Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

He came at me a second time, stabbing the knife towards my throat then cutting across in one swift motion. I stepped back but he was keeping me closed up, forcing my arms in against my body as protection, not allowing me to open up an arc for the shovel. The third time he got me in the folds of my top. I heard the tear of fabric, felt the tip of the knife blade come all the way through to my skin. But then, as he was drawing away, I swept the shovel in a half-circle. It thudded against the top of his arm and he slipped on the wet ground, falling to his side. As I went for him again, he raised a forearm, and the shovel clanged against the bone. He screamed out in pain, the noise echoing out through the Dead Tracks. I went again, catching him in the small of his back, and he thumped against the turf like a sack of cement.

Still.

As I edged closer, shovel up, I could see the posts more clearly. There were thirteen of them, all recently driven into the earth. Each one stationed about five feet apart. I stopped, eyes moving from one post to the next, a sickening realization forming. This is it. A wind came through the trees towards me. Brief and violent, like the last breath of the thirteen women Milton Sykes had killed a century before.

This is Sykes's burial ground .

Glass had found it. Nurtured it.

I stepped up behind him. The water from the grass had soaked through his medical scrubs. The mask had been pushed up to the top of his head. Long grass covered his features. 'Roll over,' I said to him, teeth gritted. He didn't react. I prodded him with the blade of the shovel. 'Roll over, you piece of shit.'

Nothing.

Forcing the shovel in under him, I flipped his body over. He rolled on to his back. Eyes closed. And suddenly he became someone else.

Someone I knew.

Aron Crane.

But it wasn't the Aron I remembered from the support group. The man who'd sat next to Jill. Even unconscious, he was different: darker and more dangerous. He wasn't the man who'd been concerned about Jill. The man I'd thought I'd bumped into by accident the day before. He wasn't anyone I remembered.

'Aron?'

He moved fast, grabbing my ankle, trying to turn it, trying to twist it the wrong way to force me to the ground. Teeth clenched. Eyes flashing. Adrenalin surging through his system as he saw a last chance to turn the tables. He forced me into a half-turn away from him and was on his feet within a second, grabbing me by the neck and pushing me to the ground. Suddenly I was beneath him, his body on mine, his hands tightening at my throat. As he closed off my air, I started to lose the sensation in my hands: my fingers numbed, my palms, my wrists.

But then his grip loosened.

Not much, but enough.

Nerves fired in my hands. Prickles of sensation drifted into my fingers. And I could feel the shovel again. The wood. The iron. The weight .

I gripped it as hard as I could and launched it off the ground towards him. The blade was side-on, the thin width of it leading first. It cracked against his skull, behind his ear, and his fingers sprang from my throat immediately; a bear trap flipping open. His eyes rolled up into his head. He wobbled. Then he slumped sideways and hit the wet ground about an inch from the thirteenth grave.

Above me, the gentle patter of rain started, popping against the canopy, coming down in a fine spray against my face.

Otherwise, the Dead Tracks was silent.

PART FIVE

Chapter Sixty-nine

Police arrived on the northern edge of the woods ten minutes after I called them. I'd dragged Crane's body back to the storage building and tied him up, then found Megan and brought her back up to the surface. We huddled together, away from him, under what remained of the roof. By the time Jamie Hart's head popped up from the air vent, his body covered in a white crime-scene boiler suit, Crane was awake but drowsy. Blood ran from his face, mixing with the rainwater pelting down through the open roof. Hart came over, a uniformed officer flanking him, and told Megan that they were going to take her somewhere safe. She looked at me for some kind of assurance, and when I told her that everything was going to be okay, she whispered a thank you and they led her off and out of sight. A minute after that, I was in handcuffs.

Three hours later, Hart and Davidson were facing me in an interview room. I was tired. I'd barely slept in over thirty hours, and I could feel every minute of it. They'd already taken away what I was wearing as evidence and sent a uniformed officer back to my house to pick up a spare set of clothes. But new clothes and machine coffee didn't help. What my body wanted most was to shut down and recharge.

'How's Healy?' I asked.

Hart had been filling out some paperwork, but he looked up at the mention of the name. He set his pen down, bony fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table. Tour partner in crime,' he said quietly.

'Is he alive?'

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

Then Hart started to nod. 'Yes, he's alive - but he's in surgery. When he wakes up, he'll probably wish those knife wounds had been a couple of inches to the left.'

A knock on the door.

They both looked up as a uniformed officer let Liz in. She was dressed in a black trouser suit with a cream blouse, her hair against her shoulders. She looked fantastic. She'd come straight from the office: in one hand was a briefcase; in the other a laptop bag. I was pleased to see her — and not just because she was my lawyer.

She looked at me but didn't smile. You okay?'

I nodded.

She turned to Hart and Davidson. 'I sincerely hope the tape isn't running'

Hart shook his head. 'No, we haven't start-'

'Good. Because I want some time to talk to my client. And that means not here, and not with you two taking notes.' She glanced over her shoulder. 'Is there somewhere my client and I can go where we will have some privacy?'

I could see Davidson twitch. He preferred me the first time they'd brought me in: on my own and lawyer-free. Hart smiled - trying to play the game - but it was wasted on Liz. She just stared at him, and both Hart and Davidson realized in about three seconds that she was the real deal. Hart, a little resigned, leaned back in his chair and then turned to the uniformed officer. 'PC Wright, please show Ms Feeny and Mr Raker to Room C.' He glanced at Liz. 'Just let me know when you're ready.'

She nodded once, then led me out.

I spent an hour going over the case with her. Every detail I could remember. She didn't say much, which only added to the atmosphere between us. I'd never seen her like this. She just typed everything into her laptop, asking me a couple of times to spell names or go back over certain events. This wasn't the Liz I thought I knew.

When we were done she leaned back in her seat and studied me. 'You're in a lot of trouble here.'

I nodded. 'I know.'

'Where's this Healy guy?'

'In a hospital.'

'Is he dead?'

'No.'

She placed her hands on the table. 'Have you got anything to barter with?'

'Maybe.'

'What?'

I told her about the women, how they'd been linked by the task forces — and how the police had kept all the information buried.

'Bloody hell,' she said when I was finished. Her dark eyes were fixed on me, her mind turning things over. She read a couple of lines of whatever she'd written on her laptop, then looked at me again. 'Can I ask you something?'

'Of course.'

She paused. A finger moved to the laptop's screen. 'Why do you do this?'

I frowned. 'It's my job.'

'No, I don't mean that. I mean…' She stopped for a second time and pulled her hair away from her face. 'I understand it's your job to find people. I understand that.'

She looked at me, her eyes focused, but didn't say anything. I smiled at her, and she smiled back — but not in the way she normally did.