Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

'Have they found anything?'

'Do you know how far the water travels north from Bow Creek alone?'

I shook my head.

'Twenty-six miles. All the way up past the M25. She didn't get dragged down from there, obviously, but that's a lot of walking just to be sure.'

'Anything apart from on-foot searches?'

They pulled blueprints from Thames Water. Checked the network close to both creeks and found nothing matching her description. There are no disused sewers close to any of the waterways we're talking about.' He looked at me. 'So she wasn't kept in a sewer, if that's what you're thinking. He may have adapted an existing structure, but it wasn't part of the functioning sewer system.'

I nodded and looked out of the window. Rain slid down the glass. Even with the heaters blowing, I could feel the chill of the evening coming off the windows.

'That's good,' I said finally.

'What's good?'

'That no one's figured out where she was taken yet.'

'How the hell is it good ?'

'Because she was taken from Hark's Hill Woods, and it seems pretty obvious that she was kept there too. Look at all the connections to that place: Glass's obsession with Sykes; the relationship Sykes had with the woods; Sona talking about coming up above ground into that house, and all the trees that were growing around it. Plus, right at the end, she talked about hearing whimpering before Markham attacked her.'

'So?'

'So it was a dog she was hearing. His dog.'

'How do you figure that?'

'I went to the Dead Tracks a few days back. While I was there, this mutt emerges from the trees. It's on its last legs. Looks like it's had its fur singed and been badly mistreated.' I paused. It sounded crazy, even though I'd seen it with my own eyes. 'And there was this shaved area on the side of its face where a patch of skin had been grafted on.'

Healy looked at me blankly.

'I think Glass was using it.'

'Using it how?'

'Using it as a lab rat. Seeing if the skin would take.'

'Why?'

'I don't know. But look at what he did to Sona.' I paused, seeing the disbelief in Healy's face. You want my best guess? He was planning something big and he didn't want to risk damaging the women.'

He went quiet, and we could both see why: his daughter was one of those women. Rain filled the silence, pounding even harder against the roof of the car, hissing as it exploded against the bodywork.

'So what — we're looking for a messed-up dog ?

I shook my head. We're looking for the house Sona described. Wherever the house is, the dog is — because that's where Glass is.'

Healy sighed. 'That place is a square mile of nothing but trees. You know how many houses border it?'

'Remember what she said. We're not looking for one that's still being lived in. We're looking for one that's barely standing. A very specific house.'

'Whose?'

I dug around in my pocket and found my notepad. 'Milton Sykes's.'

Healy smirked. 'You're about seventy years late, Raker. They knocked the entire road down during the war and built an industrial estate on top.'

'We're not looking for the house he owned on Forham Avenue,' I said, holding up the pad and placing a finger against one of the entries: 42 Ovlan Road . 'We're looking for the house he was born in.'

Chapter Sixty-three

We travelled east down Derry Road, the street I'd parked on before, and turned left at the end, driving between a canyon of abandoned factories and old brick buildings. It looked like an earthquake had passed through it. Either side, roofs had caved in, walls had fallen away and glass lay glinting in overgrown weeds at the base of the buildings.

'This place gives me the creeps,' Healy said.

I studied the buildings, the windows, the doors. So much darkness. In all the time I'd been living and working in London, I'd never seen an area as desolate and abandoned. Healy was right: it was unsettling because it was so out of place.

We turned left again at the end on to what had once been Forham Avenue, the street that eventually lead to Ovlan Road. Except now the whole thing was called Peterson Drive. Nothing remained of the houses that had once occupied the area. The road was bordered by big, metal warehouses on the right and the edges of the woods on the left. The woods were cordoned off by an eight-foot-high wire-mesh fence, broken in parts, but mostly still intact. There were danger — keep out! signs posted along it, every hundred feet or so. At the end, the road opened out into the trading estate I'd seen in the satellite photos.

Healy pulled a U-turn at the entrance to the estate then faced the car back along Peterson Drive. The rain had eased off, but the street lights revealed low-hanging cloud, swollen and dark above us. We both looked at the clock. One-thirty.

'So, where's the house?' Healy said. He leaned forward, eyes on the trees, hands wrapped around the steering wheel. 'In the woods?'

He was half joking. But then he saw my face.

'You think it's in the woods?'

'There's no fencing and no warning signs at the south entrance,' I said, nodding at the diamond-shaped danger markers. 'Why are there here?'

'Because it's dangerous this side.'

'So maybe the house had a postal address on Ovlan Road, but it wasn't on Ovlan Road. Maybe it was inside the boundaries of the woods.'

He shook his head. 'Where the hell did you pluck that from?'

'I'm making an assumption here, Healy, okay? Feel free to step in any time you think you might have a better idea.'

Silence settled between us. I'd never met anyone in my life who pissed me off more and had me feeling sorry for him in equal measure.

'The house was all broken,' Healy said quietly. I looked at him and saw what this was: his apology. That's what Sona said earlier. The house was all broken.'

I nodded. 'No floors. Trees through the roof, through the windows. Where Does that sound like to you?'

Healy glanced at the fencing. 'It sounds like here.'

'It's been a century since Sykes died. About the same since the factories started hitting the buffers. That means at least seventy years in which the boundaries of the woods could grow out to this point, uncared for, and untouched. That's enough time for things to disappear. Big things.'

'But they knocked all the houses down after Sykes got the rope.'

'They knocked the houses down along here!

'So, what — they just fenced off the other one and forgot about it?'

'That's what I'm guessing. Back then it was something approaching superstition. These days it's health and safety. The council will want to make sure people don't go in there. A building as old and unstable as that would probably come down in a stiff breeze. People start climbing around, sleeping there, starting fires, it'll end up killing someone. That's why they're telling people to keep out.'

'And that's why they put up the wall.'

He meant the concrete wall Sona had described on the other side of the river. I nodded at him. 'I'm betting it was put up the last time this fencing was replaced; to keep out unwanted guests, and as an extra security measure.'

'And on the other side of the wall?'

'Is the river that carried Sona out to the Thames.'

'And on the other side of the river…'

'I'm guessing will be the house.'

For a moment there was absolute silence. No distant car noises. No rain falling against the roof. It was as if the woods, and the thought of what lay inside, had sucked every single sound out of the night.

Then my phone started ringing.

It was Ewan Tasker.

'Task. Everything okay at Jill's?'

'I don't know.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean she isn't there. The house looks like a morgue. No lights on, no answer at the door. I've worn the doorbell out I've rung it so many times.'