Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

He came over to me.

'Crane will be handcuffed throughout,' he said, bypassing any sort of greeting. 'Two uniforms up front with flashlights, a couple more at the sides. The firearms officers will be either side of him the whole time — and they'll also have torches.'

He paused as a female officer came and asked him a question about whether he wanted the press pushed back even further. He told her yes, and turned back to me.

'Have you been in?' I asked.

'Yes.'

'Find anything?'

'No. Crane told us the body is about twenty minutes' walk, but wouldn't tell us in which direction.' He stopped, must have seen something in my face. We've done a risk assessment and believe we have all the angles covered.'

'It'll be pitch black in there.'

'We wait until morning and Jill might be dead.' He was right, but it didn't make me feel any better. 'A paramedic and two dog-support units will be coming too; one will go out front, another will trail behind us. And that just leaves DCI Hart, myself and you.'

'Are you taking forensics in?'

'No, they'll be on standby. We'll wait to see where he leads us, and then I'll call Davidson.' I looked around me and spotted Davidson talking to a uniform on the other side of the police van. 'We're already taking too many people with us.'

Nearby, one of the SFOs cranked the chamber on his Glock.

'They're a precaution,' Phillips said. 'A man with six women to his name isn't a man worth taking a risk over.'

Six we know about, I thought, and then looked to the alley leading to the woods. 'What about his lawyer?'

'He called him, but he never showed up.'

'How come?'

'Crane wouldn't say.'

I eyed Phillips. 'I don't like this.'

He didn't say anything. But in his eyes I could see what he was thinking: I don't like it either. For a moment, something passed between us: a second where we both considered backing out. But then Phillips must have cast his mind back to the risk assessment they'd done at the station, the planning, the officers he was taking in with him, and figured they were as prepared as they could be. Maybe he was right. I certainly hoped he was. But that didn't settle my nerves. Because I knew Crane now. He wouldn't lead us to Jill unless he had a way to skew things in his favour.

'Don't engage him in conversation unless you have to,' Phillips said. This is a game to him. We're not playing the game. What we want is to find Jill.'

I nodded. Ultimately, Jill was all that mattered.

'Once we've done that, we call the forensic team and we get the hell out.'

Hart appeared from my left. 'Mr Raker.'

'DCI Hart.'

'We ready?' he said to Phillips.

'Yeah, we're ready.'

'Okay. Let's do it.'

He gestured to one of the uniformed officers to open the rear doors of the van. The two SFOs fell into a position either side, the H&Ks across their chests pointing down at an angle to the floor.

A hush seemed to settle across the scene.

The Mercedes' doors clunked open.

Aron Crane sat just inside the van. His wrists were handcuffed. From our position it was hard to see his face as shadows from the interior cut across him. Then he raised his head and the orange glow from the street lamps and the blue flash of the police sirens bloomed against his skin, and he was frozen for a moment in an eruption of colour. His eyes glinted. He scanned the crowd in front of him, looking for someone. And then, when he stopped, I realized who.

The piece of shit is looking for me .

As he was being helped out of the van, our eyes met. He nodded once and then looked away. The team heading towards the alley fell in around him and started moving. Phillips and Hart walked me towards the group, slipping in behind Crane, with the dog team bringing up the rear. Crane glanced back over his shoulder and pinpointed me immediately. This time a hint of a smile broke out on his face.

And then we headed into the Dead Tracks.

Chapter Seventy-four

On the other side of the factory beds, everybody stopped. We'd reached the gate. No one had said anything on the way over. We'd walked in silence through the crumbling remains of the buildings and the dumping ground around it. Police torches had swung from left to right, and for brief moments the flashlights had reflected in the windows remaining in the factory shells and in the shards of shattered glass at our feet. But once we were off the concrete and facing the woods, the darkness got thicker and the light shone off into the night and didn't come back again.

We filed through the gate one by one. Crane looked back at me from the other side, and in the glow of a passing flashlight nodded again. Phillips noticed and looked at me, as if some kind of secret message had passed between us. This was all working perfectly for Crane: he was creating conflict between people on the same side, and he hadn't even uttered a word.

Up front, one of the dogs barked. Everyone stopped.

Phillips moved ahead of the pack and joined the handler. The two of them began talking as the spaniel on the end of the leash looked towards a swathe of black on our right. Behind me, the second dog, a German shepherd, was gazing in the same direction as the spaniel, its nose out in front sniffing the air. Phillips turned around and told one of the uniformed officers to shine his flashlight into the undergrowth. A second later, a patch of thick, tangled bush was illuminated beyond two great big chunks of oak tree. No sign of anything. Just tall grass swaying gently in the breeze, and light drizzle passing across the circle of torchlight.

We moved on.

The woods were incredibly dark. The canopy was fully covering the path now, keeping out any brief glimpse of moonlight and any synthetic glow from the street behind us. All we had were six flashlights — two up front, two at the sides, two attached to guns - passing back and forth across the path and what grew at its edges. I should have brought one , I thought. Once again I was relying on other people when the only person I trusted was myself.

A little way down, one of the officers must have seen something reflect back at him. He stopped. About twenty- five feet further along, caught in the light from his torch, I could see the first of the abandoned railway lines, cutting across the trail.

We'd been walking for about ten minutes when the dogs started barking again. Both of them this time. They were facing right, into the woods, noses out, eyes fixed on something. Three of the uniformed officers shone their lights into the undergrowth. The trees, leaves, grass and bushes were freeze-framed for a second, rain coming down harder now.

Phillips went up ahead again and chatted to the same handler as before. This time there was no breeze and everyone could hear what they were saying.

'Could it be an animal?' Phillips asked.

'Might be,' came the reply, but the handler didn't sound convinced. The dogs were so highly trained they could smell human blood. They'd been inside collapsed buildings and followed trails to survivors. They could sniff out drugs and guns and explosives. They weren't going to be disturbed by a hedgehog. Everyone was thinking the same, and a couple of them looked to Crane, as if momentarily seeking assurance. He wasn't even turned towards the noise. He just faced ahead, into the darkness.

A couple of the officers carrying torches moved off the path and into the undergrowth as far as they could. Grass fell under their feet and then sprang back up again around them. Beyond the tree trunks, cones of light moved left and right.

'Anything?' Phillips asked from the trail.

'Nothing,' one of them shouted back.

They reappeared about a minute later, dew shining on their trousers and stab vests. Crane looked back at me for a moment and smiled.