You Can Run

by Steve Mosby

  Left very recently.

  And then I was moving. Past Emma, who had her baton in one hand and her phone in the other, her face pale. Back towards the trail itself, and then running with all the strength I had towards the main road.

  You won’t get away, I told him in my head, my own baton in my hand now, my legs moving as fast as I could make them. A desperate need in my chest. Not fear at all now; not remotely. Just the knowledge that I was so close to him – the man who had killed Anna; the man who had killed all of them – and that he wasn’t going to escape.

  I won’t let you, I thought.

  I can’t.

  Twenty-Nine

  Probably only a couple of them.

  How typical of the Worm, Blythe thinks as he runs along the dirt track. How typical to suggest violence as an option, so long as he’s not the one dirtying his hands or making the effort. The message has confirmed his expectations of the man. If there were only two of them, why didn’t the Worm take care of them back at the road? The answer is obvious – he’s ineffectual and weak, and relies on Blythe to do the killing for him, just as he has all along. He will no doubt present as an adult male, but the two of them might as well be from different species.

  Blythe pounds down the old footpath, running as fast and as hard as he can.

  He’s completely out in the open, but that’s fine: there’s no point in hiding any more. This is a straight race, and trying to work his way through the surrounding trees will only slow him down and negate the benefit of his head start. The two police officers will have found his campsite by now, which means they will have called the scene in and there will be backup on the way. One or both of them may well also be in pursuit somewhere behind him. He doesn’t look back to check – what will be will be. And he is fast. A good strong runner. He has the knife ready in his hand if he needs it, his arm pistoning back and forth as he runs. If it comes to it, he will take one or both of them down.

  And despite his derision for the Worm, that was actually a tempting option before, when he was hidden away in the depths of the undergrowth and saw the two of them walking along the path. A man and a woman. The man stopped for a moment and stared into the treeline, as though he could see him. He couldn’t, of course; Blythe was too careful for that. But he had sensed him, just as the man in the car at the Grief House had last night.

  Blythe crouched there, entirely still, and felt the power coursing through him. The power that came from the fear he engendered in others. The man looked weak and sensitive, and was obviously no physical match for him. The woman was just a woman. And so it was tempting to emerge from the undergrowth right there and then, or else to wait for them to move a little further on, then come out and attack them from behind. But he weighed the situation carefully. Despite how they appeared, these were trained police, armed with batons and radios, and he wasn’t confident he could take them both down together. So he waited for them to pass, then came out on to the path and started running as hard as he could for the road.

  There will be time for hunting in the future. What he needs to do right now is escape.

  The trees create a cocoon of dark green around him, but up ahead he can see a bright, shining rectangle of sunlight. He runs faster, and the light judders around, growing larger – and then he reaches the road itself, sprinting straight out into the centre of it and curving north without even pausing. He has no choice now but to trust the Worm will be where he’s said he will be and see what happens. There’s an empty car parked up at the side of the road by the footpath, though, and Blythe slows just long enough to plunge the knife into the back tyre of the vehicle. Probably not much use, but he still feels a rush of pleasure as he sets off running again.

  He is exhilarated, actually. The mostly empty backpack bounces on his shoulders as he sprints. There is a good chance he’ll be caught within the next few minutes, and yet he feels truly alive. Not remotely calm, for once, but not panicked either. Excited. He runs straight up the middle of the road, in plain sight, and it feels good, powerful. He’s spent the last few days hiding in the darkness, and it’s strange to be out here in the sun now, so blatant and obvious, yet there’s nobody around to see him. No traffic at all. It feels like he can do anything he wants, and they’ll never catch him for it.

  There’s a bend in the road up ahead. As fast as he’s running, he speeds up. The slapping sound of his footfalls on the tarmac comes quicker and quicker, then he rounds the corner and sees the car up ahead, and he accelerates again. It has to be the Worm. He’s left his hazard lights on, as though the vehicle has broken down: two red lights blinking dimly in the afternoon light, wheeling around in Blythe’s vision as he runs towards the car, then hits the boot hard with his open hand, the impact on the metal hurting his palm.

  Out of breath now.

  He reaches down and tries to open the boot. It doesn’t work.

  He moves around to the driver’s side, and although he knows the Worm is in there, he can’t see him right now. The sunlight fills the glass with a reflection of the trees at the side of the road. He taps on the window with the tip of the knife.

  ‘Open the boot.’

  The window slides down an inch, and he catches a glimpse of unkempt brown hair.

  ‘No. Get in the back.’

  The voice is stronger than he expected.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I’ll be seen.’

  ‘There are blankets there. Get in the footwell, pull them over you.’

  You fucking idiot. But Blythe looks back down the road, and he knows that they don’t have long. No time to argue. The police at Frog Pond will be reaching the road soon, and there’ll be more joining them – pouring in from all directions. So he opens the back door of the vehicle instead, then folds himself inside. There is indeed a neat pile of blankets on the other side of the back seat. He closes the door and ducks down, beginning to gather them over him as best he can.

  It’s ridiculous; there isn’t room.

  But the Worm is already driving. Blythe feels the car pull away, then senses the world moving more and more quickly underneath him. A few seconds later, while he’s still working on the blankets, the car slows and he hears the click-click-click of an indicator, and then everything turns slightly and the car starts moving quickly again.

  ‘Why not the boot?’ he calls angrily.

  The Worm doesn’t answer.

  Thirty

  ‘We’ve missed him.’

  I shook my head. It felt to me like I’d been shaking it more or less constantly for the past hour, ever since Warren and a handful of his officers had arrived at Frog Pond. As soon as Emma radioed in the scene, Warren had claimed to be setting up roadblocks in the vicinity, but when he turned up, he seemed sheepish. They’d stopped a couple of vehicles, he told us, sounding almost apologetic, but so far there was no sign of Blythe.

  I’d hardly been able to bring myself to look at him.

  The desire to grab hold of him and slam home the obvious truth had been strong: he hadn’t had enough officers, and the ones he did have had been either stupidly concentrated in the village itself or else searching the wrong places. But there was no point. Instead, I had leaned against our car and stared down at the tarmac as he walked past me. But out of the corner of my eye I’d caught the glance he gave me. How did you know? In contrast with the combative tone he’d adopted when we first met, he appeared slightly nervous around me right then, as though I might be some kind of magician.

  I wished I was.

  I stared out of the windscreen. We were sitting in our car, still parked up by the entrance to the footpath that led to Frog Pond. We’d been joined now by several other police cars and vans, and the path itself had been cordoned off. Groups of officers were standing around slightly aimlessly, still achieving nothing. They should have been spreading out through the network of roads surrounding the area, and it frustrated me that they weren’t. Many of them seemed in good spirits. Watching them, I had that urge to grab someone again. All
of them, in fact. Make them recognise the weight of the horror that had been brought here. Force them to feel the shiver that walking in the shade of it deserved.

  I wanted them to care as much as I did.

  ‘He won’t get away,’ Emma said.

  ‘He already has.’

  ‘Not necessarily. They’re filling the whole area with uniforms. Tightening the perimeter. And if he’s on foot, he can’t have got far.’

  ‘He’s not on foot.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Will. We’ve got absolutely no reason to think anybody’s helping him.’

  No, I wanted to say, but there had been no reason to think he’d be at Frog Pond either, and yet I’d been right about that. But I remained silent. I wasn’t about to start claiming psychic powers, and intuition can only take you so far. When I’d reached the car after running back down the trail, there had been no sign of any other vehicles. I’d stood very still, listening intently, and heard nothing: just the quiet sounds of nature around me. The world had felt empty. Blythe had been here, and now he was gone. How he had got away, I still couldn’t say for certain, because it didn’t make any sense for somebody to be helping him. But I wasn’t sure how he could have disappeared so quickly without a car.

  And more than that, it just felt right.

  But if someone was helping him, who? And why?

  My phone bleeped in my pocket, but I ignored it. Sighing to herself, Emma took hers out instead and read whatever report had just been sent through to us.

  ‘We’ve got a couple more IDs on the remains from the house,’ she said. ‘Emily Bailey and Anna Parker.’

  She said it so casually that for a moment I might not have heard it. It took the few silent seconds that followed for the information to settle in my head and my heart.

  Anna.

  She was there.

  ‘Look, Will,’ Emma said, putting her phone away, ‘I think you just need—’

  I bunched up my fist and punched myself in the thigh as hard as I could. The pain didn’t appear until a second later. And then it flared. I did it again, and then again, contorting my face.

  ‘Will!’

  Emma grabbed my arm.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing? You’re scaring me!’

  I looked at her. Her eyes were wide. From the expression on her face, I might as well have just grown a second head right in front of her and started baring my teeth. She looked not just shocked but terrified of me.

  Calm down, I thought. For God’s sake, calm down.

  ‘You’re losing it, Will.’

  I looked away and nodded slowly. The muscle in my thigh was radiating pain outwards, with a slowly spreading centre of numbness where I’d landed the blows. As quickly as the emotions had overwhelmed me, they faded away. I’d lost control. I had it back now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You should be. Jesus Christ. You shouldn’t do that to yourself.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What the fuck is going on with you?’

  ‘I’m frustrated,’ I said. ‘I’m angry.’

  ‘Yeah, I am too. But that doesn’t explain that.’ She looked out through the windscreen and ran a hand through her hair. ‘The past few days you haven’t been yourself at all. You’re always weird, but I’ve never seen you anything like this. I mean it. You’re scaring me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s it? You’re sorry? Don’t you think I deserve more of an explanation than that? You’re going to get us thrown off this investigation. Do you think nobody else saw that, for Christ’s sake?’

  I looked out of the window. The nearest cluster of Warren’s officers were watching us, but turned away quickly when they saw me looking back at them. I stared at them for a moment anyway. The weird guy from out of town just went nuts. Well, at least I’d given them something more appropriate to be smiling about.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you fucking should care.’ Emma shook her head. ‘You’re too close to this for some reason. I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to tell me, Will, because you know what? This is no good right now. No good at all.’

  I didn’t answer. Eventually she sighed, and we sat in silence for a time. I stared out of the windscreen, watching the undergrowth moving gently at the edge of the woods, not knowing what to say.

  Because the truth was, she was right about all of it. The case meant far too much to me. And Emma wanted to be in the room for this one just as much as I did: for the sake of her reputation, her professional advancement. I didn’t begrudge her that. She deserved better than to spend her career stuck with me. But even though she was right, and I really did owe her an explanation for my behaviour, I just couldn’t tell her. I’d be removed from the case. We both might be. And yet without an explanation, things were going to become very awkward between us, and I didn’t want that. Right then, I had no idea how to square that particular circle.

  The frustration at having missed Blythe was burning inside me.

  We had been so close to him. I had been so close. And yet he’d managed to slip away. Whatever Emma said about the search area tightening, I had absolutely no faith in Warren and his men – or maybe I just had more faith in Blythe himself. He was working to a schedule none of us could see, and there was something we were all missing. It seemed that pretty much everybody else in the room right now was staring at the wrong wall entirely.

  God, I wanted him.

  I understood now that it had never been enough to be just peripherally involved – a part of the investigation, but only a tiny cog in the overall machine. And in a strange way, it was almost like I wasn’t supposed to be sidelined. I’d felt it for the first time at Blythe’s house, and I felt it again now, more strongly than ever. This was about him and me. This was a chance to make amends, as much as that was possible. Back at the pond, I had chased him as fast and hard as I could, and I realised now that one of the reasons it hurt so much to have missed him was that a part of me had also felt like I’d been chasing myself.

  ‘Talk to me, Will,’ Emma said. She was quieter now. ‘Let me know what’s going on. I don’t like this. You owe me an explanation.’

  I looked at her, feeling helpless. She was right, of course. She deserved to know what I was thinking and what lay behind this. Why it meant so much to me – far more than was healthy for the investigation as a whole.

  ‘I. . .’

  And I really was about to tell her everything just then. I really would have done. If I hadn’t heard a car engine in the distance. Instead I fell quiet, looking in the mirror, and saw a car approaching from the north. It was a civilian vehicle by the look of it, and it seemed to slow a little as it came closer.

  I glanced out at the groups of officers standing around. Most of them had noticed the car. As far as I could tell, none of them seemed obviously inclined to do anything about it.

  I looked in the mirror again as it reached us, then out through the window as it went past.

  And I saw who was driving.

  Thirty-One

  Townsend still had no idea what he was going to do.

  He’d been thinking about it on the drive to Moorton. He wasn’t a man who was built for heroics; he never had been. As a tall, skinny child, rarely found without a book in his hand, he’d loathed the sports and physical activities that so many of the other boys took to with such apparent ease. He rarely exercised, and whatever meagre shape he might once have been in had declined badly during the years of Melanie’s absence. He was insubstantial now, his body bordering on the frail. No match for a man like Blythe, if it came to a confrontation.

  So what on earth was he planning to do?

  Heroics, he thought bitterly, both hands gripping the steering wheel. Though that was the wrong word, wasn’t it? There was nothing remotely heroic about the things he had done in the past, and nothing he did now could redeem him. There were many words he could apply to himself, but hero wasn’t one of them.
>
  So, no: this certainly wasn’t an act of heroism. It was more an act of duty. A taking of responsibility. For so long now, he had shouldered the guilt and shame of his actions, and he’d borne them because of Melanie. He’d punished himself over and over, battering himself with self-hatred until there were no edges left to him. The result was this. He had to be there for the conclusion. To be part of the story’s end.

  He blinked.

  It really was that simple, he realised. That was all it came down to. It didn’t matter what he was going to do; it only mattered that he was present for whatever occurred. Whatever happened to him at Frog Pond would just be the final punishment in the long list of pains he’d endured over the years.

  Nearly there now.

  He hadn’t grown up in the area, but he had visited the village on several occasions, and had even gone to Frog Pond itself once, walking the path to it and taking photographs. He was struck by the contrast between the still green surface of the pond and the raging torrent of the river so close by. It was a haunting place in many ways. But he wasn’t so familiar with the roads around Moorton that he hadn’t gone slightly wrong today. Aware of the police activity, he’d deliberately avoided driving through the centre of the village, but as a result he had ended up circling round too far, only figuring out a turning or so back that he’d overshot the pond and would need to approach it from the north.

  It should be somewhere around the next bend. From what he could recall, it was easy to miss, so he slowed the car slightly as he reached the curve in the road. . .

  Immediately, he saw all the police activity up ahead.

  Keep calm, he told himself.

  Impossible, of course, but what overtook him wasn’t panic so much as a curious kind of emptiness, in which his mind froze and became incapable of making any decision at all. It felt like he’d forgotten how to drive, and his body wouldn’t respond at all. His car coasted slowly past the gathering of officers by default, by accident, because he was unable to do anything else.