The Listeners

by Anthony J. Quinn

  He grunted again, but this time she heard the fear in his throat. Something, she did not know what, had made him afraid. Then she sensed it, too. The coldness in her body was beginning to rise. From the far end of the chamber came the trickling sound of water flowing. In a flash, she realised the diabolical fate that awaited her and Morton. She twisted her legs, squirmed her waist, smacked her head off a wall, rapped her shins against Morton’s body, and clawed with her bound hands at the sides of the cavity. Morton’s body thrashed against hers, too, neither of them willing to occupy this watery grave. The investigation had turned into this final struggle of their bodies for air, the story of two detectives outwitted by a murderer, but unwilling to yield to death. The sound of the water rose, echoing cavernously, rushing and splashing against their twisting bodies.

  Amid the frenzy, the rough coughing of their breaths, something passed between them. She heard a deep sigh from Morton, a final anguish, and then a slackening as his body relaxed and grew limp. She sensed his efforts change direction, his body pushing itself under, diving towards oblivion. She gasped for air. If he succumbed first, would that somehow give her leverage, enough to push herself out of the grave?

  She could not let go. She had two children and needed to live. She was part of something bigger than just herself, a family, that might be part of something even bigger, a grand plan in life that was difficult to discern at the best of times, but she knew her role in it, and that was to care for the ones smaller and more vulnerable than herself. She wanted to hold out for as long as she could. She focused all her thoughts on lifting her head out of the water, feeling Morton’s body hunch up below her, pushing her upwards. His body felt rock solid, and its intention was clear. Words were unnecessary. He had understood the grand plan and knew that she was meant to live. She thought she was witnessing his final breaths, that he was going to die beside her in the darkness.

  The water rose around her mouth and nose, and she struggled more wildly, choking and spluttering as she tried to lift her head higher. She swallowed more water and hacked as her throat and nostrils stung. Almost her entire body was submerged now. She could feel the water streaming up to her eyes. She was frantic for air. She gulped and retched but was unable to fill her lungs any longer.

  35

  From somewhere beyond, Carla heard the click and creak of a door opening, and the pad of hurried footsteps. She shouted through the gag and choking water, but her efforts drew no response. There was a rush of air above her, the sense of the confinement lifting, and then a weightlessness overcame her. Suddenly she was breathing again, her mouth and nostrils spluttering water.

  A voice spoke with the calm authority of the emergency services, giving orders, which were obeyed by a set of invisible hands that pulled her out of the water. Shadowy figures helped her to her feet and up a narrow set of stone steps. She could not control her shivering, and the exhaustion left her bowed over, as though she had just completed a long painful journey to arrive at this spot. She mumbled her grateful thanks and urged them to help Morton, as they untied the ropes and removed the blindfold and gag.

  ‘Here, Carla, take this.’

  She inclined her head, hearing a familiar female voice. Someone wrapped a coat around her shoulders. Her vision had not fully returned. She felt detached and disorientated. Water gleamed everywhere as she blinked at the churning vision of her rescue party. A small thickset woman floated into view, as light as a bubble against the darkness of the forest. That voice and that domineering shape with its low centre of gravity. It could not be. Somehow, it must be an illusion, she told herself. She pulled the coat around her shoulders. It was identical to one she had seen before, in her own home. She peered into the murk again.

  The coldness of the water and her near drowning had jarred her body, and her mind was numb. She hunkered down, pulling the coat more tightly around her, willing her thoughts to settle, content to let the emergency services do their job and look after her and Morton. But the sight of the familiar collar of the coat brought her out of her trance again.

  ‘Lucky you found us,’ she said to the ambulance crew. ‘Did Constable Shaw raise the alarm?’

  The men and women kept moving, helping Morton onto a stretcher, the detective moving slowly, all his vigour drained. She wanted an answer but none was forthcoming. Someone offered her a cup of tea from a flask, steam swirling in her face. Morton stirred and moaned on the stretcher.

  ‘How did you know to come here?’ she asked again. ‘Did Shaw send you?’

  The shapes busied themselves, urgent but indifferent to her enquiry.

  However, her question was important, and the scene did not make complete sense to her. The thickset woman appeared again. She was not part of the rescue team. She was just watching. Carla stared back at her. The woman drew closer, brushed Carla’s face with her hand, helped fix the coat around her shoulders. Carla resisted like a child.

  ‘Say something,’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s only me, hen,’ said the woman.

  ‘Only you?’

  It was her mother-in-law’s voice that spoke back to her, talking hesitantly, with maximum caution. ‘Poor Carla. I followed you in the car after you said goodbye to David. I came here and tried to find you in the darkness. When I heard you scream I knew something bad had happened. When Constable Shaw turned up I was able to show him to the cellar door.’

  Carla stared at her, startled that of all the people she knew, her mother-in-law was the one who had helped save her and Morton’s lives.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I wanted to know what you were up to. You looked so distracted and flushed. I thought you were having an affair. I could see that you were obsessed by some secret, and I thought what else could it be but a man.’

  Carla gave an incredulous laugh that was more of a gasp. She never thought her mother-in-law could be so suspicious and calculating. Critical, perhaps, of her dedication to her work, but not so suspicious that she was prepared to follow her for several hours through the night. A mother-in-law’s distrust, that was the reason she was still alive and not a floating corpse in that godforsaken cellar. However, in the circumstances, it was difficult not to feel overwhelmed by gratitude to the woman.

  Carla tensed as Mrs Herron made to rub her shoulders. ‘I’m fine, Bernadette. I can take care of myself. You should go home now.’

  ‘If it’s OK, I’d rather stay.’

  ‘No, this is a crime scene. If you like, one of the police officers will travel home with you.’

  ‘OK,’ replied Mrs Herron and turned to leave.

  ‘Just a second.’

  Her mother-in-law stopped.

  ‘What exactly did you see in the forest?’

  Mrs Herron furrowed her brow. ‘I saw a man pulling you and your colleague along the ground. He was dressed in black with a hood. I think I saw another figure. Someone stepping out of sight, and hurrying down to the loch shore.’

  The running figure had to be Llewyn, thought Carla. And the man who had hit her and pulled her body into the cellar? It must have been Chisholm.

  ‘I was wrong, Carla,’ said Mrs Herron. ‘I didn’t realise this was what you were doing. I couldn’t get a picture in my head of you as a committed detective. But I have now.’

  Carla met her gaze. She tried to smile but it felt uncomfortable. She was aware of a flow of sympathy from her mother-in-law, and found it difficult to cope with. All she wanted to do was close the investigation, not wallow in sentimentality.

  She remained at the scene for several hours until the police and the forensic team arrived. She was sitting in Morton’s car with a blanket around her shoulders, when someone brought her a fresh cup of tea. It was Bates.

  ‘We have a lot of questions we need to ask you,’ he said. ‘But we understand you may not be able to answer all of them. Morton is recovering in hospital. I’ve spoken to him, but he is unable or unwilling to say anything.’

  She nodded, and said she would try her best.r />
  ‘First and foremost, was it just you and Morton who came here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one else knew where you were going?’

  ‘No one.’

  He gave her a look that suggested he was not sure if he could believe her.

  ‘No one,’ she repeated. ‘When we got permission from you, we left immediately. Not even you knew where we were headed. No one else was involved. Shaw rang when Morton disappeared, and I told him to get help.’

  ‘What about your mother-in-law? How did she get here?’

  ‘On the way, we stopped at my house. My mother-in-law decided to follow us for reasons only she can explain.’

  ‘Did you speak to her or your husband about what you were doing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Llewyn’s suitcase and clothes are in the log cabin, but he’s disappeared again. Looks like he decided to do a runner rather than face the music.’

  ‘And what about Reichmann?’

  ‘No sign of him, either.’ Bates grimaced and looked over at the cabin. ‘What the hell was Llewyn doing here? Is he behind what’s lying up at that cairn of stones? We haven’t identified the victim yet, but it appears to be Laura Dunnock.’

  ‘Before I was knocked out, Llewyn said he was able to direct Chisholm and make him believe that he had acted out his fantasies. I was about to arrest him.’

  ‘What drove him to do such a thing?’

  ‘He was afraid of his reputation, his life work, being ruined.’

  Bates grew silent, while the network of suspicions reformed in his head.

  ‘Maybe you were right all along,’ he said, staring at her attentively. ‘I thought we were after a madman, not the psychotherapist meant to be looking after him.’

  Bates’s manner suggested he was keen to close the case. He searched Carla’s face as though urging her to provide the conclusive clues that would solve the murders but none were forthcoming. All Carla could think of were the figures of Chisholm and Llewyn, a psychotherapist and his patient running through the forest.

  Shaw appeared. ‘Morton is feeling much better,’ he said. ‘He’s fully conscious right now, but the doctors need to keep him under observation. They say he has a severe concussion.’

  Carla felt a wave of relief and thanked Shaw for helping to rescue them.

  ‘He asked to speak to you, Carla. He wants to know if you picked up his knife.’

  ‘His knife?’ asked Bates. ‘What the hell was he doing with a knife?’

  ‘He said it was missing. He thinks he lost it after he was knocked out.’

  ‘I haven’t seen it anywhere,’ said Carla.

  Bates checked with the other officers at the scene, and confirmed there were no reports of a weapon being found. ‘Chisholm or Llewyn must have taken it with them,’ he said. He put out a call, warning that the two fugitives were probably armed with a knife.

  They stared at each other, looking uneasy. The wind picked up, enlivening the branches of the trees, their darkness pierced by the swinging flashlights of the search party. Carla felt the coldness of the flooded cellar creep over her again. She watched the lights flickering in the murk, hoping that they would penetrate a passage through the darkness.

  ‘Can you remember anything about the person who struck you?’ Bates asked Carla.

  ‘I sensed the presence of someone.’

  ‘Can you explain that?’

  ‘I felt it before at Deepwell on Ward G, and at Pochard’s house. Something in the pine trees.’

  Bates watched her, saying nothing. She thought she wasn’t making sense but the DCI appeared to consider her words carefully, as if she were on the brink of something crucial.

  ‘Tell me, Carla, why do you think Llewyn or Chisholm didn’t just lift Morton’s knife and kill the both of you?’

  She could not answer that. She had not had time to work out the killer’s motives. But it struck her that stabbing them did not belong to their attacker’s landscape of events, the sequence of grisly images that lay scattered throughout the confessions from Ward G.

  Bates asked her to give it some thought. She remembered an image from McCrea’s confession, a description of a dark pit with the bodies of two detectives thrashing like snakes knotted together. It might almost have described the macabre death the attacker had in mind for them. Had his tormented mind fallen back on a familiar image?

  ‘I’ve called in help from the local police force,’ said Bates. ‘Roadblocks have been set up around the south side of the loch. Officers have also taken up positions at all the entry points to the forest, and are approaching from the east and west following the lie of the land. Chisholm and his psychotherapist will be hunted down. We’ll find them soon, mark my words. You’ve no reason to worry about your safety any more.’

  He and Shaw stood against the backdrop of the forest, the sky above them full of pricking stars. The trees waved in the wind, their branches clustering together and whispering, not words but murmuring sounds that Carla understood as a form of primitive warning. There was something shrewd about the shadows, beckoning her to listen more carefully. Was it the effect of her head injury or the near drowning? The wind abated and then picked up again. But the sound of the trees was insistent, urging caution in a language she understood deep inside. She had the strong impression that there was something out of kilter with the way the night’s events had unfolded. What else might Llewyn have said if she had not been knocked out? What were they up to with Morton’s knife, and why hadn’t they used it on them?

  ‘I doubt that we’ll find Chisholm alive,’ said Bates.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you think Llewyn would have helped him commit these murders, and then allowed him to carry on with the rest of his life? No, this fantasy in the forest needs an ending. Llewyn would have made sure of that. Once he knew you and Morton were on his trail that was the end of him.’

  Bates made Carla travel with him to the hospital. He did not want her driving alone, even though she insisted she was fine. The DCI was preoccupied. His urgent driving revealed his anxious state of mind.

  ‘You should have called in reinforcements as soon as you lost sight of Morton,’ he chided her. His concern sounded more than professional, the note of tension in his voice signalling the grave danger she had risked.

  A nurse had just finished checking Morton’s blood pressure when they found his bed on the ward. He looked as though he had no idea where he was.

  Bates stared at him with a hard grimace. ‘Feeling any better?’ he asked.

  Morton tried to sit up in bed, but the effort seemed to nauseate him and he sank back onto his pillow. He stared around him as though he were on a strange island, washed ashore by a huge wave. No one spoke and the quiet between the three of them grew tense, or at least it felt so to Herron, like some kind of endurance test, with Bates and Morton waiting, hoping for her to break first. Yet another silence in which they were in charge. Morton shut his eyes. He needed more than silence. He needed sleep.

  ‘The staff here will take care of you both,’ said Bates eventually. ‘I’m heading back to the forest. If you need me or remember anything else call me.’

  When Bates had left, Morton opened his eyes, leaned over and grabbed Carla’s arm. ‘Get me out of here,’ he croaked. In spite of the strain, his voice was insistent. ‘I need to be sure the search is handled properly.’

  ‘I can’t. The staff have you under medical supervision. You’re not fit to go anywhere.’

  He slumped back. ‘Who were the other people in the forest?’ he asked.

  ‘I was talking to Llewyn when someone knocked me out,’ she said. ‘It must have been Chisholm.’

  ‘Who were the others?’

  ‘My mother-in-law followed us there. She helped raise the alarm. She was joined by the emergency services.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Shaw was there. He rang me while we were in the forest. He found out that there was more substance to Monteath than anyone
thought.’

  A stillness came over Morton. ‘Clever Shaw. What did he find out?’

  ‘The patients started reporting sightings of Monteath about nine years ago. Something happened at that time. Something that triggered their delusions.’

  Morton pushed himself up in bed slightly. The blanket slipped from his shoulders, revealing a bare chest marked by deep red bruises. ‘What was it?’

  ‘They met someone on the wards. A real detective.’

  ‘Did Shaw find out the real detective’s name?’

  ‘Yes. He was a voluntary patient there for about six weeks. Dr Llewyn was in charge of his care.’

  ‘The timing could be a coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  She stood over him. She could see in his eyes, even drugged with exhaustion, the realisation that soon he must tell her his story, not as a confession like those told by the patients on Ward G, but in a form of words that would reveal the truth.

  ‘I have a right to keep that time of my life private,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, but I still want to know what happened to you in Deepwell. What you saw and heard. It might have a bearing on the case.’

  He swivelled his eyes round the blank walls of the room, and then he looked at her. He was unable to hide it any longer. She could see it in his expression. His face was marked, ridged with heavy lines of emotion. For a moment, she wondered if he would be able to survive revealing himself through this look of desolation, if she would survive it herself. He held on for several moments, but the lines on his face only deepened.

  ‘Nine years ago, I was in a bad way,’ he said. ‘I’d been fighting it for months. The terrible feelings and thoughts that were building up inside me and would not let go. Hoping they would pass. But things grew unbearable. I was divorced, drinking too much, bad with my nerves. A real pitiful state. Bates made me go see the police psychologist. As it happened, she was being supervised by Dr Llewyn, and she recommended that I meet him.’ He looked up at Herron and met her gaze. The tightness in his face had slackened its grip. ‘I told him so much about myself, all the intimate details, until there was nothing left of me. The next thing I knew he had persuaded me that a voluntary stay at Deepwell would be in my best interests.’