Still Bleeding

by Steve Mosby

  It sounded vaguely pointless to Kearney, but he supposed he understood what Hammond meant.

  'So knowing what Timms had done gave people something else to think about when they looked at his stuff?' He grasped for the right phrase. 'To read into it?'

  Hammond nodded, then looked over behind them.

  'Just as, I'm afraid to say, whatever he's done now will too.'

  Kearney turned around. Across the exhibition space, the two paintings from Roger Timms's Gehenna series were now being parcelled up in large brown boxes. One of the students tore a strip of packing tape from the roll with his teeth. For some reason, it made Kearney think of skin being flayed.

  And behind them, the walls stood empty. But he supposed Hammond had a point. There was a subtle kind of meaning to be had even in those blank walls. In what had once been there, and now was missing.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I remembered Whitrow Ridge from when I was a kid. It rose up from the ground, north of the city, like the curved spine of a half-buried dinosaur. After Mike dropped me off, I looked online and found that Castle View was the name of the road that twisted along the top of it. I headed out for a taxi.

  'Fifteen quid,' the driver told me.

  'That's fine.'

  We were out in the country now. On the left of the road, the land spread away slowly and gradually. Open fields were divided by dark hedges, with the airport dimly visible in the distance, and then the edges of the city resting in hazy white mist beyond. There was a pub called the Royalty on that side: popular, despite the drive, with walkers and plane spotters. On the right-hand side, behind the cottages and farmhouses that flashed past, the land fell away much more sharply. This was the Ridge itself, thick with woodland and knee-high patches of dense heath, cut diagonally down by steep, awkward footpaths.

  The taxi driver slowed the car to a crawl, and began peering out of the side window, checking the numbers on the houses to the right. He was an old-school cabbie: not only quoting me a price in advance, but determined to deliver me as close to my destination as physically possible without driving through someone's garden.

  'That one's 162.' He nodded to the cottage on the right. 'I reckon you're running out of road, mate. You sure about the address?'

  'I think so.'

  But the houses were coming to an end up ahead. I was already counting them down in my head. The properties were so large and spread out that it was hard to tell, but I thought there were two left, and then nothing but fields and fences. Which would mean…

  'No. 166. That's your last one.'

  The taxi driver came to a stop just past the final house and shook his head thoughtfully, as if this was a mystery he needed to solve on my behalf or else go home frustrated.

  'Well,' he said, 'unless you're after this place.'

  I looked where he pointed and saw we'd pulled up by a gravel parking area that stretched back from the road for about thirty metres, I guessed, until it overlooked the Ridge. The car park was half full, with eight or nine vehicles spaced out across the gravel.

  Down the other side, there were old, weathered benches. A family was sitting at one, the father pouring hot coffee from a thermos. At another, there was a couple in biking leathers; the man had one boot off and was picking mud out of it with a stick. At the far end, an ice-cream van was parked up, the man inside sitting behind a half panel of grey glass, reading a newspaper.

  Just beyond, there was a drystone wall with a break in the middle. I watched as a man followed his dog back through, coiling a lead between his hands.

  'That's the Ridge through there?' I said.

  The cabbie leaned on his steering wheel. 'Yeah, people come for the view. Plane spotters and walkers and things. Gets some trouble at night, you know? Not that it bothers me. None of my business.'

  I didn't have a clue what he meant. Then it clicked.

  'What - people come here for sex?'

  'Oh yeah. This place is notorious for it. Flashing headlights. All that kind of stuff.'

  I turned that idea over in my head. Emily Price. Had the owner of the rucksack arranged to meet her here, whoever she was? Or did the note have a different meaning altogether? Whichever, the knowledge that people came here for clandestine, anonymous sexual encounters seemed to fit. There was something furtive about that, just as it felt there was about the scene I'd found at the Chalkie.

  'OK. This'll do, thanks.'

  'You sure?'

  I handed him a twenty and opened the door.

  'Keep the change,' I said.

  The engine roared and then faded as the taxi drove away, and the silence that followed closed around me. The place had the same heavy stillness I imagined you'd find at the top of a mountain. I headed into the car park, and the crunch of the gravel beneath my shoes felt like an intrusion. From somewhere over the Ridge, I could hear children shouting, and their voices were simultaneously close and far away, fluttering around like butterflies.

  The family at the bench watched me walk past, probably wondering why a lone man would be dropped off in a taxi somewhere like this, or even come here at all without a dog to walk. I was wondering the same thing myself. I had no idea what was I hoping to accomplish here. Or in fact whether there was anything to be accomplished at all.

  I crossed over to the ice-cream van.

  'Excuse me?'

  The guy inside put down the paper.

  'What can I get you?'

  'Nothing right now. I'm just curious about something.' I tapped a couple of fingers on the small counter. 'It might sound strange, but does the name Emily Price mean anything to you?'

  This was my best shot. Unlike the other people in the car park, I was guessing this man was here most of the time. If Emily Price had any connection to this place whatsoever, he'd be the most likely person to know. I was painfully aware that my best shot was pretty lousy and so, obviously, I wasn't holding out much hope. But he frowned.

  'Rings a bell,' he said. 'Why? Should I know her?'

  'Not necessarily. I was just curious.'

  Rings a bell. Now that he'd said it, it did with me too. I started to say something else, but he interrupted me.

  'Is she that girl that comes here?'

  He looked troubled by that. I got the weird impression I'd asked him about something that was already on his mind. Something he thought maybe I could help him with.

  How to play it?

  'Yeah,' I said. 'It might be. What does she look like?'

  'Not sure to be honest.' He half turned towards the Ridge, then looked back at me and frowned again. 'I just see her up here sometimes. Over there, looking out. She's got long dark hair. Old black raincoat. A bit tatty. Like she's homeless?'

  'That sounds like her.'

  I had no idea what to say next, but he saved me.

  'Why does she do that?' he said.

  'What? Stand up there?'

  'It's weird. That's why it came back to me then.' He scratched his ear, uncomfortable. 'I look up sometimes, and she's there, standing by herself. And she just seems… I don't know, like she's watching something. Or waiting, maybe.'

  'You've not seen her properly?'

  'No. I just notice her every now and then, and the next time I look up she's gone.' 'Right.'

  'It started to freak me out a bit. I mean, it's busy up here at the moment, but when it rains, you know, it's pretty desolate. And even then, I've seen her. I was beginning to think she was a ghost or something.'

  He said it as a joke, but couldn't quite manage the laugh. I glanced past, towards the edge of the Ridge, and something about the place made it seem not quite so ridiculous as it might have done elsewhere. It was so windswept and isolated: I could imagine a ghost here. Standing with her back to the car park, staring down the hill; silent and sad and full of foreboding. If you walked around the front of her, you'd find that she was somehow still facing away.

  Long dark hair. Old black raincoat. A bit tatty.

  'Who is she?' the guy asked.r />
  I looked back at him, sorry I didn't have any answers.

  'I really don't know,' I said.

  The wall looked like it had been there for centuries.

  There was nothing holding it together any more, assuming there ever had been. It was just odd-sized rocks, piled waist- high in a long row, and placed in such a way that each one supported the ones around it, with stone stabs added as uprights to either side of the gap leading through. There was a short series of steps beyond.

  I walked up and found myself in the middle of a footpath along the top of the Ridge. The wind blasted at my face, and I squinted. It was freezing up here. The sun itself felt hot, hanging in the centre of the sky and beating down hard, but it was wild and exposed, and the wind kept whipping quickly across, swiping any heat away vindictively, like a child would a toy.

  Bracing.

  To my right, the path had to lean out past the fenced off gardens of the cottages before it curved around out of sight. To my left, it skirted a huge pile of boulders instead, then disappeared into a thicket of trees. A little girl with curly yellow hair and pink boots was perched precariously on top of the nearest rock, hands spread-eagled beside her. A slightly older boy with skinny legs bounded up fearlessly and shouted in triumph. From somewhere I couldn't see, a man shouted at them both to be careful. Although I understood where the guy was coming from with his warning, I also thought he was missing a trick.

  Instead of heading in either direction, I walked forward. There was an artificial table built from stone here. On the top, several maps and sheets of information had been sealed in beneath dirty plastic, which in turn had been covered in casual graffiti by generations of idiots.

  In front, the Ridge fell off steeply, a carpet of heath and grass, with a third path cutting down from the information point, little more than a rumour in the undergrowth. About a hundred metres below, the woods started. And then, much further down, I could make out the town of Castleforth in the valley. The cottages and factories down there were as flat and still as a tapestry laid out on the landscape. In the distance, beyond them, a cloud was casting an enormous shadow across the fields as it flowed slowly, peacefully across the sky.

  I took a glance behind. The ice-cream van was still visible through the gap in the wall, which meant the girl - whoever she was - must have been standing more or less where I was in order for the vendor to catch sight of her. So what the hell had she been looking at? The view was nice, admittedly, but it didn't seem like a place to linger, and certainly not one to keep returning to.

  I leaned against the stone table and pretended I was reading the information there. In reality, I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do next.

  You're here. So now what?

  One obvious thing to do would be to take the path in either direction, or else head down the Ridge. But after looking at the map for a moment, I knew that would be a mistake. There was too much ground to cover, and a lot of it would be hard work. It would have been difficult enough if I'd had the slightest idea what I might be looking for, or even where it was. As things stood, I had no idea whether there was anything here at all. The only thing I was likely to get was a good walk.

  But I didn't know what else to do.

  I was on the verge of phoning for a taxi and getting out of here, when I happened to glance idly at the stone near my left hand and noticed all the graffiti there. Most of it was just names or dates, either chiselled awkwardly into the rock or written in black marker, but at the top left-hand corner someone had drawn something in what appeared to be thin white paint. It was so small it would have been easy to miss. Even if you saw it, you probably wouldn't pay it much in the way of attention.

  Not unless you recognised it.

  It was an angled line with a smaller one crossing near the base. I stared at it, because I'd seen exactly the same design last night, scribbled on that sheet in Sarah's research notes. For a few seconds, I was as quietly surprised to see it there as I would have been to find a note tacked to the plastic, addressed to me personally.

  From beside me, the wind whipped in.

  Like a sword, I remembered thinking. Pointing to the northwest. But I lifted my head now, looked at the Ridge falling away below me and reconsidered that.

  Maybe it was pointing to the path down through the heath.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Ridge was much steeper than it looked, and I realised straight away that I was wearing the wrong shoes for the job. The path was roughly formed, worn into the ground by centuries of walkers taking the exact same steps, resulting in little more than a series of dry dirt ledges leading awkwardly downwards through the heath. It was precarious terrain, and my trainers were far too flimsy and thin. The slightest misstep and I'd be risking a twisted ankle.

  The only advantage to the slope was that I quickly escaped the bitter wind, and, now that I was shielded by the body of the land, the sun felt tentatively warm on my skin. But without the roar of the air, it was even more quiet than it had been at the top. In fact, it was so unnerving I almost preferred the cold.

  I was halfway down to the trees. Glancing back up, the top of the Ridge formed a dark line against the sky. Black shapes were moving back along: the family I'd seen, returning to the car park. I watched them go. When they had dipped out of sight, there was nothing up there except grass quivering at the edge.

  Keep going.

  I set off again.

  My mind kept returning to the symbol scrawled on the stone. It wasn't a coincidence. Something was here, even if I didn't know what. So at the same time as checking my footing, I was also watching the ground in the hope of seeing another of the painted signs. That was my assumption: that whoever had left the first one would leave a second when it was time to change direction. If not, I'd be going on that long, pointless walk after all.

  My heart was humming in my chest. Part of it was nerves, but there was something else to it too. Something almost electrical.

  The path led down into the trees, where a cool shade settled across me. The trail still continued at an angle, but the undergrowth had fallen away and the land was almost bare here, the heath entirely gone. It looked as though all the life in the dry, dusty ground had been swept into piles, then gathered and twisted harshly into the gnarled pigtails of the trees. Above me, their branches formed a canopy of scrabbling arms, and as I walked through, it felt like being in an enormous, echoing hall, moving between pillars of oak. Everything smelled of resin and dew and leaves, and, from some balcony high above, the wind created a quiet whispering.

  I found the next symbol a little further along the path.

  You're right.

  The humming in my chest intensified.

  As strange as this is, the evidence is right in front of you.

  It had been drawn at the top of a long series of wooden steps that led off to the right, straight down the Ridge. Although this one was different from the symbol at the top - just a circle with a dot in the middle this time - it was in the same white paint as before. And once again, I'd probably have missed it if I hadn't been keeping an eye out. Because I had been, it was almost blatant…

  An idea clicked into place.

  When I'd seen the symbols Sarah had sketched in her notes, they'd reminded me of something, and now I realised what it was: the drawings that tramps and hobos were supposed to leave for each other. A secret code drawn on the walls of yards or the gates of houses.

  This place is friendly.

  Good food here.

  Owners hostile.

  That was what the symbols were like - especially now I was seeing them out in the wild. They were messages that would mean nothing at all to most people, but relayed important information for those who recognised them. In this case, they gave directions.

  But where to?

  I made my way down the steps. Unlike the path, these had been artificially carved into the land. Each was about thirty centimetres high, and covered
with a strip of old planking. I stopped counting after the first twenty. By then, the fronts of my shins were already hurting, and, looking back, I'd already left the original path high up above. Below me, the steps appeared to continue down for ever, presumably all the way to Castleforth.

  Was that where I was going?

  But no, it was only a few minutes before I spotted a third symbol on the left. This one had been dabbed casually onto the trunk of a tree: just a slash, but similar enough to the first two for the meaning to be clear, as there was a rough path leading off into the woodland in that direction.

  I turned and headed that way.

  As I went, I realised something else about the symbols: that they had been placed in an almost offhand manner. Even if someone noticed the last one, for example, they'd have no idea which way it was telling them to go, not unless they arrived here by following the one before it. And so on, all the way back to the top. From the starting point, they made sense and led you inexorably on. But from anywhere else, they'd appear completely random.

  The ground began to even out a little.

  The trees were larger here, with more space between them. I passed one that had either fallen or been cut down, and the trunk, resting on its side, came up to my waist. The land stretched out between. Towards the top of the Ridge, I was now faced with an almost impenetrable wall of trees. In the other direction, a little further down the slope, there appeared to be a steep drop: a lip pouting on the slant of the land. The further I went, the more the semblance of a path faded, until it seemed to have disappeared entirely and I found myself just meandering between the trees in what I hoped was a straight line.

  A couple of minutes later, still watching for any symbols on the trees, I reached a drystone wall. This one looked even older than the one up at the car park. It was small and broken down, with newer concrete posts embedded along it and barbed wire strung between them. The implication was clear. Keep out. It was either private property or dangerous terrain beyond the fence. The undergrowth there was thick and high, the grass forming a solid, unbroken wall.