by Tim Weaver
Darkness.
50
I woke inside the house, lying in the middle of the living room, next to the lamp. It was still on, although it had been tipped on to its side. I could taste blood in my mouth and feel it running down one side of my face. My arm was caught under me. As I tried to shift my weight and free it, I felt a stab of pain in my shoulder. Whiplash. Bruising. Every time I moved, my chest went into spasm.
A noise.
When I craned my neck to see what it was, nausea swept up through my throat. I listed, rolling on to my back, and when I regained some control, looked again, trying to trace the origin of the sound.
It was my mobile phone.
I gritted my teeth, forced myself up into a sitting position at one of the sofas and watched the phone continue its gentle journey across the floor: slowly, steadily, moving an inch in my direction every time it buzzed. When I looked the other way, I could see my crumpled car through the open front door: hazards flashing, a single headlight still working but pointing off at a forty-five-degree angle, through the treeline to the moors on the other side.
Why am I back here?
Momentarily confused, I looked around the room again. The house was empty, although – with the lamp on its side – the lighting had changed. Shadows crept in around doorways and windows, and into the far corners. Everything was suddenly under-lit, the brightness fading halfway up the walls.
Did Reynolds bring me back here?
My head was swimming.
Pounding.
Unable to find reasons or connections.
And the whole time my phone continued ringing, edging closer to me. After a couple of seconds, I tried to grasp at it, fingers brushing its casing, but the movement sent a stab of pain along my breastplate that almost took my breath away.
I let my body settle again.
Five seconds later the phone drifted into reach, so I tried scooping it up a second time. I managed to get a finger on it – without moving my shoulder – and pulled it in against my leg. The clock read eleven-thirty. The caller was unknown.
I pushed Answer and slowly brought it up to my ear.
‘Welcome back,’ a man’s voice whispered.
Mancunian accent.
It was Reynolds.
As I tried to adjust my position, I caught a whiff of something for the first time. I scanned the room again, a prickle of unease forming, my eyes falling on the stairs on the far side. There was almost no light in that part of the living room.
‘I imagine you’re not feeling too special at this point.’
‘No, not really,’ I said.
The house was silent now, as quiet as it had been at any point. The rain had stopped. The wind had died down. Now the building was settling again: the occasional creak, a groan, the snap of wood as the walls softly contracted in the cold.
‘That whole thing with the tyre, that wasn’t supposed to go like that.’ A pause. His words were incredibly quiet, but they were uniform, automated, like he was reading from a script. ‘I wasn’t banking on you belting across moorland at forty-five miles per hour. That’s not how people usually drive up here. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted you to crash your car. I wanted you to hurt yourself, maybe hurt your ego too. I needed you to understand that I was on to you, and I was in control. But you weren’t supposed to find out about the tyre until after I was gone. You weren’t supposed to have seen me.’
‘Looks like your plan’s changed,’ I said. The line glitched and there was a slight echo; what sounded like contamination from another call. ‘What do you want?’
‘Stop looking for Franks.’
I didn’t reply, but my mind was already shifting forward: whose side was he on – and why would he be asking me to stop? Because he was protecting Franks? Or because he wanted Franks for himself? I found it hard to swallow the idea of him working with Franks: their relationship had been poisonous. The two of them hated each other.
‘I tried to play nice with you, Raker. I turned over your house, I took your casework, I left you alive. At that point, I thought that I’d done enough to disrupt your … what would you call it? Case? Mission? Or is this another lost soul you feel responsibility for? Whatever it is, honestly, I didn’t want things to go this way. But, having found out a little about you since, perhaps I should have expected it.’
‘Why should I stop?’
‘Why? Because next time it won’t be your tyre I’m sticking a knife in.’ A pause. ‘Believe it or not, I’m not in the business of killing people. That’s not what this was supposed to be about. This whole thing … think of it as a public service. But, even so, I’ll make you this promise: if you don’t pack up and return to London immediately, I will kill you, and I will kill everyone you care about. That includes your daughter.’
‘Don’t ever –’
‘Don’t ever what?’
And then, on the back of that, something clicked with me: the smell. I looked across to the far side of the room, at the dark of the stairs. I knew what it was now.
Mildew.
Instantly, as if my thoughts had been projected, something moved in the shadows. And then, out of the blackness, came the toe of a boot. Black. Mud-specked. Worn.
Reynolds.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, pale face like a silver smudge against the night. He was cloaked by the darkness, almost wearing it. After watching me for a moment, he rocked forward, a shape ripped from the shadows, and stood, eyes never leaving mine. I could see dust and mud on his hands; my blood too. He came across the room – muscular, but with those same small movements – and stopped just short of me. There was a mobile phone in his right hand. He pushed a button on it and it chirped gently.
‘If you’re not back in London within twenty-four hours, telling Melanie Craw that you can’t work her case any more, I’ll kill your daughter in front of you.’ He stopped, eyeing me. He sounded different now: harder, his accent more pronounced, his words more severe and carrying a greater threat. ‘Do you want to watch your daughter get her throat cut?’
Her throat cut.
Just like he’d done to Simon Preston.
I fixed my gaze on him. ‘You even as much as look at her, and I’ll –’
‘You’ll what? You think I’m scared of you? I’ve been watching you for a while now, and you’ve never had a clue. So maybe you should be the one that’s scared.’
I didn’t respond.
‘For your daughter’s sake, I hope you are.’
Again, I said nothing.
‘You’ve got twenty-four hours.’
His eyes lingered on me for a moment more, a hint of a smile on his face – and then he headed out of the living room, on to the veranda. Light drizzle drifted past him, right to left, caught in the soft light spilling from the house. I watched him take the steps, slowly, his stride almost mechanized.
At the bottom, he looked back at me once.
Thirty seconds later, the moor swallowed him up.
51
As soon as Reynolds was gone, I hoisted myself up, using the sofa and a nearby wall to steady myself. Some of the discomfort in my shoulder had subsided, but it was still throbbing, sharp pain shooting downwards in a diagonal across my chest. I checked the kitchen for painkillers. I didn’t expect to find any, and I wasn’t disappointed. Bringing my left arm across my waist and pinning it there, I returned for my mobile phone.
Annabel.
I dialled her number.
Waiting for her to answer, a new thought came to me: what if Reynolds had already been to her house? He probably expected me to call her straight away, expected me to try to move her, and after the tenth unanswered ring, an awful, gluey dread took hold. He’s already been there. He’s already got her.
But then, finally, she picked up. ‘Hello?’
‘Annabel, it’s me.’
‘Hey, how are you?’
‘Are you and Olivia okay?’
‘Fine. Wow, it’s late.’
‘Wh
ere are you?’
A concerned pause. ‘Just at home. Why?’
‘Listen to me carefully, okay? I need you and Olivia to get dressed, get in the car and take the M5 north. I want you to keep driving until you get to the services at Bristol.’
‘What? But I thought you were coming to see us?’
‘I’ll explain later. Just do this for me, okay? When you get to Bristol, park up and go inside, and wait where you can be seen. I’m going to send someone to meet you.’
‘What? I don’t … Are we in danger?’
She was panicked now. So I lied: ‘No. Something’s come up. I can’t get to you for the time being, and I just want to make sure things are watertight. I’m probably being paranoid, but that’s a father’s job, right?’ I tried to make light of it, but she wasn’t taken in by it. I looked at my watch. Midnight. ‘The man you’re going to meet there is called Ewan Tasker. I’ll send a picture of him to your phone. You only leave with him. No one else. Everything’s going to be fine, but I need you to do this one thing for me, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Thank you, sweetheart.’
I told her I’d call back in ten minutes when she and Olivia were dressed and ready to leave. In the meantime, I dialled Task. He didn’t sleep much, so he answered after a couple of rings, and when I explained what I needed from him, he didn’t acknowledge the hour, the distance I was asking him to travel or the size of the favour. He’d long since passed the stage where he asked the reasons why. Perhaps that was what every relationship I had in my life was damned to repeat. When we were done, I thanked him, hung up and called Annabel again. She picked up after a single ring.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘I suppose so.’
I got her to talk me through them leaving the house, locking it and getting into the car. When they were inside, she switched to speakerphone, and I listened to her guide me through her next movements: out on to their lane, exiting the village and picking up the A38. Once they hit the main road, I relaxed just a little. In the background of the call, I could hear Olivia singing to herself, and the beep beep beep of a videogame.
I said hello to her.
‘Hi, David,’ she said.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m good.’
‘Great. You look after your sister, all right?’
‘She should look after me.’
‘I know. You look after each other then.’
‘Okay.’
A brief silence.
‘Belle says you’ve put us in danger.’
‘Olivia,’ Annabel said, her voice close to the phone’s speakers, the volume sending a crackle of static along the line. ‘I didn’t say … She doesn’t … I didn’t say that.’
‘You did,’ Olivia countered.
‘Shut up, Liv.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll send you this picture now, then call me when you get to Bristol. Call me before if you need to. But just keep going until you get to the services.’
‘Okay.’
After I hung up, I looked around the empty house, darkness licking its walls, the lamp still on its side, to my smashed, broken car, its front embedded in a grass bank, and knew that Annabel was right: I’d put them in danger. The two girls were on my radar now, they were part of my life. This life. Whatever they did, however geographically distant they were to me, their lives could still be reduced to this, any time, by anyone.
I’d told Annabel when she’d come to stay with me that I would protect them both. I told her they were mine now, and they were stronger with me around.
But that wasn’t the reality.
The reality was, I didn’t make them stronger.
I made them victims.
52
Once I’d taken care of Annabel, I thought of something else: the plastic tag I’d found discarded in the hole. I checked the pockets of my coat.
It was still there.
Briefly, I considered ‘BROLE108’ and what it might mean, then I switched off the lamp, set it down on the table and headed outside. As I pulled the front door closed I felt a twinge in my shoulder, but I’d mostly been able to subdue the pain by keeping my arm pressed in place. Drizzle dotted my face as I locked up and headed across the moors. This wasn’t how I’d imagined I’d be leaving the house – injured, cornered, under threat – and as I got beyond the boundaries of the property, the wind made a noise like an exhalation.
You make people victims.
I pushed the thought down and used the flashlight to direct me along the track, down towards my car. The damage to it was bad, but not as bad as it could have been: the bumper was hanging loose, the grille bunched, the shattered plastic from one of the headlights scattered across the grass in front of it. Plus the tyre needed changing. There was probably internal damage too, none of which was going to become clear until I got the car back out on to the road. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to drive back to the cottage. I wasn’t exactly sure if the cottage was even the best place to go any more.
I’ve been watching you for a while now.
Maybe you should be the one that’s scared.
As Reynolds’s words echoed in my head, I pushed them down with everything else, yanked open the door and slid in at the wheel. Inside, the car smelled of fried electrics. In the ignition, the keys moved gently as a breeze passed through the front. I tried the engine once and it failed to fire. The second time, it coughed and choked, but then came to life. Pushing it into reverse, but unable to comfortably look back across my shoulder, I used the rear-view mirror as my guide and jammed the accelerator to the floor.
The functioning front wheel spun, mud spewing off ahead of me.
Then it gripped.
The car shot back. When I slammed on the brakes again, the movement juddered through the vehicle and I felt another tremor of pain pass across my body. I gritted my teeth, tensed my body, sucked it up.
Getting out, I walked around to the boot, popped it open and grabbed the spare tyre. It felt like a concrete block. I hauled it half the way out, readjusted my arm so it was even tighter against my stomach, and yanked the tyre the rest of the way. It fell to the ground with a dull whumph. I righted it, and clumsily wheeled it around to the front of the car with one arm. How the hell am I going to change this?
As I got there, I heard something.
The rumble of another car.
I let the tyre fall flat against the track, grabbed the flashlight – which I’d placed on the bonnet – and directed it down the slope, back in the direction of Postbridge.
Darkness.
No sign of a car.
Yet I could hear it more clearly than ever.
I paused there for a moment, my own car on the track behind me, its one working headlight cutting through the treeline to my right. The rain had started to come again, its clamour gradually increasing as it moved from drizzle to downpour to deluge. A minute later, the heavens opened, and I stood there in the pouring rain, watching nothing but the blackness that lay ahead of me.
It had to be Reynolds, driving away.
He must have left his car at the bottom of the track earlier, before coming up here, knowing I’d hear his vehicle approaching otherwise. Except the noise from the car engine wasn’t getting softer. It wasn’t the sound of someone driving away.
It was the sound of someone getting closer.
Turning and heading back up the track, I went to the boot and used the torch to find a crowbar I kept taped to the underside. As I ripped it away I felt a twinge in my upper arm, my elbow, in my collarbone. It delayed me for a moment, the pain becoming more and more difficult to ignore, but then I slammed the boot shut, got in at the wheel and cranked the car into gear. As quickly as I could, I reversed back up the slope.
After hitting the grass, I kept going, further and further back in the direction of the tor. When I was forty feet from the track, swaddled in the night, I killed the lights and the engine, got out and hurried ba
ck to the treeline. Suddenly the crowbar felt heavy in my hand – maybe because of my injury, maybe because I didn’t know what was coming in my direction – but the tyre was still sitting in the middle of the road. And as I found a space behind an old, crooked oak tree, I knew that was exactly where I needed it to be.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
All of a sudden, headlights seemed to appear from nowhere, a quarter of a mile down the track. They swept across the treeline as the road snaked from left to right, but it was impossible to tell what car it was, or who was at the wheel. The lights were too bright, the inside of the car too dark, the rain too heavy. As the car got closer and closer, I could see huge fists of water pounding against the windscreen, each one opening like a lesion on the glass, before running off again.
Maybe it’s Reynolds.
Maybe he’s forgotten something.
But then, finally, the car stopped, the door opening, and the soft sound of music carried off, through the rain to where I was crouched behind the tree.
The driver got out, eyes on the tyre in the middle of the road.
It was Melanie Craw.
53
I moved out from behind the trees and down on to the track, Craw silhouetted briefly by her headlights. When she formed again, she was watching me through a wall of rain, her eyes moving from the cuts on my face, to my arm, then off to the dark of the house.
‘What’s going on, Raker?’
She had to shout above the storm. I moved closer to her, trying to think about the reasons she might have come all this way. ‘Craw. What the hell are you doing here?’
‘What happened to you?’
‘What are you doing here?’ I said again.