by Tom Weaver
'Might be,' came the reply, but the handler didn't sound convinced. The dogs were so highly trained they could smell human blood. They'd been inside collapsed buildings and followed trails to survivors. They could sniff out drugs and guns and explosives. They weren't going to be disturbed by a hedgehog. Everyone was thinking the same, and a couple of them looked to Crane, as if momentarily seeking assurance. He wasn't even turned towards the noise. He just faced ahead, into the darkness.
A couple of the officers carrying torches moved off the path and into the undergrowth as far as they could. Grass fell under their feet and then sprang back up again around them. Beyond the tree trunks, cones of light moved left and right.
'Anything?' Phillips asked from the trail.
'Nothing,' one of them shouted back.
They reappeared about a minute later, dew shining on their trousers and stab vests. Crane looked back at me for a moment and smiled.
'You got something to say?' I asked him.
Everyone glanced at me, then at him. The smile was gone. It had lasted long enough for me to see but no one else. Most of the officers' eyes were back on me now.
'Calm down, Mr Raker,' Hart said from in front of me. 'And you -' pointing at Crane '— keep your bloody eyes on the path.'
About five minutes further on, we hit the clearing I'd found a few days before. The spot where Markham had left Megan for Crane to find. The rain sounded heavier as it fell through the gap in the leaves.
'Pitter patter, pitter patter,' Crane started saying. A few of us looked at him. His head was down, handcuffed wrists together in front of him. Titter patter, bang, pitter patter, bang'
Phillips stepped towards him. 'What did you say?'
Crane looked up. 'Sorry?'
'What did you say?'
'Pitter patter, pitter patter. The rain, DCI Phillips. It's coming down hard now. We'd better move on, or we're all going to get soaked.'
Crane scanned the group. Two uniforms up front, torches straying across the path. The two SFOs either side of him. Both dog handlers up ahead now, framed in the flashlights. Two other uniforms either side of us, one standing in the tall grass of the clearing, one on the edge of the woods. The paramedic next to me. Phillips and Hart next to her. Then his eyes fell on Phillips.
Something was up.
In that moment, I knew we should have been turning around and heading back the other way. Crane was a killer and a liar. Trusting him was suicide.
'Wait.'
Everyone looked around at me, including Crane. Phillips was annoyed, but edged a couple of steps back in my direction. 'What is it?'
'This is…' I shook my head, glanced at Crane. 'This is wrong'
Phillips studied me for a moment, saying nothing. But then he turned to Crane. In the expression on his face, I saw that he felt the same as me. But I also saw that he wasn't going to back out. Not now. Not after getting all this signed off. 'Where's Jill?'
'It's not far now.'
'You better not be messing us around here, Crane. If this is all a joke, I'll flush you down the toilet — you understand that, right?'
Crane smiled. 'It's not far now,' he repeated.
We all fell back into position and continued along the path. Under the canopy the rain wasn't as hard. It fell as a mixture of intermittent droplets and drifting drizzle, swirled around in front of us by a gentle breeze that wheezed and groaned. About a hundred yards on, someone's radio crackled, the sound amplified by the oppressive quiet. It was one of the SFOs'. He reached to his belt and adjusted something on his Airwave handset. Except for the rain and the sound of the wind, we were back to complete silence.
Then something cracked in the woods on our left.
Everybody stopped. The dogs were straining on their leashes, noses out again, staring into the dark. 'What can you see?' one of the handlers asked. The spaniel sniffed the air then returned to its original position, primed for whatever had made the noise. Two uniforms moved to the edge of the woods and shone the torch in again. Another one followed about ten seconds later.
I looked along the line. One SFO was facing the opposite way, into the woods on the other side from where the noise had come. The other was watching the uniforms examining the area. We'd bunched together, and I realized Crane was closer to me all of a sudden. So close I could have grabbed him by the throat and stopped this before it got out of hand. To my left, Hart was standing in the grass at the edge of the woods; Phillips a couple of steps behind him, eyes fixed on the dark.
Another crack.
The SFO who was watching the other way glanced over his shoulder. The paramedic looked too, her fluorescent jacket shining in the passing torchlight. One handler moved into the trees, then the other followed. Within twenty seconds, Crane and I were virtually on our own, only the SFOs for company. The rest of them were beyond the treeline, torches flashing back and forth, or were watching on the edges of the forest.
'Do you remember what I said to you, David?' Crane whispered. One of the SFOs' eyes flicked to him. His hands tightened on the barrel of the MP 5. The other one saw his partner's movement and did the same. I nodded at them both that it was okay, but they didn't move. They were eyeing Crane with suspicion. 'That we had a connection?'
I didn't reply, but in my head I was trying to figure out what this was about, and why he was trying to engage me in conversation. As the torches passed in semicircles, I could see the officers' silhouettes form and then merge again with the dark. Hart had his mobile phone out, flipping it over inside the palm of his hand. Phillips was next to him.
'I shouldn't have been so cruel about your wife.'
I looked at him. What are you doing, Crane?
'Earlier. I shouldn't have said those things about her.'
'Do yourself a favour and shut the fuck up.'
One of the SFOs made a move forward. I glanced at him, then at Crane, then turned back to the woods. The beam from a torch cut out about twenty feet beyond the tree line. A couple of seconds later it flickered back on. One of the uniforms swore, cursing the batteries.
'I'm the same as you, David.'
I looked back at him. His face was blank: no expression, no hint of humour. He just held my gaze. I glanced at the SFO and stepped in closer to Crane.
'I already told you: we're not the same.'
'Sure we are,' he replied, and stopped, smiling. You figured me out. My wife. The child she was carrying. I always thought I hid it quite well. But I suppose you must become quite attuned to loss when you spend so much time around it. These cases you take on, they're full of it. And, of course, you have all those memories of your wife inside your home. All the photos. The home movies. Her music collection sitting there in the corner of the living room, untouched.'
'Be careful,' I warned him.
He looked around, eyes scanning the darkness. 'All I'm saying is, I understand. I get you. I lost someone, you lost someone. I kill, you kill.'
I flashed a look at him. 'What?'
A smile wormed its way across his face. 'I know all about that case up north, David. And I'm not talking about the cosy little picture you painted for the police.'
I glanced at the SFOs, then back to him.
'Oh, come on,' he said, and made a tut-tut sound. He dropped his voice to a whisper. The SFOs were studying us both now. 'I saw you on the news after what happened up there, just like everybody else. You spend enough time around loss, you pick it up in other people.' He paused. You spend enough time around killers, you can do the same.'
'You're insane.'
'You're a killer, David. A reluctant one, I'll admit. But a killer nonetheless. I can see it in you. I can read you just like you can read me. So, you and me… we're the same.'
Crane winked so only I could see, and backed up a couple of steps, opening himself out to the SFOs again. Above the sound from the woods and the whisper he'd been speaking in, it would have been hard for them to hear anything. But they knew something was up.
'Don't worry,' he continued, wink
ing again, 'your secret's safe with me. But you might want to try and remember what it felt like to, you know…' He made a gun sign with one of his hands and pretended to fire it. You might want to reacquaint yourself, is all I'm saying'
I looked at him. I might want to reacquaint myself with firing a gun.
'What are you talking about?' I asked again, but he didn't reply, and out of the woods came the search teams. They were finished. Phillips looked over at us, suspicion in his face, and then everybody started to fall back into position. 'Phillips - wait.'
He fixed a stare on me. 'What now?'
'We need to go back.'
'Why?'
I glanced at Crane. He was staring at me, his face blank. 'He's got a plan. Some sort of fucked-up plan. I don't know what it is, but someone's going to get hurt.'
Phillips looked between us, then at Hart. Hart was gazing at me, as if he believed I was the one with the plan. What did he say?'
'Something about me needing to fire a gun.'
'What?'
'It's riddles. Just a bunch of…' I glanced at Crane again. Nothing in his face now. He'd wiped it clean. 'Look, I know you feel the same: everything about this is off. We're walking into a trap, and until we figure out what it is, I think we need to go back.'
Phillips scanned the group. Everybody was either staring at him or me, and I knew we weren't about to turn around. He may have had the same instincts as me, but this was a challenge to his decision-making. His planning. His position. If he backed down now, he said to everyone here, I made the wrong choice.
'We move on,' he said quietly.
'This is a big mistake, Phillips.'
'Raker,' he spat back at me, 'you're not in charge here. You have no opinion. You have no choices. You follow my orders and that's it. Are we clear?'
'This is a mistake.'
'Are we clear?'
This was for show now. He didn't deserve a reply. He believed exactly the same as me, felt something was off just as I did, but he was overlooking it to save face. I let my silence hang there, in between us, and then the group started walking again.
Phillips turned to Crane again. 'Where's Jill, you weaselly piece of shite?'
'It's not far now.'
'You said that a quarter of a mile back.'
'I mean it this time.'
The rain started making a chattering sound against the canopy. As we moved across another piece of rusting railway track, the wind picked up too, blowing in from our right. Leaves snapped. Grass swayed. About a minute later, one of the torches flashed past a patch of grass, coiled and twisted around the trunk of a sycamore. Some of it had come loose and was moving, making a gentle sigh like a voice. I watched a few of the team directing their lights towards it, as if they thought they'd heard someone speaking. But it was just this place. The buried secrets. The lost lives.
Then one of the torches passed a shape about sixty feet in front of us.
The light swung back: it was one of the crates from the hideout. Five feet square. Cyrillic printed on the side. It sat on its own in an oval clearing on the right of the trail, where the woods bent away and then came back in further down. We all stopped.
'What's that?' Phillips asked.
'That,' Crane replied, 'is Jill.'
Chapter Seventy-five
Everyone stared at the crate and realized this was it. What we'd come out to the woods for. Then Phillips started to organize things: he told one of the SFOs, one handler, two uniforms with flashlights and the paramedic to follow him over. Hart joined the group as well. The rest of us stayed put.
I glanced at Crane, stepping closer to him in case he tried to make a run for it. I could feel dread worming its way through my chest. What have you brought us here for, you murdering prick? He was almost side-on to me now, watching closely, the corners of his mouth turned up in a trace of a smile.
Except he wasn't watching at all.
As I took a step forward, I could see his body was facing forward but his eyes were fixed on the woods to our right. I followed his line of sight. The darkness was thick. The dull glow from the nearest torch had lit the immediate area to the edge of the trees. Beyond that, though, I couldn't see anything. No movement. No sound. Nothing to warrant his attention.
The lull was disturbed by Phillips's voice again. At a distance of sixty feet, and with the rain getting heavier every minute, it was hard to make out his words clearly. But he was going around the group, telling each of them what he wanted from them.
I made sure Crane hadn't moved. His eyes were still watching the woods to his right, so I stepped level with him. He noticed me enter his field of vision. The smile disappeared. He looked like he was trying to decide if he'd given anything away.
'Something you want to share?' I asked him.
His smile returned. 'Just enjoying the show, David.'
He turned back to face what was unfolding in front of him, and we watched as Phillips and his team pulled on forensic gloves. Phillips walked right up to the crate. Placed his fingers around the lid. He nodded once to everyone watching and went to lift it away. It didn't open. He looked from the lid to Crane. Attempted to lift it away again.
Nothing.
Briefly, Crane's eyes flicked right again, then he was back to watching Phillips. He and Hart were examining the crate, trying to work out what was preventing it from opening.
'Constable,' I said to one of the uniforms holding a flashlight. He looked at me. 'Could you shine your torch into the woods over there?'
He frowned, 'Why?'
I glanced at Crane. He was staring at me, his face stoic. 'Just for a second.'
The PC was young, mid twenties. He probably liked the fact I'd come along for the ride because it meant he wasn't bottom of the food chain any more. He shook his head. 'No. I do what DCI Phillips tells me, not you.'
The PC looked back up the trail to the group. Defiant.
The remaining SFO was standing behind me. I turned to him. 'Can you get him to shine the torch into the woods?'
'Why?' he replied.
The PC turned back to face us.
'Because Crane doesn’t give a shit about what's happening up there,' I said, nodding to the group at the crate. 'But he can't keep his eyes off the woods.'
They looked from me to Crane, then to the woods. Crane didn't meet their eyes. He was staring up the trail, watching as Phillips, Hart and both uniforms tried to prize the lid of the crate away. A crack sounded, and - beyond the fall of rain - Hart said something. The lid had shifted.
The SFO watched me for a moment, MP 5 hanging diagonally across his waist. 'Okay,' he said, and looked at the PC. 'Do what he says.'
Crack.
The lid had come away. Everybody stepped back, leaving Phillips on his own. He placed his hands either side of the lid and lifted it up, dropping it on to the path with a dull whup. The group stepped up to the crate and looked inside.
'It's empty!' I heard Hart shout from the crate.
And then the PC shone his light into the woods.
About fifteen feet in was the Hanging Tree, the distinctive T-shaped oak I'd seen in photographs online, and the place Milton Sykes had built a treehouse as a child. Tied to the trunk was Jill. She'd been bound and gagged. Rope had been looped around her throat, pinning her to the bark, a semicircular piece of skin hanging from the top of her face. It took me two or three seconds to realize what it was: her forehead. The flap of skin covered one eye; the other was closed. She had bruises everywhere: her face, her arms, around her collarbone. Her clothes — a pair of jeans and a thin long-sleeve sweater — were soaked through with blood and rainwater, the sweater torn, exposing her stomach. Scrawled across her skin in black ink was 8.5.
Phillips sprinted towards us, his eyes fixed on Jill, and told me to hold back. I wanted to get to Jill. I wanted to tear her down from the tree and rip Crane apart on the way through. He was fully facing me now, his back to her. Finally I couldn't wait any more: I stepped past him, about three fe
et from the tree line, unable to take my eyes off the body strapped to the tree.
'What the fuck have you done?' I said.
'I didn't get time to finish her,' he replied in a matter-of- fact voice from behind me, bringing his handcuffed wrists up to the side of his head and scratching a spot next to his eye. 'So we'll call her eight and a half. Would have been good to have had the time to sort out that terrible skin of hers. But while I usually prefer to finish my work, I'll accept this one for what she is.' He paused. His eyes drifted to the woods behind me. 'A marker.'
A second later he dropped to the floor.
Fnip. Fnip.
To my right, the SFO's head exploded into a shower of blood. His gun flipped off to the side, landing with a thud in the grass. Fnip. Next to him, the PC went down, a bullet pounding into his chest, close to the heart. I dropped to the floor. Rolled towards the grass at the opposite tree line.
Fuck. It's a set-up.
From behind where I'd been standing two men in balaclavas emerged from the woods, both armed with silence pistols. At the crate, the SFO lifted his MP 5. Fnip. Another uniform went down, falling against the crate and crushing it beneath him. Fnip. Someone else. Maybe Hart. I couldn't tell any more.
The SFO started firing.
It was a thunderous noise, ripping across the woods and echoing away. The two men retreated back into cover, into the trees and bushes. The remaining SFO was left out in the open. One man against the darkness.
I grabbed the MP 5 lying on the ground next to the dead SFO and made a break for the other side of the trail, where Jill was now disguised by the night again. Fnip. Fnip. Bullets hit the path close to my feet. My body automatically tried to avoid them, and the move unbalanced me: I stumbled forward, hitting the undergrowth hard beyond the tree line. A split second later, another bullet hit a tree about six inches to my left. Bark spat out, dusting me as I tried to move deeper into the darkness.
Fnip. Fnip. Fnip.
Someone cried out. A woman.
The paramedic.
Fnip.
Close to me, the sound of a body hitting the grass. Then the dogs barking. I wasn't sure who was still standing and who was already dead. MP 5 gunfire erupted, brief flashes of light illuminating the trail. I could see Crane flat to the floor. Bodies strewn next to him. Torches on the ground — one facing off along the path, one into the side of the woods the men were in.
