Tom Weaver - The Dead Tracks

He fixed a stare on me. 'What now?'

'We need to go back.'

'Why?'

I glanced at Crane. He was staring at me, his face blank. 'He's got a plan. Some sort of fucked-up plan. I don't know what it is, but someone's going to get hurt.'

Phillips looked between us, then at Hart. Hart was gazing at me, as if he believed I was the one with the plan. What did he say?'

'Something about me needing to fire a gun.'

'What?'

'It's riddles. Just a bunch of…' I glanced at Crane again. Nothing in his face now. He'd wiped it clean. 'Look, I know you feel the same: everything about this is off. We're walking into a trap, and until we figure out what it is, I think we need to go back.'

Phillips scanned the group. Everybody was either staring at him or me, and I knew we weren't about to turn around. He may have had the same instincts as me, but this was a challenge to his decision-making. His planning. His position. If he backed down now, he said to everyone here, I made the wrong choice.

'We move on,' he said quietly.

'This is a big mistake, Phillips.'

'Raker,' he spat back at me, 'you're not in charge here. You have no opinion. You have no choices. You follow my orders and that's it. Are we clear?'

'This is a mistake.'

'Are we clear ?'

This was for show now. He didn't deserve a reply. He believed exactly the same as me, felt something was off just as I did, but he was overlooking it to save face. I let my silence hang there, in between us, and then the group started walking again.

Phillips turned to Crane again. 'Where's Jill, you weaselly piece of shite?'

'It's not far now.'

'You said that a quarter of a mile back.'

'I mean it this time.'

The rain started making a chattering sound against the canopy. As we moved across another piece of rusting railway track, the wind picked up too, blowing in from our right. Leaves snapped. Grass swayed. About a minute later, one of the torches flashed past a patch of grass, coiled and twisted around the trunk of a sycamore. Some of it had come loose and was moving, making a gentle sigh like a voice. I watched a few of the team directing their lights towards it, as if they thought they'd heard someone speaking. But it was just this place. The buried secrets. The lost lives.

Then one of the torches passed a shape about sixty feet in front of us.

The light swung back: it was one of the crates from the hideout. Five feet square. Cyrillic printed on the side. It sat on its own in an oval clearing on the right of the trail, where the woods bent away and then came back in further down. We all stopped.

'What's that?' Phillips asked.

'That,' Crane replied, 'is Jill.'

Chapter Seventy-five

Everyone stared at the crate and realized this was it. What we'd come out to the woods for. Then Phillips started to organize things: he told one of the SFOs, one handler, two uniforms with flashlights and the paramedic to follow him over. Hart joined the group as well. The rest of us stayed put.

I glanced at Crane, stepping closer to him in case he tried to make a run for it. I could feel dread worming its way through my chest. What have you brought us here for, you murdering prick? He was almost side-on to me now, watching closely, the corners of his mouth turned up in a trace of a smile.

Except he wasn't watching at all.

As I took a step forward, I could see his body was facing forward but his eyes were fixed on the woods to our right. I followed his line of sight. The darkness was thick. The dull glow from the nearest torch had lit the immediate area to the edge of the trees. Beyond that, though, I couldn't see anything. No movement. No sound. Nothing to warrant his attention.

The lull was disturbed by Phillips's voice again. At a distance of sixty feet, and with the rain getting heavier every minute, it was hard to make out his words clearly. But he was going around the group, telling each of them what he wanted from them.

I made sure Crane hadn't moved. His eyes were still watching the woods to his right, so I stepped level with him. He noticed me enter his field of vision. The smile disappeared. He looked like he was trying to decide if he'd given anything away.

'Something you want to share?' I asked him.

His smile returned. 'Just enjoying the show, David.'

He turned back to face what was unfolding in front of him, and we watched as Phillips and his team pulled on forensic gloves. Phillips walked right up to the crate. Placed his fingers around the lid. He nodded once to everyone watching and went to lift it away. It didn't open. He looked from the lid to Crane. Attempted to lift it away again.

Nothing.

Briefly, Crane's eyes flicked right again, then he was back to watching Phillips. He and Hart were examining the crate, trying to work out what was preventing it from opening.

'Constable,' I said to one of the uniforms holding a flashlight. He looked at me. 'Could you shine your torch into the woods over there?'

He frowned, 'Why?'

I glanced at Crane. He was staring at me, his face stoic. 'Just for a second.'

The PC was young, mid twenties. He probably liked the fact I'd come along for the ride because it meant he wasn't bottom of the food chain any more. He shook his head. 'No. I do what DCI Phillips tells me, not you.'

The PC looked back up the trail to the group. Defiant.

The remaining SFO was standing behind me. I turned to him. 'Can you get him to shine the torch into the woods?'

'Why?' he replied.

The PC turned back to face us.

'Because Crane doesn’t give a shit about what's happening up there,' I said, nodding to the group at the crate. 'But he can't keep his eyes off the woods.'

They looked from me to Crane, then to the woods. Crane didn't meet their eyes. He was staring up the trail, watching as Phillips, Hart and both uniforms tried to prize the lid of the crate away. A crack sounded, and - beyond the fall of rain - Hart said something. The lid had shifted.

The SFO watched me for a moment, MP 5 hanging diagonally across his waist. 'Okay,' he said, and looked at the PC. 'Do what he says.'

Crack.

The lid had come away. Everybody stepped back, leaving Phillips on his own. He placed his hands either side of the lid and lifted it up, dropping it on to the path with a dull whup. The group stepped up to the crate and looked inside.

'It's empty!' I heard Hart shout from the crate.

And then the PC shone his light into the woods.

About fifteen feet in was the Hanging Tree, the distinctive T-shaped oak I'd seen in photographs online, and the place Milton Sykes had built a treehouse as a child. Tied to the trunk was Jill. She'd been bound and gagged. Rope had been looped around her throat, pinning her to the bark, a semicircular piece of skin hanging from the top of her face. It took me two or three seconds to realize what it was: her forehead. The flap of skin covered one eye; the other was closed. She had bruises everywhere: her face, her arms, around her collarbone. Her clothes — a pair of jeans and a thin long-sleeve sweater — were soaked through with blood and rainwater, the sweater torn, exposing her stomach. Scrawled across her skin in black ink was 8.5.

Phillips sprinted towards us, his eyes fixed on Jill, and told me to hold back. I wanted to get to Jill. I wanted to tear her down from the tree and rip Crane apart on the way through. He was fully facing me now, his back to her. Finally I couldn't wait any more: I stepped past him, about three feet from the tree line, unable to take my eyes off the body strapped to the tree.

'What the fuck have you done?' I said.

'I didn't get time to finish her,' he replied in a matter-of- fact voice from behind me, bringing his handcuffed wrists up to the side of his head and scratching a spot next to his eye. 'So we'll call her eight and a half. Would have been good to have had the time to sort out that terrible skin of hers. But while I usually prefer to finish my work, I'll accept this one for what she is.' He paused. His eyes drifted to the woods behind me. 'A marker.'