Kevin Brooks - Dance of Ghosts

‘Who the hell do you think I am?’ I said, reversing into the picnic table. ‘Jack fucking Bauer?’

By the time I got back to the railway crossing it was almost 5.30 and the daylight was nearly gone. It was that pre-dusk time of day when the light becomes hesitant, unsure what to do with itself, and the form of things is indistinct. There were no streetlights here, and as I pulled in at the side of the road on the south side of the crossing, the view up ahead seemed to lack definition — the grey ribbon of the road itself merging into a green-grey dullness of roadside ditches, low hedges, and barren trees.

I lit a cigarette and called Cal.

‘Where are you?’ he said.

‘At the crossing. Are you still looking at the road on Google Earth?’

‘Yeah, and I’ve found a few places that might be worth checking out. If we assume that he killed her and dumped her body somewhere between the junction and the crossing, then he would have had to find a place where he could park the car and do his stuff without being seen. Right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, well, the road from the junction is pretty well lit for about half a mile, and the only places he could possibly pull off and park are in the fields on either side of the road, but the hedges are quite low around there, and he’d still be out in the open. But further on, heading towards the crossing, there’s no lighting and there’s a couple of places where he could get off the road and not be seen. Do you want me to direct you to them?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re facing north, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK, the nearest one to you is about four hundred yards away, on the left-hand side of the road. That’s your left. All right?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, pulling away. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘There’s a right-hand bend in the road, and just past that there’s a little dirt track that leads down to a patch of wasteground that looks as if it’s filled with piles of gravel or something … some kind of roadworks storage, I suppose. Are you there yet?’

‘I’m just at the bend … hold on. Yeah, I can see the track … but there’s a gate.’

‘A gate? I can’t see any gate.’

‘Well, it’s there,’ I said, stopping beside a six-foot-high wire-mesh gate. ‘And it’s locked … it’s got a big brass padlock on it.’

‘Yeah …’ Cal muttered. ‘I can see it now. It’s not very clear …’

‘I don’t think he’d bother with a locked gate, Cal. Even if he could get it open, it’d be too risky. He’d have to stop the car, get out, pick the lock, open the gate — ’

‘Yeah, OK. Well, leave it for now … you can always check it out later. The other place I found looks more promising anyway.’

‘Where is it?’ I said, pulling back onto the road again.

‘Keep going for about another two hundred yards and you should see a lane on your right. I think it’s some kind of access road. It heads down towards the railway tracks, and there’s a few little buildings down there … railway buildings, probably. But there’s all kinds of other shit down there too — piles of pallets, old girders, sleepers, rusted machinery — ’

‘Just a minute, Cal,’ I said, slowing the car and peering over to my right.

‘Are you there already?’

‘No … I’m looking at something else.’ I stopped the car. Although there was very little traffic, the road here was quite narrow, with nowhere safe to pull in, so I flicked on the hazard lights. ‘Can you check something for me?’ I said to Cal.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m about fifty yards north of the gate, and on the right-hand side of the road there’s a kind of lay-by … but it’s cut off from the road behind a strip of trees, so you can’t actually see into it from the road. It’s like one of those pull-off areas for lorry drivers … can you see it yet?’

‘I’m still looking …’

‘There’s a slight bend in the road just past it, and the entrance on the north side — the town side — is blocked by two big piles of earth.’

‘Yeah, I’ve got it now.’

‘What do you think? It’s got to be a pretty isolated spot, because if you’re coming from town the first entrance is blocked, and the other entrance, which I suppose is the exit really, that’s a really tight turn.’

‘Yeah, and if you’re coming the other way you’d have to cut across the road right after the bend, and you wouldn’t want to do that.’

‘Can you make out what’s in there?’

‘Well, like you said, it’s not really a lay-by, it’s just a lane … a pull-off area. I can’t see any buildings or anything. It looks like there’s a little stream running alongside it … maybe a ditch. It veers off to the right about halfway along and heads down a bank towards the railway tracks.’

‘I’m going to take a look.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, there’s something about it … I don’t know. It feels …’ Like a dead place , I was going to say. It feels like a dead place . Which it did. It felt rotten, decaying, empty, soulless … but, for some reason, I didn’t want to voice those feelings.

‘Listen, Cal,’ I said, glancing over my shoulder to check that the road was clear. ‘I’m just going to put the phone down for a minute, OK? I’ve got to make a U-turn and … well, you know what my driving’s like.’

‘OK.’

I put the phone on the passenger seat and glanced over my shoulder again. The road behind me was clear, but I had to wait for a lorry to rumble past from the opposite direction. Once it had gone, I put the car into gear and swung a tight U-turn so I was heading back in the direction I’d just come from, and then almost immediately I slowed down again to make the 180-degree left turn into the lay-by. It was just a narrow track at first, curving round to the right, before gradually straightening out into a slightly broader stretch of gravelled concrete. The night was almost fully dark now, and as I drove slowly towards the widest part of the lay-by, the beam of my headlights lit up the gloom in front of me. The lay-by itself was just a flat slab of emptiness, a pot-holed lane with a bulge in the middle. There were a few scraps of litter around — an empty KFC box, some burger wrappers, carrier bags hanging in trees — but none of it looked fresh. This wasn’t a well-used place. The surrounding trees and hedges seemed to lean in towards the lay-by, giving the whole place a tunnel-like sense of enclosure and isolation.

I parked the car and turned off the engine.

The silence was acute.

I sat there for a while, gazing around at the rapidly dimming surroundings, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I tried to imagine what I’d be thinking if it was 2.30 in the morning and there was a dead body in my car. Would you get rid of it here? I asked myself. Would you feel safe getting rid of it here? And, if so, where exactly would you dump it?

I picked up my mobile.

‘Cal?’ I said.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yeah. I’m in the lay-by now. I’m just going to take a quick look round, OK?’

‘Keep your phone on.’

‘Yeah.’

I reached under the seat and pulled out a torch, checked it was working, turned it off again, then opened the door and stepped out. I’d already spotted the stream that Cal had mentioned — or, at least, I’d seen the top of a tree-lined clay bank that ran alongside the lay-by, stopping about halfway along, and I was pretty sure it was the bank of the stream that Cal had seen on Google Earth. As I crossed the lay-by, heading for the point where the bank dropped away, I could smell a growing sourness in the air — rotted leaves, waste, dead things. The stagnant odour of decay. There was a small gap between the end of the bank and a thick black tangle of hawthorn trees — just enough room for an adult man to squeeze through — and as I approached the gap, I turned on the torch. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see — footprints, maybe … a scrap of cloth caught on a branch — but, of course, there wasn’t anything there. If anything had happened here, it had happened a month ago — time enough for the wind and rain to remove all traces of evidence.