The Dead Tracks

    Phillips nodded. 'Chief Inspector Hart is busy elsewhere.'

    'I saw him earlier.'

    'He was checking in.'

    Now it was my turn to look suspicious. 'The biggest unsolved of the last twelve months and he doesn’t want a piece of it?'

    Phillips sighed. 'If you must know, David, DCI Hart is currently taking a long, hard look around your house.'

    I frowned, 'Why?'

    Phillips ignored me and spun the folder around, so it was facing me. He slowly opened it up. Inside were five photographs, face down, one on top of the other.

    'Why do you think?' he asked.

    He flipped the top picture over. Crime-scene photography. It was a picture of the doll I'd found at the youth club, sitting on my living-room table, just as I'd left it. He turned the next one over. The photograph I'd discovered inside it — the woman's shoulders and neck — in a transparent evidence sleeve.

    'Those were left for me.'

    'Where?'

    'In my front garden,' I lied.

    'By whom?'

    I looked at him. 'I don't know.' 'When?'

    'I don't know.'

    'Do you know where the doll came from?'

    'No.'

    'Do you know who the female in the picture is?'

    'No.'

    He leaned back in his seat. 'There's a lot you don't know.'

    'Would you rather I made up an answer?'

    Phillips shook his head. 'No. No, I don't want that, David. But let me remind you: you're in trouble here.'

    'Because some nut left a doll on my lawn?'

    He studied me for a moment, then looked down at the rest of the photographs. A couple of fingers tapped the table. He started playing with his wedding band. Turning it. Turning it. 'Do you know what the number two signifies on that photograph?' Phillips asked, placing a fingertip on the scrawled two in the corner of the picture of the woman.

    'No.'

    'I think you do.'

    He slid a finger under the third photograph and turned it over. It was another picture of a photograph, this one bagged as evidence, sitting on the kitchen counter in my house. It had been taken in the same location as the previous picture of the woman's neck. Same subdued light. Taken either seconds before, or seconds after. In the corner was the number one, written in exactly the same way. And looking out was a woman I didn't recognize. Not Megan, but not dissimilar to her. Blonde hair, tied up behind her head. Blue eyes open, but slightly glazed. She wasn't dead, but it looked like she might be drugged. She was pretty, but her skin was grimy and it looked like there might be a faded bruise to the side of her right eye.

    'Who's that?' I asked.

    'You don't know?'

    'No.'

    'You didn't take this?'

    'No.'

    Phillips flipped over the fourth photograph. It was a picture of Derryn's shoebox — the one I'd seen a crime- scene tech leaving with — taken from above, bathed in the white of a flashlight. It was full of her stuff: photographs of us, photographs of her, some jewellery, a notebook. On top, right in the centre of the box, was the photo of the woman Phillips had just shown me; in situ. Dirty, drugged face. Blonde hair. Bruise.

    They'd found it in the shoebox.

    'That's not where it was,' I said.

    'That's where we found it.'

    'I've never even seen that —'

    'We found that photograph in the shoebox in your cupboard at your home,' Phillips said. 'This woman…' He looked from me to Davidson. 'We believe you abducted and tortured her.'

    'You've got to be kidding me.'

    'No, David,' he said. 'I'm deadly serious.'

    'I don't even know her. I've never seen this woman in my fucking life. I don't know who she is, or how her picture got into that shoebox, but it's nothing —'

    A blink of a memory formed in my head. The night I got back from Jill's at four o'clock in the morning. I'd forgotten all about it, but now it was coming back to me. The rubbish bin at the front of the house had been tipped over, and the bin liners had spilt across the pathway. And the porch had been left slightly open.

    'Somebody broke into my house,' I said quietly, almost to myself.

    'David—'

    'Somebody broke into my house.'

    Who?'

    'I don't know. I was at a friend's. When I got back it was the early hours of the morning and there were bin liners all across the path, and the door to my porch had been left open. I didn't leave it open that night.'

    'Did you report it?'

    'No.'

    'Why not?'

    'I didn't think about it.'

    'Or you just lied to us again,' Davidson offered.

    'Why would I lie?'

    'I don't know,' he replied. Why would you?'

    'I'm not lying.'

    'You're lying,' Phillips said.

    I stopped. Looked at him. It was more definitive coming from Phillips, more of a statement than if it had come from Davidson. Phillips had played everything out on an even keel. No posturing. No promises. No showboating. Now he was accusing me of lying in a police interview.

    'I'm not lying,' I repeated.

    Phillips watched me for a moment, and something flickered in his eyes; maybe a little disappointment, as if he'd expected more from me.

    Then he flipped the final photograph over.

    It was a picture taken in my kitchen. An evidence marker had been placed on the floor at the base of some varnished wooden panels that ran for about six feet under one of the counters. The very top one had come away on the right side. I'd noticed it a couple of nights before while making myself dinner and had vowed to reattach it, but then forgotten. In the space behind the panel there was a nail in the cavity wall.

    And something was hanging from it.

    I pulled the photograph towards me. It was a piece of white clothing, the cotton speckled with blood.

    'What's that?'

    'That,' Phillips said, thumping a finger against the picture, 'is what Megan was wearing the day she disappeared.'

Chapter Thirty-eight