Now You See Me

by Chris McGeorge

  “Think about this?” Robin said, holding up the paper. “I think it’s pretty bloody obvious, don’t you? It shows where the hole is. This is it—what we need to get the police to see reason—if the hole really exists then this is it. A real tangible way that this could have happened.”

  “In the morning at first light, we will...”

  “No—we go now,” Robin said.

  Sally stepped back, some kind of disgust on her face. “No, we don’t.”

  Robin shrugged. “Fine, then see you around, Sally.” He started walking again, even if it was just for effect. He knew the conversation was nowhere near over.

  “Robin.”

  He wheeled around. “We’re not a team, okay. We’re not a detective duo or something. I was doing fine before you came along.”

  Sally scoffed. “You were halfway toward getting yourself run out of town. And let’s not forget this was my lead. I brought you here. That paper is mine.”

  “This isn’t about whose lead it is, Sally. There is a young man sitting in prison right now, and maybe he shouldn’t be in there. And maybe we can do something about it. And maybe, just maybe, we can do something about it right now. Not at first light, now.”

  Sally slowly walked toward him, until they were close, almost intimately so. “Why are you doing this, Robin? What’s your prime motivation? Is it Matthew McConnell’s well-being? Or is it just about the information in his head?”

  Robin held her gaze for as long as possible, before looking away.

  “I thought so,” Sally said. “Maybe you should save the lectures about a moral compass for when you get one.”

  Robin sighed, and tried to formulate a sentence. It was a while before he did, and even then it was only two words. “I’m going.”

  Sally nodded. “If it comes to finding one—if it comes to finding out what happened to the Standedge Five, and what happened to Samantha Ferringham—I don’t really know you, Robin. You seem like a good enough man—meat and potatoes. You say what you see, think the world is black-and-white just enough to think you’re on the right side. Your paths are aligned at the moment, but you have to start considering the very real possibility that at some point they are going to diverge. And then you’re going to have to start asking yourself some very hard questions.”

  Robin knew she was right, but wasn’t going to let her know it. He felt like a petulant child who only wanted to add to the petulance. “Are you coming or not?”

  “I’m coming,” Sally said. “You need me. Because you’re going the wrong way.”

  Robin looked at her as she turned and started walking the other way. He found himself following once again. Sally was speaking the truth, and hadn’t he wondered himself, in the back of his mind, what would happen if he had to choose? In that moment, though, he saw Sam at the end of a long road.

  And following this scrap of paper would lead him closer. To her.

  And that was what mattered. That was all that mattered.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Sally led him back to the Diggle entrance of Standedge Tunnel. She followed the canal a little the other way until they came to a bridge. She looked back as she started to cross.

  “I’ve never gone to the abandoned tunnel, so I’m just guessing here, but I assume it’s this way.”

  Robin nodded as they crossed the bridge, and watched Sally as she hopped over a fence into a probably private field. Robin didn’t even think, just climbed over the fence too—a little less easily than Sally.

  There were three horses in the field, hanging around farther down the fence, and they looked around to regard the intruders. Robin stopped to watch them, and started getting left behind. He caught up to Sally halfway across the field.

  “How old are you?” he said, slightly awkwardly.

  Sally looked around, mirroring his awkwardness. “You wanna check my ID or something?”

  “No,” Robin said quickly, “just...what you said back there made a lot of sense. That’s all.”

  “I’m twenty,” Sally said.

  “Your dad teach you to be so wise?”

  Sally laughed. “No. No, he did not.” They got to the end of the field, and Sally hopped over the fence onto a gravel path and watched Robin as he precariously picked his way over, seemingly to enjoy the spectacle. She waited until his feet were back on the ground and set off up the gravel path, crunching with every step. Robin walked too.

  “Your mother, then?”

  “Mother?” She said it like it was a foreign word. “No... I don’t have one of those.”

  “Everyone has a mother.”

  She stopped, looked at him thoughtfully.

  “What?”

  She shrugged and carried on. “You just reminded me of someone for a second.” Before Robin could respond, they rounded a corner, and Sally gave a small whoop of joy. “Well, that was easy.”

  They were confronted by a large train tunnel, completely fenced off and padlocked tight. Inside the tunnel was darkness. It was completely abandoned and small sounds echoed throughout. The whole place felt wrong—a structure made for life devoid of it. Robin stepped forward, looking at the fence and, specifically, the bottom of it. He saw that there was indeed a layer of concrete that spanned the width of the tunnel, just like Martha Hobson at the Visitor Centre had said, making it impossible to dig under the fence.

  Sally tapped him on the arm and pointed up. He looked to where she was pointing. “There’s the camera.” There was a small nondescript box on the top of the tunnel with a red light blinking on it. Robin suddenly had the feeling of being watched.

  “There really is no way you could get through here,” Robin said.

  And Sally nodded. “This isn’t what we’re here for, though. I guess we’ll try and get round the side.” With that, she crossed in front of the tunnel, looking at the hedges that lined the entrance. With a shrug, she reached out her hands and started to hack through. She disappeared.

  Robin looked back at the tunnel, into the same nothingness he saw inside of Standedge. Train tracks worn into the dirt disappeared into the dark. He thought of the rugged face he’d seen. He imagined it—must have. But as he looked, the likelihood of that was in flux. He shivered involuntarily and hacked his own way through the bushes.

  He emerged into a clearing of trees and bushes, all bare of leaves. The cold weather had already cleared them, and after a second, he understood why. A thick and cold wind smacked him in the face, almost blowing him over. He shielded his eyes, and when it was over, he blinked away the cold.

  “Jesus,” Sally said, clutching her coat and wrapping it around herself. She reached out in front of her to rest her hand against something, and through the skeletons of bushes, Robin saw the side of the railway tunnel. It was uneven and just gave the impression of a rocky hill. The surface was jagged but complete—there were no gaps, just a hill. Solid. No hint of a way through. “Well, let’s see if our mystery mapmaker has good intel.”

  They started to walk—slowly and steadily, charting a course as close to the edge as they could. There was an incredible amount of undergrowth to contend with, and if it had been the height of summer when the leaves were lush, it would have been impossible to traverse. Over the next twenty minutes, they searched in silence—following the hill.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Sally said, as she snapped through a bare bush.

  “You want to know how old I am?” Robin said, smiling.

  Sally looked at him before continuing. “Well, I do now. But no, not that.”

  Robin reached out and traced the side of the hill with his fingers. The light was failing—Sally had been right about that. The sun was visible through the tree trunks. Soon they’d have to work by flashlight. “Shoot.”

  “Why do you trust McConnell? How do you know he’s not lying about this phone call with your wife?”

/>   “I know,” Robin said, looking the hill wall up and down.

  “Yes, but how?”

  Robin sighed. “There was something that he couldn’t possibly know. Something that Sam must have told him.”

  “What was it?”

  “He said ‘Clatteridges. 7:30 p.m. 18th August 1996.’ It was something I never wrote about in the book. Something hardly anyone knows.”

  “What happened?”

  Robin considered it, and then said, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Okay, then,” Sally said, but not as flippantly as the words suggested. She sounded content to let it go, and Robin was thankful to her for that.

  * * *

  They continued quietly. Robin watched the hill, seeing nothing of note. Just a steep hillside. As impenetrable as it was unremarkable.

  They carried on for another twenty minutes or so, as the sun dipped and then started to disappear. Robin got his phone out, casting its light through the undergrowth.

  “McConnell give you anything to go on,” Sally said, getting her own phone out, doing the same, “except Clatteridges?”

  Robin smiled to himself. It was kinda dumb. “Nothing concrete, except...” He shifted his weight, so he could get into his backpack. He reached in and pulled out the notebook. With one hand, he awkwardly shuffled the notebook to the page and tapped Sally on the shoulder. She shone the flashlight at him and took the open notebook. She stopped to look at it, and Robin took over in front.

  Robin watched her, before going back to the search. “He said that Sam said something about a black hound and a horse head.”

  “A horse head?” Sally said, behind him.

  “That mean something to you?” Robin said, raising his flashlight to look up the hillside and then down. The hill became bare, divulging into a rock face. The undergrowth was incredibly thick here, and...

  His flashlight hit on something.

  “No,” Sally said, but Robin didn’t hear. He was too busy ripping through the bare thin branches, trying to see what was on the rock face, right at the base. It was a stack of wet cardboard, stuck to the rock face. He battled with the plant life and reached for it. He pulled it away, and shone the torch into the gap.

  “Sally.”

  He looked back.

  “Sally.”

  She was still looking at the notebook, and she muttered something. Something that Robin would probably have recognized as “A horse head...” if he was listening.

  “Sally,” he shouted, and she looked up.

  Robin smiled, as he pulled away the cardboard and shone the torch at what he’d found behind it.

  A small crack in the rock that had loosened everything under it, creating a small hole. Just big enough to squeeze through.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Robin went first—he cleared more of the undergrowth so he could lie on his stomach and shuffle himself forward. Sally trained her flashlight on the hole as Robin pulled himself forward. He slid his own phone into the hole so the flashlight illuminated ahead of him. He took one look at Sally, who smiled her good luck, and he stuck his head inside.

  The hole was slightly bigger than it first appeared but not by much. He looked above him and his head grazed against a jagged rock. He resolved to keep his head down, shuffling his arms forward and pulling himself farther into the hole.

  “Are you okay?” Sally said, as Robin felt his feet graze the sides of the tunnel.

  He didn’t respond—he felt like even the slightest noise could cause a shift in the rock and send the whole thing tumbling down around him. He inched forward again, wondering how far it would be until he hit the tunnel.

  As he moved, he wondered if this was really it. Was this really what they had been looking for? Was this how the Standedge Five had been taken out of the tunnel? The hole was only big enough for one person—it would have been difficult, almost impossible, to push a body through the hole. It would just get stuck.

  What did any of this mean? This was the first tangible step in the right direction—the first thing that made sense in the quest for finding out what truly happened, but it only brought up a dozen more questions.

  Robin caught up with his phone—the flashlight beam shining directly up and not helping him see ahead at all. He instinctually started to reach for it, shifting his right arm—dragging it against the side of the hole. He snagged it against a loose rock and something fell onto his back.

  He stopped stock-still. There was a shift above him—fine rubble fell on his face as he held his breath. There was a sound of tumbling rock, and for a second he thought that this was it. He was about to be crushed.

  But then the sound stopped. And he stayed still a minute more, breathing out slowly. He was okay.

  He retracted his arm and started shuffling forward again, nudging the phone ahead with his nose. It was inherently ridiculous, and he wondered what he looked like crawling through this hole like some kind of animal.

  He nudged the phone forward and suddenly the light shot up, extending beyond the ceiling of the hole. At first he thought it had just widened but he craned his head up as far as he could to see and started to hear the wind. Suddenly, as he levered himself forward into the opening, a gust hit his face. It wasn’t an opening; it was the tunnel.

  An inch more forward and his arms were free. The ground was wet and slippery but he could reach out his hands and grasp a ridge of rock in the ground. He pulled himself out of the hole awkwardly, trying to make sure not to touch the sides with his feet. But soon enough, they were free, and in the tunnel.

  He pushed himself up onto his knees and reached out and grabbed his phone. He shone it around the open space. The tunnel was big, with a high curved ceiling that was mostly smooth. There were a few weathered patches where bricks had come loose and exposed uneven rock. It didn’t look unstable, but wasn’t in the best condition. He could see how a body could cause some kind of collapse.

  He shone the flashlight along the floor to see wooden planks slotted into the old train tracks, creating a path of sorts and making the floor more level—undoubtedly to help when the tunnel was used as a road to take a van through, following the boats inside Standedge. The rest of the floor was shingled, but the loose gravel rocks were sparse, having been shifted around for what must have been decades.

  Robin pointed the torch each way. Left was where they had walked outside and he could see a small pinprick of dull light in the center of the tunnel that had to be the Diggle entrance. Right—there was nothing but darkness.

  Robin wrenched himself to his feet, feeling more exhausted than he’d felt in years. His arms and legs throbbed with pain. His shins stung, and pointing the phone down, he saw that his trousers had ripped at the knee and his skin was red and raw. For some reason, he touched a knee—obviously a mistake. A shot of pain ran through his body into his brain.

  He clenched his teeth, trying to get through the pain by focusing on what he could hear. A steady dripping sound echoed up and down the tunnel, probably only from one source but sounding like the drips that surrounded him. There was the wind, of course, providing a steady blunt whistling backdrop, and strange sounds he didn’t think he could even describe. They sounded like throwing a bowling ball at a padded wall—sort of hollow thuds with no real weight behind them. Those sounds seemed to be inconsistent but constant—almost like the tunnel was living and breathing around him.

  He shivered.

  He had never believed in ghosts or anything like that, but if there was anywhere they existed, it was here.

  He heard Sally’s quiet voice through the hole. “I’m coming in.”

  Robin knew he should wait—should be there to help Sally if she needed it. But it was almost like he was mesmerized by the dark. He stepped into the center of the tunnel, turning right and shining the flashlight into nothing but more of the same.

 
And he started to walk.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The tunnel had him now. He started to realize why Matthew had been so entranced by somewhere like this. It was like the outside world didn’t exist. The only thing he could count on was the ground in front of his feet—the ground that came alive in the circle of light. Nothing that was behind him mattered. Just that ever-moving circle—always staying one step ahead of him.

  The sounds were still there. The hollow clunks, the dripping. Sally was behind him somewhere—he had heard her get through the hole and into the tunnel proper. But she wasn’t with him. And neither was her own hovering light. Maybe she had gone the other way.

  He walked on the tracks—the wooden planks had ended and he was stepping over the sleepers now. He stopped every so often to point the flashlight around himself, but all he saw was the same—the walls of a railway tunnel. It was sleeping, having been forced into slumber.

  Robin smiled at that, and stepped halfway over the railway line, tripping. He dropped his phone and it went flying ahead of him, the light whipping around, until it slammed into the ground. He cursed under his breath and scrabbled around in the dark in front of him, his hands finally finding the phone. But not before he discovered something slimy and slippery. He picked up the phone and shone the light down on what he had found.

  It was a damp and dirty piece of plastic bag. An orange bag for a loaf of bread.

  What the hell was that doing in a place like this?

  Robin looked around him. And he saw something to his left. It looked like a brick doorway without a door. This must be a pathway to Standedge.

  He got up and walked to the doorway, exiting the railway tunnel and coming out onto a landing of sorts, with a railing off into nothingness. And then another tunnel.