Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(36)

He stopped the car, switched off the headlights, and immediately felt safer when he was swallowed by the darkness. The storm was right above him as he ran to open the gate, head down, glad of the thick waxed jacket and heavy boots he was wearing. The trees were creaking and keening in the wind, dark shadows high above his head. When he looked up, a flash of lightning lit up the skyline, and he saw that the row of large oak trees lining the road were bending far over in the wind.

He hurried to the car and drove through the gate, getting back out to close it.

The gate led to a piece of moorland popular with walkers. On a clear day, it stretched out for miles, dotted with trees whose branches towered and stretched out over the moor. An ancient Roman road ran straight through the middle. Its original stones had long ago been covered by moss and grass, but the road was built to last, and with the regular footfall from walkers, the grass, worn away in patches, revealed the shiny white granite flagstones.

Tom had explored this location before, and he’d planned to use the Roman road to drive deep into the moor without fear of the car getting stuck in the soft earth or sinking into the boggy marsh.

He put the car in a low gear and started across the grass toward the beginning of the road. Lightning forked across the black sky. Deep, rolling rumbles of thunder added to the symphony of the storm, and rain hammered relentlessly on the roof of the car with a low roar.

He usually felt safe on the moor, but as the storm raged around him, Tom felt scared for the first time.

As he passed under the canopy of a large tree, its branches bent and swayed, as if it were reaching out for him. The car stopped bouncing and lurching, and he felt the grass smooth out and firm up at the beginning of the Roman road.

There was a groaning, cracking sound up ahead, and the lightning lit up a huge hornbeam tree, which must have been several hundred years old. Its trunk was more than three meters wide, and its vast canopy of branches extended out over the road. It seemed to bend and rise up, and then the giant tree toppled toward the car. Tom hit the brakes, put the car in reverse, and had just pulled back when the tree fell across the road with a crash and a loud ripping sound, pulling up a wide circle of the earth with it.

Tom felt the impact of the tree falling, and the trunk blocked his view through the windscreen. He sat for a moment, shaking, and then opened the car door.

He could smell fresh soil mingling with the rain. The fallen trunk was like a tall wall, blocking his path. The tree must have stood at fifty meters tall. It lay across the road and seemed to stretch far out across the moorland into the shadows. The colossal ball of roots at its base seemed to reach up as high as a three-story house.

Tom found his mobile phone in one of the pockets of his jacket and, using the dim light from the screen saver, walked through the pelting rain to the huge muddy hole where the tree had been. It was deep, rapidly filling with rainwater, and the runoff from the edges was taking the loose earth with it.

Tom had planned to drive deep into the moor to dump Hayden’s body, but with the Roman road now blocked with the tree, he didn’t want to risk driving off into the soft moorland where the car could get stuck.

Tom looked up at the sky as the lightning flashed again. Steam was rising from the exposed roots, and the fallen tree creaked and groaned as if it were in the last throes of death, ripped from the soil and unable to breathe. He always believed that a higher power had brought him this far, had allowed him to do what he did. Had this higher power given him the perfect place to hide the body?

Tom looked down into the depths of the hole, where the soil and rainwater were pouring in. He went to the back of the car and lifted out Hayden’s body. He cradled it in his arms and stood as close to the edge of the hole as felt safe, and then, like an offering to his helpful god, he tossed the body down into the depths. The noise of the storm was still loud, and he didn’t hear Hayden’s body hit, but a flash of lightning lit up the hole, and he saw the body was already half-submerged in the mud and filthy water.

Tom stepped back and looked up at the sky, enjoying the feeling of the cold rain on his face. Lightning flashed again, and he knew he wasn’t looking up at God. He was God.





20


“Did you hear the storm last night?” asked Jake.

“No,” said Kate. It was early the next morning, and she still felt bleary. They were walking down the cliff to the beach for a swim.

“It was like, raging. Thunder, lightning.”

“I must have slept through for a change,” she said. The sun was glinting golden off a bank of low clouds and scattering diamonds across the still water. Kate could see a tide line of rubbish on the beach thrown up by the storm. She was usually a light sleeper, so it was a refreshing change to feel rested.

Jake waded into the rolling surf and dove headfirst under a breaking wave. Kate waited for the next wave to break and dove in after him. The water enveloped her, and she kicked out lithely, moving through the growing swells, feeling her heart pumping and the zing on her skin from the salt water. The six-inch scar on her stomach tingled in the cold water, as it always did. It was an ever-present reminder of the night she’d learned that Peter Conway was the Nine Elms Cannibal and confronted him. She’d been unaware that she was pregnant with Jake at the time, and Peter’s sharp blade had missed him by millimeters. But having Jake here with her, now a grown man, swimming out strongly beside her, made her feel that there was good in the world.