The David Raker Collection

by Tim Weaver

  I entered Megan’s email as the username, and 03206 as the password. And I hit Return. The security box disappeared and the website began to load a new page. It took a couple of seconds. When it was done, a small map appeared in the centre, about five square inches in size. It had been drawn by hand with black marker pen and scanned, and looked like an approximation of a car park, vehicles – as if viewed from above – on one side, a long thin line opposite them. On the other side of the line was an X and a typewritten message: Meet here at 2.30 p.m. for a romantic woodland picnic!

  It was the Sixth Form car park at Newcross Secondary.

  He knew what he was doing. He knew there was no CCTV coverage in that part of the school and he knew what time her lesson finished. He picked her up and he took her away, and no one even noticed.

  The ultimate disappearing act.

  Except he’d left a trail. Because while the woodland he described could have been anywhere as far as the police were concerned, I’d spotted him in Tiko’s, I’d found out who he looked like, and I knew the significance of the website password.

  I knew his next move that day.

  He’d taken her to Hark’s Hill Woods.

  27

  There was a coffee shop that doubled up as a deli a couple of doors along from the office. I headed downstairs and ordered a steak sandwich. While I was waiting, my phone started buzzing. It was Ewan Tasker calling about Jill’s husband. I was tempted not to answer, not because I didn’t want to speak to him, but because I didn’t want another case to add to my workload minutes after a major break in the Carver one. But if I didn’t answer, Tasker would just assume I wasn’t around – and then keep on calling.

  I hit Accept. ‘Help the Aged.’

  A laugh crackled down the line. ‘Raker.’

  ‘How you doing, Task?’

  ‘Good. How are you?’

  ‘Can’t complain. I tried you earlier this morning, but I imagine you were winding your way towards the nineteenth hole. You’re not hammered already, are you?’

  He laughed again. ‘Not yet.’

  Rain pounded against the window of the coffee shop, making a noise like an army marching. I bent slightly and covered my other ear.

  ‘So what have you got for me, old man?’

  ‘You didn’t hear any of this from me.’

  ‘Goes without saying.’

  The sound of paper being shuffled around.

  ‘Okay. Frank Robert White. Forty-one years of age. Married to Jill, no kids. Detective inspector for three years before he got popped, nineteen months of which he spent at the Met. On the evening of 25 October of last year, he was shot once in the chest, high up near the left shoulder, and once in the head, just above the bridge of the nose. He was part of a task force investigating Akim Gobulev. You’ve heard of him, right?’

  ‘Yeah. The Ghost.’

  ‘Right. Gobulev runs Russian organized crime in London, except no one’s seen him since he landed at Heathrow ten years back.’ More paper being flicked through. ‘You know what his first name means back in Mother Russia?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘ “God Will Judge”. Fucking right about that. He was a pain in my balls at NCIS, but it looks like SOCA managed to get close to him through an informant.’

  ‘So SOCA were working with White’s Met team?’

  ‘Right. White was SCD.’

  The Specialist Crime Directorate. They were a Metropolitan Police department working across the city on serious and high-profile cases. Homicides, gangs, child abuse, e-crime, money-laundering – it all came under the SCD umbrella. It was split into eight Operational Command Units, and SCD7, which covered organized crime, would have been where Frank White was based.

  ‘White had put a task force together to support SOCA and work alongside them, and they were about to put the cuffs on Gobulev’s … What the hell have I written here?’

  ‘Plastic surgeon?’

  ‘Yeah, surgeon.’ He sounded surprised. ‘You already know all this?’

  ‘Not much, but some.’ I kept it at that. I didn’t want an overview from Task; I wanted everything he had. ‘What do we know about this surgeon?’

  ‘Intelligence suggests he’s kind of like a gun for hire – except he comes armed with a scalpel and a syringe full of Botox.’

  ‘So he isn’t Russian?’

  ‘No. Informants put him as English. He did the works on God Will Judge’s face – as in, completely changed the way he looked – which is probably why we never found the arsehole in ten years at NCIS.’

  ‘And presumably why Gobulev took a shine to the surgeon.’

  ‘Yeah. He uses his medical expertise on a freelance basis – nose job here, brow lift there – but mostly he’s just sewing up knife wounds and scooping out bullets for low-level shitheads. It’s a way for the Russians to keep their employees out of A&E. Once you hit the hospitals, people start asking questions.’

  ‘So what happened the night Frank died?’

  ‘SOCA got a tip-off that the surgeon would be at that warehouse down in Bow, helping Gobulev take delivery of some guns.’

  ‘But Gobulev wasn’t there.’

  Tasker snorted. ‘Gobulev doesn’t go to his own birthday party.’

  ‘So why send the surgeon?’

  ‘No one was really sure. But the Russian informant reckons there was something else with the guns as part of the delivery.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Currently unclear. White’s team screwed up and got spotted early doors and then it turned into the OK Corral. White and the other officer who died got separated from the rest of the task force, and the next time anyone saw them they were bleeding out on the floor of the warehouse and the surgeon was haring away from the scene of the crime in a stolen car.’

  ‘What about the rest of Gobulev’s men?’

  ‘Three dead at the scene. One was DOA; one decided not to speak in the interview, or during his subsequent trial.’

  ‘At all?’

  ‘Not about his involvement in anything, no. The Ghost’s a scary man. Maybe Mr Dumb thought a life in clink was preferable to whatever Gobulev would do to him if he talked.’

  ‘What about forensics?’

  ‘Not much. The warehouse wasn’t exactly a sterile environment. They recovered a ton of fibres, a shitload of hairs, some trace stuff. No matches.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘Lots of prints, but mostly from the people working in the warehouse, or Gobulev’s men. Nothing for the surgeon. Looks like the murder team were pretty exhaustive too. Every print the SOCO came back with, they put through IDENT1.’

  The scene of crime officer was the conductor. He documented everything that happened on site, from the moment the first officer arrived to the moment the lights were turned out. At the end, he handed in his report, including fingerprints lifts. After that, all the prints were put through the national automated fingerprint system – which meant the surgeon’s prints failed to match up with any of the six million already logged.

  ‘So he hasn’t got any priors,’ I said.

  ‘No. Although that’s working on the assumption he even left his prints at the scene in the first place. They had some prints they couldn’t attribute to anyone – but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were his.’

  ‘Everyone leaves prints.’

  ‘Not if you’re wearing surgical gloves. Forensics found traces of cornflour at the scene. Looks like it’s the same story with ballistics as well. White was shot with a hollow point 9mm, and the markings on the shell …’ Tasker paused. I could hear him looking through his notes. ‘The markings put the weapon as a GSh-18. Also Russian. Imported illegally, so pretty much impossible to trace.’

  ‘Okay. So, physical description of the surgeon?’

  ‘Medium height, medium build.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No. He’s a mystery man.’

  ‘Anyone see his face?’

  ‘You’re gonna like this. The in
formant said the surgeon used to turn up to meetings wearing a white plastic mask. No markings on it. Just holes at the eyes, nose and mouth.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘The man without a face.’

  I paused and looked around me. Rain continued hammering against the window. Across the road, people ran past, caught in the storm, their coats pulled up over their heads.

  ‘What did Gobulev’s people call him?’

  ‘Dr Glass.’

  ‘Anyone know if that was his real name?’

  ‘Doubtful given that he turned up to meets in a mask.’

  ‘You put the alias through HOLMES or PNC?’

  The Home Office Large Major Enquiry System was a database used by UK police forces to cross-check major crimes. The Police National Computer held details on every vehicle registered in the UK, stolen goods, and anyone reported missing or with a criminal record.

  ‘Nothing,’ Tasker said.

  ‘Nothing flagged up?’

  ‘Nothing for that alias.’

  I thought of Jill. I knew the alias of the man who’d killed Frank now, but that wasn’t much more than she had already.

  ‘Sorry, Raker – I know it’s a whole lot of nothing.’

  ‘No, Task, that’s great. I appreciate your help.’

  ‘You need anything else?’

  ‘Any chance you could send me a copy of the file? I made a promise to someone that I’d look into this and I just want to make sure I’ve ticked all the boxes.’

  ‘I’ve got a golf competition in Surrey tomorrow morning. We tee off at 6 a.m. I’ll put the printouts through your letterbox on the way through.’

  ‘All right, old man. I appreciate it.’

  I killed the call and pocketed the phone. I felt sorry for Jill, but the dead end suited me fine. Right now, Megan was my priority.

  28

  Back at the office, I slid in at my desk, started on my steak sandwich and went to Google Maps. Within seconds, I had a top-down satellite view of Hark’s Hill Woods. It was a weird slab of land. A square mile of overgrown woodland right in the middle of an incredibly dense swathe of city. North of the woods was a road that looked new, leading to some kind of industrial estate on the north-western corner. A quarter of a mile south was tightly packed housing, unfurling across London all the way down to the curve of the Thames. And immediately surrounding the woods, in the spaces around its edges, were the skeletons of old factories – dyeworks, foundries, munitions plants – some standing but damaged, most collapsed or in a serious state of disrepair. It was obvious that the whole area, save for the redevelopment to the north and the homes to the south, had been completely forgotten about since the end of the Second World War; and the only constant was that the woods had grown bigger and the factories had crumbled further.

  After finishing the sandwich, I began filling in some of the background on the area. Putting Hark’s Hill Woods into Google got me 98,400 hits, most detailing the Milton Sykes case. I moved through the results. On the third page, a hit halfway down caught my eye. An encyclopedia of serial killers.

  I clicked on it.

  Heading to S, and then down to Sykes, I found a photograph of him, slightly blurred, and a badly spelt description of what I’d already found: his upbringing, his victims and his connection to the woods. Right at the bottom was what had caught my attention in the two-line description on Google: Sykes was reported to have sometimes used the alias Grant A. James. Grant A. James. The letter sent to Megan from the London Conservation Trust had been from G. A. James. And then I remembered the name in her Book of Life too. The name no one had been able to shed any light on: A. J. Grant.

  I leaned back in my chair.

  Staring out at me from the computer monitor was a blurry photograph of Milton Sykes and, sitting in the space in between, a succession of unanswered questions. I drummed my fingers on the desk, trying to fit all the pieces together. The man at Tiko’s. The Grant alias. The email.

  The map.

  That’s why I’m telling you he buried those women in the woods. Because I went down there, and that place … something’s seriously wrong with it. Dooley’s words came back to me as I tabbed back to the satellite photograph of Hark’s Hill Woods. From the air it didn’t look like much: just a square mile of land built on rumour and folklore. But it had affected people, scared them, and then drawn them into its heart.

  And, six months before, one of them had been Megan Carver.

  29

  It was three by the time I found Derry Street – the nearest road to Hark’s Hill Woods on its southern side – and it was a truly miserable network of terraced houses. Everything had a derelict, run-down feel to it, compounded by the fact that there was absolutely no one around. No kids playing. No people talking on doorsteps. Just a grey autumn still.

  As the road began to rise, beyond the rooftops of the houses to my left, I could see the empty factories I’d spotted in the satellite photos. They too were deserted, but in a more obvious way: decaying brickwork, hollowed-out windows, some entrances boarded up, some lying open in an invitation to drug addicts, the homeless and teenagers on a dare. When the road dropped off again, the factories disappeared, but – a quarter of a mile on – I spotted a small alleyway where the terraced housing broke for the first time. A tattered sign pointed along it. It was illegible, blistered by the sun and worn by rain. A kid, about fifteen, was sitting on the steps of his house watching me. I parked up, got out of the BMW and set the alarm. The kid continued to watch.

  I looked at him. ‘Afternoon.’

  He didn’t say anything. His eyes flicked from me to the alleyway, as if I was about to do something stupid. I moved level with the entrance. It was paved until about halfway along, then became a gravel path. Beyond that was a bed of concrete, the half-demolished walls of an old factory still standing in places, almost defiantly. Even from where I was, I could see the place was a mess. Rubbish strewn everywhere, pushed into the corners where the walls still stood, or just left on the ground in the open spaces between them. The smell of bottles, wrappers, cans and bin bags came in on the wind.

  ‘You’re not going down there, are you?’ the boy said.

  I looked at him. ‘Yeah. Looks nice.’

  For the first time he smiled. ‘It ain’t nice.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I breathed in. ‘It’s mountain fresh up here. Not many places can give you that delicate aroma of rubbish dump and public toilet.’

  He smiled again. I nodded a goodbye to him, and started along the alleyway. As I passed, he watched me, the smile gradually fading from his face. ‘The Dead Tracks.’

  I stopped. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s what they call it.’ He looked from me, along the alleyway. ‘The woods over the back. That’s what they call that place: the Dead Tracks.’

  On the other side of the factory bed, the entrance to the woods loomed ahead of me. It was completely overgrown. Nature had claimed back what was once its own, covering everything, eating away at its surroundings like a virus. Either side of the path, trees leaned in, forming a canopy. Further along, daylight stabbed through whatever spaces it could find, hitting the floor in squares of watery yellow light.

  I started along the path.

  The grass became more aggressive as the path started turning to mud, carving through the earth, breaking the surface like hundreds of fingers. The deeper I got, the less light there was. I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. In an hour and a half, the day would start to fade. By six, it would be pitch black under the trees.

  Ahead of me, rain dripped from the leaves of a huge sycamore, hitting the mud like a distant drumbeat. Then a little way down I spotted something on the path: a train track, rusted by age, weeds crawling through its slats. It broke through the grass on my left, fed across the path and then disappeared between the trunks of two giant oak trees on the opposite side. It was part of the railway Dooley had talked of; laid but never completed. I carried on, the canopy breaking briefly a
bove me.

  Crack.

  I stopped.

  What the hell was that?

  Suddenly, wind clawed its way out from the trees to my left, whipping across the path – and the temperature seemed to drop right off. Goosebumps scattered up my arms, down the centre of my back, and I felt a shiver pass through me like a wave. But then, as quickly as it had arrived, the wind disappeared again.

  Swivelling, I looked back down the path.

  ‘Hello?’

  The route I’d followed had started to darken, as if lights had blacked out behind me, one after the other. But nothing moved, and no sound came back, and after a while I felt ridiculous. You’re standing in the middle of the woods talking to the bloody trees. Get a grip on yourself.

  I turned and carried on. After a couple of minutes, the foliage started thinning – and then a clearing appeared on my left. It was about thirty feet long, running in a semicircle adjacent to the path. There were no trees, but it was awash in knee-high grass. It looked momentarily beautiful compared to the approach, and seemed like the first, and most obvious, place for the picnic that Megan had been promised on the website.

  Then, through the corner of my eye, movement.

  A blur, where the trail continued on past the clearing. I stepped back on to the path, and looked deeper into the woods. Everything was dark: the path itself, the trees lining it.

  A branch broke behind me.

  I turned and looked back along the way I’d come. In the woods to the side of the path, about thirty feet down, something shifted in the trees. The wind came again, cutting across the clearing in an icy blast. The whole time, my eyes never left the spot between the trees. But there was no other movement. No sound. Just the drip, drip, drip of rain. And then, when that stopped briefly, a pregnant hush, as if something was sitting behind the silence, waiting to scream.

  I watched for a few moments more, then stepped further into the clearing and began looking around. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find, but even when people vanished, they didn’t vanish. And yet, ten minutes later, I’d found nothing, the light had faded a little more, and now I could hear thunder in the distance and see steel-grey clouds moving across the sky above me.