'em what I knew, they said I needed to keep my trap shut if anyone asked.'

    I
paused. Let my mind return to the photograph and the formalin in the
background. 'Did the police ever ask you if you'd heard anything about a
missing girl?'

    Radar
frowned. 'No.'

    'They
just asked about Drayton?'

    'Yeah.'

    I
paused. 'So if they know he's on the take, why haven't they closed him down?'

    'He
disappeared. Most people think he bought a one-way ticket out of the country
when he could smell pork on the wind. And the business is squeaky clean. So his
family run the place over in Beckton in his absence. You'd have to dial 999 to
find out what the police have got planned for him if he ever returns.
Especially after the…' He trailed off.

    'The
what?'

    'Doesn’t
matter.'

    'The
what?
He didn't respond. 'Speak up, Radar.'

    He
sighed; slid a couple of fingers beneath his beanie and tried to rub his frown
away. Eventually he took the hat off altogether and dragged a whole hand across
his head, his shaved hair bristling beneath his palm. Another sigh, this time
louder.

    'Especially
the what, Ray?'

    This
Drayton guy, he's got a series of properties all over that part of the city.
Not just the place at Beckton. And in one of them… somethin' got fucked up.'

    'What
are you talking about?'

    'It's
why the police were interested. Way I hear it is that Drayton sourced some guns
for some OC outfit and allowed 'em to use one of his buildings as a pick-up
point for the weapons.'

    'Organized
crime?'

    'Yeah.
Russians. The police got wind of it and sent in the cavalry. Only it went
wrong' He paused. Looked at me. 'And a couple of coppers got a bullet in the
face.'

    I
looked at him, struck into silence.

    
Bloody
hell.

    He's
talking about the night Frank White died
.

    The
Frank White file was sitting inside the boot of the BMW, still in the envelope Tasker
had mailed it in. I'd brought it with me in case I found the time to skim-read
it while chasing leads back to Megan. But now, somehow, Frank White had moved
in from the periphery - and he'd tethered himself to her disappearance.

    I
slid in at the wheel, closed the door and tried to clear my head. The cemetery
was quiet. I put the wipers on intermittent, listening to them sweep across the
glass. For the moment, there wasn't a direct connection that I could see. There
was a line running from Frank's death, to the Russians, to Drayton Imports, to
the formalin, and on to the girl in the photograph. But the circle wasn't
complete. It felt like
something
was at work — like on some level the
two of them were bound to one another - but even if Megan
was
the girl
in the picture, which wasn't even certain, the only thing that connected her to
Frank White was the fact that the formalin in the background of the shot had
probably been imported by Drayton - the man who owned the warehouse Frank was
shot in.

    And
yet I didn't like the convenience of it all; the coincidence. Because I didn't
believe in coincidences. I believed in structure and meaning. I believed in
connections.

    People
connected. Events connected. Everything tied up.

    I
started going through the file. It echoed exactly what Tasker had already told
me over the phone. The task force was spotted early on by Russian lookouts, and
the operation descended into a shoot-out. Three specialist firearms officers
had accompanied White's SCD7 team to the scene, and one of them had managed to
hit the surgeon's getaway vehicle, a stolen black Lexus. But he still got away.
At 11.17 p.m., Frank White was declared dead. Another detective, Kline, was
already gone. Two of Akim Gobulev's men made it through the firefight. One died
in the ambulance on the way to the hospital; the other refused to talk. There
were five separate attempts by detectives to interview him, and the five
transcripts included in the file weren't more than a page long.

    So
all they had was the surgeon.

    And
they didn't even have him.

    Pathology,
fingerprint lifts and ballistics confirmed what Tasker had already told me, but
the evidence inventory was one of the longest I'd ever seen. The lack of a
smoking gun — and the fact that two police officers were lying dead on the
floor of the warehouse - had galvanized the forensic teams. It looked like
every fibre in the building had been processed. For the people working there,
it had become personal the moment White and Kline stopped breathing.

    I
leafed through the list. Everything bagged at the scene had been catalogued,
and it all quickly became a blur: numbers, names and descriptions rolling down
one page and on to the next. Hairs. Mud. Dust. Powder. Skin. The eleventh and
twelfth pages listed evidence recovered from Gobulev's men - dead and alive —
at the scene. More fibres. Fingerprints. Illegal firearms, the serial numbers
removed. Below that, there were two entries for the two 9mm bullets that had
killed Frank White. Both were hollow point, which meant they'd expanded in his
chest and head as soon as they'd made contact. He would have died quickly.

    I
moved on through the rest of the file — interviews, photographs of the scene,
what they knew about the surgeon — and when I got to the end dropped it on to
my lap and looked out at the cemetery again. It was still quiet. No people. No
cars. Only the gentle wheeze of the wipers.

    Picking
up my phone, I dialled the Carvers. James answered, but Caroline was there as
well. I asked him to put me on speakerphone, so I could talk to them both.

    'Very
quick question,' I said. 'Do either of you recognize the name Frank White —
maybe someone Megan knew, or perhaps the police mentioned the name in passing?'

    'Doesn’t
ring a bell for me,' Carver replied.

    I
could feel the tension travel down the line. He was answering for himself, not
the two of them now.

    'Same
here,' Caroline said quietly.

    
People
connected. Events connected. Nothing is coincidence. I
said goodbye, then
dialled Jill's mobile. She was out somewhere. In the background I could hear
people talking.

    'I'm
not disturbing you, am I?'

    'No,
not at all,' she said. 'I'm doing some shopping'

    'Can
I ask you a couple of questions?'

    'Of
course.'

    'Do
you ever remember Frank mentioning the name Megan Carver?'

    A
pause. Wasn't she that girl who went missing?'

    'Right.'

    'I
don't think so.'

    'He
never mentioned being involved in the search for her?'

    'No.
Why do you ask?'

    I
paused.
You have to ask her — and there's no easy way to phrase it.
'Mind if I ask why you decided to come to the support group this week?'

    'What
do you mean?'

    
I
mean I'm already working the Megan Carver case, and then you turn up and I end
up looking into your husband's death as well. And now I find out there might be
some kind of connection
.
'I just wondered about the timing, that was
all.'

    She
hesitated. I rode out the silence. There didn't seem to be a lot of mystery to
Jill. The grief she felt for her husband seemed real; the shyness seemed
genuine. I couldn't see anything behind her reasons for coming to the group
other than to get over the death of someone she'd loved. But, even so, the
timing was too perfect. She'd all but asked me to look into Frank's death
forty-eight hours after the Carvers had first brought me Megan. London was a
city of seven million people, and yet somehow I'd ended up with both cases
within two days of each other.