by Alex North
Eventually, he moved the knife.
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Hague showed me.’
‘Why would he do that?’
A good question.
‘This was a couple of months later,’ I said. ‘He knew I hated Charlie, and he thought I might want to know that justice had been done. Maybe he figured he could trust me not to tell. And he was right about that.’
The man looked at me.
Not quite believing yet. But nearly.
‘Hague gave me something,’ I said.
I nodded towards Charlie’s dream diary, which I’d dropped by the door when I was first hit. The man stared at it for a moment, then reached out and picked it up, flicking through the pages. Whoever he was, he had clearly learned enough about the case to understand what he was seeing.
‘And I’m glad,’ I said. ‘I’m fucking glad he told me.’
Even if the rest of what I’d said was fiction, there was nothing pretend about the venom in my voice then. If my story had been true – if Hague’s brother really had turned up on my doorstep – I’d have gone into those woods with him in a heartbeat. And when he looked at me, the man could see I was telling the truth.
A few seconds later, he tossed the diary into the front room.
‘You’re going to take me there,’ he said.
40
I stood outside the back door on the edge of the garden, the coils and swirls of grass before me a frozen, dark blue sea. The pitch-black trees at the bottom might as well have been the end of the world. Behind me, the man flicked on a torch. The beam turned the undergrowth ahead into a colourless carpet of texture and shadow.
‘We go in this way?’ he said.
‘We’re less likely to be seen this way.’
‘How far is it?’
I thought about it.
‘A way. A mile or so.’
‘You’d better not be lying to me.’ He pressed the knife against the base of my spine. ‘You know what will happen if you are.’
‘I’m not lying.’
I breathed in the night air. It was cool now. And it was strange how calm I felt, especially as I had no idea how the minutes ahead were going to pan out. In all likelihood, this man was going to kill me, and all I was really achieving here was to stretch out whatever time I had left. But there was an off-kilter edge to the world, and an unreal quality to the silence. It felt as though the man and I had stepped out of time and found ourselves in a place where the past and present mingled more freely than usual.
A place where anything might happen.
I lifted my cuffed hands, pinched my nose shut, and tried to breathe.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
I lowered my hands.
‘Nothing. Come on.’
And then I set off down the garden, hardly aware of him following, aside from the bobbing light that kept quiet, methodical pace. At the bottom of the garden, I pulled the old chicken wire away from the posts and trampled it down. The man shone the torch into the woods, revealing a route so overgrown at the sides and overhead that it was more like a tunnel than a path.
I looked behind me. With the light shining so brightly, it was impossible to see the man, but I had the impression that he was as uneasy as I was – or as I should have been. And then I turned and stepped over the remains of the fence, and began pushing my way through the branches and foliage that were already scratching at my arms.
Heading off into the Shadows for one last time.
It was easy enough to find one of the handful of rough paths that snaked through the woods. Once I had, I led the man along it for a while.
He kept a little way behind but shone the torch ahead, and the light made the wood seem eerie and other-worldly. The nearest trees on either side were brightly illuminated, every detail of the pitted bark revealed, and I could see a carpet of tangled grass and broken sticks stretching a little way in front. But the light only penetrated so far. The view just metres in front of me was like a black pupil, or a hole into which I was leading the two of us.
As we walked, I began to lose track of the direction we were heading. Not that it mattered. After a few minutes, I spotted a convenient break between the trees on the left-hand side – not a path, but manageable – and that was where I decided to take us off-grid.
‘We need to go this way.’
‘You’re sure?’
At hip-height on the nearest trunk, there was a spread of thin branches hanging down from a larger one, like skeletal fingers poised over a piano. I gestured to them as though they were a landmark I recognized.
‘I’m sure.’
I stepped confidently through, hoping it didn’t lead to a dead end. Luck was on my side. A little way along, there was another break between the trees, this time to the right, and I took that, leading us deeper into the woods.
A branch snapped off against my upper arm. With my hands cuffed, I tried awkwardly to bend others out of the way as I went. The deeper into the woods we walked, the less well the torch seemed to work, and the trees cast shadows across each other, lending everything a shattered feel. All I could hear in the hush were the twigs snapping beneath our feet as we moved further and further away from the rest of the world.
It’s a way, I’d told him.
A mile or so.
Of course, I had no actual destination in mind. No real idea of where I was taking this man or what would happen when we reached it.
Suddenly, there was a break in the land.
I teetered and almost fell. An enormous stretch of earth had been hacked and gouged out, a footstep ahead of us.
Keep calm.
There was no way forward, so I stepped to the left, carefully lifting my foot over a tangle of undergrowth.
‘Watch yourself here,’ I said.
I just had to hope. I remembered what these woods were like – how it often felt that you weren’t moving through them so much as them shifting around you – and I sent a silent plea to the forest to slide a piece into place that would help me now.
Luck was with me again. A little way along, the ground closed up, and I could lead us off to the right again. The village felt a long way behind us now.
‘How much further?’ the man said.
‘Still a way.’
But I could tell from the silence that followed that his patience was running out. I needed to distract him as I took us deeper.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I said.
No reply.
‘Who are you? A soldier, I’m guessing.’
Again, he said nothing. But this time, I thought the man was at least considering the question.
‘I was a soldier once,’ he said finally. ‘For a long time. And I did some very bad things when I was. Things I’m ashamed of. Afterwards, I was a father, and everything started to feel right again.’
His voice sounded so blank, so empty, and I thought I understood now. He was a parent – presumably of the victim in Featherbank that Amanda had told me about. Charlie had never been found, and therefore his child was dead, and it had broken him. That was why he was here, doing what he was doing. He was trying to rectify that.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Be quiet.’
‘I was just a kid. I tried to do the best I could. I had no idea it would lead to other kids copying what Charlie did. I genuinely thought it would all just be forgotten.’
And then time ran out.
I stepped between the trees and was faced by a dead end. There was another enormous dip in the land here, the edge ridged with tree roots that looked like black veins coiling out of the crumbling earth. There was no way forward. The ground to the left was overgrown and impassable. To the right, there was a small stretch of earth that ended in a thick wall of trees, the grass and brambles between them as impenetrable as barbed wire.
This was as far as we went.
‘There,’ I said.
The man stepped out beside me. My heart
was beating hard as I pointed at the area of ground to the right of the ravine ahead. He angled the torch towards it, flicking the beam back and forth, searching for an old well that wasn’t there.
‘Where?’
You used to be so decisive.
I reached out quickly and knocked the torch upwards towards his face, then shouldered him away from me as hard as I could, as hard as I remembered once going through a boy on a rugby pitch. He went sprawling – not over the edge as I’d wanted, but at least far enough away for me to spin back the way we’d come.
And then run for my life into the darkness.
41
Are you saying my son was murdered because of a ghost?
That was what Dean Price had asked her. But as Amanda rocketed along the dark dual carriageway towards the village of Gritten Wood, it was Mary Price’s words the same day that returned to her.
Dean used to be in the army.
It’s only since Dean left the army that the two of them started to bond.
Dean’s always been practical. A problem-solver.
At the time, Amanda had said this wasn’t a problem anyone could solve, but now she wondered if that was true. Michael Price had been murdered because Charlie Crabtree had never been found. The mystery of his disappearance had cast a shadow over everything and caused so much pain. And that was a problem that could be solved, couldn’t it?
If you had the training and the will.
If you had nothing left to live for.
Back at the department, Mary had told her Dean walked out of the house three days ago, and she hadn’t heard from him since. His phone was switched off. The man had gone dark.
Everything is fine, Amanda told herself.
She had already checked, and Paul wasn’t in his room at the hotel. But that just meant he was probably at his mother’s house. And while he wasn’t answering his phone, the most likely explanation, surely, was that, after the events of the day, he didn’t want to speak to her.
So there was nothing to worry about.
But that was logic speaking, and she was hearing other, louder voices right now. The dark landscape outside the car reminded her of the nightmare she often had, and she was beginning to feel the same panic and urgency it always brought. Someone was in trouble and she was not going to reach them in time.
Her phone was attached to the dashboard. She dialled Dwyer.
‘Where the hell did you disappear to?’ he said.
‘I’m on my way to Gritten Wood.’
She explained what she’d learned from Mary Price.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he said. ‘You didn’t think to wait for me?’
‘No time. I’m sure everything is okay, but I wanted to get out here as quickly as possible. Stay on the line and I’ll let you know if I need you.’
‘I’m sending someone anyway.’
She thought about it.
‘Fine by me.’
The car in front of her was moving too slowly. Amanda pulled out and overtook it, accelerating away and ignoring the horn blaring behind her – but then the turning for Gritten Wood came up suddenly on the left, and she swerved off the dual carriageway, hardly slowing as the road narrowed. The car juddered and bounced around her, the tyres bumping over the rough ground. The husk of the village appeared ahead of her, as dark and apparently deserted as before.
And beyond it, the black mass of trees.
Her heart started beating more quickly.
She reached the house a minute later. Paul Adams’s car was parked up outside. She pulled in behind it, cranking on the handbrake and grabbing her mobile from the dashboard.
‘I’m there,’ she said.
‘Anything?’
‘The car’s here.’ She got out and looked at the house. ‘The hall light’s on.’
‘Just stay on the line.’
‘Will do.’
‘And don’t do anything stupid.’
Amanda remembered the savagery that had been done to Billy Roberts, and the terror she’d felt afterwards at having come so close to such a monster.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’
She kept the phone pressed to her ear as she headed up the path to the front door. She knocked, but didn’t wait for a reply – just turned the handle and found it unlocked. Inside, the brightly lit hallway was empty.
‘Paul?’ she shouted.
There was no reply.
‘What’s going on?’ Dwyer said.
‘Hang on.’
Amanda stared down the hallway towards the kitchen at the far end. The light wasn’t on in there, but she could feel a breeze coming from that direction. She headed down. The back door was open on to the black, overgrown sea of the garden.
‘Back door’s open.’
She stepped out. It was difficult to make out much detail, but she could see the trees at the bottom. The darkness there was absolute.
‘Officers en route,’ Dwyer told her.
Which was excellent news, Amanda thought. Because she was aware she needed help here – that she couldn’t do this by herself. There was absolutely no way she was setting foot into those woods on her own. But at the same time, a different thought was gnawing at the back of her mind, and while there was no way she could know it for certain, somehow she did.
The backup wasn’t going to get here in time.
For a few seconds, she found herself frozen on the back step, unable to head down through the grass towards the implacable blackness at the end. She was shivering. Even though she was willing her body to move, it wouldn’t respond.
Then:
Calm down, she told herself.
The voice came like a slap. For a moment, she thought it was her father’s, but it wasn’t.
It was just hers.
Someone needs you.
Yes, she realized. That was what it came down to. She wasn’t that little girl any more, lying in bed in the middle of the night, afraid of the dark and waiting for someone to save her. She was the person who came when someone else called.
‘Are you there?’ Dwyer said.
‘I’m here,’ Amanda said.
And then she lowered the phone and headed quickly down the garden towards the woods.
42
I crouched down between two trees, out of breath and trying to fight the panic that was filling me. The invisible undergrowth was thick and tangled around me. I could hardly see a thing.
And I was lost.
When I’d first run from the man, I’d been sure I was heading back the way we’d come. But I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, because I had no idea where I was now. The woods were disorientating even in daylight, never mind the almost absolute blackness I found myself in now. I wasn’t even sure whether I’d headed back towards the village or burrowed myself deeper into the forest.
I held still and listened.
Branches cracked off to my right – not too close, but not far enough away either. I glanced that way and saw light flickering dimly between the trees. He was over there, scanning the woods for me. And he seemed like a man who would search methodically. If I stayed where I was, he was going to find me.
But if I moved, where would I go?
A bramble was digging into my arm. I shifted ever so slightly, trying to think.
Go left – away from the light for a start.
I started to get up, but then heard a voice –
‘You can’t hide.’
– and my head jerked around. The words had come from somewhere off to the left. I could see light flashing between the trees in that direction now: closer than it had been before. But it was impossible for him to have covered that much ground so quickly.
Was it me turning or was it the world?
‘I used to hunt people like this for a living.’
I turned away from the voice and the light and felt my way slowly between the trees, my hands against the rough trunks, moving slowly and quietly, and praying I didn’t end up cornered.
&nbs
p; Everything was silent for a time, apart from the rustling of the leaves against my arms and the soft snap of tangled grass giving way around my ankles.
Then suddenly the world opened up ahead. One second, the back of my hand was against a branch, the next it felt like the tree had rotated away from me. And somehow the light was directly in front of me now, slashing brightly between the black trunks.
‘There you are.’
The light clicked off and the woods were plunged into darkness.
And then I heard an awful, angry snapping sound as the man came straight at me. I turned and ran to one side, plunging blindly through the woods now, shouldering my way wildly into the trees, rebounding from them, heading in any direction that became open to me. And yet wherever I went, it felt like I was actually moving towards him: that the wood was spiralling the two of us ever closer together. The noise seemed to be coming from everywhere.
Whichever way I looked, I saw only indistinguishable grey shapes, and every time I turned, the vague path before me was identical to the last. And I was surrounded on all sides by the snap and crunch of the man hunting me here.
I couldn’t find the way out of here by myself.
I needed –
‘Paul!’
The voice pulled me up short. It came from behind me, and was so far away in the distance that I wondered if I had imagined it. But in its own way it was as heavy as an anchor. It was a woman’s voice. For a moment, I thought it was Jenny – but, of course, that was impossible.
‘Paul, are you in there?’
I hesitated, then began to head back the way I’d come. But the man had heard the woman’s voice too. I could sense him somewhere away between the trees to my right. There was the rasp of heavy breathing coming from there.
And as I moved, I felt it coming closer.
‘Paul?’
I crept along at first, following the voice like a thread through a maze. Twigs cracked off to the side as the man tracked me, but at least it was only one side now. Then the trees thinned before me and I found myself on a path. I moved more quickly now, still expecting the man to emerge at any moment.
