The Dead Tracks (23 page)

    'Three
dead at the scene. One was DOA; one decided not to speak in the interview, or
during his subsequent trial.'

    'At
all?'

    'Not
about his involvement in anything, no. The Ghost's a scary man. Maybe Mr Dumb
thought a life in clink was preferable to whatever Gobulev would do to him if
he talked.'

    'What
about forensics?'

    'Not
much. The warehouse wasn't exactly a sterile environment. They recovered a ton
of fibres, a shitload of hairs, some trace stuff. No matches.'

    'Fingerprints?'

    'Lots
of prints, but mostly from the people working in the warehouse, or Gobulev's
men. Nothing for the surgeon. Looks like the murder team were pretty exhaustive
too. Every print the SOCO came back with, they put through IDENTi.'

    The
scene of crime officer was the conductor. He documented everything that
happened on site, from the moment the first officer arrived to the moment the
lights were turned out. At the end, he handed in his report, including
fingerprints lifts. After that, all the prints were put through the national
automated fingerprint system — which meant the surgeon's prints failed to match
up with any of the six million already logged.

    'So
he hasn't got any priors,' I said.

    'No.
Although that's working on the assumption he even left his prints at the scene
in the first place. They had some prints they couldn't attribute to anyone -
but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were his.'

    'Everyone
leaves prints.'

    'Not
if you're wearing surgical gloves. Forensics found traces of cornflour at the
scene. Looks like it's the same story with ballistics as well. White was shot
with a hollow point 9mm, and the markings on the shell…' Tasker paused. I could
hear him looking through his notes. 'The markings put the weapon as a GSh-18.
Also Russian. Imported illegally, so pretty much impossible to trace.'

    'Okay.
So, physical description of the surgeon?'

    'Medium
height, medium build.'

    'Anything
else?'

    'No.
He's a mystery man.'

    'Anyone
see his face?'

    'You're
gonna like this. The informant said the surgeon used to turn up to meetings
wearing a white plastic mask. No markings on it. Just holes at the eyes, nose
and mouth.'

    'Are
you serious?'

    'The
man without a face.'

    I
paused and looked around me. Rain continued hammering against the window.
Across the road, people ran past, caught in the storm, their coats pulled up
over their heads.

    'What
did Gobulev's people call him?'

    'Dr
Glass.'

    'Anyone
know if that was his real name?'

    'Doubtful
given that he turned up to meets in a mask.'

    'You
put the alias through HOLMES or PNC?'

    The
Home Office Large Major Enquiry System was a database used by UK police forces
to cross-check major crimes. The Police National Computer held details on every
vehicle registered in the UK, stolen goods, and anyone reported missing or with
a criminal record.

    'Nothing,'
Tasker said.

    'Nothing
flagged up?'

    'Nothing
for that alias.'

    I
thought of Jill. I knew the alias of the man who'd killed Frank now, but that
wasn't much more than she had already.

    'Sorry,
Raker—I know it's a whole lot of nothing.'

    'No,
Task, that's great. I appreciate your help.'

    'You
need anything else?'

    'Any
chance you could send me a copy of the file? I made a promise to someone that
I'd look into this and I just want to make sure I've ticked all the boxes.'

    'I've
got a golf competition in Surrey tomorrow morning. We tee off at 6 a.m. I'll
put the printouts through your letterbox on the way through.'

    'All right,
old man. I appreciate it.'

    I
killed the call and pocketed the phone. I felt sorry for Jill, but the dead end
suited me fine. Right now, Megan was my priority.

    Back
at the office, I slid in at my desk, started on my steak sandwich and went to Google
Maps. Within seconds, I had a top-down satellite view of Hark's Hill Woods. It
was a weird slab of land. A square mile of overgrown woodland right in the
middle of an incredibly dense swathe of city. North of the woods was a road
that looked new, leading to some kind of industrial estate on the north-western
corner. A quarter of a mile south was tightly packed housing, unfurling across
London all the way down to the curve of the Thames. And immediately surrounding
the woods, in the spaces around its edges, were the skeletons of old factories
— dyeworks, foundries, munitions plants — some standing but damaged, most
collapsed or in a serious state of disrepair. It was obvious that the whole
area, save for the redevelopment to the north and the homes to the south, had
been completely forgotten about since the end of the Second World War; and the
only constant was that the woods had grown bigger and the factories had
crumbled further.

    After
finishing the sandwich, I began filling in some of the background on the area.
Putting Hark's Hill Woods into Google got me 98,400 hits, most detailing the
Milton Sykes case. I moved through the results. On the third page, a hit
halfway down caught my eye. An encyclopedia of serial killers.

    I
clicked on it.

    Heading
to S, and then down to Sykes, I found a photograph of him, slightly blurred,
and a badly spelt description of what I'd already found: his upbringing, his
victims and his connection to the woods. Right at the bottom was what had
caught my attention in the two-line description on Google:
Sykes was
reported to have sometimes used the alias Grant A. James.
Grant A. James.
The letter sent to Megan from the London Conservation Trust had been from G. A.
James. And then I remembered the name in her Book of Life too. The name no one
had been able to shed any light on: A. J. Grant.

    I
leaned back in my chair.

    Staring
out at me from the computer monitor was a blurry photograph of Milton Sykes
and, sitting in the space in between, a succession of unanswered questions. I
drummed my fingers on the desk, trying to fit all the pieces together. The man
at Tiko's. The Grant alias. The email.

    The
map.

    
That's
why I'm telling you he buried those women in the woods. Because I went down
there, and that place… somethings seriously wrong with it.
Dooley's words
came back to me as I tabbed back to the satellite photograph of Hark's Hill
Woods. From the air it didn't look like much: just a square mile of land built
on rumour and folklore. But it had affected people, scared them, and then drawn
them into its heart.

    And,
six months before, one of them had been Megan Carver.

    It
was three by the time I found Derry Street — the nearest road to Hark's Hill Woods
on its southern side — and it was a truly miserable network of terraced houses.
Everything had a derelict, run-down feel to it, compounded by the fact that
there was absolutely no one around. No kids playing. No people talking on
doorsteps. Just a grey autumn still.

    As
the road began to rise, beyond the rooftops of the houses to my left, I could
see the empty factories I'd spotted in the satellite photos. They too were
deserted, but in a more obvious way: decaying brickwork, hollowed-out windows,
some entrances boarded up, some lying open in an invitation to drug addicts,
the homeless and teenagers on a dare. When the road dropped off again, the
factories disappeared, but - a quarter of a mile on - I spotted a small
alleyway where the terraced housing broke for the first time. A tattered sign
pointed along it. It was illegible, blistered by the sun and worn by rain. A
kid, about fifteen, was sitting on the steps of his house watching me. I parked
up, got out of the BMW and set the alarm. The kid continued to watch.

    I
looked at him. Afternoon.'

    He
didn't say anything. His eyes flicked from me to the alleyway, as if I was
about to do something stupid. I moved level with the entrance. It was paved
until about halfway along, then became a gravel path. Beyond that was a bed of
concrete, the half-demolished walls of an old factory still standing in places,
almost defiantly. Even from where I was, I could see the place was a mess.
Rubbish strewn everywhere, pushed into the corners where the walls still stood,
or just left on the ground in the open spaces between them. The smell of
bottles, wrappers, cans and bin bags came in on the wind.

    'You're
not going down there, are you?' the boy said.

    I
looked at him. Yeah. Looks nice.'

    For
the first time he smiled. 'It ain't nice.'

    'Oh,
I don't know.' I breathed in. 'It's mountain fresh up here. Not many places can
give you that delicate aroma of rubbish dump
and
public toilet.'

    He smiled
again. I nodded a goodbye to him, and started along the alleyway. As I passed,
he watched me, the smile gradually fading from his face. The Dead Tracks.'

    I
stopped. 'Sorry?'

    'That's
what they call it.' He looked from me, along the alleyway. 'The woods over the
back. That's what they call that place: the Dead Tracks.'

    On
the other side of the factory bed, the entrance to the woods loomed ahead of
me. It was completely overgrown. Nature had claimed back what was once its own,
covering everything, eating away at its surroundings like a virus. Either side
of the path, trees leaned in, forming a canopy. Further along, daylight stabbed
through whatever spaces it could find, hitting the floor in squares of watery
yellow light.

    I started
along the path.

    The
grass became more aggressive as the path started turning to mud, carving
through the earth, breaking the surface like hundreds of fingers. The deeper I
got, the less light there was. I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. In an hour
and a half, the day would start to fade. By six, it would be pitch black under
the trees.

    Ahead
of me, rain dripped from the leaves of a huge sycamore, hitting the mud like a
distant drumbeat. Then a little way down I spotted something on the path: a
train track, rusted by age, weeds crawling through its slats. It broke through
the grass on my left, fed across the path and then disappeared between the
trunks of two giant oak trees on the opposite side. It was part of the railway
Dooley had talked of; laid but never completed. I carried on, the canopy
breaking briefly above me.

    
Crack.

    I
stopped.

    
What
the hell was that
?

    Suddenly,
wind clawed its way out from the trees to my left, whipping across the path —
and the temperature seemed to drop right off. Goosebumps scattered up my arms,
down the centre of my back, and I felt a shiver pass through me like a wave.
But then, as quickly as it had arrived, the wind disappeared again.

    Swivelling,
I looked back down the path.

    'Hello?'

    The
route I'd followed had started to darken, as if lights had blacked out behind
me, one after the other. But nothing moved, and no sound came back, and after a
while I felt ridiculous.
You're standing in the middle of the woods talking
to the bloody trees. Get a grip on yourself

    I
turned and carried on. After a couple of minutes, the foliage started thinning
— and then a clearing appeared on my left. It was about thirty feet long,
running in a semicircle adjacent to the path. There were no trees, but it was
awash in knee-high grass. It looked momentarily beautiful compared to the
approach, and seemed like the first, and most obvious, place for the picnic
that Megan had been promised on the website.

    Then,
through the corner of my eye, movement.

    A
blur, where the trail continued on past the clearing. I stepped back on to the
path, and looked deeper into the woods. Everything was dark: the path itself,
the trees lining it.