Vanished

Then something moved to my left.

I turned. Immediately beyond the wall was a huge tomb, its door facing out at me, flanked by two arched windows. On top was a stone angel, carrying a water bowl. I got to my feet and stepped away from the grave, opening up my view beyond it. A path led to its left, along a narrow trail, tombs on either side, simpler graves in between. Grass swayed gently along the trail, moved by the wind, but I couldn’t hear it. All I could hear was birdsong and, distantly beyond that, the sound of an engine idling in the car park.

Behind me, I glimpsed a couple in their sixties, the woman holding a bunch of flowers, emerging on the other side of the fir trees and heading down towards the field of graves. And then, in the direction I’d seen movement, a bird swooped out from one of the trees, glided along the trail and soared up on to the triangular roof of a tomb further along.

I rubbed an eye; ran a hand through my hair. I was tired.

I knelt down again at the grave, brushing some of the dirt away with my fingers. Soil had got into the lettering, kicked up as people passed too closely. When it was clean, I looked around the rest of the garden and saw other families had been here more recently than me: the graves were decorated with flowers and vases, a handwritten letter on one, held down at the base of the headstone with a series of smooth pebbles.

Sorry I didn’t bring a vase, I thought to myself, and then I smiled at how Derryn would have reacted, probably telling me that I’d have to bring the flowers before I got to apologize about a vase. I studied the polished marble of the headstone, her name engraved in gold, and then I touched the letters beneath it, the marble cold against my skin: Beloved wife of David. It seemed such a long time ago in many ways, and yet the two and a half years had gone in the blink of an eye. One minute I was watching her being buried, the next I was lying alongside another woman. Perhaps now I had neither.

Crack.

A noise to my left, like twigs snapping beneath feet.

Same direction as the movement.

This time I got to my feet and stepped fully away from the grave, eyes on the trail leading between the tombs. It ran for about a hundred yards and then started a slow turn to the right where I could see a stone entranceway, vines cascading down from above, huge pillars on either side like the gates to heaven itself. I’d walked it once before. It led back around the other side of the bank of fir trees and joined up with the field of graves. On the other side of the entranceway, out of sight, were the biggest structures of them all: massive mausoleums, standing like houses.

I moved out through the gate of The Rest and along the path. The tombs ran in a roughly symmetrical pattern, facing each other on either side of the trail, smaller, plainer graves in between. In this part of the cemetery, the front of the tombs and the graves, as well as the trail itself, had been kept clear, but everywhere else nature had run wild. It was thick and relentless, the occasional gap showing through to the car park at the bottom, but otherwise a twisted mess of branches and leaves.

Halfway along the trail, something rustled in the undergrowth. I stopped, looked down and saw a small animal – a mouse, or maybe a vole – disappear into a thick tangle of grass and nettles. Then, through the corner of my eye, something else moved. Just a flicker of a shadow. I looked up, replaying what I thought I’d seen – the movement from left to right, one side of the trail to the other – and headed towards it, quicker now, eyes fixed on a tomb about three-quarters of the way along. It was half turned away from the trail, the door facing me, pillars either side, a coat of arms under the roof. But when I finally got level with the tomb and looked into the area behind it, there was nothing. Just swathes of thick, green brush and the shadow of the entranceway, about twenty feet away now.

What the hell is the matter with you?

Wind whistled through the entranceway, as if drawn into it, vines hanging down from its top, swaying in the breeze. I stood there, feeling slightly disorientated, looking through as the trail continued on to the mausoleums on the other side. All around me were trees and graves. Nothing else. For a moment it was like being in a cramped space, one that was gradually closing in, and as I stood there trying to figure out what I’d seen, and why I thought I might have seen it, I felt my phone start to vibrate in my pocket.

I took it out. It was Craw’s number.

‘David Raker.’

Interference. The line drifted.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Craw.’

I could barely even hear her, and when I took the phone away from my ear I could see I only had a single bar. I moved back along the trail. ‘Can you hear me now?’

‘Just about. Where are you?’

‘Out and about. The reception’s bad here.’

‘I need … you … thing …’

‘I missed that. What?’

And then the line cut out. I stopped and looked down at the display again. Still only one bar, and now the wind was picking up. I glanced around me, trying to find a sheltered spot, but then the phone started to vibrate in my hands for a second time.

‘Craw?’

The wind whipped past me, disguising any sort of reply, so I stepped into the doorway of one of the tombs, set back from the trail and protected under the overhang of a roof. The wind died down a little, replaced by birdsong and a faint drip.

‘Can you hear me now?’ I asked.

‘Where the hell are you?’

‘Right on top of a hill.’

‘Have you got five minutes?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

I looked back along the trail, to the edges of The Rest, and then the other way, to the entrance. In between, everything was suddenly still. No wind. No movement.

‘Pell’s made a run for it,’ she said.

‘From the hospital?’

‘Yeah. Got up in the middle of the night and disappeared. They didn’t discover he was gone until this morning, which means he left between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m.’

‘Didn’t you have someone watching his room?’

‘Pell knocked him out, dragged him back into his room and switched clothes, then dumped the officer in the bed. After that, he just walked right out.’

‘And no one saw him?’

‘He waited until the nurses were doing their rounds.’

‘He must know he’s in deep shit.’

‘I’ve got teams out looking for him. He’s got bruising all over his face, so it’s not like he’s going to be difficult to identify.’ A pause. ‘But there’s a couple of things.’

‘What?’

‘Smart’s autopsy is this afternoon, so I guess we’ll find out more then. But his medical records list him as forty-one years of age, about fifteen stone, and somewhere around six-two, six-three. That sound about right to you?’

‘Yeah. He was tall. Pretty well built.’

‘That’s how he was able to control them.’

‘Right.’ I sensed something was troubling her. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘It’s … impossible … Pell …’

I frowned. ‘What about Pell?’

The line started drifting again.

‘Craw?’

‘… hear me?’

‘You’re starting to go again.’