I took it out. It was Craw’s number.
‘David Raker.’
Interference. The line drifted.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Craw.’
I could barely even hear her, and when I took the phone away from my ear I could see I only had a single bar. I moved back along the trail. ‘Can you hear me now?’
‘Just about. Where are you?’
‘Out and about. The reception’s bad here.’
‘I need … you … thing …’
‘I missed that. What?’
And then the line cut out. I stopped and looked down at the display again. Still only one bar, and now the wind was picking up. I glanced around me, trying to find a sheltered spot, but then the phone started to vibrate in my hands for a second time.
‘Craw?’
The wind whipped past me, disguising any sort of reply, so I stepped into the doorway of one of the tombs, set back from the trail and protected under the overhang of a roof. The wind died down a little, replaced by birdsong and a faint drip.
‘Can you hear me now?’ I asked.
‘Where the hell are you?’
‘Right on top of a hill.’
‘Have you got five minutes?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
I looked back along the trail, to the edges of The Rest, and then the other way, to the entrance. In between, everything was suddenly still. No wind. No movement.
‘Pell’s made a run for it,’ she said.
‘From the hospital?’
‘Yeah. Got up in the middle of the night and disappeared. They didn’t discover he was gone until this morning, which means he left between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m.’
‘Didn’t you have someone watching his room?’
‘Pell knocked him out, dragged him back into his room and switched clothes, then dumped the officer in the bed. After that, he just walked right out.’
‘And no one saw him?’
‘He waited until the nurses were doing their rounds.’
‘He must know he’s in deep shit.’
‘I’ve got teams out looking for him. He’s got bruising all over his face, so it’s not like he’s going to be difficult to identify.’ A pause. ‘But there’s a couple of things.’
‘What?’
‘Smart’s autopsy is this afternoon, so I guess we’ll find out more then. But his medical records list him as forty-one years of age, about fifteen stone, and somewhere around six-two, six-three. That sound about right to you?’
‘Yeah. He was tall. Pretty well built.’
‘That’s how he was able to control them.’
‘Right.’ I sensed something was troubling her. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘It’s … impossible … Pell …’
I frowned. ‘What about Pell?’
The line started drifting again.
‘Craw?’
‘… hear me?’
‘You’re starting to go again.’
‘Thing … completely … height …’
‘What? Can you repeat that?’
‘… height.’
‘What about his height?’
Then the line died. I tried instantly to return the call, but this time it failed to even connect. I dropped it into my pocket and stepped away from the tomb.
A blur of movement immediately to my right.
And then a short, sharp pain in my neck.
80
I opened my eyes. I was on my back, a canopy of leaves and branches above me. When I turned my head to the right, I could see the trail – maybe forty feet away, maybe more – and the tomb I’d been standing in front of. I felt my eyes start to roll, as if I were being pulled back into sleep, and when I fought against it, my head started to swim, and above me the greens of the foliage mixed with the blue of the sky and I felt a spike of nausea.
I closed my eyes again.
Images and sounds filled my head.
The entranceway through a tunnel of leaves to my left … the sound of birds in the trees and a faint wind, cool against my face and hands … my hands … my hands being pulled across the forest floor … my whole body being pulled … being dragged off into the woods by my feet, blocks of sun cutting through the canopy above me … he’s going to kill me … hesgoingtokillme … hesgoingtokillme …
I ripped myself from the darkness.
Blinked.
Once. Twice.
Then I forced my upper body into action, moving left, back towards the trail, my legs barely even moving, crawling through the mud and the fallen leaves. I made it about two feet before I was exhausted. Turned over. Collapsed on to my back.
And that was when I saw him.
He was sitting with his back to me about ten feet to my right, perched on a fallen tree trunk. Black anorak. Hood up. He was looking through a break in the trees, down the slope to the car park about fifty feet below. I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see anything of him except his hands, but as I looked across at him an image flashed in my head of the dream I’d had three nights before: a man in a coat, hood up, nothing but darkness inside.
Standing at the door to my bedroom.
Coming for me.
My body shivered, as if the ghosts of that dream were passing through me, and my eyes drifted to the tree trunk he was on: next to him was a hunting knife. Eight inches long, four-inch blade, charcoal-grey grip. His hand was flat to the grip, almost hovering over it, like he was threatening to pick it up. I noticed some cuts on his hand; blood dotted along the fold of skin between his thumb and forefinger.
Suddenly, my phone started ringing. I watched him shift, looking off towards the trail and the tombs around it. The tip of his nose came into view, but nothing else. I followed the sound myself, trying to see where it was, and then I spotted it – in the middle of the trail – just a black dot from this distance. It vibrated across the scorched, flattened grass. Four rings. Five rings. Then it stopped. I wondered who it could have been. Healy. Craw.
Liz.
The man turned back to face the trees in front of him. From where I was lying, the cars were just about visible in the car park below. Two. Maybe a third, although it could easily have been an edge of a building. One of the cars I could see was mine. That meant, in the whole cemetery, there was a maximum of two other people. I didn’t know if one of the cars was his but, either way, I couldn’t rely on anybody coming past and finding me.
The cemetery was massive, the number of people here minuscule.
It was why he wasn’t bothered about my phone.
‘Duncan?’ I said, trying to make the natural connections between events. Pell was on the run. It had to be him. ‘Duncan?’ I said again, and this time he jolted, reacting to the sound of my voice. His hand, still hovering over the knife, lowered on to it, around the grip. Then his fist closed around the handle, and all I could see was his hand and the blade coming out of it.
I tried to pull myself to my feet, using the nearest tree, but my legs buckled under me, giving way like there was no bone, no muscle, nothing inside them. They were like liquid. Whatever he’d injected me with hadn’t paralysed me, but it had slowed me down. I could feel it working its way out of me, feel my system fighting back all the time, but when I finally had the strength to walk out of here, it was going to be too late. He was already moving off the tree trunk and coming towards me.
Get the hell out of here.
I dug my fingers into the cracks in the earth, the palm of my hands cutting on thorns, skin brushing nettles, and tried to drag myself forward. Behind me I could hear his feet on the forest floor, branches cracking, dried leaves crunching, as he came around the tree trunk towards me. I got another three feet when a boot slammed against the ground to my right and he grabbed a handful of hair at the back of my head. I heard him grunt, felt his hand brush the skin at the nape of my neck, and then he forced his knee into the centre of my spine. It was like being in a vice. I couldn’t move. I looked out to the trail, left, right, praying someone was coming. But there was no one. We were alone. Even if I shouted out, forced up every sound I had, it would only be a second before he put a hand to my mouth.