Dead Set by Will Carver

Author:Will Carver [Will Carver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

January

Tuesday

CHELSEA PIERS, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK, 11:48 EST

London, 16:48 GMT

I PASS THE Sanford Meisner Theater, the place Girl 8 was found, on my way to meet Marquez. The police tape has been taken down but the picture of the bicycle in the window has been replaced with a police notice asking for witnesses to step up.

But all I can think about is Audrey.

I should tell Paulson that I’ve found her, but he’s busy excavating skeletons of lost children.

A red X has been graffitied on the door of the theatre as a warning or a distasteful joke.

It seems so long ago that Kerry Ross was strangled and transformed into another floating corpse.

Eames is locked away. He seems to be involved, he has too much knowledge for someone who is not, but he cannot be committing the physical act of murder.

This is no longer a case of catching Eames the person, the animal, but of thwarting Eames the movement, the belief. The myth.

The lie.

I can see the piers complex on the opposite side of the road; the colourfully numbered sections look nothing more than loading bays for goods deliveries, but the innocuous exterior hides a state-of-the-art sporting facility beneath.

I walk underneath the red tunnel, which feels as though I am dangerously entering the exit to a car park. A lorry beeps as it reverses inside and I look over my shoulder to check the distance to the outside should I need to make a run for it.

The buildings inside look as false as any building in this country. There is a restaurant, a shop, a post office; it’s like an unreal but functioning village. Directly ahead of me is the golf club entrance. That is where Marquez is waiting. Tucked away. Keeping me a secret.

Off the radar.

Where Audrey has been living for the last year or so, invisibly getting on with her life.

An overweight, friendly Hispanic lady – five feet three inches tall, shoulder-length dark, straight hair, smooth dark skin – greets me with a smile. She asks whether she can help me today and then marvels at my accent in much the same way that the batting-cages woman did.

‘Oh, you’re meeting someone?’ she jokes flirtatiously, throwing a grin to her colleague who is standing by the glass door wrestling with a bag of wayward golfing irons.

‘Yes. I imagine he’s already inside,’ I suggest, trying to move the conversation on.

‘Well, there’s a private party on the top level and a group coming in on three real soon, but you can take a look down here or on level one. That’s just through this door’ – she points to her right – ‘and left up the stairwell to get to the other levels.’

‘Thank you. You’ve been a big help.’ I accentuate my Britishness a little more to leave her with something to coo about.

‘You’re welcome,’ she responds, on automatic pilot, but she means it.

I check the lower level first. An elderly gentleman adorned with a lemon sleeveless jumper and pale blue cap is having a lesson at the far end.

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