OF WAY.'
“Are you sure this is it?” asked Harlan.
“Yes. I remember laughing because some joker had scratched out the L in public.” Jones didn’t smile at the joke now.
As Harlan turned off the road, the car’s headlights illuminated a narrow wheel-rutted track cutting between uniform ranks of pine trees. He got out of the car and approached the gate. It was secured with a chain and padlock, but the frame was so soft with rot that he was able to loosen a nail and unhook the chain. He drove through the gate, then closed it, returned the chain to its place and pushed the nail back in with his thumb — if anyone else came to the gate that night, he didn’t want to give them a hint someone had been through it.
“How far to the caravan?” asked Harlan.
Jones shrugged. “About a mile, I think.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, I think, I think. What do you expect? Like I told you, I haven’t been here for donkey’s years.”
Harlan leaned in close to Jones, eyes glinting like steel beads. “Well you need to do better than just think. You need to be certain. If this friend of yours, the Prophet is-”
“He’s not my friend,” Jones was quick to point out. “He’s just someone I bought some stuff off.”
“Whatever. If he’s already at the caravan, I don’t exactly want to announce our arrival.”
“Okay, okay. Just give me a moment.” Jones closed his eyes, forehead wrinkling as he dredged through his memories. “These pine trees go on for a couple of hundred yards, then…then the road goes down into a dip where it crosses a stream. That’s where the pines stop and the oaks and beeches start. From there it’s about two or three hundred yards to a clearing set off to the right of the road. That’s where the caravan is.”
Harlan drove slowly along the track. Like Jones had said, after a short distance it descended into a valley with a shallow, boggy stream at its bottom. The car rocked from side to side as it wallowed through the mud and climbed the stream’s far bank. The trees closed in thickly on either side, their branches brushing the car, almost blotting out the sky. Harlan had a sense that he was entering somewhere cut off from the rest of the world. He’d used to love such isolated places before becoming a copper. But the longer he’d been in the job, the more their silence and secrecy made him uneasy. Where another person saw a romantic spot to spend a night or two, he saw somewhere where someone could commit murder and hide a body without fear of being seen or heard. He switched off the headlights and crawled along for another hundred yards or so, watching for a gap in the trees where he could pull off the track. There wasn’t one. He stopped the car. He didn’t like leaving it in full view, but he couldn’t risk continuing any further until he’d checked the caravan out. He popped the boot and turned to Jones.
“No, please, please don’t make me go back in there,” begged Jones. “I’m not gonna try to get away. I mean, come on, where would I go out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Harlan got out of the car and made his way around to Jones, who recoiled from him, shaking his head frantically. He took out his knife and brought the blade close to Jones’s face. Jones stopped struggling. Dragging in a quivering breath, he stood out of the car and shuffled to the boot. He lay limp and resigned as Harlan wrapped more tape around his ankles and mouth. Harlan retrieved the torch from the backseat, before heading along the track. He covered the lens with his fingers, letting out just enough light to illuminate his way. Again, Jones’s memory proved reliable — after maybe two hundred yards, the wall of trees gave way on the right to an overgrown grassy clearing. The caravan, a tiny oval tourer, its roof livid with mould, was set to the back of the clearing. No lights showed in its windows. There was no car outside it, but the grass was flattened in places as though one had been there recently. To its right was a roughly built shelter, a beard of vines dangling from its tarpaulin roof.
Resisting the urge to investigate further, Harlan made his way back to the car. He drove past the clearing, stopping out of sight of it around a bend. Thinking about ringing Jim, he checked his phone. It had no signal. There’d be no calling for backup out here.
Harlan returned for a closer look at the caravan and shelter. Rusty petrol drums and gas canisters were stacked beneath the sagging tarp. There was also an old petrol powered generator from which wires ran to a battery beneath the caravan. A spade and pickaxe leant against the generator. Harlan’s eyebrows drew together as he stooped to inspect the spade. Its flat blade was caked with damp earth, as though it’d recently been used. Behind the shelter a faint trail was visible in the long grass. Harlan followed it to the tree-line. Beyond that the trail disappeared into a mulchy mass of fallen leaves. He approached the caravan and tried its door. Locked. He turned his attention to the nearest window. The rubber seal was rotted and cracked. With a punch of his palm, he jammed the blade of his screwdriver through it. A quick jerk dislodged the latch. He opened the window, pulled aside a mildewy curtain and shone his torch into the caravan.
At first glance, the place looked abandoned — the floor was strewn with soggy newspaper, apparently put down to soak up the multiple leaks in the roof; the walls were studded with mould; several of the cupboards stood open and bare; pile of pots and pans festered in a pool of grease-filmed water in the sink. A closer look, however, revealed signs that someone had been there recently — a rolled up sleeping-bag and pillow wrapped in clear plastic to keep the damp out were stowed on a built-in sofa; a plate still glistening with baked-bean juice and a glass half- full of milk stood on a fold-up table.
Harlan hauled himself through the window, wincing as he sent several plates crashing to the floor. He closed the window and drew the curtain back across it, before continuing his exploration. He tried a light switch. Nothing happened. He sniffed the milk. It was sour but not curdled. Perhaps a week old, he reckoned, maybe less. He opened the cupboards. In one there were several litres of bottled water, a jar of instant coffee and a box of matches. In another there were tins of baked beans and soup and half a pack of stale biscuits. In a third there was a coil of rope that could’ve been used for tying people up or hanging clothes out to dry. There was no sign of the photos and videos Jones had spoken about. A partially dismantled television sat on a shelf in an alcove, but there was no video-player. There were two doors other than the entrance. Harlan opened one and reflexively clapped his hand over his nose. The door led to tiny toilet cubicle. The toilet was full almost to the brim with rust-coloured, stinking water. He thought about the spade, reflecting that whoever had been staying here had probably used it to dig a toilet in the woods. The second door opened into a cupboard that contained a dustpan and brush, a couple of toilet rolls and some empty clothes-hangers.
Harlan frowned as a thought crossed his mind. Had Jones been feeding him a line of bullshit about coming here with the Prophet? Did the Prophet even exist? Maybe Jones had made him up to buy himself some time? Maybe this was just some place where Jones had stayed before. Harlan shook his head. The fear in Jones’s face and voice hadn’t lied. Still, he was relieved he hadn’t had the chance to phone Jim. At least, if it came to it, he could question Jones further. A shudder passed through him as a voice piped up in his mind, what if you lose control? What if this time you can’t stop yourself from killing him? He shoved the voice away. The ‘what ifs’ were irrelevant. What had to be done, had to be done. It was as simple as that. His pulse jumped at a sound from outside — the whine of an engine grinding its way along in low gear.
Snapping off his torch, Harlan peered between the curtains. The approaching vehicle’s headlights danced crazily as it negotiated the rutted track. He was about to climb out the window and dash into the woods, but there was no time. The vehicle was already swaying into view. As its twin beams fell on the caravan he squinted, struggling to make out what kind of vehicle it was. It wasn’t a transit van, that much was obvious. But it was much bigger than a normal car. Some kind of four-wheel drive, maybe. The vehicle pulled up outside the caravan. Its engine fell silent and the driver’s side door opened. A figure got out and walked in front of the still blazing headlights. Before he scurried into the toilet, Harlan caught a glimpse of a masculine physique — stocky, but close enough in build to the man Kane had described to plausibly be him — beneath a thick head of long black hair. He covered his nose with one hand as the stench hit him again, the other felt for the knife in his pocket. As a key clicked in a lock and the front door squeaked open, he raised the knife, ready, if necessary, to slash whoever was coming.
The floor trembled slightly as footsteps advanced into the kitchen area. There was a pause. A sniff, as if the footsteps’ owner had caught a whiff of an unfamiliar scent. Followed by a sound of clinking crockery, which Harlan guessed was the plates being picked up from the floor and returned to the sink. His muscles tensed for action. A few seconds passed. The footsteps moved towards the far end of the caravan. There was a tearing sound of Velcro being peeled apart. A low grunt as something heavy was lifted. Then the footsteps came back to the front door and went out. The door was left open. A moment later the footsteps returned. Another grunt as something else was carried outside. A minute crawled by and still the door remained open. A faint whiff of smoke — not wood smoke, but an acrid smell of burning petrol and plastic — cut through the toilet’s fumes. Harlan’s ears caught the crackle of
