The Dead Tracks (51 page)

    'Whose?'

    I dug
around in my pocket and found my notepad. 'Milton Sykes's.'

    Healy
smirked. 'You're about seventy years late, Raker. They knocked the entire road
down during the war and built an industrial estate on top.'

    'We're
not looking for the house he owned on Forham Avenue,' I said, holding up the
pad and placing a finger against one of the entries:
42 Ovlan Road
.
'We're looking for the house he was born in.'

    We
travelled east down Derry Road, the street I'd parked on before, and turned
left at the end, driving between a canyon of abandoned factories and old brick
buildings. It looked like an earthquake had passed through it. Either side,
roofs had caved in, walls had fallen away and glass lay glinting in overgrown
weeds at the base of the buildings.

    'This
place gives me the creeps,' Healy said.

    I
studied the buildings, the windows, the doors. So much darkness. In all the
time I'd been living and working in London, I'd never seen an area as desolate and
abandoned. Healy was right: it was unsettling because it was so out of place.

    We
turned left again at the end on to what had once been Forham Avenue, the street
that eventually lead to Ovlan Road. Except now the whole thing was called
Peterson Drive. Nothing remained of the houses that had once occupied the area.
The road was bordered by big, metal warehouses on the right and the edges of
the woods on the left. The woods were cordoned off by an eight-foot-high
wire-mesh fence, broken in parts, but mostly still intact. There were danger —
keep out! signs posted along it, every hundred feet or so. At the end, the road
opened out into the trading estate I'd seen in the satellite photos.

    Healy
pulled a U-turn at the entrance to the estate then faced the car back along
Peterson Drive. The rain had eased off, but the street lights revealed
low-hanging cloud, swollen and dark above us. We both looked at the clock.
One-thirty.

    'So,
where's the house?' Healy said. He leaned forward, eyes on the trees, hands
wrapped around the steering wheel. 'In the woods?'

    He
was half joking. But then he saw my face.

    'You
think it's in the woods?'

    'There's
no fencing and no warning signs at the south entrance,' I said, nodding at the
diamond-shaped danger markers. 'Why are there here?'

    'Because
it's dangerous this side.'

    'So
maybe the house had a postal address on Ovlan Road, but it wasn't on Ovlan
Road. Maybe it was inside the boundaries of the woods.'

    He shook
his head. 'Where the hell did you pluck that from?'

    'I'm
making an assumption here, Healy, okay? Feel free to step in any time you think
you might have a better idea.'

    Silence
settled between us. I'd never met anyone in my life who pissed me off more and
had me feeling sorry for him in equal measure.

    'The
house was all broken,' Healy said quietly. I looked at him and saw what this
was: his apology. That's what Sona said earlier. The house was all broken.'

    I
nodded. 'No floors. Trees through the roof, through the windows. Where Does
that sound like to you?'

    Healy
glanced at the fencing. 'It sounds like here.'

    'It's
been a century since Sykes died. About the same since the factories started
hitting the buffers. That means at
least
seventy years in which the
boundaries of the woods could grow out to this point, uncared for, and
untouched. That's enough time for things to disappear. Big things.'

    'But
they knocked all the houses down after Sykes got the rope.'

    'They
knocked the houses down along here!

    'So,
what — they just fenced off the other one and forgot about it?'

    'That's
what I'm guessing. Back then it was something approaching superstition. These
days it's health and safety. The council will want to make sure people don't go
in there. A building as old and unstable as that would probably come down in a
stiff breeze. People start climbing around, sleeping there, starting fires,
it'll end up killing someone. That's why they're telling people to keep out.'

    'And
that's why they put up the wall.'

    He
meant the concrete wall Sona had described on the other side of the river. I
nodded at him. 'I'm betting it was put up the last time this fencing was
replaced; to keep out unwanted guests, and as an extra security measure.'

    'And
on the other side of the wall?'

    'Is
the river that carried Sona out to the Thames.'

    'And
on the other side of the river…'

    'I'm
guessing will be the house.'

    For a
moment there was absolute silence. No distant car noises. No rain falling
against the roof. It was as if the woods, and the thought of what lay inside,
had sucked every single sound out of the night.

    Then
my phone started ringing.

    It
was Ewan Tasker.

    'Task.
Everything okay at Jill's?'

    'I
don't know.'

    'What
do you mean?'

    'I
mean she isn't there. The house looks like a morgue. No lights on, no answer at
the door. I've worn the doorbell out I've rung it so many times.'

    'Did
you try calling her number?'

    'Her
mobile's off. The phone in the house just keeps ringing.'

    I
glanced at Healy. He flicked a look back.

    'Did
you check for break-ins?'

    'Back
and front.'

    'Nothing?'

    'Zero.'

    Shit.
I looked at Healy again and this time he wasn't even attempting to disguise his
interest. He'd shifted in his seat to face me.

    'Who
was the other guy?' Tasker said.

    'What
do you mean?'

    'The
other guy. I'm know I'm old, but I didn't need someone there to hold my hand,
Raker. I can babysit with the best of them, I promise you.'

    'What
are you talking about?'

    A
confused pause. 'I assumed you sent him.'

    Who?'

    When
I turned up at the house, some other guy's already in the back garden. He
flashes a warrant card at me. Tells me he'll take care of things.'

    'A
cop?'

    'Yeah.
You didn't send him?'

    'No.
Who was he?'

    'I
don't know. Didn't tell me his name.' The line drifted. I could hear a car horn
in the background. 'Thing is…'

    'What?'

    'I
could have sworn to you it looked like he'd just come out of the house. Like
he'd been inside, taken care of something and then locked up again. He looked
shifty. On edge. I let the feeling go, because I thought he was with you.'

    Dread
thickened and twisted in my chest. What did he look like?'

    'Medium
height, dark hair.'

    'Anything
else?'

    'He
had this weird tic.'

    'Tic?'

    'Kept
fiddling with his wedding band.'

    And
then it hit me like a sledgehammer.

    
The
first time they'd taken me to the station, when Davidson and I had waited in the
parking lot as Phillips went to his car to get his mobile phone
.

    'Was
he Scottish?'

    'Yeah.'

    'Did
you see what he was driving?'

    'Yeah,'
Tasker said. 'A red Ford Mondeo.'

    The
same car Phillips had.

    And
the same car that had been watching Jill's house.

    We waited
for dawn — sleeping in ninety-minute shifts — to help make navigating the woods
easier. And at five- thirty, as the clouds started to thin out and the first
smudges of daylight stained the sky, we left the car and headed for the fence.
About twenty yards down, some of it had begun to rust, the wire mesh dissolving
into a flaky brown crust. In the boot of the car, Healy kept a toolbox and had
brought a pair of pliers with him. He dropped to his knees at the fence and
started to pick away at the mesh, folding it up and creating a hole. After five
minutes, he'd created a space big enough for us to get our hands in and peel
back.

    A
minute later, we were inside.

    The
woods were as thick on the northern edge as they were on the south. Except here
there was no path. Between the tree trunks, we could see further in, where a
fuzzy grey light had settled in an opening about eighty feet away. I led us
across the uneven ground, thick undergrowth against our legs, dew-soaked leaves
brushing against our faces. At the opening, the canopy thinned out and the sky
was starting to colour.

    Healy
swatted a low-hanging branch away from his face and stepped in beside me. Ahead
it was gloomy: lots of trees trunks side by side, and barely any room to make
out what was between them. 'I see what you mean about this place,' he said
quietly, and I wasn't sure if he was talking about how thick everything was —
or the feeling that pervaded the woods. Just like the first time, the
temperature seemed to drop the further in we got, and there was a constant
noise in the background: a wind passing through the leaves.

    Except,
every so often, it sounded like someone speaking.

    We
carefully moved on in a southerly direction. The foliage was getting thicker
and the light was fading, daylight blocked by the canopy and the network of
tree trunks and branches. Eventually it got so dense we had to stop and double
back. We came around in the same direction but further down, where small arrows
of morning light managed to break through from above and angle down.

    That
was when we hit the wall.

    It
seemed to appear from nowhere. I'd imagined it being a grey-white colour, laid
in the last ten to twenty years. Instead it was almost black, stained with age,
mud and moss, and looked at least forty years old. Chunks of it had fallen
away. There was a little graffiti, but not much - as if even kids on a dare
didn't venture this far in. I placed a hand against it. Dust and a sticky
sediment, like sap, clung to the skin of my fingers. I looked up. There were
huge fir trees above us and mulched pine cones at our feet.

    
Crack.

    We
both turned and looked back in the direction we'd come. Healy glanced at me and
then back into the gloom.

    'What
the hell was that?' he said quietly.

    I
didn't reply, waiting for it to come again. But it didn't. Instead, a
disconcerting hush settled around us, all other noise briefly drifting away,
until the only thing I could hear was Healy breathing next to me. Something was
out of kilter here. I'd been to places where death clung to the walls and the
streets and the people left behind. But I'd never been to a place like this. I
was no believer in ghosts. But whatever had happened here, whatever lay buried,
something of it remained above ground.

    Turning,
I grabbed the top of the wall and hauled myself up.

    At
the top, I peered over.

    Directly
below was the river, just as Sona had described it. Probably slightly more than
six feet across, but not much. The current flowed surprisingly fast, sloshing
and gurgling as it moved off to the right. On the other side of the water was
the rough path she'd fallen into the water from. It looked like it might once
have been a wall; maybe a property boundary. Bits of red brick remained
embedded in the mud and gravel. Beyond the path, on the other side of the
water, huge trees rose out of the earth, like thick forearms reaching for the
clouds. Then hidden between them, surrounded by nature, was what remained of
Ovlan Road. And the house Sona had described.