by Tim Weaver
At the bottom of the driveway was a brick wall, separating the road from the property boundaries, an eight-foot main gate built into it. Either side of the gate, set atop the wall, was a stone eagle. I slowed down, signalling for Healy to do the same, and looked off through the woods: the electric fence connected at either end of the brick wall, starting at road level and ascending the slope on my left and right, until it eventually looped around the children’s home. On top of the brick was more electric fencing – this time a three-wire variant – but there was none on the gates themselves. Instead, two CCTV cameras were set into the brick beneath the stone eagles, focused on the gates, the pavement and the main road.
Close by: more sirens.
I glanced at Healy, standing beside me, one foot on the driveway, one in the mud at the side, his eyes sunken and hollow, looking down towards the gate. Blood had run out of the gash in his jacket, on to his leg, his trousers gathering at the ankles where they were too big for him, his hairless head shining wet with rain. He looked at me, seemingly aware for the first time of what was happening.
We were about to be caught.
Arrested.
In two minutes, this was over.
As the sirens got louder, I pulled at his arm again and headed right, down to the gates. He followed. Cars whipped past, even more of Epping Forest visible on the far side of the road. I shrugged off my jacket and, as Healy caught up, I handed it to him. ‘Put this on over yours,’ I said.
He looked at me, confused.
‘But put it on back to front.’
It took a second for him to catch up, but then he got it: the cameras. I was going to hoist him up and over the main gates, and he was going to use the hoods on both coats to hide his identity: by wearing mine back to front, he could disguise his face. It was thin enough for him to see through – or at least to see enough until he was clear of the cameras.
‘And you?’ he said.
‘Hurry.’
‘And you?’
Sirens, getting louder and louder.
‘Just put it on, Healy.’
He put my jacket on over his, but the wrong way round, like he was slipping into a straitjacket. When he was done, I zipped it up at the back. He looked absurd, but I didn’t care. Instead, I moved him into position at the gates, dropped down behind him, and then told him to place a foot into my locked hands.
The vague flash of a blue light.
‘Let’s go, Healy.’
I heaved him up and felt him fumble around for a grip, but then he came away, almost toppling on to me. Saying nothing, I grabbed hold of his foot again and pushed even harder. This time, I could sense a weight adjustment, as if he’d got hold of something. Pushing again, I felt him become even more secure, his foot slowly leaving my hands. I stole a look up. I couldn’t see the strain in his face, but I could see it in his skin: in the veins in his hand, his fingers like claws.
He was on top, one leg over the other side.
More blue lights.
I stepped up to the gates, looking along the road. I couldn’t see them, but it sounded like they were right on top of us.
‘Make the jump, Healy,’ I said. ‘Now.’
Still clinging on to the top of the gates, he swung down, one arm losing its grip, one still holding on, and then – finally – let go, crumpling into a heap on the other side. I saw passengers in passing cars glance at us, and spotted a couple across the street, framed by a mix of fir and horse chestnut trees, talking to one another, yet to notice.
‘Run,’ I said to him.
‘What about you?’
‘Just run, okay?’
‘But you’re –’
‘Healy. You can’t get caught. You need to go.’
‘I …’ He hesitated. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Lie low. I’ll find you.’
He didn’t react.
‘Are you listening to me?’
A long pause. ‘Yes.’
For a second, he sounded emotional again, but it was hard to tell for sure. Through the hood of my coat, I could see the outline of his face: a hint of a nose, a chin. Nothing else. The sound of the sirens suddenly got louder than ever, ripping across the afternoon in a series of shrieks. They’re here. They’ve entered the street. He looked up to where the cameras were focused on him: I was safe on my side of the gate, out of view, undocumented; every second he lingered, more of him was committed to tape, more evidence, more for the police to work with.
‘Go, Healy,’ I said.
He stepped back.
A second of hesitation.
And then, at last, he walked away.
69
Over the next hour, everything changed.
I watched from the back of a marked police car, the radio buzzing in front, voices drifting in and out, as St David’s came alive. A uniformed officer stood just outside my door as a succession of vehicles arrived: more marked cars first, then two plain-clothes detectives in a blue Volvo, and then – once a team had been into the building and found Grankin – forensics arrived in a white Iveco van.
As the techs pulled on their white boiler suits and sorted through their equipment, an Asian man in his late thirties, smartly dressed in grey trousers and a black tie, with a stab-proof vest, made his way over to me. He talked in hushed tones with the PC – a mumble of conversation – and then opened my door.
‘Mr Raker?’
I looked up at him.
‘I’m DCI Bishara.’ He placed a hand on the roof of the vehicle and looked across at the building. ‘So, it’s a bit of a mess in there. Is all of that your work?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘Which bits are you?’
‘None of it.’
He glanced at me. ‘You found it like that?’
‘Yes.’
He didn’t say anything else, his eyes taking me in: the cut on my cheek; my clothes, still soaked through; the mud caked across my hands from Healy’s boots.
‘Okay,’ he said.
It was obvious he didn’t believe me.
I didn’t blame him. He probably had someone back at the station doing a background check on me right now. It wouldn’t take him long, if he didn’t have that information already, to find out what had happened in Wapping this morning. He’d know that I’d made a break for it.
He’d know about my history.
The only saving grace, for now, was that I’d left the car a couple of miles away. If they’d had the chance to go through that, they’d have found East’s blood all over the boot. As I looked past Bishara, to where uniformed officers stood on the edges of the treeline, I realized how much trouble I was in. This whole place was a lockdown. My prints were all over Grankin’s house. They were all over the room in which he’d died. If Healy was smart, he’d dump the gun somewhere it would never be found, making it impossible to tie me directly to the murder. But, even if he was lucid enough to do that, and do it properly, I was still cornered.
‘Sit tight for a couple more minutes, okay?’ Bishara said, and then pushed the door shut without waiting for an answer. He said something to the uniformed officer, and then I watched him make a beeline for the forensic team at the van. A couple of minutes later, the two techs headed inside the building, leaving Bishara to talk to a woman in her forties, who I assumed was the scene-of-crime officer.
I started thinking about Healy, about where he might be now, and then – from behind me – Bishara appeared again, passing the car and following the SOCO down to where the uniforms were lined up. Somewhere in the forest beyond them was the tunnel that Grankin had dug out. They would already have found it, because a Met team was already in his house, but the SOCO seemed to be filling Bishara in on what she knew, perhaps had even seen, gesturing to the trees, pointing with her finger in the direction of the tunnel. Bishara nodded, not interrupting, only speaking again when the SOCO started leading him a little way into the forest.
They disappeared for a moment, swallowed by branches a
nd leaves, but then reappeared. Bishara beckoned to a couple of officers to follow him, and they headed back in, keeping to exactly the same route set out by the SOCO.
I waited.
In the silence, I started to drift, exhausted, drained. My body ached all the way down to my bones, my head hurt, my cuts, my bruises. I tried to stay awake by counting the hours since I’d slept, and then – to keep it going – worked back through the events of the last month, trying to pinpoint a night when I’d slept the entire way through. I couldn’t remember. That was what scared me. I couldn’t actually remember sleeping through the night. I’d forgotten what it even felt like.
Before I was aware of it, my head rolled against my shoulder and I lurched awake, looking out into the memories of St David’s garden: the long grass, the weeds, the tangled bushes, the density of the forest that penned it in.
Moments later, a forensic tech appeared from the treeline, hood up, mask on, carrying an evidence bag in either hand. I felt a moment of panic: What has he found? He wouldn’t have brought whatever it was all the way through the tunnel and out this side, so it must have been something he’d found in the forest. But what? What had we left there? Had Healy dropped something? Had I? I tried to focus on the bags, to get a sense of their shape and size, but then the tech moved behind me, past the boot of the car and around towards the front of the building.
I rubbed at my eyes. They were gritty, dry, painful, and when a single shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds above the trees, shining directly into the back seat of the car, I closed them and gave in: I let the fatigue take me away, like a boat washing out to sea. I felt my shoulders relax, my head drop back and my body shut down.
Darkness.
But then I was awake again.
Someone was shouting.
I blinked myself into consciousness and tried to clear my head. It was just after 3 p.m. I’d been asleep for twenty minutes. Glancing out across the garden to the treeline, I saw that there were no officers there any more. The one stationed outside the car was still here, but only just: he’d stepped away from the back of the vehicle, eyes fixed on movement at the far end of St David’s, close to the extension.
I knocked on the window. He didn’t respond.
‘Hey,’ I said.
Nothing.
I looked again, down to where the forensics van was parked up, its back doors open. I could see flashes of movement to the left of it, between the van and the side of the building. Briefly, I made out two officers, one radioing something through, but then they were gone, sprinting through the doors of the extension.
‘Hey,’ I said, tapping on the glass.
This time the constable glanced at me.
‘What’s going on?’
He was young, panicked, nervy. His eyes lingered on me, almost flickered, as if caught between telling me to shut up and keep quiet, and wanting to share.
‘What’s going on?’ I said again.
He looked from me to St David’s, then back to me again. But as I was about to knock on the glass a third time, I noticed something behind him.
Black smoke.
It was creeping out through the gaps between the window frames and the boards on the bottom floor, through the holes in the brickwork there. It escaped up towards the sky, towards the sunlight, in thick, twisted cords.
The building was on fire.
Just like the pier.
‘Hey,’ I said, hammering on the glass. ‘Let me out.’
He shook his head. ‘Quiet.’
‘Listen to me –’
‘No, you listen,’ he replied, jittery, unconvincing. ‘Shut up.’
I was about to come back at him again – but then, from the grey doors of the extension, a forensic tech emerged, the one I’d seen come from the forest earlier. He no longer had the evidence bags with him.
As he exited, he removed his gloves, pocketed them and headed across to the van, shutting both the rear doors. He didn’t get above walking pace the whole time. Instead, as he reached the driver’s side and pulled that door open, perching one foot on a ramp next to the tyre well, he looked back along the length of the van – hood up, face mask still on – as if he were checking something on its side. But he wasn’t looking at the van.
He was looking at me.
It was Korman.
70
‘Hey,’ the constable said to Korman. ‘Hey, what’s happening?’
I knocked on the glass. ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘No! He’s not with the police!’ But the PC didn’t even turn, just waved a hand in my direction, swatting me from his thoughts. He took another couple of steps closer to Korman, flicking a look to his left where smoke continued to leak from the cracks of the building.
He asked Korman something else, a repeat of the same question, but the officer was too far away from me now, his voice subdued by the distance between us.
With the outside of my fist, I thumped at the rear window so hard, I could feel the echoes of it travel through my body, but the officer was saying something else to Korman now, Korman’s eyes still on me even as he was being addressed. I had a flashback to the CCTV film of him exiting Searle House – after he’d killed the girls, after he’d stabbed Gail and then stood there recording her final moments – and started to feel light-headed: all the rage and the suffering and the need for revenge blinking like a strobe behind my eyes. Korman finally stepped off the foot ramp on the side of the van, eyes switching from me to the officer.
‘No!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t approach him!’
Do something.
You’ve got to do something.
I rolled back, on to the base of my spine, and launched a series of kicks at the passenger window, pounding against the glass with both feet. The third time, it cracked, splitting from top to bottom, zigzagging open like ice on a frozen lake. I saw the officer stop, level with the back of the van, but Korman just looked at him, saying nothing. Listening.
Those eyes.
I kicked again and the glass shattered, exploding into a shower of crystal chips that spilled out across the inside seat and the grass outside. As the sound travelled, the constable looked back, Korman just inches away, eyes still on him, even as he turned – and I realized that, without intending to, I’d made a mistake.
I’d diverted the PC’s attention.
Like a trap springing shut, Korman grabbed the PC at the back of the neck, smashing him face-first into the side of the van. I scrambled on to my hands and knees and threw myself through the window, nicking myself on a fang of glass still lodged in the window frame. As I hit the ground, I looked up: Korman had yanked the baton out of the officer’s belt and whipped it into its full extension. He swiped it around the officer’s head, blood flecking against the flank of the van.
The PC dropped to the floor.
‘Korman!’
I scrambled to my feet, Korman – bent over the officer – looking up at me. He wasn’t out of breath; in fact, he hardly seemed affected at all, even by me coming towards him. All I saw was a minimal twitch of the head, left to right, eyes moving to the building, to the smoke plumes drifting out from its belly, thick and gnarled and as dark as oil. A second later, one of the boards fell away from somewhere close to where the toilets were, charred black on the inside; through the open window, I could see the fire ripping through the room, licking at walls, at the ceiling.
As Korman shuddered out of his stillness, tossing the baton to one side, I heard voices, Bishara calling my name, the sound of people coughing, emerging from the inside of the building. Officers spilled out, holding evidence bags to their chests, Bishara gesturing towards me, shouting at me to stay where I was.
Footsteps.
Korman was making a break for it.
Instinctively, I headed after him.
‘Raker! Stop!’ Bishara shouted, and without even looking back I heard officers take off after me. As Korman emerged from behind the van, Bishara shouted a second time, ‘That’s him!’ They were talking ab
out Korman this time.
They know he’s a fake.
He’d compromised himself.
My movements softened as I hit grass, and then my boots slapped against the concrete of the driveway again, Korman pounding down the slope at full pelt about twenty feet in front of me. There was a uniformed officer stationed at the open front gates. As he saw us, he took a couple of steps in our direction, holding up a hand, asking us to slow down. Korman kept going, the officer’s hand straying to his equipment belt, fingers gripping his baton. He told Korman to stop, but Korman accelerated instead, the shift in speed deceptively quick; as the officer was bringing his baton out, Korman smashed into him, sending the PC pirouetting off into a bed of leaves, head crashing into the base of a tree.
Somewhere, close by: fire engines.
The sound got louder as we hit the street, a long, two-lane road with high trees on either side. Korman didn’t stop, wheeling out right. I followed, dodging between passers-by, people looking at us, at him, at the cops giving chase even further back. Gradually, the gap started to close, Korman finding it hard to keep running in the forensic suit, the boots dragging, pulling at his heels, weighing on him. He tossed the mask aside, the hood whipping off his shaved head too, and for the first time he glanced back at me. A second, maybe less – and then he was focused on the road in front of him again, finding acceleration from somewhere, a reserve of energy that I simply couldn’t call upon after almost two days without sleep.
As the gap started to widen, the pavement ended and I was pursuing him along the edges of the road, trees closing in around us. It felt like we were leaving the city, all sound seeming to die away, the sirens, the rumble of vehicles, people, birdsong. Up ahead, the road gently curved to the left, Korman following its arc. I had no idea where we were, my direction shot, the lack of signposts and the endless trees making it hard to get a sense of anything – of location, of what lay ahead. I looked behind me at the cops giving chase, but they were lost around the curve of the bend – and then back to Korman.