The Dead Tracks

Chapter Sixty-three

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.