The Dead Tracks

    'Derryn. I can't compete with her, David.'

    'What? You don't have to compete with —'

    'You don't have that mechanism that tells you when enough is enough. You don't know when to stop. You're trying to plug holes in the world because you know what it's like to lose someone, and you think it's your job to stop anyone else suffering the same way. You're doing this for her, David. That case up north was for her. And this one is too. You're plugging the hole she left behind by taking on other people's pain. And I can't compete with that.'

    I let go of her hands. She looked at me, a tear breaking free, a watery streak of mascara following in its wake. I stared back, unable to articulate. Unable to come back with any argument.

    Because I knew, deep down, she might be right.

Chapter Seventy

    The interview took two and a half hours. Liz sat beside me the whole time, stopping me if she felt I needed to be redirected away from something harmful. Hart and Davidson came at me hard, like attack dogs, trying to catch me out, trying to lead me into blind alleys and oneway streets. They both played on my relationship with Healy. They tried to make it sound stronger and more purposeful than it was. They used the moment outside the safe house when Healy had pulled a gun to underline their case, Hart making mention of how I'd done nothing to dissuade Healy.

    'I told him to put the gun away.'

    'Once,' Hart said. 'Half-heartedly. The second time, when you saw what I was telling you to do, you ignored me. Then you ran off into the sunset with him.'

    'I felt—'

    'You felt a kinship for him, David.'

    'No.'

    'You believed what he was doing was right.'

    'No.' I sighed.

    'Then why did you do it?'

    I paused, glanced at Liz and then back to them. 'I felt his actions were wrong — but his reasons were right.'

    Davidson snorted. 'How do you figure that?'

    'I think he was frustrated.'

    'With who?'

    'With you.'

    Silence descended. It was hot in the room, and the only sound now was the whirr of an air-conditioning unit.

    'Look at it from his point of view,' I continued. 'You brushed his daughter's disappearance under the carpet with the other seven, but you didn't even have the decency to link her to Glass.'

    A tremor passed across the room.

    Davidson whitened. Hart crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. 'What are you talking about, David?'

    'You know what I'm talking about.'

    No reply. They didn't want anything committed to tape. In their faces, I could see they were trying to figure it out. How I knew. Whether Healy had told me. How he'd found out so much. I had them by the balls and there was no backing out now.

    'I get it,' I said. 'Deny all knowledge, maintain the silence. Trouble is, your circle of trust has been breached. You're not the only people who know what really happened any more. The rest of the world might think it's a one-in-a-million chance that we stumbled across seven women in that place, but all of us here know different.'

    Davidson looked away. Hart maintained eye contact, but his hand was hovering close to the tape recorder, desperate for this to end. I nodded for him to push the button.

    He stopped the tape.

    Liz leaned forward. 'Okay,' she said. 'Here's the deal: David walks out of here, without charge. You leave him alone. You don't come back for him. Anything to do with his part in this investigation is over. In return, he maintains a dignified silence.'

    They looked between us.

    Finally, Hart nodded. 'Let me make some calls.'

    They left me alone in the interview room with a cup of coffee and a bland ham and cheese sandwich. Liz disappeared to call the office and see what she'd missed out on. She smiled as she left - touching my arm and telling me I'd done brilliantly - but she didn't mention anything we'd talked about earlier. I was too tired, too drained, to figure out if the fissure that had opened between us could ever be pushed back together again. But I was glad, at least, to have got some kind of reaction out of her.

    There was no clock in the interview room, but it felt like about fifteen minutes had passed when the door opened again. I turned, expecting to see Liz.

    But it was Phillips.

    He looked at me, closed the door behind him and walked around to the other side of the table. I felt like grabbing him by the collar and smashing his face through the wall.

    'How are you, David?' he asked, sitting down.

    I smirked. 'Oh, just great.'

    'Can I get you anything else?'

    'Yeah,' I said, pushing the coffee cup across the table. 'Another one of those — and an explanation of what the hell you were doing at Jill's.'

    He nodded as if he'd expected that straight off the bat. 'She called me.'

    'Why would she do that?'

    'Because Frank and I went way back. We came up through the ranks together and then I basically got him the job here at the Met. I've known Jill for years.'

    'So, what - you just hang around outside her house?'

    'She left a weird message on my phone. She didn't say anything — it was just ten seconds of silence - but when I called her back she didn't answer.'

    And then it all shifted into focus: the night before, she phoned and didn't answer, and then she'd been odd when I'd called her on the landline. Because Crane had come for her at home. The first one had been a distress call. She must have made the same call to Phillips as well. But Crane had found out — and the next time I rang her, Crane had made her tell me everything was fine. Probably with a knife at her throat.

    'I didn't like it,' Phillips continued. 'So I went round there…' He glanced behind him, even though the door was closed. 'And I managed to get into her house'. Just like Ewan Tasker had suspected. 'But she wasn't there. She was gone.'

    I looked at him. 'She called me in a panic one night and said she thought someone had been watching her place. It was you. She saw your car.'

    'It was me. It was my car.' He paused. A long-drawn- out breath. 'Frank and I had a kind of… arrangement. A promise we made.'

    'You'd look out for each other.'

    'Right. If either of us…' He stopped briefly. 'Look, when I made that promise to Frank, when we made that promise to each other, it was one I never believed I'd have to see through. But now I do. So from time to time, I check in on Jill. I went past her place a couple of times on the way to the station yesterday evening. That night you're talking about, when you went round, I guess I didn't hide well enough. It had been a long day.'

    I didn't say anything. Just stared at him.

    'You're pissed off,' he said. 'I get it.'