The Dead Tracks

    'A couple,' Caroline said, 'but nothing serious.'

    'Did you meet them?'

    'Briefly. But she used to say that when she finally brought a boy home for longer than a few minutes, we'd know it was the real thing' She attempted a smile. 'Hopefully we'll still get to see that day.'

    I paused for a moment while Carver shifted up the booth and slid his arm around his wife. He looked into her eyes, and back to me.

    'She never expressed a need to travel or leave London?' I asked.

    Carver shook his head. 'Not unless you count university.'

    'What about her friends - have you spoken to them?'

    'Not personally. The police did that in the weeks after she disappeared.'

    'No one knew anything?'

    'No.'

    I picked up the pen. 'I'll take the names and addresses of her closest friends, anyway. It'll be worth seeing them a second time.'

    Caroline reached down to her handbag, opened it and brought out a green address book, small enough to slip into a jacket pocket. She handed it to me.

    'All the addresses you need will be in there, including her school,' she said. That's Meg's book. She used to call it her Book of Life. Names, numbers, notes.'

    I nodded my thanks and took it from her. What sort of stage would you say you're at with the police?'

    ‘We're not really at a stage. We speak to them once a fortnight.' Carver stopped, shrugged. He glanced at his wife. 'To start with we made a lot of headway in a short space of time. The police told us they had some good leads. I guess we got our hopes up.'

    'Did they tell you what leads they had?'

    'No. It was difficult for them at the beginning' He paused. We put out that reward for information, so they had to field a lot of calls. Jamie Hart told us he didn't want to give us false hope, so he said he and his team would sort through the calls and collate the paperwork and then come back to us.'

    'Jamie Hart was heading up the investigation?' 'Right.'

    The waiter arrived to take our orders as I wrote Hart's name on my pad. I'd heard of him: once during my paper days when he'd led a task force trying to find a serial rapist; and once in a Times news story I'd pulled out of the archives on a previous case.

    'So, did Hart get back to you?' I asked after the waiter was gone.

    Carver rocked his head from side to side. The answer was no but he was trying to be diplomatic. 'Not in the way we would have hoped.'

    'How do you mean?'

    'At the beginning, they were calling us every day, asking us questions, coming to the house and taking things away. Then, a couple of months into the investigation, it all ground to a halt. The calls stopped coming as often.

    Officers stopped coming to the house. Now all we hear is that there's nothing new to report.' His mouth flattened. A flicker of pain. 'They would tell us if there was something worth knowing, wouldn't they?'

    'They should do.'

    He paused for a moment, his hand moving to his drink.

    ‘What was the date of Megan's disappearance?'

    'Monday 3 April,' Carver said.

    It was now 19 October. One hundred and ninety-nine days and they hadn't heard a thing. The police tended not to get interested for forty-eight hours after a disappearance, but in my experience the first couple of days were crucial in missing persons. The longer you left it, the more you were playing with percentages. Sometimes you found the person five days, or a week, or two weeks after they vanished. But most of the time, if they didn't resurface in the first forty-eight hours it was either because they'd disappeared for good and didn't want to come home again — or their body was waiting to be found.

    'When was the last time anyone saw her?'

    ‘The afternoon of the third,' Carver said. 'She went to her first class after lunch, but didn't make the next one. She was supposed to meet her friend Kaitlin at their lockers because they both did Biology. But Megan never arrived.'

    'Biology was the last lesson of the day?'

    'Yes.'

    'Does the school have CCTV?'

    'Yes - but very limited coverage. Jamie told us they checked all the cameras, but none of them revealed anything'

    'Have you told him you've come to me?'

    Carver shook his head. 'No.'

    It was better that way. The best approach was going to be cold-calling Hart. The police, understandably, didn't like outsiders stepping on their toes — especially on active cases - and if they picked up my scent, they'd close ranks and circle the wagons before I even got near.

    'So what's the next stage?' Carver asked.

    'At a time that's convenient for you, I'd like to come and speak to you at the house; have a look around Megan's bedroom. I don't expect to find anything significant, but it's something I like to do.'

    They nodded. Neither of them spoke.

    'After that, I'll start working my way through this,' I said, placing a hand on her Book of Life. 'The police have had a look at this presumably?'

    'Yes,' Carver said.

    'Did they find anything?'

    He shrugged. They gave it back to us.'

    Which meant no. A moment later, the waiter returned with our meals.

    'Do you think there's a chance she's alive?' Caroline asked after he was gone.

    We both looked at her, Carver turning in his seat, shifting his bulk, as if he was surprised and disappointed by the question. Maybe she'd never asked it before. Or maybe he didn't want to know the answer.

    I looked at her, then at him, then back to her.

    'There's always a chance.'

    Yes,' she replied. 'But do you think she's alive?'

    I looked down at my meal, a lobster broken into pieces, not wanting my eyes to betray me. But I had to look at her eventually. And when I did, she must have seen the answer, because she slowly nodded, then started to cry.

    Outside, James Carver shook my hand and we watched his wife slowly wander off along Victoria Embankment, the Houses of Parliament framed behind her. Boats moved on the Thames, the water dark and grey. Autumn was finally clawing its way out of hibernation after a warm, muggy summer.

    'I don't know what you want to do about money,' he said.

    'Let's talk tomorrow.'

    He nodded. 'I'll be around, but Caroline might not be - she's got some work at a school in South Hackney.'

    That's fine. I'll catch up with her when she's free.'

    I watched Carver head after his wife. When he got to her, he reached for her hand. She responded, but coolly, her fingers hard and rigid. When he spoke, she just shrugged and continued walking. They headed down to Westminster Pier and, as they crossed the road towards the tube station, she looked back over her shoulder at me. For a second I could see the truth: that something had remained hidden in our conversation; a trace of a secret, buried out of her husband's sight.

    I just had to find out what.

    The day had started to darken by five-thirty. I stopped in at the office on the way back from the