Death Walks Behind You

by Scott Hunter

  Linda writhed, badly winded, willing her lungs to take in air. After thirty seconds of torture she was able to take a ragged breath, then another, and another, until her breathing had returned to near normal. She was scared to move her arms or legs, sure that she must have broken something in the fall, but the ground she was lying on had a soft, earthy quality. She flexed her legs experimentally. There was no agony of fractured bone, just aches and pains – bruising for sure, but at least she could move without restraint.

  But where to? It was dark and she could vaguely make out that she was in some kind of building, but she couldn’t tell whether square or round. Was there an exit? Very slowly she sat up, groaning at the stiffness and soreness in her spine. Hope fluttered in her stomach. She would get out of here, somehow.

  On all fours she began a cautious exploration. The air smelled musty and damp. Perhaps she was in some kind of storehouse? And then she saw it – a ramp of raised earth.

  The way out.

  The thought made her dizzy. She was so close. She crawled on, her senses vibrating like antennae, ears straining for any noise that would indicate the return of her captors. In her weakened state the effort to crawl up the ramp almost defeated her, but she screwed up every last ounce of strength and used her legs and feet to push herself to the top.

  And there was the door. Partially ajar.

  A long, dusty beam of moonlight picked out the wooden struts and contours of the building. The door creaked as a gust of wind blew an eddy of dead leaves along the floor and made the hinges complain . Linda lay flat, hardly daring to breathe. Silence returned. She moved forward, scraping her knee on something sharp, an old nail or splinter of wood; she didn’t stop to check. Now she was at the door to the outside; she pulled herself upright, leaned on the rough wall for support. Taking a deep breath she put her head through the opening and looked out.

  Bright moonlight illuminated a large garden, tinting the extremities of its bushes and trees a dull silver like some Victorian daguerreotype. Linda felt a sudden wave of nausea and held onto the door for support.

  Keep calm. Listen. Watch.

  Nothing moved. To the left a line of trees provided good cover. If she could make it that far, it would be just a question of finding a road, flagging someone down.

  One thing at a time… Let’s get out of here first…

  She eased herself through the opening and took a tentative step outside. The urge to run, to just make a break for it, was almost overpowering, but Linda waited, checking the shadows. When she was sure she was not being observed she limped stiffly to the nearest cover, a laurel hedge, feeling the waxy leaves brush her skin as she pressed herself against them. Her heart was racing. Ahead of her was an expanse of lawn, the flat contours only broken by a sundial, or maybe a fountain of some kind? It would provide little cover. She had no choice but to cross the moonlit expanse if she were to have any hope of making cover. Linda looked up. There were few clouds, but none were anywhere near enough to the moon to offer her the critical twenty seconds she needed.

  Now or never, Lin, come on…

  She broke cover, hobbling as fast as her cold limbs would allow. Half way across she heard it: a shambling, thumping sound of pursuit. She choked back a scream and threw herself at the line of trees, so close, so close… Fear lent her wings and she crashed into the woodland at full sprint. Behind her came the noise she remembered, the deep, heavy breathing, the oddly spaced footfalls, uneven yet powerful and fast.

  She felt branches in her face, tangling her hair, the breath heaving in her chest. A stitch was forming around her midriff, crippling her so that she was running almost bent double. The moonlight, her recent enemy, now befriended her, filtering through the woodland’s burgeoning foliage and showing her the beaten path ahead. But her muscles, weakened by hunger and thirst, had little energy left and she felt control slipping away. The realisation made her panic and she tripped on a root, fell full length. Her head connected with something hard and she saw stars.

  As she lay stunned, something stood over her. It wasn’t until the ice-cold grip clamped around her arm that she finally gave voice to her terror and let out an agonised, primal scream of despair.

  To her surprise the pressure eased and her pursuer straightened, stepped back.

  What?

  She was on all fours now. The figure was silent, watching her. She glanced to her left – she could see the way through. There was a path, maybe even one she had walked the dogs along in some previous existence. She knew what was happening, and the realisation filled her with a hopeless dread.

  He’s playing with me…

  Linda bolted, bullying her legs into action. She flew along the path, not daring to turn, waiting for the awful sound of footsteps behind.

  Nothing.

  She stopped, turned, fell again, got up, stumbled on. The ground was getting muddier, wetter, sucking at her feet. She slowed to a standstill, clutched at a sapling, retched bile, wiped her mouth and staggered on. Two metres later she realised her mistake: she was no longer running on solid ground. Her feet were catching – no, sinking – into the earth.

  The bog…

  She was up to her knees in soft, sucking moistness. With a cry she tried to pull a leg out, to backtrack. It was no use. She only succeeded in sinking even further.

  No, no, no, no…

  It was up to her thighs, the weight of peat and decomposition which formed the body of the great bog squeezing against her like some living thing, pulling, drawing her down.

  And he was there, at the edge. Watching.

  Watching me die…

  She couldn’t believe it was all going to end like this, with no answers, no reason given …

  Very quickly her own weight drew her inexorably down. She took a final, despairing gulp of air and the bog closed gently over her head. Two small bubbles rose and were replaced by three more, before they also popped and were gone. The murky water swirled once, twice, and was still.

  A figure detached itself from the shadows and hovered, head bowed, at the edge of the bog, as though mourning the passing of some noble beast. A long time later it moved away, almost sorrowful in its gait, until it too was absorbed by the darkness.

  Chapter 12

  “Seen the Banner man, Charlie?”

  Charlie looked up from the mound of paperwork which, despite her best efforts, had accumulated on Moran’s desk. “I wish,” she told the detective sergeant, a likeable lad from Braintree with the unlikely name of Toby Glascock, better known throughout TVP as ‘Brit’, an abbreviation of ‘Brittledick’. However, as his senior officer, Charlie had thought it wise to stick with plain ‘Toby’ .

  “He is on tonight, isn’t he?” Toby scratched his chin absently. “According to the rota.”

  “He is. Do me a favour, Toby, would you? Give his mobile a call and tell him if he doesn’t haul his arse in here by seven at the latest there’ll be trouble.”

  Toby grinned. “Pleasure.”

  Charlie bit her lip. It wasn’t like Banner to be quite so irresponsible. Stupid, yes. Stubborn, yes, occasionally. But a no-show was unusual. Banner liked his work, she knew that. He enjoyed being a detective. Sometimes he was even quite good at it. Trouble was, he was also pretty good at partying. She remembered the conversation with Andreas, the look he had given her when he had told her about Banner’s friend and their clubbing intentions. But her mind was also reaching back to another scenario – the time when Banner had been clobbered at the Zodiac, the club frequented by the late Ranandan brothers, two of Huang Xian Kuai’s deputy drug pushers. Banner had been found half-comatose, trousers around his ankles and his bloodstream swimming not with alcohol but with a dangerous dose of Ketamine. It had been a warning. Back off…

  But the Ranandans were dead. The Zodiac was clean – well, cleaner, at any rate. And who knows where Banner had intended to go? Maybe he had mentioned the club to Andreas. Should she call him at the house? No, not yet. Banner was a big boy, he could look aft
er himself. Charlie chewed her biro, only dimly aware of the buzz of conversation filtering in from the open plan office as the rest of her team arrived for their shift.

  Enough.

  There was no point worrying about something that probably hadn’t happened. Whatever, Banner had better have a damn good excuse.

  The phone rang. She picked it up reluctantly. For some reason she had forebodings of bad news.

  “Charlie?”

  “Guv! Nice to hear your dulcet tones again. How’s things in the wild west?”

  “Unsettling, to be honest.”

  Moran sounded decidedly unholiday-like. Something in his tone…

  “How can I help? Did you find the awol woman?”

  “Not yet. This is a wild shot, Charlie. I don’t want to waste your time.”

  “Come on, guv. Out with it.”

  “OK. Can you have a nose around any old unsolveds in the Cernham area? Get someone to check back through any media coverage, anything at all on the area. Whatever it is, just drop me a line anyway.”

  “Why not Exeter?” Charlie asked. Strictly speaking it was their patch, but obviously there was a reason.

  “Forget it,” Moran told her. “Undermanned and fighting flu. I’ve given up.”

  “Ah. But what are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know. Misper, maybe. Suspicious death? Something’s being hidden here. Something somebody doesn’t want me to know.”

  “OK. I’ll get someone on it.”

  “Banner will be delighted.”

  “Uh huh.” Charlie hesitated. Should she say something?

  “Uh huh what?”

  She could sense Moran’s antennae twitching. “Guv, you know I said I was going to move?”

  “Yes. Sooner the better, I believe I suggested.”

  “You did. Well … I’ve taken your advice. I’ve moved in with Banner.”

  “You’ve what?”

  Charlie laughed out loud, drawing surprised looks from the desks immediately outside Moran’s office. “No, not like that. He mentioned that he had a spare room, you know. And there’s two other people sharing. It sounded great, actually. And it is. The house is amazing.”

  There was a brief silence at the other end, then: “Well, good. I don’t know what to say. I mean, you and Banner…”

  “I know. But we won’t get in each other’s way. It’s a big house.”

  “It’ll need to be.”

  Charlie smiled as Moran expressed his surprise down the wire.

  “You’ll probably end up an item,” Moran said.

  Charlie snorted in derision. “I think not.”

  “Mark my words.”

  “Guv!”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re in a safe place, Charlie. Seriously. After what happened I wasn’t happy with you staying put.”

  “I know. I’m fine now. Sorted.”

  “Good. Anyway, see what you can do about Cernham. It’s not a priority, but…”

  “But it is really. Got it.”

  “Bye, Charlie.”

  “Bye.”

  Charlie put the receiver down with a smile. Now, which officer would best be suited to Moran’s request? Not Toby. She needed him on other stuff. Maybe George…

  “Evening, Charlie.”

  Charlie looked up as DCS Higginson came in.

  The Chief surveyed the office. “News, views?”

  “That was DCI Moran, sir.” Charlie offered Higginson a seat, which he declined with a regretful gesture.

  “Meeting with the CC this evening. Have to be punctual. Anyway, what’s Moran doing calling you from afar? Keeping a weather eye open?”

  “It was nothing, sir. He’s enjoying his leave.”

  “Glad to hear it. What about this Chinese fellow?”

  “No recent sightings, sir. We’re keeping all likely venues under obs.”

  “Great. Well, have a good night. Let me know if I can help with anything.”

  “Sir.”

  “Oh, and Charlie?”

  “Sir?”

  “You’re going to take some time off when Brendan gets back, OK?”

  “But–”

  “Some time off,” Higginson interrupted with another of his fatherly looks which almost made Charlie fill up again. “No arguing. You didn’t take a break after the Ranandan case, did you? Not even a day to recover from what I understand was a very serious assault?”

  “No, sir,” Charlie said quietly. And she hadn’t. What would have been the point? She would only have stayed at home, front door barred (replacement front door), waiting for her next duty day to come round. Fretting. Watching every passer-by.

  “Well then.” Higginson nodded briskly. “No arguing.” He grinned. “See you later.”

  After Higginson had left Charlie wondered whether she should have mentioned Banner’s unexplained absence. No. Not yet. She wanted to know for herself what the Banner man had been up to. The phone rang. Charlie sighed, and pushing the paperwork to one side she reached for the beeping instrument. She listened to the caller, one of the patrol car lads suspicious that a town centre assault might be drug-related. Charlie had asked to be first on the call list for any sniff of drug-related crime, and the officer had thought it prudent that she should know. Good man. Charlie made a note of the name. After Sheldrake’s warning it wasn’t worth taking any chances.

  She bumped into DC George McConnell on her way out. The wiry Scot had accepted her instructions without question, as she’d known he would. That was why she’d chosen him. Banner would have moaned loudly, Toby would certainly have pointed out that Cernham was a tad beyond TVP’s normal jurisdiction, and the new DC, Tessa Martin – well, she was new. And although George’s rather peculiar end-of-shift habit of having to collar an audience to summarize the events of his working day grated a little, he was nevertheless a good, solid copper. George simply did what he was asked, and very efficiently too.

  “Boss. I have a few bits. Nothing too meaty, though.”

  “Oh, thanks George. Look, I know it’s a little off track, but–”

  “The thing is,” George interrupted, “I’m actually quite interested in this historical stuff. It’s not the first they’ve found in the UK, either. I must say, I didn’t realise they’d dug one up in Somerset.”

  “George, you’ve lost me.”

  “Sorry. A bog body. You know, preserved in peat.”

  “Right.” Charlie frowned. She was tired and running low on patience.

  Undeterred by Charlie’s weary expression, George went on. “There was a big archaeological hoo ha in ‘78 – guess where? Yep, Cernham. Some local yokel found a hand sticking out of the bog. Turned out to be four thousand years old.”

  “George–”

  “I’m getting there. Now, the thing is that this wasn’t the only body in the bog; a search turned up another one, but it was a lot younger. By this time they had a pukka archaeologist on site and local press coverage to boot.”

  “Go on.”

  “It was thought that it might be the body of a missing girl, name of Rachel O’Neill.” George paused. “So the press conjectured, anyhow.”

  “And? Was it?”

  “That’s the thing. The body disappeared before it could be positively identified.”

  “And where exactly did this disappearance occur? Coroner’s office? Path lab?”

  George delivered his punch line with evident pleasure. “Neither, boss. It disappeared way before it got to that stage, according to the local rag. But here’s the thing – the archaeologist was interviewed by the same reporter a few days later but by then he’d changed his tune – said he couldn’t be sure if the second body was recent after all. Said how he had acted too hastily, jumped to conclusions before a proper analysis could be performed and so on.”

  “Interesting. So what happened then?”

  “Not a lot by the look of it.” George gnawed his fingernail. “It all went quiet.”

  “What about this archaeologist, though?
Is he still alive? You could try contacting him.”

  “Nah,” said George. “A week later the local paper carried a ten liner about him.”

  “Don’t tell me. He died?”

  George shrugged. “No one knows for sure by the look of it but he and his wife disappeared. They never returned to the site.”

  Just after six, Charlie climbed wearily into the driver’s seat of her blue Kia Picanto. The dawn sun, promising a warm day, highlighted the deep shadows beneath her eyes as she checked herself briefly in the mirror. What a state. Zippy breakfast then bed for you, girl…

  She guided the car along the empty but soon to be bustling roads towards the leafier suburbs of the University area and her new home. The shift had been busy, but routine. The drug-related assault had turned out not to be, which was a relief. Higginson’s suggestion of time off was becoming more and more appealing. She could shop, maybe buy some pictures for her bedroom to replace the musty old portraits of Banner’s parents’ tenure. And maybe even a day or two in Cov? She could catch up with a few mates. Get away, recharge the batteries.

  But not yet. Not till the guv was back. She’d have to call Moran tomorrow with news of George’s bog body. Strange one, that. Probably no connection, but you never knew.

  The house was quiet. Charlie dumped her bag on the breakfast bar and checked the coffee machine. Her note to G was still there. And the coffee. So what? G had probably had to rush out somewhere. She made toast, filled her customary glass of water and headed upstairs. Which was Banner’s room? Should she check? He was probably still sleeping it off. By god, he’d be sorry this evening…

  Her bedroom was warm and cosy. She drew the heavy curtains, changed into a light onesie, read a few pages of a paperback until her eyes grew heavy, flopped onto the bed and was asleep within seconds.