by Tim Weaver
He went quiet, and we could both see why: his daughter was one of those women. Rain filled the silence, pounding even harder against the roof of the car, hissing as it exploded against the bodywork.
‘So what – we’re looking for a messed-up dog?’
I shook my head. ‘We’re looking for the house Sona described. Wherever the house is, the dog is – because that’s where Glass is.’
Healy sighed. ‘That place is a square mile of nothing but trees. You know how many houses border it?’
‘Remember what she said. We’re not looking for one that’s still being lived in. We’re looking for one that’s barely standing. A very specific house.’
‘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.’
63
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.
64
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.
Four walls. No roof. A dark, empty interior.
Clambering up on to the top of the wall, I waited for Healy to do the same. He was bigger, slower, but seemed to move pretty smoothly. ‘Looks like we’re going to have to make a leap for it,’ I said, turning to him. He didn’t seem keen.
I aimed for a patch of grass slightly to the left, and just about hit it. The impact was hard, but not painful. I stood and looked back at Healy. He was sizing it up. A foot either side of the space I’d hit and he’d be landing on brick or stones and breaking an ankle. He glanced at me and then back to the patch he wanted to land on. Then he leapt across the river. As he landed, I heard a hard slapping noise: skin, bones and cartilage impacting against the ground. Mud kicked up, gravel spat away.
‘You okay?’ I said.
He nodded, moved gingerly. ‘I’ll survive.’
Now we were closer to the house it looked even bigger and more ominous than before. The opening in its front was a mouth. The windows that remained were eyes. Blackened moss ran from the bricks and was speckled around the entrances, like the house had coughed up its memories. Trees loomed, almost leaning in, as if drawn to the building. And there was a sudden lack of sound again. The river. The rustle of the leaves.
But nothing else.
In my jacket pocket was Healy’s torch. I flicked it on and shone it into the darkness of the house. The cone of light swept across the interior. There were two windows upstairs, both long since smashed through, huge branches reaching in from trees lining the rear of the building. Some of the original wooden floors remained, but they’d been chipped and scuffed, broken by falling branches and pieces of masonry. Rubble was scattered everywhere: stone, concrete, wood, tiles.
Further inside it was even colder. And now there was a noise. Very distant, but clearly audible. I turned to Healy. ‘You hear that?’
He stepped closer and listened.
A wind passed through the holes in the house, disguising the sound for a moment. Then, as everything settled again, the noise emerged for a second time.
‘Something’s clicking,’ Healy whispered.
Dropping to my haunches, I shone the torchlight towards the centre of the room. Piles of rubble had formed everywhere. To my left was part of the wall that had once divided the kitchen and living room. More rubble. Bricks. Grass coming through a crack in the floor. To my right was what was left of the living room: a fireplace built into the wall; a couple of original floorboards, but mostly just the space beneath them. I got to my feet and walked across to where the floorboards didn’t exist any more and shone the torch down. A rat darted across the floor. Lots of dust and debris. Bricks from the walls.
And hidden in the darkness: a manhole cover.
65
We jumped down into the space below the floorboards. Everything else was decades old, but the manhole looked new. It had been painted black. There was a T-shaped lever built into its middle, sitting in a hollowed-out space. I reached down, wrapped my fingers around the lever and turned it. A squeak. Then it began to move. On the other side the clicking sound continued, neither of us saying anything.
Finally, the lever hit a buffer and there was a gentle clank.
I looked at Healy, nodded, then lifted it out. It was heavy, but relatively easy to move. I shifted it sideways and placed it gently on the floor, among all the debris. Then we turned back to the hole and looked down.
Immediately inside was a speaker, a crackle coming from it like static. Next to that, embedded in the wall, was a small plastic box, about the size of a ten-pound note. There was nothing on it but two LED lights. One red. One green. It was an alarm system. The green light was on, and the clicking was faster now. The light must have changed from red to green the minute I’d removed the manhole cover, and the faster click was the alarm going off somewhere else.
He knows we’re coming.
A ladder dropped down into a circle of darkness. I shone the torch into the space. I could see a polished floor below, but not much else. Maybe
a cabinet and a door to the right – but the torch was already struggling. The batteries were old, and the beam was starting to fade from using it continuously at Markham’s house. In fifteen minutes, we’d have a light that couldn’t define anything clearly. In twenty minutes, we’d have nothing at all.
I looked at Healy. Are you okay? He nodded, but all of a sudden he looked old and ground down. This place; the expectancy of what lay ahead; the confrontations, dead ends and betrayals that had littered his journey: it had all come to a head.
‘Healy?’ I said softly.
A second’s pause, as if he was trying to pull himself out of the funk – and then he did. ‘I’m fine,’ he replied and, as if to prove it, he shuffled into position at the manhole and started descending the ladder. I put a finger to my lips. Slowly. Even as he dropped down through the hole, I could hear the gentle ching of his shoes against the metal rungs. When he was about halfway down, I started to wonder if that might not be the point: every surface, every movement, made a sound.
After about ten seconds, all I could see of Healy was his head. I leaned down and handed him the torch, a fist coming up from the black circle and taking it from me. Then I got into position myself. Below, I could hear him taking the rest of the steps. Ching ching ching. Then nothing. He must have reached the bottom. I stopped and peered into the dark. The torch swung left and right, picking out walls, another door and the cabinet I’d glimpsed earlier.
I started down after him. There were thirty-eight rungs in all, and each one felt wet to the touch. Maybe it was dew from Healy’s boot. Maybe it was oil. It felt thicker than water, but didn’t leave any colour on my skin. Once my feet touched the floor, I wiped my hands on my trousers and looked for Healy. He was off to my right, the torch gripped at shoulder height. He was shining it through a big glass panel in a door in the corner. He tried the door but it was locked. Inside it was mostly dark, but the torch revealed what looked like steel medical storage units, the torch reflecting in their surface as he swung it in all directions. In the centre of the room, drilled into the floor – so dark and so deep we couldn’t see the bottom – was a hole.