“We kept our heads down about it and kept quiet. And when Matthew McConnell is behind bars for good, that’s when we can grieve more openly.”
“You’re putting a lot of stock in the fact that Matthew is guilty,” Robin said.
“That’s because he is, sweetheart. He’s a crafty bastard, but guilty as sin.”
“Can I ask what makes you so certain?”
“Well, the police say he is, even after their investigation. There are no other suspects. And there’s no way it could have been anyone else.”
Robin thought as Martha went back to squeezing the mop and then finally splatting it onto the stone floor. “Can you talk me through the logistics of going through the tunnel? Explain the ways, as someone who works here, that it couldn’t have been anyone else?”
“Ooh, fancy,” Martha said. “Sounds like a GCSE question, dunnit?”
“Please.”
“Okay, but not because I want to help you. I’m only telling you because it supports my argument,” she said, gliding the mop across the floor and sloshing Robin’s shoes in a way that was almost certainly deliberate. “The Five and him went through on a private boat. He had the keys to the gate across the front of the canal tunnel. He opened the tunnel before he went to get the boat at the mooring site about a mile out of Marsden. He piloted the boat through the tunnel. There was no third party, no bogeyman—him. He was the only one who could’ve done it.”
“What about the abandoned tunnel? The one you take the van through?”
She looked almost impressed. “You’ve done your homework—well done. That tunnel was locked up tight. We had trouble with kids getting in the tunnel a few years back—the whole thing is fenced off either side but they used to burrow under. So we poured concrete along the fence boundary. Those gates are unlocked with a keycard—a keycard that was locked up in here on that day. No one else could have done it.”
“Did Matthew have a key to the Visitor Centre?”
“You’re thinking he took the keycard and replaced it somehow. Benefits of it being a computer system on the gate—you can see when the gate was unlocked. It wasn’t—at all—that day. And anyhow, he took the tunnel gate key the day before. Visitor Centre was locked.”
“So Matthew couldn’t have used the abandoned tunnel to move the bodies of his friends?”
“He could have accessed the tunnel through the multiple cut-throughs in the canal tunnel but he couldn’t have got out.”
“What about the other side of the canal tunnel? The train tunnels?” He was saying and hearing tunnel so much, the word was starting to lose all meaning.
“There’s no real easy way to get to the live train tunnels. There are no paths or whatnot. And even if you did get in there—well, they’re called ‘live’ for a reason.”
Robin grew silent and watched Martha go up and down the floor. She paused and nodded to Robin to move and he stepped back, up the step into the doorway to the table area. “You’ve said that no one else could have done it, but by your description, it doesn’t seem like Matthew could have done it either. What do you think happened?”
Martha stopped, leaning on the mop. “I thought he drowned them. Then the divers came back and they weren’t in the water. Then I thought he’d hidden them in the abandoned tunnel. And that search was a bust too. Then I just sort of stopped wondering.”
“How can you do that?” Robin said, stepping forward and nearly sliding on the wet floor. He steadied himself on the door frame. “How can you be content with not knowing something which happened mere meters away?”
Martha scoffed. “You sound like one of them Ghosts of Marsden lot. Always wanting to find a way for it to be over. That’s how you start getting theories in your head like aliens and ghosts and monsters. Dangerous talk.”
“What could have possibly happened? Think.” He was getting angry, his voice ballooning in the quiet.
“I dunno,” Martha said, clearly thinking hard but coming up short. “He could have cloned the keycard, tied up the steering, hacked into the computer system and carried the bodies out the abandoned tunnel, rejoining the boat at a later cut-through.”
“Also hiding the bodies somewhere the police search would never find?” Robin said. “No. Be better, Martha.”
Martha looked around, as though she’d find an answer on a wall. “Maybe he hid the bodies in the boat somewhere and moved them again later.”
“Again, somewhere the police search didn’t find? Not to mention the fact he was unconscious in the hospital, no doubt with a guard on the door. Nope.”
“I don’t... Maybe...scuba equipment?”
“Scuba equipment? What about scuba equipment? No.”
“I don’t know, okay. Sometimes, in certain situations, being rational is difficult. But the police have McConnell. McConnell did it.”
Robin gritted his teeth, his temper flaring. “I came to this town to see if there was any way that Matthew McConnell could not have done what he has been accused of, but what I’ve found is no logical theory to say that he did it. This boy is about to go up against a court who are going to decide if he can come home or not, and the most damning thing I’ve found so far is his own goddamn testimony.”
Martha looked at him with a mix of contempt and poorly constructed anger. “Okay, city boy, since you’re all about the theories, what do you think happened?”
And that was when he realized he hadn’t been angry at Martha. He had been angry at himself.
Because he honestly had no idea.
Chapter Twenty-One
Martha slammed the door behind him and bolted it. He wasn’t getting inside Standedge anytime soon, not in any official capacity, anyhow.
He should have been ashamed at how irate he had got, but—it was the strangest thing—he wasn’t. He was relieved. He hadn’t got so upset at anything in a long time, not since Sam and the screaming at the police officers to take him seriously. He had thought the fire was gone.
But this case. This case that Sam led him to. This tunnel.
Robin looked at it, thinking of how Amber described the games they used to play. He stepped forward, and suddenly a gust of wind flew out of the tunnel and whipped into his face, as though it had been waiting for him. He made his way down the canal side as far as he could, until he was almost sticking his head through the bars.
Stare into the black. See how long you last.
“One,” Robin muttered under his breath.
There was nothing. Beyond the bars was an abyss. It wasn’t like he saw the beginnings of the tunnel and it faded away. As soon as the tunnel mouth started, the world was gone.
“Two.”
It was as if he could step inside and be erased. Fall into eternity.
“Three.”
But as he looked more, shapes started to manifest. They had no real form, no real tangibility. It was like looking into an ever-changing lava lamp. Looking into thought.
“Four.”
He was seeing what the mind saw when presented with absolutely nothing.
“Five.”
And then there was something else. Something to grasp on to. Something that felt fathomable. An oblong shape coming through the dark.
“Six.”
The more he looked, the more he saw, and he didn’t know if he was regarding it or it was regarding him. Something long and gaunt.
“Seven.”
And hairy.
Robin snapped his eyes away, stepping back from the tunnel and turning away. His breath came in thick gasps and he suppressed a yelp. He held his head in his hands and told himself to pull himself together. It was what the game did. That’s why the children played it. With the absence of stimuli, the mind invents.
But for a moment there, he too was a child standing in front of a hellhole, goaded on by the bullies. Staring into the tunnel.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Robin barreled through the front door of The Hamlet, having run most of the way. He didn’t know why he’d come back here—he guessed he just needed to see somewhere familiar, somewhere the closest to home that he currently had.
The pub was quiet. There was one man, who looked scruffy and drunk, seated in the window seat, but he was the only patron and then he remembered why.
It was Tuesday night. The vigil at the church.
As if on cue, Amber came out of a door behind the bar, said goodbye to the barman and made her way toward the door. She looked up to see Robin. “Robin, are you coming to the vigil?”
He was apprehensive about it. After all, Claypath was gunning for him. But it could be useful. So he said, “Yes.”
“I’ll show you where the church is.” Amber smiled.
Outside, Amber led Robin into the heart of the town and turned left at the clock tower.
“How’s the investigation going?” Amber said.
Robin didn’t even really know how to answer that. “It’s hitting a few speed bumps.”
Amber laughed. “Don’t want to say I told you so, but...”
“Yeah, you were right. People around here, they just seem content with what’s happened. The Five—they’re just...gone and people are carrying on like nothing happened. How is that possible? How can you live next to a mystery like this and not wonder what happened to them? I mean, how does something like that happen?”
Amber turned a corner onto a village green. And past that, a church. There was a stream of people going inside. Everywhere else was quiet. But the church, even standing across the green like he was, seemed to pulse with activity, as if everyone in town was there.
Amber stopped and turned to Robin. “I think you’ll find your answer here. You’ll see why people need to accept they’re gone, need to draw a line under what happened.”
Robin watched as more people filed into the church. They were all dressed in muted colors as though this were a funeral instead of a vigil. He guessed in some ways it was.
Robin nodded. “Okay.”
And Amber nodded too, leading him across the green and into the church.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The church was busy, with many of the pews already full of people. Robin and Amber slid into a pew at the back. Robin looked around at a sea of faces he hadn’t seen around Marsden before, but eventually he saw people he recognized. There was Benny Masterson, and Martha Hobson, and a couple of people he knew by sight from the pub. Most people were keeping their heads down. If they talked, they talked in hushed tones, careful not to be too loud.
Suddenly, Robin felt eyes on him, and shivering, he turned his head to see a young woman in the corner of the room. She was looking directly at him. She stood out, as she wasn’t all in black. She had a purple hoodie on and had her hands in her pockets. As Robin met her gaze, she didn’t look away. Finally Robin did. But he could still sense her watching.
“I’d like to thank you all for coming,” a voice said, and Robin looked to the front of the church to see a man in black with a vicar’s collar. Behind him, several people had appeared, sitting on the stage area.
“Are they the parents?” Robin whispered to Amber.
There were only five people on the stage but there were eight seats. “That’s Mrs. Pack,” Amber said, gesturing to the woman at the far end. She looked incredibly old and exhausted. She was dressed in a ragged-looking jumper and jeans—not something he would have expected of an event such as this.
Next to her were three empty seats, until a couple arrived. They looked slightly more together, dressed in formal wear, although they matched Mrs. Pack’s tiredness. “Mr. and Mrs. Frost and next to them Mrs. Claypath and then our Chief of Police Roger Claypath.” The Claypaths looked the most together of them. Mrs. Claypath was dressed in an expensive-looking black dress, while Roger Claypath had his uniform on. He looked as intimidating as he had the previous day at the prison.
“Where are the others?” Robin said. “The Sunderlands and Mr. Pack?”
But Amber didn’t have time to answer.
“We will begin with a reading,” the vicar said. And started to read from a Bible.
After a passage and a prayer, the vicar invited the families up to say a few words. Mrs. Frost was the first to stand up, but as soon as she got to the podium at the front of the stage, she erupted into tears. Mr. Frost hurried up to her. “Let me, Sandra.”
Mrs. Frost nodded.
“Our Robert,” Mr. Frost said, his arm around his crying wife, “he was always gifted with knowing what to say. And I don’t know where he got that from, because it certainly wasn’t from me. He was a fantastic writer. Uh, he wrote stories and scripts and songs. But mostly he wrote poems. Which, as I’m sure you understand, was ironic. Because we named him after a poet.” Mr. Frost smiled and sniffed. “I was going to read something out that he’d written, but looking through the many poems he wrote, I realized that he never wrote anything sad. He focused on the good in the world and that’s what we should do. We should all remember the good of them. The Standedge Five were the best of us, and I am proud to call Robert Frost my son. Thank you.” Mr. Frost stepped away from the podium and led his wife back to their seats.
Next Mrs. Pack stood up, but she was crying so much that her entire speech was lost. Everyone just watched as she stumbled and sobbed through whatever she was saying. No one stopped her; she just continued until she was done, and when she was, she just stood there, swaying slightly, looking out to the crowd.
Roger Claypath got up and took Mrs. Pack back to her seat. Then he went back to the podium. “I have no doubt that all of you understand the pain we are all going through, and if you didn’t understand, I’m sure you do now.” And then Claypath somehow stared directly at Robin. How had he known exactly where he was? His gaze was fierce, and piercing. The message was clear.
Leave us alone.
“I understand now,” Robin muttered under his breath, maybe to Amber, maybe just to himself. “They move on because they have to.”
And Robin found tears coming to his eyes. And suddenly the room felt like it was closing in on him. He had to get out of the church. He didn’t care what anyone else would think. He just had to leave.
So he did, pushing past some people he didn’t know and opening the door as softly as he could.
Outside he burst into tears. He didn’t really know why. And then he thought—they were moving on even though their children were lost. They were managing it, even though it was difficult.
Did he have to move on?
Was the only reason he was still fighting for her because it was less painful than being faced with the prospect of finally letting go?
Chapter Twenty-Four
With the whole town in the church, Robin’s walk back to The Hamlet was uneventful and lonely. He went through the doors to find the pub was very much as he left it. The same barman was behind the bar, and the same man was sitting at the window table, finishing an obviously fresh pint.
Robin ordered a Coke and then whispered to the barman, “Who is that man by the window?” If the whole town was at the vigil for the Standedge Five, then this man was the odd one out. Why was he not with everyone else?
Robin wasn’t prepared for the answer, though. The barman looked to the man then back at Robin. “That’s Ethan Pack, Pru Pack’s father.”
Robin’s eyes widened and he turned to look at the man. He was wrapped up in a raincoat, even though it wasn’t raining outside and it was plenty warm in The Hamlet. He had a thick beard, and hair that was jutting out at odd angles. There was a newspaper on the table next to him, but he seemed to have no interest in it, just content with drinking. The sight of him just made Robin feel sad.
“What’s he drinking?” Robin said.
Thirty seconds later, Robin placed a fresh Marsden Ale in front of Ethan Pack. Ethan Pack looked up. His eyes showed no life. “I saw you were running a little low.”
“Thank you, stranger,” he mumbled.
“Robin Ferringham. Can I sit?” And he sat when Pack waved his approval.
“Robin, huh?” He drained his pint—over half—and started on the fresh one. “You passing through?”
“You could say that,” Robin said, and Ethan shrugged. Subtlety wasn’t going to be necessary for this conversation. Ethan was drunk. “I couldn’t help noticing that you weren’t at the church? The vigil for the Standedge Five?”
“What’s that to anyone?” Pack said.
“Because...of your daughter. She was one of them, right? One of the Five?”
Ethan looked at him, and Robin thought that maybe he had overstepped his bounds. But Ethan just took another drink. “Don’t mean I have to band together with all those arseholes and sing ‘Kumbaya,’ does it? I’m fine exactly where I am.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to you.”
“Yeah, well...” Ethan said breathlessly.
“I lost someone too,” Robin said. “A while ago. You never stop wondering.”
Ethan looked at him, really looked at him for the first time. “No, you never do. And I can’t stop. All the time, round and round in my head. She’s nothing now—just a...a question mark.”
“What was she like? Your daughter?”
“The usual young woman. Ran rings around me and May. May was my... Pru’s mum. Pru had big plans. She was a hell of an engineer. She had just got an internship designing things for spas. New kinds of hot tubs, swimming pools, saunas. It wasn’t what she really wanted to do, but it was a step in the right direction. She really wanted to work on space shuttles. Move to Florida and go to work at the Kennedy Space Center. Imagine that.” He tipped the beer to Robin and took a sip. It left a foam mustache on his upper lip and he didn’t seem to have any interest in rubbing it off.
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