The Dead Tracks

    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.'

    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