Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

'You got something to say?' I asked him.

Everyone glanced at me, then at him. The smile was gone. It had lasted long enough for me to see but no one else. Most of the officers' eyes were back on me now.

'Calm down, Mr Raker,' Hart said from in front of me. 'And you -' pointing at Crane '— keep your bloody eyes on the path.'

About five minutes further on, we hit the clearing I'd found a few days before. The spot where Markham had left Megan for Crane to find. The rain sounded heavier as it fell through the gap in the leaves.

'Pitter patter, pitter patter,' Crane started saying. A few of us looked at him. His head was down, handcuffed wrists together in front of him. Titter patter, bang, pitter patter, bang'

Phillips stepped towards him. 'What did you say?'

Crane looked up. 'Sorry?'

'What did you say?'

'Pitter patter, pitter patter. The rain, DCI Phillips. It's coming down hard now. We'd better move on, or we're all going to get soaked.'

Crane scanned the group. Two uniforms up front, torches straying across the path. The two SFOs either side of him. Both dog handlers up ahead now, framed in the flashlights. Two other uniforms either side of us, one standing in the tall grass of the clearing, one on the edge of the woods. The paramedic next to me. Phillips and Hart next to her. Then his eyes fell on Phillips.

Something was up.

In that moment, I knew we should have been turning around and heading back the other way. Crane was a killer and a liar. Trusting him was suicide.

'Wait.'

Everyone looked around at me, including Crane. Phillips was annoyed, but edged a couple of steps back in my direction. 'What is it?'

'This is…' I shook my head, glanced at Crane. 'This is wrong'

Phillips studied me for a moment, saying nothing. But then he turned to Crane. In the expression on his face, I saw that he felt the same as me. But I also saw that he wasn't going to back out. Not now. Not after getting all this signed off. 'Where's Jill?'

'It's not far now.'

'You better not be messing us around here, Crane. If this is all a joke, I'll flush you down the toilet — you understand that, right?'

Crane smiled. 'It's not far now,' he repeated.

We all fell back into position and continued along the path. Under the canopy the rain wasn't as hard. It fell as a mixture of intermittent droplets and drifting drizzle, swirled around in front of us by a gentle breeze that wheezed and groaned. About a hundred yards on, someone's radio crackled, the sound amplified by the oppressive quiet. It was one of the SFOs'. He reached to his belt and adjusted something on his Airwave handset. Except for the rain and the sound of the wind, we were back to complete silence.

Then something cracked in the woods on our left.

Everybody stopped. The dogs were straining on their leashes, noses out again, staring into the dark. 'What can you see?' one of the handlers asked. The spaniel sniffed the air then returned to its original position, primed for whatever had made the noise. Two uniforms moved to the edge of the woods and shone the torch in again. Another one followed about ten seconds later.

I looked along the line. One SFO was facing the opposite way, into the woods on the other side from where the noise had come. The other was watching the uniforms examining the area. We'd bunched together, and I realized Crane was closer to me all of a sudden. So close I could have grabbed him by the throat and stopped this before it got out of hand. To my left, Hart was standing in the grass at the edge of the woods; Phillips a couple of steps behind him, eyes fixed on the dark.

Another crack.

The SFO who was watching the other way glanced over his shoulder. The paramedic looked too, her fluorescent jacket shining in the passing torchlight. One handler moved into the trees, then the other followed. Within twenty seconds, Crane and I were virtually on our own, only the SFOs for company. The rest of them were beyond the treeline, torches flashing back and forth, or were watching on the edges of the forest.

'Do you remember what I said to you, David?' Crane whispered. One of the SFOs' eyes flicked to him. His hands tightened on the barrel of the MP 5. The other one saw his partner's movement and did the same. I nodded at them both that it was okay, but they didn't move. They were eyeing Crane with suspicion. 'That we had a connection?'

I didn't reply, but in my head I was trying to figure out what this was about, and why he was trying to engage me in conversation. As the torches passed in semicircles, I could see the officers' silhouettes form and then merge again with the dark. Hart had his mobile phone out, flipping it over inside the palm of his hand. Phillips was next to him.

'I shouldn't have been so cruel about your wife.'

I looked at him . What are you doing, Crane ?

'Earlier. I shouldn't have said those things about her.'

'Do yourself a favour and shut the fuck up.'

One of the SFOs made a move forward. I glanced at him, then at Crane, then turned back to the woods. The beam from a torch cut out about twenty feet beyond the tree line. A couple of seconds later it flickered back on. One of the uniforms swore, cursing the batteries.

'I'm the same as you, David.'

I looked back at him. His face was blank: no expression, no hint of humour. He just held my gaze. I glanced at the SFO and stepped in closer to Crane.

'I already told you: we're not the same.'

'Sure we are,' he replied, and stopped, smiling. You figured me out. My wife. The child she was carrying. I always thought I hid it quite well. But I suppose you must become quite attuned to loss when you spend so much time around it. These cases you take on, they're full of it. And, of course, you have all those memories of your wife inside your home. All the photos. The home movies. Her music collection sitting there in the corner of the living room, untouched.'

'Be careful,' I warned him.

He looked around, eyes scanning the darkness. 'All I'm saying is, I understand. I get you. I lost someone, you lost someone. I kill, you kill.'

I flashed a look at him. 'What?'

A smile wormed its way across his face. 'I know all about that case up north, David. And I'm not talking about the cosy little picture you painted for the police.'

I glanced at the SFOs, then back to him.

'Oh, come on ,' he said, and made a tut-tut sound. He dropped his voice to a whisper. The SFOs were studying us both now. 'I saw you on the news after what happened up there, just like everybody else. You spend enough time around loss, you pick it up in other people.' He paused. You spend enough time around killers, you can do the same.'

'You're insane.'

'You're a killer, David. A reluctant one, I'll admit. But a killer nonetheless. I can see it in you. I can read you just like you can read me. So, you and me… we're the same.'

Crane winked so only I could see, and backed up a couple of steps, opening himself out to the SFOs again. Above the sound from the woods and the whisper he'd been speaking in, it would have been hard for them to hear anything. But they knew something was up.

'Don't worry,' he continued, winking again, 'your secret's safe with me. But you might want to try and remember what it felt like to, you know…' He made a gun sign with one of his hands and pretended to fire it. You might want to reacquaint yourself, is all I'm saying'

I looked at him . I might want to reacquaint myself with firing a gun .

'What are you talking about?' I asked again, but he didn't reply, and out of the woods came the search teams. They were finished. Phillips looked over at us, suspicion in his face, and then everybody started to fall back into position. 'Phillips - wait.'