“Where is this caravan?”
“In some woods ten or fifteen miles away from the drain.”
“On a site?”
“No. It’s on its own. There’s nothing else for miles around but trees.”
“Did he live there?”
“I dunno. I don’t think so. I think he just used it for storing photos and other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“Homemade videos, stuff like that.”
“So where does he live?”
“How the hell would I know? I haven’t seen him since the day he gave me that drawing.” A tremor passed through Jones’s bloated frame. He swallowed a groan. “Look, I’ve told you everything I know. What else do you want from me?”
Harlan’s eyes flicked between Jones and the drawing as he considered the question. This guy, the Prophet, obviously had a record. He’d spent time in prison and in a sex offenders’ hostel. He was, or used to be, very distinctive looking. His fingerprints might even be on the drawing. Given time, that was probably more than enough for the police to track down his identity. But there was no time. “I want you to show me where the caravan is.”
“I don’t know if I can. It was years-” Jones fell silent at the warning in Harlan’s eyes. He heaved a wheezy breath of resignation. “Okay, I’ll try.”
“You’ll do more than try. Where’s the backdoor key?”
“In my left trouser pocket.”
Harlan pulled out a thick bundle of keys. “Is the gate key on here?”
“Yes.”
As Harlan flicked through the bundle, Jones nodded to indicate the required keys. Harlan gagged Jones once more and hurried to the backdoor. As fast as his trembling hands would allow, he twisted open the half-a-dozen deadbolts and other locks securing the door and gate. He sprinted towards his car, pulling up sharply at the end of the alley. Peering around the corner, he saw a couple of fire-engines shrouded in the smoke billowing from the garage. Several firemen were aiming a jet of water at the flames stretching through a hole in the roof. Others had formed a loose cordon in front of a crowd of onlookers. No one seemed to notice Harlan as he ducked into his car and drove into the alleyway. If they had, he reflected, they’d most likely assume he was removing his car from harm’s way. He braked in front of the gate, popped the boot and darted back into the house. His heart gave a lurch when he saw that Jones’s eyes were closed. He anxiously searched for a pulse and found one as thin as a spider’s thread. He slapped Jones’s face, and the bound man’s eyelids flickered open. He cut the tape wrapped around Jones’s legs, then thrust his hands under his sweat-drenched armpits and hauled him upright. As Harlan guided him to the car, Jones swayed and reeled like a ship in heavy seas, almost capsizing both of them several times.
Jones shook his head and tried weakly to pull away from Harlan when he saw the open boot. He squealed as if he’d been stabbed as Harlan shoved him into it, flipped his legs in after him and slammed it shut. Breathless, Harlan jumped behind the steering-wheel and accelerated away hard. He braked equally hard as a couple of police cars passed the end of the alley, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Jones hammered at the boot. “Don’t waste your time. There’s no one around to hear you,” said Harlan, but Jones kept at it until they were beyond the sound of the sirens. At an inconspicuous speed, Harlan drove on through the night-time sounds of the city, which seemed strangely muffled and distant, as if they came from deep inside a tunnel.
Chapter 15
As Harlan passed into the sheltering dark of a street of unlit warehouses, his mask of implacable resolve slipped and his breath came in a sharp exhalation. He pulled over, tremors of revulsion running through him as he thought about how close he’d come to killing Jones. He’d been forced to go down into a place inside himself that he’d seen but never visited before, and the call of the darkness that lurked there had proved almost irresistible. He could still feel its voice at the back of his brain, like an itch demanding to be scratched. He flung open the door and sucked in lungfuls of the night. “Focus, focus,” he murmured over and over. Gradually the tremors subsided.
Harlan got out of the car and opened the boot. Jones goggled up at him, his face slick with sweat. As Harlan peeled away his gag, he gasped for breath like a drowning man pulled out of the water. “I’m claustrophobic,” he wheezed. “Please don’t keep me in here any longer.”
“I won’t, but try anything funny and it’s straight back in here. Understand?”
Jones nodded. Harlan helped him out of the boot and into the front passenger seat. Jones cried out as his weight came down on his pulverised hands. Giving him a warning look, Harlan cut the tape binding his wrists. He rebound his hands in front of him.
“Which way?” asked Harlan.
“Just get onto the motorway and I’ll tell you when to leave it.”
As fast as he dared, Harlan drove to the motorway. He kept one eye on the road and one on Jones. Jones watched him right back as if trying to work out what he was thinking. “I know who you are,” he said suddenly, eyes widening with realisation. “You’re that guy who killed Susan Reed’s husband. I’ve seen your face on the news. Your name’s H…Ha…”
“Harlan Miller.”
“Yeah, that’s it. You used to be a copper, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So you know you’ll never get away with this.”
“Who said anything about getting away with this?”
“You want to go back to prison?”
“I want to find Ethan Reed.”
“I understand. I get it. You want to save the boy to make up for what you did to his old man. But you and I both know he’s long beyond saving. Whoever took him did his thing and killed him weeks-”
“Shut up,” broke in Harlan, a twitch pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“Look, what I’m saying is there’s no need for this. You tell your copper mates about the caravan and they’ll find it in no time. Just let me go. Let me go now and I promise I won’t give your name to-”
“One more fucking word and it’s back in the boot for you.”
Jones grimaced at the threat. He fell to studying his hands. A great shudder racked him. “Maybe it’s best if you kill me,” he murmured. “Because if I can’t paint, I…I don’t know what I’ll do.”
I don’t know what I’ll do. The threat implicit in those words made Harlan go cold. He didn’t doubt for a second that Jones had been, at least to some degree, telling the truth when he’d said that painting kept him straight. Without it, surely it was just a matter of time before he answered the call of his own darkness. And then more people — children, their parents, relatives and friends — would suffer. The cycle of devastated lives would continue, expanding and intersecting like ripples in a pond. And, Harlan reflected with a mounting sense of guilt, it would be his fault. Unless, unless…The itch in his mind became a burning, and spread. No, he said silently but vehemently to himself, no! He wound down his window. Tears sprung into his eyes as the air hit him like ice-water. The heat receded again. But for how long? he wondered darkly. For how long?
They stayed on the M1 and then the M62 for nearly an hour and a half, passing fields of crops and livestock, lonely industrial estates, and the sleeping outskirts of Wakefield, Leeds and Huddersfield, before crossing the black peaty spine of the Pennines. “Come off here and head towards Saddleworth,” said Jones, gesturing at a junction, beyond which hills loomed like solid shadows in the moonlight.
Twenty minutes or so after leaving the motorway, having been directed into a snarl of narrow lanes, Harlan asked with a note of doubt and warning in his voice, “How much further?”
“Shh,” hissed Jones, looking intently at the passing landscape. “Let me concentrate.” He pointed at a humpbacked stone bridge that crossed a stream. “I remember that. It’s not far now.”
The moon was hidden from sight as they passed into a mixed wood of towering deciduous trees and pine plantations. “There!” said Jones, pointing at a wooden gate with a sign on it that read ‘PRIVATE NO PUBLIC RIGHT
