Spider's Web (24 page)

His phone vibrated as a message came through. It was from Anna. He opened it. A photo of the sign to the visitor centre appeared. It had been sent at 11:21. Forty-six minutes ago. Another message arrived. A photo of the sign for the Major Oak sent fifteen minutes after the first. Anna was obviously pointing him in the direction of Emily. He tried phoning her. No answer. There seemed little point in continuing blindly along the path. Better to wait and see if Anna sent more photos. He hunkered down against a tree at the edge of the clearing. A couple of minutes passed. A third photo arrived. It was of a broken old oak tree. The edge of one of the visitor centre buildings was visible in the top left of the photo.

As Jim ran back along the path, more photos landed in his inbox. They showed a faint path leading through the trees. The broken tree wasn’t difficult to locate. He glanced inside its hollow trunk and studied the ground around it. There were no signs of footprints. But then the ground was dry and blanketed with dead leaves. About fifty metres from the tree he came across a clump of bracken with several flattened fronds. The position matched the angle from which the photo of the tree had been taken. His eyes continued roaming the ground and found what they were looking for – the faint path. He set off along it.

The deeper into the forest he got, the denser the undergrowth became. Several times it threatened to swallow the path, forcing him to pause until he spotted some point of reference from one of the photos. After about a quarter of an hour he came to a grassy track. At its nearest edge there were tyre marks in the soft turf. He frowned. Had Emily got into a vehicle with someone? If so, how had Anna followed them? He judged the main road to be somewhere away to his right. The tyre tracks led in the opposite direction, petering out after several metres. Yet another photo arrived on his phone. He wasn’t surprised to see an image of the track. It was blurry as though it had been taken whilst in motion. A dark line slanted across the top of it. Looking to his right, he picked out several trees that appeared in the photo. Had it been taken facing backwards in a vehicle? Maybe the line was the rim of a window.

It had been sent at 12:06. Jim swore through his teeth. He was still twenty-five minutes behind Anna. If she and Emily were in a vehicle, they could be miles away by now. In which case, there was no point him continuing the pursuit on foot. He turned to head back to the main road along the track. He’d only taken a couple of steps when his phone rang. It was Reece. He hesitated to answer the call. But the thought came to him,
What if something’s happened to Staci? What if she’s died?
After Margaret’s murder, Reece had been there for him day and night. If not for him, he might well have done something stupid like thrown himself off a cliff. He had to at least make sure his friend wasn’t on the verge of some similarly distraught act. He put the phone to his ear and, trying to keep the dread out of his voice, asked, ‘How’s things?’

‘I’m on my way home from East Midlands Airport,’ replied Reece. ‘Staci’s on a flight to Cape Town.’ The uneven breathing of someone struggling to hold it together filled the line. ‘I’m wondering if I’ll ever see her again.’

Jim wished he could reassure Reece that he would. But he knew it was better to say nothing at all than give empty reassurances. ‘Yeah, you must be. But listen, Reece, I can’t talk right now. I think I might be on to something big. I may even be close to finding Spider.’

‘No shit. Where are you?’

‘Sherwood Forest.’

‘I’m not far from there. I’m just coming up to junction twenty-eight on the M1. I can be at the forest in twenty-five minutes. Half an hour tops.’

‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’

‘Course I fucking am. Besides, what else am I going to do? Go home and cry into a mug of tea?’

A faint smile passed over Jim’s lips. If he had to tackle Gavin, it certainly wouldn’t do any harm to have the big man backing him up. ‘OK. Head to the visitor centre car park. I probably won’t be there. I’m trying to catch up with Anna. She’s tailing Emily Walsh.’

‘Who’s Emily Walsh?’

‘There’s no time to explain now. Call me when you get to the car park.’

Jim pocketed his phone and started jogging in the direction of the main road. The track arched gently away from where he was parked, but he wanted to be certain of where it met the road. As he ran, photos continued to come in. Assuming the perspective was skewed by Anna taking them facing backwards, one appeared to show a left turn in the track, another a right, then a second right, then a left. As before, a dark line cut off the upper portion of the photos. That decided Jim. Anna had either managed to sneak in, or been captured and forced into, the back of whatever vehicle Emily was in. As she seemed to have her hands free, the former struck him as more likely. She surely wouldn’t have been able to avoid discovery in a car. Perhaps the vehicle was a van of some sort. Creases gathered on his brow. Perhaps it was a van similar to the one that had been used to abduct Jessica Young.

Then came a photo of a padlocked farm gate. A padlock meant private land, and private land could mean a house. The photo had been sent at 12:21. Less than five minutes ago. Which meant Emily might have been taken to a house or some other property within roughly fifteen minutes’ drive of where he was standing. He dialled Anna again. This time she picked up! He opened his mouth to ask,
Where are you?
But before he could do so her voice came down the line in an intense whisper. ‘I’ve found
him
. I’m at the fucker’s house.’

By
him
Anna could only mean one person – Gavin! ‘Is Emily with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m on the forest track close to the main road. How far away are you?’

‘Maybe four or five—’ The line broke up briefly, then Anna’s voice came back through. ‘—you take a left, then, after about half a mile, a right, then a quick right…’

Again, Anna’s voice faded out of hearing. ‘Stay right where you are,’ said Jim. ‘Do not try to apprehend Gavin yourself. Do you hear?’

There was no reply. The line went dead. Jim quickened his pace, suppressing his rising excitement, reminding himself that a spider wasn’t caught until it was caught.

Emily’s step faltered as she neared the cottage’s front door. Her nose wrinkled at the two dead rabbits dangling against its garishly colourful surface. The sickly scent of rot they gave off suggested they’d been there for some time. As did the maggots infesting their grey-brown fur. ‘What are they there for?’ she asked, revulsion thickening her voice.

‘To keep away unwanted visitors,’ said Gavin, opening the door.

Emily glanced around herself. Unwanted visitors? She couldn’t imagine Gavin got any visitors at all. There wasn’t another house in sight. She followed him into a gloomy, low-ceilinged hallway with a stone-flagged floor, dirty-white walls and a flight of carpetless stairs. To her right was a closed door. At the far end of the hallway a table with what looked like a thick butcher’s chopping board on it was visible through an open door. A musky smell of incense hung in the air. Gavin locked the front door, then hung his jacket on a peg. Underneath it he was wearing a faded baggy black t-shirt tucked into the waistband of his camouflaged trousers. A long, wooden-handled knife was holstered on his waist. Noticing Emily looking at it, he patted the handle. ‘This is my skinning knife. I catch and kill all the meat I eat myself. When you eat an animal, you absorb some of its spirit too. If you only eat domestic meat, then you’ll be tame and domestic. If you only eat wild meat, you’ll become like the animals of the forest – wild and healthy, and most importantly, free.’

Gavin moved through the closed door into a narrow living room that ran the length of the house. Light filtered through small, dusty windows at either end of the room. To the left of the door was a threadbare sofa facing a stone fireplace heaped with the remnants of a fire. A scorched kettle hung above the ashes. The hearth was stacked high with chopped logs, some of which had toppled onto a goatskin rug. To one side of the fireplace were some rough home-made shelves piled with books. On the wall above it there was a carving of a bearded face with staring eyes, pointed ears and curving horns. The walls were littered with dozens of similar carvings. In some the man appeared to have leaves sprouting from his face. In others the face wasn’t that of a man at all, but looked more like a goat or a stag. One particular carving caught Emily’s eyes. It depicted a figure with cloven hooves and shaggy hairy legs attached to a muscular torso and horned head. The man – if that’s what it was – was sitting cross-legged and in his arms he held a naked, long-haired girl. The girl’s breasts were small. Her body and limbs were slender. She dangled limply in the man’s arms. The man looked not at the girl, but straight back at Emily. There was nothing lewd in his expression, just a kind of remorseless blankness.

‘The carvings are a hobby of mine,’ said Gavin. ‘Do you like them?’

No, they give me the creeps
, thought Emily. But she didn’t say it for fear of offending Gavin. Instead she gave a non-committal shrug.

‘You know who he is, don’t you?’ continued Gavin.

Recalling what he’d said at the hollow tree, Emily replied, ‘The Horned God.’

Gavin nodded. ‘He is the Lord of Nature. He gives us everything and all he asks in return is that we honour him.’ His voice sharpened with contempt. ‘Unlike the false gods of the Christians and Muslims, he does not ask us to kneel. He asks us to indulge in every pleasure we desire. For our bodies are his bodies. And so our pleasure is his pleasure.’

Emily shifted uneasily as the thought came to her,
What if your only pleasure is hurting others? What then?
Again, she couldn’t bring herself to speak her mind. Not because she was worried about offending Gavin this time, but because she was afraid what answer he would give. Besides, she hadn’t come here to talk about this shit. She’d come here to find out who she was. ‘Anna Young said something about our parents not being what they seem. What did she mean?’

Gavin stared at her, stroking his beard thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps it would be best if I begin by explaining why Dad stopped bringing you to the forest. Like you said, it wasn’t because you stopped wanting to come. It was because he thought it was too dangerous.’

‘Because of the McLeans?’

Gavin’s eyes grew heavy-lidded. He looked at Emily for another moment, as if savouring some thought. ‘No, not because of the McLeans. Because of—’

Breaking off, he reached into a trouser pocket and withdrew a vibrating phone. He put it to his ear, but said nothing. Deep furrows formed on his tanned forehead. Shoving the phone back into his pocket, he wheeled around to peer out the front window.

‘Who was that?’ Emily asked as Gavin bobbed his head as though trying to get a look at something.

‘Stay here,’ he retorted, turning to head for the door.

Emily followed him into the hallway. ‘What’s going on?’

Gavin hastened towards the rear of the house, pausing only to shoot her a backwards glance. His voice came in a growl of warning. ‘I said fucking well stay here!’

She flinched to a halt, the uncertainty that had been in her eyes since meeting Gavin tipping towards outright fear. His words of a moment earlier returned to her.
No, not because of the McLeans. Because of—
And suddenly she knew what he’d been about to say.
Because of me.
He was the reason their dad had stopped bringing her to the forest. He was the one who made it dangerous. What was he? she wondered. Some kind of pervert who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – control his urges? More to the point, did she really want to hang around and find out? Her gaze returned to the carving of the Horned God and the girl. It answered the question for her – no. Sure, she was desperate to find out the truth of who she was. But she wasn’t so desperate as to risk ending up like that.

She turned to the front door. Gavin hadn’t left the key in it. She would have to follow him out the back way. As she padded along the hallway, she wondered about the phone call. Had he gone outside to meet the caller? Another possibility occurred to her. Perhaps the call had been a warning of some kind. Maybe someone was at the house who shouldn’t be there. Anna Young’s face flashed into her mind. Had she somehow followed them?

She put a hand over her nose as she entered the kitchen. There was a strong animal smell. Rows of pheasants, wood pigeons and rabbits hung from ceiling beams. The chopping board was deeply scored with knife marks and stained rusty brown. A chair was pushed up to the table with a labelless bottle of some homebrew in front of it. There was a greasy cooker with a pan of watery brown liquid on its hob. In a chipped farmhouse sink next to the back door, there were several aluminium trays containing what looked suspiciously like the leftovers of a takeaway chicken curry. It appeared Gavin was something of a bullshitter.

The door was closed. Emily tried the handle. To her relief, the door creaked open. She poked her head outside. At the back of the house there was a small, windowless barn with a corrugated roof. Beyond the barn a long garden stretched towards a tall hedge. Someone had made an attempt to cultivate the garden. There were four rectangular earthen beds with rows of canes. But the beds were clogged with weeds and the surrounding grass was overgrown, except for a circular area around a sapling tree. A path had been cut through the grass to the tree, whose slender branches were decorated with dozens of fluttering coloured ribbons.

Gavin was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes searched vainly for a gate or a gap in the hedge. Unless he was in the barn, Gavin must have headed around the front of the house. She was going to have to go that way too. She cautiously peered around the corner of the house closest to the forest. Halfway along the side there was a gap in the hedge filled with coils of barbed wire. Maybe the coils could be pulled aside and she could slip away into the trees. As she started towards the wire, she spotted Gavin emerging from another gap in the hedge adjacent to the Land Rover. He was moving slowly like a predator poised to strike. She gave a sharp little intake of breath. In his right hand he was gripping the skinning knife.