Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

'Nothing,' Tasker said.

'Nothing flagged up?'

'Nothing for that alias.'

I thought of Jill. I knew the alias of the man who'd killed Frank now, but that wasn't much more than she had already.

'Sorry, Raker—I know it's a whole lot of nothing.'

'No, Task, that's great. I appreciate your help.'

'You need anything else?'

'Any chance you could send me a copy of the file? I made a promise to someone that I'd look into this and I just want to make sure I've ticked all the boxes.'

'I've got a golf competition in Surrey tomorrow morning. We tee off at 6 a.m. I'll put the printouts through your letterbox on the way through.'

'All right, old man. I appreciate it.'

I killed the call and pocketed the phone. I felt sorry for Jill, but the dead end suited me fine. Right now, Megan was my priority.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Back at the office, I slid in at my desk, started on my steak sandwich and went to Google Maps. Within seconds, I had a top-down satellite view of Hark's Hill Woods. It was a weird slab of land. A square mile of overgrown woodland right in the middle of an incredibly dense swathe of city. North of the woods was a road that looked new, leading to some kind of industrial estate on the north-western corner. A quarter of a mile south was tightly packed housing, unfurling across London all the way down to the curve of the Thames. And immediately surrounding the woods, in the spaces around its edges, were the skeletons of old factories — dyeworks, foundries, munitions plants — some standing but damaged, most collapsed or in a serious state of disrepair. It was obvious that the whole area, save for the redevelopment to the north and the homes to the south, had been completely forgotten about since the end of the Second World War; and the only constant was that the woods had grown bigger and the factories had crumbled further.

After finishing the sandwich, I began filling in some of the background on the area. Putting Hark's Hill Woods into Google got me 98,400 hits, most detailing the Milton Sykes case. I moved through the results. On the third page, a hit halfway down caught my eye. An encyclopedia of serial killers.

I clicked on it.

Heading to S, and then down to Sykes, I found a photograph of him, slightly blurred, and a badly spelt description of what I'd already found: his upbringing, his victims and his connection to the woods. Right at the bottom was what had caught my attention in the two-line description on Google: Sykes was reported to have sometimes used the alias Grant A. James. Grant A. James. The letter sent to Megan from the London Conservation Trust had been from G. A. James. And then I remembered the name in her Book of Life too. The name no one had been able to shed any light on: A. J. Grant.

I leaned back in my chair.

Staring out at me from the computer monitor was a blurry photograph of Milton Sykes and, sitting in the space in between, a succession of unanswered questions. I drummed my fingers on the desk, trying to fit all the pieces together. The man at Tiko's. The Grant alias. The email.

The map.

That's why I'm telling you he buried those women in the woods. Because I went down there, and that place… somethings seriously wrong with it. Dooley's words came back to me as I tabbed back to the satellite photograph of Hark's Hill Woods. From the air it didn't look like much: just a square mile of land built on rumour and folklore. But it had affected people, scared them, and then drawn them into its heart.

And, six months before, one of them had been Megan Carver.

Chapter Twenty-nine

It was three by the time I found Derry Street — the nearest road to Hark's Hill Woods on its southern side — and it was a truly miserable network of terraced houses. Everything had a derelict, run-down feel to it, compounded by the fact that there was absolutely no one around. No kids playing. No people talking on doorsteps. Just a grey autumn still.

As the road began to rise, beyond the rooftops of the houses to my left, I could see the empty factories I'd spotted in the satellite photos. They too were deserted, but in a more obvious way: decaying brickwork, hollowed-out windows, some entrances boarded up, some lying open in an invitation to drug addicts, the homeless and teenagers on a dare. When the road dropped off again, the factories disappeared, but - a quarter of a mile on - I spotted a small alleyway where the terraced housing broke for the first time. A tattered sign pointed along it. It was illegible, blistered by the sun and worn by rain. A kid, about fifteen, was sitting on the steps of his house watching me. I parked up, got out of the BMW and set the alarm. The kid continued to watch.

I looked at him. Afternoon.'

He didn't say anything. His eyes flicked from me to the alleyway, as if I was about to do something stupid. I moved level with the entrance. It was paved until about halfway along, then became a gravel path. Beyond that was a bed of concrete, the half-demolished walls of an old factory still standing in places, almost defiantly. Even from where I was, I could see the place was a mess. Rubbish strewn everywhere, pushed into the corners where the walls still stood, or just left on the ground in the open spaces between them. The smell of bottles, wrappers, cans and bin bags came in on the wind.

'You're not going down there, are you?' the boy said.

I looked at him. Yeah. Looks nice.'

For the first time he smiled. 'It ain't nice.'

'Oh, I don't know.' I breathed in. 'It's mountain fresh up here. Not many places can give you that delicate aroma of rubbish dump and public toilet.'

He smiled again. I nodded a goodbye to him, and started along the alleyway. As I passed, he watched me, the smile gradually fading from his face. The Dead Tracks.'

I stopped. 'Sorry?'

'That's what they call it.' He looked from me, along the alleyway. 'The woods over the back. That's what they call that place: the Dead Tracks.'

On the other side of the factory bed, the entrance to the woods loomed ahead of me. It was completely overgrown. Nature had claimed back what was once its own, covering everything, eating away at its surroundings like a virus. Either side of the path, trees leaned in, forming a canopy. Further along, daylight stabbed through whatever spaces it could find, hitting the floor in squares of watery yellow light.

I started along the path.

The grass became more aggressive as the path started turning to mud, carving through the earth, breaking the surface like hundreds of fingers. The deeper I got, the less light there was. I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. In an hour and a half, the day would start to fade. By six, it would be pitch black under the trees.

Ahead of me, rain dripped from the leaves of a huge sycamore, hitting the mud like a distant drumbeat. Then a little way down I spotted something on the path: a train track, rusted by age, weeds crawling through its slats. It broke through the grass on my left, fed across the path and then disappeared between the trunks of two giant oak trees on the opposite side. It was part of the railway Dooley had talked of; laid but never completed. I carried on, the canopy breaking briefly above me.

Crack.

I stopped.

What the hell was that ?

Suddenly, wind clawed its way out from the trees to my left, whipping across the path — and the temperature seemed to drop right off. Goosebumps scattered up my arms, down the centre of my back, and I felt a shiver pass through me like a wave. But then, as quickly as it had arrived, the wind disappeared again.

Swivelling, I looked back down the path.

'Hello?'

The route I'd followed had started to darken, as if lights had blacked out behind me, one after the other. But nothing moved, and no sound came back, and after a while I felt ridiculous. You're standing in the middle of the woods talking to the bloody trees. Get a grip on yourself