The Dead Tracks (36 page)

    Static.

    To
her side: movement.

    'Mark?'

    'You
won't feel a thing,' a voice said from somewhere inside the room.

    And
then a hand slipped around her face, clamping on her mouth, a tissue pressed
against her nose and lips. And within a couple of seconds, she'd blacked out.

    Healy
and I walked up the path towards Alba, the block of flats in Mile End Daniel
Markham had once occupied. The doors were open. Just inside, in the foyer, a
woman was mopping floors, big puddles of water scattered around her. She didn't
even look up as we moved behind her and into the ground-floor flats.

    It
was eight-thirty. Commuting hour. A couple of people left their apartments,
dressed for work. At Markham's door we waited, listening to the sounds of the
building. Televisions. A conversation next door. But no one about to exit their
flat. I pushed at the door to number eight and it swung gently away from its
frame. The piece of card I'd used to wedge it shut dropped to the floor. Healy
stepped back and let me take in the flat — any changes, any suggestion Markham
had been back. But it looked exactly the same.

    Healy
headed to the living room. I went back to the bathroom and flicked on the light.
The bathroom cabinet remained open, the clasp still broken. Nothing else had
been moved. I placed my hands either side of it and lifted the cabinet off the
wall. The message emerged.
Help me.

    'Healy.'

    He appeared
a couple of seconds later, looking at me, then at the message on the wall.
"You think Markham wrote that?'

    'You
don't?'

    He
studied the wall, shrugged. 'Why's he asking for help? And why bother hiding it
where no one's going to find it?'

    'I
found it.'

    'By
accident.'

    'But
I found it.'

    'So
what's your point?'

    'Maybe
he wants to be stopped,' I said, looking at the message again. 'Or maybe he's
caught up in something, he's scared, and he wants someone
else
to be
stopped.'

    'Who,
Glass?'

    'That's
what we've got to find out.'
Click.

    A
noise from behind me. From outside the bathroom.

    As I
moved to the door, a memory formed: standing outside the flat the first time
I'd been around, my ear pressed against the door, listening to something click
inside.

    I
walked out into the hallway and looked around. It was narrow and empty. One
painting on the wall of a sunset, but nothing else. Healy passed me and went to
the kitchen. I headed into the bedroom. Bed base, no mattress. Empty bedside
cabinets. No lampshade. In the living room, Healy was opening and closing
cupboards. I walked through and looked around. Exactly the same as everywhere
else. Nothing had been moved. Nothing had changed inside the flat since I'd
last been in. Healy closed a cupboard, noticed me and looked up.

    'You
all right?'

    'Did
you hear something?'

    He
stood up. 'Like what?'

    There
was no sound in the flat now. The only noise was from outside: cars passing on
the street below; people next door; distant sirens. I scanned the room.

    'Like
what?' Healy asked again.

    'Like
some sort of click.'

    
'
A
click
?

    Then
I saw it above the doorway.

    It
was sitting on a small black shelf, obscured by shadows, a wire snaking out of
it and up through a tiny hole drilled in the ceiling.

    It
was a video camera.

    'Someone's
watching us,' I said.

    Before
Healy had a chance to fall in alongside me, I redirected him back towards the
living room and out of sight of the camera. I hadn't spotted it the first time
I'd been in, but I saw it now. Small and compact, black, sitting on an equally
black shelf in the darkest part of the room. It was easy to miss. If it hadn't
been for the click of the zoom, I might never have thought to look up there. Through
the corner of my eye, I followed the wire out of the back of the unit and into
the ceiling.

    
It
leads to the flat upstairs.

    Healy
disrupted my train of thought. He was moving across the living room to a stool
in the corner of the room.

    'What
are you doing?'

    He
stopped and looked back at me like I'd asked the dumbest question he'd heard
all day. 'What do you think I'm doing? I'm going to get that camera.'

    'That's
a bad idea.'

    He let
out a snort and rocked back on his heels, as if I'd just surprised him with my
stupidity a second time. 'Yeah? And what's a good idea? Standing around here
with our dicks in our hands?'

    'We
need to leave it where it is for the time being.'

    'And
why would we do that?'

    'Because
it feeds into the flat upstairs.'

    His
eyes drifted to the ceiling and then back to me, as if he thought I might be
trying to trick him. 'Then what are we waiting for?'

    'We
need to play this right.'

    
'Right?
He shook his head. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? In case you
hadn't noticed, I'm not your apprentice.'

    'Healy,'
I said gently, 'cool down.'

    Fire
flared in his eyes, and for a moment I wondered whether enlisting his help had
been the right thing to do. He'd brought me details of the case I might have
spent weeks trying to find. But he also brought a lack of control, and a need
for vengeance. I'd sensed it in him the first time we'd met, and I saw it
again. For a second, I caught a glimpse of the two of us hours and days from
where we were now. And all I could see was me trying desperately to rein him in
— and, eventually, not even able to do that.

    'Look,'
I said, keeping my voice down, 'if you go off like a rocket, you're going to mess
this up for the both of us. I know how you feel, remember that. I know what
it's like to lose. But you need to look calm for the camera. You need to turn
around and start scouring the flat like you were before, understand? It has to
look like we either can't see what's there — or we don't know what to make of
it.'

    'And
what are you going to do?'

    'I'm
going to head upstairs.'

    'You're
going to go looking for him?'

    'Yes.'

    'I'm
coming with you.'

    I
shook my head. 'One of us needs to stay.'

    'Then
you stay.'

    
'No,'
I said, my voice raised for the first rime. You've lost focus. You need to stay
here and calm down.' I stopped. 'We need to make it look like we're staying
put.'

    His
eyes lingered on me. I wondered whether he had come to the conclusion I was
right, or was formulating some sort of alternative plan that didn't involve me.
I didn't know him well enough to choose between the two. And now I was starting
to realize I
definitely
shouldn't have enlisted his help. Once the anger
died down, Healy became a stone wall. No expression. No obvious clue to how he
felt. I was good at reading people, but I couldn't read him. And if I couldn't
read him, I couldn't trust him.

    'Fine,'
he said, his voice even. 'Do what you have to do.'

    He
turned away from me. I waited a moment, wondering if I'd handled it the right
way. Then I started walking back towards the camera, keeping my eyes off the
lens, trying to make it look as if I was heading back to the bedroom.

    But
then it all went wrong.

    As I got
level with the bedroom, Healy appeared behind me and pushed me inside. For a
second I was completely off guard: I stumbled into the bedroom, only just
staying on my feet, and crashed into the nearest wardrobe. The door shut behind
me. Beyond it, I could hear him heading out of the flat. Hard, fast steps. The
front door crashing against the wall as he yanked it open. Footsteps in the
corridor outside, fading quickly away.

    
Healy,
you stupid bastard.

    And
then more movement, this time from upstairs.

    I
sprinted out of the flat and into the corridor. He was disappearing up the
stairs, heading for the second floor, the noise of him echoing through the
building. I took the steps two at a time, getting to the second-floor landing just
as the door to the flat burst open and a figure emerged from inside, heading
off in the opposite direction. It was a man. The same one I'd seen in the
alleyway outside the youth club. Long dark coat, dark trousers, black boots,
dark beanie. Healy was almost within touching distance; I was about ten feet
back and closing.

    At
the end of the corridor were two doors, left and right. Both opened on to an
external stairwell: the left one headed down; the right headed up. The man got
to the end and tried the left one. It juddered in its frame, sticking and then
coming out - but not far enough. He couldn't get through it. Switching to the
right-hand one, he pulled at it hard - it didn't move an inch, his hand
slipping from the handle.

    He
was cornered.

    A
second later, Healy was on him.

    He
grabbed the man by the arm, trying to pull him into his body. Face contorted.
Coloured. Fierce, violent anger rupturing like a fault line. But the man moved
fast. Jabbed twice. Once to the chest. Once to the throat. Healy stumbled back,
his hand at his windpipe - but swiped a leg in an arc. It caught the man in the
knee, knocking him sideways, back against the left-hand door. It slammed shut.

    This
time Healy came at him harder, hands out, teeth clenched. For a second, the
size of him was immense. Not fat, not overweight, just
powerful.
Driven
on by all the injustice and the heartbreak and the revenge; everything he'd
felt in the past ten months, channelled. A second after that, he was at the
man's throat, pushing him back towards the ground, fingers white. Squeezing.
Pulling. But then everything slowed down. I was only feet away when something
glinted in the sleeve of the man's coat. A syringe. He jabbed it once, up into
the nearest piece of Healy he could find. In the split second it took Healy to
react, the man had pushed him aside and was on his feet. He glanced back at me.

    It
was the man from Tiko's.

    The
man who looked like Milton Sykes.

    He
dropped the syringe into a coat pocket and reached into the opposite pocket for
something else. A blade emerged. It was a hunting knife: about eight inches
long with a rubberized handle and a guthook built into the end of the
stainless-steel blade. He swivelled it inside his palm, so the right angle of
the guthook was facing out in front of him, then swiped it across the air in
front of me. I stepped back. My heels hit the door to someone's flat. But I
didn't take my eyes off him. In the periphery of my vision, I could see Healy
off to the side of me. He was slumped against a wall, his hand clutching an
area above his heart where the needle had gone in. A speck of blood was soaking
through his shirt. He looked like he was on the edges of consciousness, his
eyes drifting in and out like a television reception.

    The
man started to edge around me, back towards the only way out, the knife up in
front of him. As he glanced between the two of us, I noticed something weird:
his eyes were moving fast, but the rest of his face was still. Completely
still. Almost paralysed. It was a weird, detached kind of look. When I stepped
towards him, he jabbed the blade forward again. A warning. He did it again as
he passed beyond me. He'd come all the way around. Now all he had to do was
turn and run.

    I
inched towards him.

    'I
wouldn't do that,' he said.

    His
eyes flicked to Healy, then back to me. His speech was quiet, but sharp and
clipped, as if he was trying to disguise his voice.