As he passed a post office and another charity shop, there was a break in the buildings, and he found what he was looking for. Set back slightly, it was the largest pub he had seen yet, although the outer decor matched every other pub he’d found in Marsden. A cream building with black siding and a sign with gold lettering. The Hamlet. The sign jostling gently in the wind had a man in a puffy Shakespearean collar holding a skull. The windows and open door streamed light out of them and the sound of laughing and conversation washed out into the street.
Robin headed inside.
Chapter Seven
The Hamlet was thriving. He came through the door to find a quaint bar area, unmistakably British with its rich mahogany furniture and country decor. Paintings of men on horses galloping after foxes hung on the walls. It seemed like all the people absent from the streets outside were in The Hamlet. It was packed with people sitting at the tables and propped up against the bar. The whole place had a warm glow, friendly and inviting. There was a steady noise of chatter, punctuated every so often with a hearty laugh.
As Robin stood in the doorway, a few people looked up from their conversations. They smiled at him, and as he looked over to the bar, a man with a purple nose and rosy cheeks tipped his pint and smiled. Robin smiled back, a reflex he usually suppressed in London. But something about The Hamlet screamed safety, a real home away from home. The man took a deep sip from his pint and turned back.
Behind the bar, a young woman dressed in black, with her brown hair tied up in a bun, was smiling and laughing with a man at the end of the bar as she poured a glass of white wine. Robin stepped forward, leaning against the bar, next to the smiling man.
When the young woman had finished taking money for the wine, she came over. “What’ll it be?”
“A Coke, please. And I was hoping to get some food. Are there any more tables?”
“Downstairs, there’s a few,” she said. “I’ll get your drink.”
While she was pouring out the Coke, the man beside Robin cleared his throat. Robin looked at him to see he was smiling again. “My mother used to say, ‘Never trust a man who doesn’t drink.’” Closer, Robin could see that his purple nose was bulbous and attempting to eclipse his entire face. He had a gray pepper-pot beard and wore glasses on a chain. He looked kind, if troubled by years of alcohol abuse. “Probably why she died of liver failure.” He laughed heartily and clapped Robin on the back.
Robin could only smile back, a little dazed by the off-color joke and the physical contact. “Sorry, it’s been a long day.”
“You come far?” he said, taking another swig of beer.
“I...” Robin wondered if he really looked that out of place. And then remembered he was carrying a suitcase.
The man tapped his head with a finger. “Everyone from Marsden. Up here. In the brain box. I’m Jim Thawn—I run the bakery.” Robin shook his outstretched hand.
“Robin. Robin Ferringham.”
“What brings you to Marsden, Robin? I’m guessing it isn’t the world-famous bakery, is it? Because I make a mean tiger bread.” His speech was not slurred, but it was a little too fluid. If his speech appeared in type as he said it, it would be fuzzy around the edges. Robin suspected that the half-empty pint in his hand had not been his first, maybe not even his fifth.
Robin thought for a moment. He didn’t want to talk about Matthew McConnell and the Standedge Five until he got the lay of the land. After all, the whole town had seemingly stayed silent about it. He had to find out why. So he told the truth in a different way. “Curiosity,” he decided on.
Jim looked at him for a moment, and then decided that was enough of an answer. “Well, you picked a good place to be curious. Marsden’s a beautiful place. Lot of history here.”
The barmaid came over with Robin’s Coke and he gave her the money. As he placed the money in her hand, he noticed she was wearing two thick black sweatbands on her wrists—a bold and slightly odd fashion choice. When she came back with his change and a folded menu, he said, “I’m also looking for a place to stay. Someone told me there’d be rooms here.”
“Yes, of course. How long are you thinking of staying?”
Robin thought. He didn’t really know. Loamfield said that Matthew’s day in court was Friday. But what if he met with Matthew and hit a dead end? Matthew’s information on Sam was the most important thing. If Matthew was somehow lying, would he be able to walk away?
“Don’t worry,” the barmaid said. “You can pay by the night. We don’t have many tourists coming through here this time of year.”
Robin took a sip of his Coke. “How much is it?”
“Forty-five per night.”
Robin spluttered. “I’m sorry.”
“Forty-five pounds.”
“Right. How much is breakfast, then?”
“Breakfast is included.”
Robin looked from her to Jim. Jim was chuckling. “Right?” he said, wondering why it was so cheap.
“Things aren’t so expensive here, huh?” she said. “You’re a bona fide city boy, aren’t ya?”
“You could say that,” Robin said uncomfortably.
The barmaid was called away by someone demanding another pint in shaky tones and Robin said goodbye to Jim, locating the narrow stairs that went to the basement. He made his way down, emerging into a snug small stone room with a roaring fireplace, tables around the edges and a plush red rug laid out on the floor. A golden retriever was lying in front of the fire on a leash that ran along the floor and disappeared under a table in the corner where a family—a father, a mother and two children—were poring over a large map. The basement was just as busy as the upper level, but at least no one was standing around. There was only one table free and Robin sat down at it, placing his backpack on the seat next to him and drawing up his suitcase so it stood alongside. Like upstairs, there was something incredibly homely about the place, and the tables of people creating a slow drum of conversation matched with the crackling of the fire made Robin feel suddenly very tired.
Robin realized that he hadn’t really traveled anywhere farther north than Milton Keynes in years. Seeing Sam come and go at least twice a month made him feel that she did enough traveling for the both of them. And after she went missing, well, he barely had enough motivation to go to the corner shop, let alone a new city or town.
He closed his eyes, feeling oddly content. Like he could sleep. He snapped his eyes open and took a drink to try to counteract his drowsiness. He looked at the menu, catching the eye of the barmaid when she came down to collect empties. He ordered fish and chips and then tried to find something to keep himself awake.
He decided against getting the folder, full of the printouts he had collected on the Standedge Incident, out of his backpack. He didn’t want anyone to spy what he was looking at. So instead he looked around the walls of the basement.
The walls were lined with pictures, but photographs rather than paintings like upstairs. Nearest him, in the corner, was an old framed map of the town and the surrounding countryside. He had seen it on the web the night before and could trace the thin baby blue line of the Huddersfield Narrow through Marsden until it disappeared completely into the Standedge Tunnel. The map covered the whole of the tunnel and he saw the tracks of the three tunnels running either side of it. The railway line that he had just been on, the one adjacent to it and the disused railway tunnel to the left. The canal tunnel ran for a distance, and eventually came out in the neighboring town of Diggle. Just viewing it on the map, Standedge seemed to stretch on forever.
Next to the map was a photo of a landscape Robin didn’t recognize, but he guessed it was somewhere local. It was a rural landscape, a hill silhouetted by a cloudy sky. As he looked closer, he saw two white smudges at the top of the hill with black faces and legs. Two sheep. Was it possible that they were the same ones he met on his way here? Robin smiled at that.
>
There was an old detailed illustration of workmen in Standedge, chipping away at rock and loading boats with waste. There was a small plaque next to it, with some information:
Standedge Canal Tunnel: At 16,499 feet long and
636 feet deep at its lowest point,
Standedge is the longest
and deepest canal tunnel in the United Kingdom.
It stands as an incredible feat of British engineering
and construction.
Another illustration caught his eye. It looked more like a schematic, showing a drawn overhead view of the entire tunnel. In the almost-exact center of the tunnel was an S-shaped configuration. Something jogged in Robin’s memory, something he had skimmed over but found slightly amusing. When the tunnel was built, it was started from both ends, but was woefully miscalculated. Thus when the two workforces got to the middle, the tunnel didn’t meet. A slight deviation had to be made to get the tunnel to join up.
Robin could see why the tunnel was a tourist attraction—it was indeed an impressive thing, but the question for him wasn’t why anyone would go through the tunnel. It was why Matthew and his friends did.
Glancing round, Robin saw the walls littered with more photos—all local and most pertaining to the tunnel. But there wasn’t much he hadn’t already seen, so most didn’t hold his attention—that was until he looked above the fireplace and saw there was a picture of a group of people sitting around a room that looked like the one he was in right now. He strained to look, but knew he would have to get up to see properly. Slowly, without drawing attention to himself, he slipped out of his seat and walked toward the fireplace, careful not to disturb the golden retriever.
The picture was of the Standedge Five. In this room—the basement of The Hamlet. Robin’s eyes widened and he slowly looked around, matching details up.
They looked almost identical to how they looked in the picture he found online. Tim Claypath, Rachel Claypath, Edmund Sunderland, Robert Frost and Prudence Pack were seated around a table in front of the fire—it seemed they had arranged all the small tables to create a bigger one. The dog was sitting on Rachel Claypath’s knee. Scattered across the table were poker chips and hands of cards. They were all looking at the camera and smiling—even Edmund’s looked genuine this time. Matthew was nowhere to be seen.
Finding a framed photo of the five missing friends on the wall in a pub and taken in this very room—it made the disappearance seem realer. Five people. Vanished.
Robin looked at the faces of the Five with sadness. Tim and Prudence were waving at the camera. He realized they both had something on their wrist, some kind of black scrawl. A tattoo or some kind of writing. And by the looks of it, the marks were both the same. Robin got even closer but couldn’t for the life of him make out what it said.
Slowly, he took his phone out and switched the camera on, holding it up to the picture. As soon as he pressed the button, he was blinded by a split second of dazzling light. The flash. The room must have been dark enough to trigger it. He blinked away sunspots and realized the room had gone silent.
He looked around. Every single person in the room was looking at him. Everyone had looked up from their conversations and were staring—two people near the stairs who looked like they were on a date, two elderly men who seemed to be trying to outdrink each other, three women on a girls’ night out and even the family in the corner—all eyes trained on him.
Robin found himself looking down and met the eyes of the golden retriever, who was also staring up at him. Robin suddenly felt very unsettled. He expected someone to break the silence, say something, but no one did. He turned back to the picture but that seemed worse—the eyes burning into his back.
He stepped away from the picture, picking his way around the dog, and got back to his table as quickly as he could. He kept his head down, and after a moment, he heard the sound of four conversations starting up again—overlapping each other into an inaudible mess of chatter. He dared to look up and found no one was staring at him anymore.
What the hell was that?
He looked at his phone to see the flash had consumed the picture. All he saw were ghosts of the Standedge Five fighting through the light.
“Fish and chips.”
Robin jumped out of his skin and looked up. The barmaid was towering over him, holding the food. He tried to smile, slipping the phone into his pocket.
Trying to suppress the urge to run.
Chapter Eight
Robin ate his food quietly, trying not to look around the room and attract the gaze of any of the other patrons again. As far as he could tell from his peripheral vision, no one even acknowledged that he was there, and if not for the incident with the photo, he would have wondered if he were invisible.
Slowly, the basement started to empty. The family with the dog were first to leave, and the others soon followed. When Robin finally managed the courage to look up, he was alone, with only the snaps of the healthy fire to keep him company.
He waited five minutes and went back to the picture above the fireplace, taking a photo without the flash on this time. He was still transfixed by what was written on Tim’s and Prudence’s wrists, but could not make it out.
He went back to his seat and looked at the picture on his phone, zooming into Tim’s wrist. Definitely something there, but too pixelated to make out. “Crap,” he muttered under his breath.
“Can I take your plate?”
Robin jumped. The barmaid was standing over him again. She had made her way down the rickety stairs without him hearing so much as a creak. Robin smiled despite his surprise. “Yes, thank you.”
She didn’t pick up his plate. Instead she sat opposite him. “I’m Amber.”
“Amber. I’m Robin.”
“There’s a room ready upstairs for you when you want it.” She pushed aside the empty plate and placed a large brass key on the table. It had a tag hanging off it with a large 4 written in marker. Robin refrained from picking it up—it seemed Amber wasn’t finished.
“You’re a long way from home,” she said, but there was an air of friendliness about the remark.
“Yes.”
“Why are you here?”
Robin was quiet for a moment. “It’s a long story. I needed a change of scene, and I’ve never been here, so...”
“If you don’t mind,” Amber interrupted, “that’s not why you’re here. No. You’re here for them, aren’t you?”
“Them?”
“Them.” She gestured toward the fireplace and the framed photo above it. “The Standedge Five, as they’re called.”
“I don’t know what...”
“Please,” Amber said, “you’ve already got people talking about you. You’re bad at this. And if you don’t want to get run out of town, you have to get better.”
Robin opened his mouth then closed it. She was right, after all.
Amber smiled, but it was friendly. “I think the ‘grown-ups’ in town started labeling them the Standedge Five because they couldn’t bear to call them by their names,” Amber continued. “I guess it’s easier for them that way.”
“Did you know them?” Robin said, dropping any pretense that remained.
“I was a year behind them in school. Knew them a bit. Well, I guess you could say that. I had a bit of a thing for Tim, truth be told. Just a silly little thing, but... We had one sort of...date, but...” She trailed off, fiddling with one of her sweatbands, absentmindedly.
“What were they like?” Robin said, leaning forward. “What were the Standedge Five like at school?”
“Well,” Amber said, “it was the six of them at that point. Matthew McConnell too. They used to hang around together all the time, in and out of school. Thick as thieves. And the community liked them. A gang of kids who weren’t going around kicking in shop windows or smoking pot—just hanging, being with each
other. They used to come down here quite a lot, before I got my job here.” She got up, took the photo off the wall and sat back down, placing it in the center of the table. She looked at it with something like longing. “All us kids looked up to them. I think we desperately wanted to be one of them. But there were never tryouts, no auditions, no open spots. It was always the six of them, and the six of them it would always be. Until death they did part, I guess.”
Robin looked down at the photo. “Do you know what brought them together?”
Amber looked up. “I think it was the tunnel.”
Robin looked confused. “What?”
“At Marsden Primary, there’s a Geography field trip where classes go through the tunnel. It’s quite famous. You have to understand, to a kid, Standedge Tunnel is kinda scary. Bullies make little kids go and stand by the tunnel and look inside it for thirty seconds to prove they aren’t cowards. There’s a myth about a man living in there that parents tell their kids so they won’t get too close—the Standedge Monster. You know, that kind of thing. So, to voluntarily go in there, at nine years old, with only a Geography teacher and some tour guides to protect you, that’s a big deal.”
Robin nodded. He had never been claustrophobic. But even looking at pictures of the tunnel and knowing that it was a long journey through turned his stomach slightly.
“Well, they did it, and after that, they started hanging out. Inseparable. Like the tunnel changed them or something, brought them closer together. I dunno. And when they were old enough, they went again. Through. And then it became a sort of tradition, I think. I don’t know the details, but it seemed all us other kids knew it. I think a lot of people felt left out.”
“Left out?”
“Of course. The chance of being in a gang with the Claypath twins—I mean, who wouldn’t be jealous, right? That’s why Matthew, especially, worked to make sure he was important to them—I think he was afraid of getting left behind. He joined the Trust so he could take the group through Standedge without a tour guide.”
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