Spider's Web (23 page)

‘Yes, I want to know the truth, but not about trees and all that stuff. I want to know about you and me.’

‘It’s all part of the same thing, Emily. It’s all one whole.’ Gavin braced his hands against the walls of the tree as though trying to hold them back. ‘The tree, the forest, you, me. You can’t know one thing without knowing the other.’

‘Are you some kind of druid?’

Gavin laughed and wrinkled his nose, as though the idea both amused and disgusted him. ‘Druids are a made-up concept. I’m a child of Cernunnos, the Horned God. And his only law is that there is no law. Can you imagine that, Emily? A world in which there’s no right, no wrong. Just the freedom to be and do anything you want. I can show you that world. I can—’ He broke off at the sound of voices outside and peered through the crack. Two women passed by, one of them pushing a pram. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘We’ve stayed here too long. Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere we can talk alone.’

‘We are alone.’

‘I mean properly alone. There are too many people around here. Too many eyes and ears.’

Gavin swiftly slid through the crack and headed into the trees. Emily followed more slowly. Did she want to be truly alone with him? She wasn’t sure she did. But what if she didn’t go with him? Would she ever get the answers she was so desperate for? He glanced back at her. His eyes flitted nervously beyond her. Then he continued on his way. She stared after him.
You’ve come this far
, she told herself.
There’s no point backing out now.
Taking a deep breath, she hurried to catch him up. And as she did so, his words went round in her head.
A world in which there’s no right, no wrong.
Part of her wondered what such a world would be like. Another part never wanted to find out.

Anna took a photo of the ‘Major Oak’ sign and sent it to Jim. She blinked as though her eyes were playing tricks on her. One second Emily had been standing by a tree. The next she was gone. Poof! Like magic. Her eyes scoured the surrounding trees. Nothing. What the hell was going on here? She resisted an urge to dart forward and try to find out. What if Emily suspected she was being followed? She might have dived into the bracken that carpeted the forest floor and be waiting to see if her suspicion proved true. Anna reminded herself too that someone else might be lying in wait, watching both for Emily and anyone following her.

She dropped to her knees and worked her way around to the right of the tree, keeping a distance of fifty or so metres between herself and it. She stopped moving when she saw the crack that allowed entrance to the tree’s hollow interior. Was Emily in there with Gavin? At that distance it was impossible to tell. Her mind returned once again to the tree in Leeds. An image came to her of Emily with a knife protruding from her chest. It was all she could do to stop herself from crawling close enough to get a look inside the tree.
Be patient
, she told herself.
If either of them is in there, you’ll find out soon enough.
She lay on her belly, peering between bracken fronds, her fingers curled around a thick dead branch. Several minutes edged by. More doubts crowded in on her. What if Emily had somehow managed to slip away with Gavin? The longer she lay there the less chance she had of catching them up. Her eyes were drawn to the path by movement, then darted back to the tree as a face appeared at the crack. For a second she had the crazy impression that she was seeing a living carving of the Horned God. She half expected a pair of curved horns to sprout into view. Then she saw past the illusion, saw the face that had haunted her for twenty years.

Her first instinct was to charge at Gavin and pummel his ugly bastard face with the branch. Just keep on pummelling and pummelling until it was nothing more than battered flesh and broken bone. But if she did that she would never find Jessica. Rigid with hatred, she watched Gavin slither into full view. Emily emerged behind him. As he slunk off into the undergrowth, she stared after him, her eyes not quite afraid, but wary, like a deer uncertain whether to give flight or stay. She decided upon the latter.

Anna’s hand tightened on the stick, and not only because Gavin was heading almost directly towards her. As Emily had started after Gavin, a sly smile had spread under his beard. Anna pressed herself as flat as possible, hardly breathing. Gavin was less than twenty metres away now, slightly off to her right. She placed her palm against the ground, ready if necessary to spring up swinging. She would have to get in a good first hit if she was to have any chance of overpowering Gavin. He wasn’t much taller than her, but his shoulders were twice as broad.

‘Do you live near here?’ asked Emily.

Gavin made no reply. He veered away from Anna’s hiding place, turning onto what looked like an animal path. Anna forced herself to wait until Gavin and Emily were a good couple of hundred metres away. She hurriedly pushed herself upright and took a photo of the hollow tree and the animal path, before pursuing them. The sun was out, casting lines of light and shadow across the forest floor. Anna kept to the shadows as much as possible, taking photos every few hundred metres and sending them to Jim like a trail of crumbs for him to follow. She was constantly on the verge of losing sight of Gavin and Emily, but she dared not draw any closer. Other than birdsong and the sighing of the wind amongst the leaves, the forest was silent, and every sound she made seemed abnormally amplified in her ears. Several times she dropped to her haunches or dodged behind a tree, fearing she’d done something to give herself away.

After maybe half a mile, they came to a broad grassy track. A battered blue Land Rover with a mouldy white roof was parked at the side of the track. A tarp-covered trailer was attached to the back of it. One edge of the tarp had come loose and billowed gently in the breeze, exposing cut logs. Anna made to take a photo, but Gavin glanced over his shoulder. She ducked down, heart hammering. He wasn’t looking at her though. He was looking at Emily. He said something inaudible, then climbed into the driver’s seat. Anna’s mind raced. She couldn’t follow a vehicle on foot. From the direction of the track, she guessed it branched off the road she was parked on. But by the time she could get back to the camper van and find the track again, Gavin and Emily would be long gone. What the fuck was she to do? Suddenly she knew. On her knees and elbows, she crept closer to the Land Rover. Emily was standing by the passenger door, as if uncertain whether she wanted to get in.

‘How far is it?’ Anna faintly heard her ask. She couldn’t make out Gavin’s reply, but Emily got into the vehicle. The engine growled into life. This was it. It was now or never. Anna darted forwards and dived under the tarp. Splinters of wood speared her palms. She barely noticed. Adrenalin filling her veins, the pungent scent of freshly cut wood filling her nostrils, she waited to find out if she’d been seen. The Land Rover accelerated along the track, heading deeper into the forest. Relief rushed through her. She’d got away with it! For now.

As the trailer rattled over the track, Anna poked her phone out from under the tarp and took more photos. For two or three miles the track cut straight as a ruled line into the heart of the forest. The trees changed from haphazard birch and oak to rigid rows of pines that let little light through their branches. The Land Rover turned left and descended gently for half a mile or so before making a right, then another right and a sharp left. Then it juddered to a halt, but the engine remained on. There was the sound of a gate scraping open. The Land Rover pulled forward a short distance. Through a tear in the tarp, Anna glimpsed Gavin closing and padlocking a wooden farm gate with a hand-painted ‘PRIVATE’ sign nailed to it. When Gavin returned to the car, Anna photographed the gate. After half a minute more, the vehicle stopped again and the engine was cut. The doors opened and closed. Anna craned her neck to try and get a glimpse of what was going on. But all she could see were the pointed tips of pines swaying against the cloudless sky.

Footsteps moved away from the Land Rover. Her straining ears caught what sounded like a key turning in a lock. There was the dull thud of a door being closed. She waited a minute or two to make sure her ears weren’t misleading her. Then, cautious as a rabbit leaving the safety of a burrow, she slid from beneath the tarp and ducked down behind the trailer. The Land Rover was parked at the end of a rutted track, its edges overgrown with brambles and nettles. Behind her and to her right, pines marched in two rows that formed a right angle at the gate. To her left was a grassy field, enclosed by barbed wire and thick hedgerows, and dotted with vehicles in various states of disrepair. There was another Land Rover, its axles resting on bricks, the guts of its engine scattered over the ground. And there were two vans – a newish-looking red Ford Escort, and an ancient Transit, so eaten up with rust that its white paintwork was barely visible. She felt a clutching sensation around her throat. Was it the same van Gavin had thrown Jessica into the back of?

The smell of woodsmoke tickled Anna’s nostrils. To the right of the Transit was a bare patch of scorched earth with a metal barrel-like structure about one and a half metres tall at its centre. Smoke seeped from the edges of a lid that sloped to a central point like a Chinese peasant’s hat. A charcoal kiln. That explained the trailer of logs. Beyond the Land Rover was a small, grey, two-storey cottage with a slate roof, grimy windows and a door that had been daubed with a crude rainbow of paint. A couple of rotten-looking dead rabbits were hanging from a hook on the door. Anna spotted some movement in a downstairs window. She jerked back behind the trailer as Gavin’s weathered face appeared at the glass. Shit! Had he seen her? Long moments passed. Nothing happened. She released a slow but shaky breath and considered her next move. Should she wait for back-up or should she move in closer to the spider’s lair?

14

‘I’ve just passed Calverton,’ Jim said loudly into his phone, then the line died again. Where had Anna said she was? All he’d been able to make out was,
I’m… Ed…
He tried calling her back, but got an answering service. He expelled a sharp breath of frustration. He knew the bus’s final destination was Ollerton, but he didn’t know the exact route it took to get there. Reluctantly, he pulled over and brought up the bus timetable on his phone. He was glad he’d done so when he saw that the bus took a minor detour through Edwinstowe and Sherwood Forest before arriving at Ollerton. It took the bus fifty-two minutes to get from Nottingham to Edwinstowe. Almost exactly the same amount of time had passed since Anna had first called him that morning. So that had to be where she was. His phone rang. He answered it quickly, expecting it to be Anna.

Garrett’s voice came over the line. ‘Good news, Jim. I managed to get hold of Sharon Walsh’s health records. She was diagnosed with endometriosis in 1996. She’s infertile. Emily can’t be her daughter.’

Instead of replying, Jim accelerated hard back into the road.

‘Hello? Are you there?’ asked Garrett.

‘Yes,’ Jim said flatly, concentrating on overtaking a car.

‘I thought you’d sound more pleased. This should be enough to get a warrant for DNA.’

‘I am pleased, but something’s going down here.’ Jim quickly filled Garrett in on the situation.

‘That sounds promising. Very promising. Do you want me to send over a helicopter?’

‘No. If Emily is meeting Gavin, that’ll only send him scurrying back to whatever hole he’s been hiding in. We need to keep a low profile.’

‘OK, but I’m going to contact the local police and put them on alert.’

‘You can’t do that. We can’t afford to risk Villiers getting wind of this.’

Garrett was silent a moment, then he said, ‘You’re playing a dangerous game, Jim.’

‘Yeah, well it’s the only game I’ve got left.’

Jim cut off the call and focused all his attention on the road. The bus took just under half an hour to travel from Farnsfield, which was a few miles north of him, to Edwinstowe. He figured he could cover the same ground in maybe two-thirds of the time. First the fields on his left, then those on his right gave way to trees. He passed through them into Edwinstowe. He scanned the quiet streets for Anna’s camper van. Beyond the village the trees closed in again. He spotted the van near the entrance to a car park. Spurred on by an ever-increasing sense of urgency, he pulled in behind it and jumped out of the car. Surely there was only one reason for Emily to get off the bus here – to meet someone away from prying eyes.

He peered into the van. As expected, it was empty. He ran across the car park to the bus shelter, his gaze scouring the trees. At the far side of the car park was a path. To the left it led back towards Edwinstowe. To the right it wound gently through the trees to the visitor centre. It didn’t seem likely that Emily would have headed back to the village. He followed the sign for the visitor centre. Moving more cautiously now, he checked out the café and exhibits. Anna and Emily were nowhere to be seen. Emily must have headed further into the forest, he reasoned. Assuming, of course, she’d come this way at all. He approached a man painting one of the buildings and flashed his ID. ‘Have you seen a girl pass by here? She’s fifteen years old, blonde, slim, about five three.’

‘No, sorry,’ replied the man.

Jim asked the same question in the café. ‘Yes, I think I’ve seen her,’ answered the woman behind the counter. ‘She poked her head in here about half an hour or so ago. She looked like she was looking for someone.’

‘Did you see where she went?’

The woman shook her head. Jim thanked her and returned outside. If Emily had stuck to the path, there were only two ways she could have gone – either back to the car park or towards the Major Oak. He headed for the Major Oak. Numerous smaller paths branched off the main one into the trees. After about ten minutes’ walk, the path broadened into a clearing with the Major Oak – a squat, fat tree, its broad-spreading branches supported by metal struts – at one side and a picnic area at the other. Two women were sitting at a table, one of them feeding a baby. Jim described Anna and Emily to them. They hadn’t seen either. He looked about himself uncertainly. Beyond the clearing the path looped back towards the visitor centre. It seemed more likely to him that Emily would have headed deeper into the forest.