The Darkness Around Her
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
One
FOUR MONTHS LATER
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Fifty-one
Fifty-two
Fifty-three
Fifty-four
Fifty-five
Fifty-six
Fifty-seven
Fifty-eight
Fifty-nine
Sixty
Sixty-one
Sixty-two
Sixty-three
Sixty-four
Sixty-five
Sixty-six
Sixty-seven
Sixty-eight
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
The Darkness Around Her
Neil White
One
Lizzie marched along the unlit towpath. She was angry, hurt. She wiped tears from her eyes and the warm blood that streamed from her swollen nose smeared across her hand and coated her lip.
The town was quieter now; the New Year fireworks had finished and people were starting to queue for taxis home. Not Lizzie though. She’d bolted for the darkness, just to get away, too ashamed to head into the bright lights. The canal, brought in on an aqueduct, curved high above the town, clinging to the steep side of one of the many hills that surrounded Highford, before it disappeared into the valley on the other side and made its way across the Pennines.
The glow of the town-centre streetlights didn’t make it this far. The water was black and still, catching only the gleam of the moon. Canal barges were moored in the distance. The smell of their wood smoke in the air told her they were occupied, and another one cruised towards her, its headlight just like a torch beam, but too far away to illuminate her path.
She was alone in the dark.
Then she heard a noise.
She stopped, looked back, strained to hear it again, needing the reassurance that it was just rubbish, like the rustle of a plastic bag blown against a fence. It was more than that though, more like the crunch of footsteps on gravel. She peered into the darkness, a tingle of fear making her senses keen. Only shadows and silence greeted her.
Lizzie turned around, panic rising, looking for a way off the towpath, but she knew it was pointless. High fences that protected the scrapyard and small workshops that lined the canal kept her from a quick exit, razor wire in rolls across the top. She couldn’t go back, she knew that. He’d be waiting for her. She was there because of him.
She quickened her step. Her heels rang loudly on the cobbles, the sound skimming across the water and echoing from the wall on the other side. Dread tightened her chest, made her breath come faster.
All she had to do was keep going. There was a low bridge ahead that would take her to an estate on the other side, built on a hill that rose steeply. She could aim for that and find a way home.
She cursed him. It had been just another stupid argument.
He’d started it, as always, too much booze fuelling his jealousy, the beast that was always lurking. He’d accused her of looking at someone else. The idiot just didn’t get it. He was pushing her to leave, with his snide remarks, the put-downs, saying how she’d let herself go, but then accused her of tarting herself up for other men whenever she made an effort. Didn’t he get the irony?
She went to wipe more tears from her cheek but stopped herself. Let them fall.
It had been good once. Beautiful Liam. Kind Liam. The flowers. The messages. The lies.
There’d been punches before tonight, digs into her back that made her cough in pain, leaving bruises only he saw. There’d been the late-night beatings, of course, blurred by alcohol, where she’d called the police but had backed down by the time they arrived, somehow persuaded that he’d change, that the good times made up for the bad.
This time had been different, because it had been in public, outside the pub, people seeing her go down, the stars blurring into white streaks as she went backwards, ending with a thump on the ground of the car park. Another night out ending in pain.
No more. She’d had enough. This time she wasn’t going back.
All she could think of was to get away, to keep running. Customers from the pub had blocked his way as she pushed herself up from the ground, but that wouldn’t last. No one could take him on; he was too big, too angry, his shoulders hunched, his body tensed, fists clenched, his shouts loud. She’d fled to the sanctuary of the towpath, hoping he wouldn’t see where she’d gone.
There was a dark shape ahead, making her slow down, but it resolved into a bench as she got closer. There’d been no more noises. It had been her imagination.
She stopped to sit down. She needed to calm herself and work out what to do. She couldn’t go back to his place, but she had clothes there, and jewellery. He had photographs of her, intimate ones. He’d use them against her.
That shouldn’t matter. Leaving didn’t have to be harder than staying. Get her stuff. Go. Stay out of town.
The streets on the other side of the low bridge weren’t far away, lining the higher slope on the other side, the town centre just a swirl of orange lights below. The streets meant safety, but she needed to steady her nerves, to work out her next move. It got dark ahead before it got brighter and there was something about the shadows ahead that made her nervous.
She took a cigarette from her packet, and was about to light it, when there was another noise. A bottle kicked over, rolling along the towpath.
He was following her. He’d seen where she’d gone, would know that she either had to keep going into the darkness or turn back towards him. He’d said too many times that he’d never let her leave him. He was waiting for her in the solid blackness of the towpath, she knew it.
She put her cigarette away, left the bench, increasing her pace as she went, not caring now that the click of her heels echoed like loud cracks along the path. She looked over her shoulder as she ran, straining to see who was there.
The bridge was getting closer. Shadows underneath.
She looked back again. There was movement on the towpath behind her, a dark mass flitting across.
The bridge was just twenty metres away. She was almost at the steps.
She took off her shoes, holding them in her hands like weapons, the heels long and pointed. ‘Leave me alone,’ she shouted, just to attract attention, her eyes going to the windows of the houses opposite, trying to make someone open a curtain or tu
rn on a security light.
There was no response.
The steps were just there. The sharp stones between the cobbles made her wince, slowed her down, but once on the bridge she could run, make it to the tarmac on the other side. To the streetlights. To where people would see her.
Someone stepped in front of her. She let out a scream, but he rushed her, one hand going to her throat, choking it quiet, his other hand pulling her back by the hair.
She gasped and searched for air, but there was none to be had. She flailed her arms, heard him cry out as a heel dug into his head, and for a moment she thought she was able to fight him off, but she was thrown off-balance.
He pushed her towards the water. Her arms thrashed at him, but she dropped the shoes. Her bag fell off her shoulder and became tangled round her legs. Her feet couldn’t get a grip as she tried to push back, the stones tearing at the soles of her feet. He was too strong.
He kept on pushing her until one of her feet was in the air, the ground no longer there, and then she started to fall backwards.
The splash of the freezing water made her gasp in shock, but it was drowned out as the dirty water filled her mouth. She spluttered, fought to keep her head above the water. Her feet scrambled for something to push against, but the canal was too deep.
She floundered up, her head above the surface, and coughed out the water, dirty and acrid, her hair plastered across her face. She snatched a gulp of air before he pushed her down again, holding her this time, pulling her body against the wall of the canal and her head under the surface
She pushed against the stones but she couldn’t fight him, the water providing too much resistance. Her mouth was clamped shut. Images flashed into her head. Her mother, raising her on her own, tough but loving. Liam, those early days, tender and doting. The later months. Bullying, spiteful, drunken.
If he would only let her up, she’d try harder. She’d understand him better.
Her arms splashed in the water, tried to reach for his head, but he was using the strength in his arms to hold her under the surface.
Her lungs ached, her lips pressed together. She was tired, cold, couldn’t struggle any more.
Just hold on. She needed to breathe, but she had to fight it. Why didn’t he let her go? He loved her.
No more struggles. Her strength had gone. Her chest was willing her to take a breath, her brain telling her she needed the oxygen even though she knew what would happen when she opened her mouth.
She gave in.
The water rushed in, cold and dirty. She coughed, her lungs fighting, but there was just more water.
Then there was darkness.
FOUR MONTHS LATER
Two
Dan Grant set down the expert witness report he was reading and massaged his temples.
He lived in one of eleven apartments squeezed into the stone frame of an old wharf building at the end of a cobbled yard. Highford had been built on cotton, a small northern town hidden in a valley, with the skyline once dominated by mills and high chimneys that belched out smoke so thick that the streets became lost in the gloom. Soot coated the lines of terraced houses, the town laid out in tight grids. The cotton industry had died in the eighties and, as the smog cleared, the remains lay scattered across the valley floor as vast empty stone blocks, the windows broken, rough grass sprouting between the cobbles.
Some of the wharf buildings had been resurrected as office spaces; the canals that once fed them, no longer clogged by the queues of barges that had sailed from Liverpool, were now home to canal cruisers and wildlife. Others, like the apartment block Dan lived in, had been converted into modern living spaces, with the old wooden canopy that had once provided shelter for the cotton bales as they were winched inside now broken up by steel balconies.
Dan’s apartment gave him a view along the water and a base in the town he’d grown up in. It usually felt like a sanctuary from his work pressures, but the following day he’d be defending a client in a murder trial and his home had turned into an extension of his office, every surface covered in papers as he reviewed all the evidence he had, obsessed over every detail, worried that he’d missed something crucial. It was only mid-morning and his head felt already clogged by facts.
He went to the window, knowing the view would relax him. The water glistened, the hills in the distance brightening as late spring brought fresh life to the countryside.
His mind went back to a freezing night in January, to the phone call that had started it all.
‘Dan Grant,’ he’d said, tucking the phone into his shoulder and picking up a bottle of wine.
‘This is Highford custody office. We’ve got someone here who wants someone from Molloys. We called Mr Molloy but he said he’s been on the whiskey and I should call you.’
Dan paused with the corkscrew. ‘Just a phone call or an interview?’
‘Interview. Peter Box.’
He sighed and put the bottle down with a clink. As a defence lawyer, he was used to the clock meaning little, because crime doesn’t happen only during office hours. He answered the phone every time though. If it rang, someone needed him.
‘He’s been arrested for murder,’ the sergeant continued.
That got his attention. A murder case trumped everything. He put the wine back in the fridge and headed out into the night.
DI Murdoch was waiting for him, pacing by the automatic doors, despite the cold winter wind, her police ID swinging from a purple lanyard, her shirt creased, although in Murdoch’s case that was probably more to do with lack of an iron than long hours at a desk. She was part of the Major Incident Team, a small unit that investigated serious cases all over Lancashire, using local officers for the mundane tasks.
Dan liked Murdoch, but it was a feeling borne out of respect rather than affection. She was tough and tenacious, and honest. He suspected her integrity had stopped her being promoted beyond inspector; from Dan’s experience, the higher up the ladder he looked, the less he could trust those looking down. He trusted a grafter like Murdoch, though, because she’d always listened to him. A detective who can change direction is one who’ll usually end up in the right place.
Murdoch seemed impatient. He hadn’t seen Tracy Murdoch for a few months. Her hair was long and dark, but unnaturally so, with an inky tint to it, and her skin showed the ravages of chain-smoking, with lines around her mouth that aged her much more than her fifty years.
Dan followed, acting weary, but he was alert, looking out for any hints that he was not getting the full picture. Whatever Murdoch told him would shape Dan’s advice to his client, and he ran through the options in his head.
If the case against him was solid, Dan might tell his client to stay silent. Admitting a serious offence never improves a client’s situation and it buys time to think of an excuse. The same went for a weak case, because Dan couldn’t allow his client to fill in the gaps for the police. It was those cases in the middle that were the hardest, where his client had a story to tell that he’d need to repeat later, and Dan had to judge whether he should tell it straightaway. A misreading of the case might send him the wrong way, and in a murder case, the stakes were even higher.
‘What have you got?’ Dan said, as they approached a solid wooden door that led them to the custody suite.
‘You know it’s a murder?’
‘So I was told.’
‘You heard about the woman found by the canal on New Year’s Day? Elizabeth Barnsley? Attacked and drowned.’
Dan had seen the news reports and remembered the name, Lizzie to her friends. He felt a twinge of guilt, because when he’d seen them he’d thought the same as every criminal defence lawyer thought when they heard of a murder: he’d hoped he’d get the case.
‘Why do you think Peter Box did it?’
‘Ah, the evidence.’ She opened the door into the custody suite. ‘Simple. When Lizzie was fighting for her life, she must have used her shoe to defend herself with, because her stiletto heel had blood on i
t. Peter Box’s blood.’ She held out her hand. ‘After you.’
Dan grimaced at the glare of light. The custody suite used to be dank and dark, with an old wooden desk, high and scarred, opposite a holding cell and by large steel doors, through which the prisoners were brought from the police cars and vans that parked just outside. A gloomy corridor beyond led to a set of stairs that rose into one of the courtrooms in the next building. A recent revamp had made everything brighter and shinier, but the process was still the same: prisoners came in through the large steel doors from the back of a van, usually kicking and screaming; they were catalogued, stamped, and taken into the court the following morning, and the court would send them somewhere else, either back out onto the streets, or into a van with tiny dark windows for a trip along the motorway to the nearest prison. For many, it was a regular occurrence. They might call it a ‘custody suite’ but it was merely the first stop in a small factory that processed raw material to be repackaged further down the line, a little more dented, and a lot more broken.
‘Any more evidence? Doesn’t sound like much on its own.’ Dan was trying to sound unimpressed, knowing that what lay ahead was a series of interviews meant to wear the suspect down, but a DNA link to the victim was a good start for the police. If Murdoch was hoping to rattle him though, she’d better not keep him up too late. Tiredness increased his desire for the fight.
‘He sought hospital treatment for a wound to his temple. That’s how we traced him, asking around the hospitals, because we knew from the blood on the heel that Lizzie had hit someone hard. And in case you’re wondering about the wound, it’s the same shape as Lizzie’s heel.’
They had arrived at another wooden door, which led to the ‘bubble’, a small enclosure where lawyers were expected to make notes with their knees pressed up against a narrow desk, leaning in towards the tiny holes in the glass screen through which their clients could give instructions.
‘I hope you’re not planning on hanging around to accidentally overhear,’ Dan said. ‘I’ll be wanting the custody footage if I hear anyone outside.’
‘Don’t be a prick, Dan.’
‘Ditto.’ And he went inside, closing the door behind him.
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