Twenty minutes or so
after leaving the motorway, having been directed into a snarl of narrow lanes,
Harlan asked with a note of doubt and warning in his voice, “How much further?”
“Shh,” hissed Jones,
looking intently at the passing landscape. “Let me concentrate.” He pointed at
a humpbacked stone bridge that crossed a stream. “I remember that. It’s not far
now.”
The moon was hidden
from sight as they passed into a mixed wood of towering deciduous trees and
pine plantations. “There!” said Jones, pointing at a wooden gate with a sign on
it that read ‘PRIVATE NO PUBIC RIGHT OF WAY’.
“Are you sure this is
it?” asked Harlan.
“Yes. I remember
laughing because some joker had scratched out the L in public.” Jones didn’t
smile at the joke now.
As Harlan turned off
the road, the car’s headlights illuminated a narrow wheel-rutted track cutting
between uniform ranks of pine trees. He got out of the car and approached the
gate. It was secured with a chain and padlock, but the frame was so soft with
rot that he was able to loosen a nail and unhook the chain. He drove through
the gate, then closed it, returned the chain to its place and pushed the nail
back in with his thumb – if anyone else came to the gate that night, he didn’t
want to give them a hint someone had been through it.
“How far to the
caravan?” asked Harlan.
Jones shrugged. “About
a mile, I think.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, I think, I think.
What do you expect? Like I told you, I haven’t been here for donkey’s years.”
Harlan leaned in close
to Jones, eyes glinting like steel beads. “Well you need to do better than just
think. You need to be certain. If this friend of yours, the Prophet is–”
“He’s not my friend,”
Jones was quick to point out. “He’s just someone I bought some stuff off.”
“Whatever. If he’s
already at the caravan, I don’t exactly want to announce our arrival.”
“Okay, okay. Just give me
a moment.” Jones closed his eyes, forehead wrinkling as he dredged through his
memories. “These pine trees go on for a couple of hundred yards, then…then the
road goes down into a dip where it crosses a stream. That’s where the pines
stop and the oaks and beeches start. From there it’s about two or three hundred
yards to a clearing set off to the right of the road. That’s where the caravan
is.”
Harlan drove slowly
along the track. Like Jones had said, after a short distance it descended into
a valley with a shallow, boggy stream at its bottom. The car rocked from side
to side as it wallowed through the mud and climbed the stream’s far bank. The
trees closed in thickly on either side, their branches brushing the car, almost
blotting out the sky. Harlan had a sense that he was entering somewhere cut off
from the rest of the world. He’d used to love such isolated places before
becoming a copper. But the longer he’d been in the job, the more their silence
and secrecy made him uneasy. Where another person saw a romantic spot to spend
a night or two, he saw somewhere where someone could commit murder and hide a
body without fear of being seen or heard. He switched off the headlights and
crawled along for another hundred yards or so, watching for a gap in the trees
where he could pull off the track. There wasn’t one. He stopped the car. He
didn’t like leaving it in full view, but he couldn’t risk continuing any
further until he’d checked the caravan out. He popped the boot and turned to
Jones.
“No, please, please don’t
make me go back in there,” begged Jones. “I’m not gonna try to get away. I
mean, come on, where would I go out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Harlan got out of the
car and made his way around to Jones, who recoiled from him, shaking his head
frantically. He took out his knife and brought the blade close to Jones’s face.
Jones stopped struggling. Dragging in a quivering breath, he stood out of the
car and shuffled to the boot. He lay limp and resigned as Harlan wrapped more
tape around his ankles and mouth. Harlan retrieved the torch from the backseat,
before heading along the track. He covered the lens with his fingers, letting
out just enough light to illuminate his way. Again, Jones’s memory proved
reliable – after maybe two hundred yards, the wall of trees gave way on the
right to an overgrown grassy clearing. The caravan, a tiny oval tourer, its
roof livid with mould, was set to the back of the clearing. No lights showed in
its windows. There was no car outside it, but the grass was flattened in places
as though one had been there recently. To its right was a roughly built
shelter, a beard of vines dangling from its tarpaulin roof.
Resisting the urge to
investigate further, Harlan made his way back to the car. He drove past the
clearing, stopping out of sight of it around a bend. Thinking about ringing
Jim, he checked his phone. It had no signal. There’d be no calling for backup
out here.
Harlan returned for a
closer look at the caravan and shelter. Rusty petrol drums and gas canisters
were stacked beneath the sagging tarp. There was also an old petrol powered
generator from which wires ran to a battery beneath the caravan. A spade and
pickaxe leant against the generator. Harlan’s eyebrows drew together as he
stooped to inspect the spade. Its flat blade was caked with damp earth, as
though it’d recently been used. Behind the shelter a faint trail was visible in
the long grass. Harlan followed it to the tree-line. Beyond that the trail
disappeared into a mulchy mass of fallen leaves. He approached the caravan and
tried its door. Locked. He turned his attention to the nearest window. The
rubber seal was rotted and cracked. With a punch of his palm, he jammed the
blade of his screwdriver through it. A quick jerk dislodged the latch. He
opened the window, pulled aside a mildewy curtain and shone his torch into the
caravan.
At first glance, the
place looked abandoned – the floor was strewn with soggy newspaper, apparently
put down to soak up the multiple leaks in the roof; the walls were studded with
mould; several of the cupboards stood open and bare; pile of pots and pans
festered in a pool of grease-filmed water in the sink. A closer look, however,
revealed signs that someone had been there recently – a rolled up sleeping-bag
and pillow wrapped in clear plastic to keep the damp out were stowed on a
built-in sofa; a plate still glistening with baked-bean juice and a glass
half-full of milk stood on a fold-up table.
Harlan hauled himself
through the window, wincing as he sent several plates crashing to the floor. He
closed the window and drew the curtain back across it, before continuing his
exploration. He tried a light switch. Nothing happened. He sniffed the milk. It
was sour but not curdled. Perhaps a week old, he reckoned, maybe less. He
opened the cupboards. In one there were several litres of bottled water, a jar
of instant coffee and a box of matches. In another there were tins of baked
beans and soup and half a pack of stale biscuits. In a third there was a coil
of rope that could’ve been used for tying people up or hanging clothes out to
dry. There was no sign of the photos and videos Jones had spoken about. A
partially dismantled television sat on a shelf in an alcove, but there was no
video-player. There were two doors other than the entrance. Harlan opened one
and reflexively clapped his hand over his nose. The door led to tiny toilet
cubicle. The toilet was full almost to the brim with rust-coloured, stinking
water. He thought about the spade, reflecting that whoever had been staying
here had probably used it to dig a toilet in the woods. The second door opened
into a cupboard that contained a dustpan and brush, a couple of toilet rolls
and some empty clothes-hangers.
Harlan frowned as a
thought crossed his mind. Had Jones been feeding him a line of bullshit about
coming here with the Prophet? Did the Prophet even exist? Maybe Jones had made
him up to buy himself some time? Maybe this was just some place where Jones had
stayed before. Harlan shook his head. The fear in Jones’s face and voice hadn’t
lied. Still, he was relieved he hadn’t had the chance to phone Jim. At least,
if it came to it, he could question Jones further. A shudder passed through him
as a voice piped up in his mind,
what if you lose control
?
What if
this time you can’t stop yourself from killing him
? He shoved the voice
away. The ‘what ifs’ were irrelevant. What had to be done, had to be done. It
was as simple as that. His pulse jumped at a sound from outside – the whine of
an engine grinding its way along in low gear.
Snapping off his torch,
Harlan peered between the curtains. The approaching vehicle’s headlights danced
crazily as it negotiated the rutted track. He was about to climb out the window
and dash into the woods, but there was no time. The vehicle was already swaying
into view. As its twin beams fell on the caravan he squinted, struggling to
make out what kind of vehicle it was. It wasn’t a transit van, that much was
obvious. But it was much bigger than a normal car. Some kind of four-wheel
drive, maybe. The vehicle pulled up outside the caravan. Its engine fell silent
and the driver’s side door opened. A figure got out and walked in front of the
still blazing headlights. Before he scurried into the toilet, Harlan caught a
glimpse of a masculine physique – stocky, but close enough in build to the man
Kane had described to plausibly be him – beneath a thick head of long black
hair. He covered his nose with one hand as the stench hit him again, the other
felt for the knife in his pocket. As a key clicked in a lock and the front door
squeaked open, he raised the knife, ready, if necessary, to slash whoever was
coming.
The floor trembled
slightly as footsteps advanced into the kitchen area. There was a pause. A
sniff, as if the footsteps’ owner had caught a whiff of an unfamiliar scent.
Followed by a sound of clinking crockery, which Harlan guessed was the plates
being picked up from the floor and returned to the sink. His muscles tensed for
action. A few seconds passed. The footsteps moved towards the far end of the
caravan. There was a tearing sound of Velcro being peeled apart. A low grunt as
something heavy was lifted. Then the footsteps came back to the front door and
went out. The door was left open. A moment later the footsteps returned.
Another grunt as something else was carried outside. A minute crawled by and
still the door remained open. A faint whiff of smoke – not wood smoke, but an
acrid smell of burning petrol and plastic – cut through the toilet’s fumes.
Harlan’s ears caught the crackle of flames.
The photos and videos
, he
thought.
They were here and the fucker’s burning them
.
He’s burning
the evidence
.
Harlan resisted an urge
to rush outside and restrain the Prophet. Assuming that was really who it was,
there was a lot more at stake than the loss of physical evidence. The questions
uppermost in his mind were: where did that trail in the grass lead? What did
the woods conceal? He could perhaps find out by questioning the Prophet like
he’d questioned Jones. But he was reluctant to do so whilst there was a chance
that the Prophet might unwittingly lead him to the answers he sought. At the
same time, whether or not the front door was open, he couldn’t risk remaining
in the toilet. If the Prophet suddenly jumped in his car and drove off, Harlan
would lose him. Similarly, if the Prophet headed off into the woods, Harlan had
to be ready to follow him the instant he made a move.
Harlan opened the door
a crack and peered out. The headlights of the vehicle, which he could see now
was a mud-spattered green Landrover, had been switched off. The glow of a fire
away to its right was reflected in its windscreen. Harlan closed the toilet
door behind himself, and hunkering low, moved to the opposite end of the
caravan. The sofa’s cushions had been removed, exposing a hollow, now empty
interior. Harlan parted the curtains a finger’s breadth. The Prophet, with his
sleeves pushed up, was prodding at the fire with the spade, his eyes as black
as the hair on his forearms in its flickering light. He was wearing
loose-fitting jeans and a green bomber jacket that fitted tightly around his
bull-neck. He had no beard, but there was a heavy stubble on his jaw. His
shoulder-length hair framed an angular face pitted with what looked like acne
scars. Harlan estimated him to be mid-thirties. Forty at the most. As the
Prophet watched the fire eat away at two cardboard boxes, his jaw twitched like
Harlan’s pulse, and his face twisted in a grimace of rage. He flung the spade
away suddenly, shouting, “Fuck!” He lowered his head, rubbing roughly at his eyes.
Then, his shoulders rising and falling with a deep breath, he retrieved the
spade and continued his prodding. When the boxes and their contents, which
Harlan couldn’t make out from where he was, had burnt down to glowing embers,
the Prophet approached the caravan again.
Harlan crouched down,
flattening himself against the wall between the end of the kitchen unit and the
sofa. Dry mouthed but calm enough to hold himself as still as a beast of prey,
he listened to the Prophet climb the little flight of metal steps outside the
caravan. The door slammed shut, shaking the flimsy structure. The lock clicked
back into place. Harlan lifted his head above the window sill in time to see
the Prophet striding towards the woods, torch in hand, the spade resting on his
shoulder. He waited until the Prophet was under the trees, before opening the
window and clambering out. He couldn’t see the Prophet anymore, but the beam of
his torch was visible. As quickly and quietly as possible, he pursued it. It
was dark as the bottom of a well under the dense canopy of oak and beech.
Branches snagged his clothes and scratched his face, his feet stubbed against
roots, but he didn’t slow his pace until he was as close as he dared get to the
Prophet.