by Ben Oakley
“Well you don't have anyone, do you?”
“How does that make me bad with women? Maybe I prefer my privacy and singular existence. Maybe I just wanna be left alone to get on with things.”
“You get lonely?”
I shook my head, “I don't wanna talk about me.”
“My turn to hit a nerve?”
Suddenly something caught my eye on the buffer a few metres ahead. It was a very small bump on the surface and what looked like a small piece of plastic.
“Got something,” I said.
Even though I was going at a slow speed, the kayak still drifted by the object and I had to dig in to slow myself down. I could just about turn the kayak around with an inch to spare on each end. I bumped off the walls in quick succession but finally started to face the other way.
Paine had dug in her paddles and slowed herself to a stop, “I see it.” She reached for it but was at the wrong angle. “Can't reach it, hold on. Can you come up on the side of me?”
I turned a little more and crawled my way to the side. I bumped into Paine's kayak and we were side by side attempting to hide our paddles so as not to knock each other out.
I looked to the brick buffer and picked up the object which was covered in mud or slush, I didn't want to think about what it might have been. I stuck my hand in the water and washed it off, then took it out to let it rest on my palm.
“What is it?” she said.
“Shine your light here.”
The flashlight on the phone illuminated my hand in the darkness but I still couldn't quite work it out. And then it dawned on me.
Paine looked over at it, “is that what I think it is?”
“It's a hospital wrist band.”
I washed it off in the water again and read what was left of it out loud.
Fern. A.
D.O.B: 19/01/2001
NHS: 486 668 ???
University College Hospital (UCH)
“I don't understand?” Paine said.
I had realised all too quickly, “it's Ana Fernandez, a Brazilian victim.”
“How do you know that?”
Suddenly Paine's light went off and her phone started ringing. I put the wristband in the seat of the kayak and used my phone to light up the darkness. The ringtone echoed throughout the tunnel, louder than our voices had done.
“Paine,” she said calmly into the phone.
I thought back to Daisy the waitress at The Outhouse bar and how she had told me about Fernandez. It almost confirmed to me that the killer was using the canal systems somehow but I needed more proof.
Paine then interrupted my train of thought as she ended her call.
“That what I think it is?” I asked.
“Stansey King has been located entering Highgate Cemetery!”
Twenty Two
It took at least another ten minutes for us to get the kayaks back out the canal and onto the walkway. I shouted back to the owner that we had to rush off and he seemed to understand. Or let's just say another twenty quid sealed the deal.
In the car on the way over to Highgate, her phone would not stop ringing and I found it tricky to get a word in at all but I worked hard at it.
“How do you know about Ana Fernandez?” she asked suddenly.
“She used to work at The Outhouse Bar and Cafe, I was there this morning watching your roadworks theatrics. You can find out a lot by just talking to people.”
“We attributed her death to the Blood Streams Killer a couple of weeks ago. Her throat had been cut and she'd been left to bleed out in the Limehouse Basin.”
“So this guy cuts their throats and then puts them in the water to bleed to death?”
“Mostly. There's been a few differences but generally that's what he does.”
“The water must have significance,” I said, “he's purposefully watching them bleed into the canal.”
Paine still hadn't put on her siren but the roads were working in our favour yet again. We'd taken the smaller roads close to my home in Hampstead and onto Highgate Cemetery.
“Why do you think he's watching them bleed out?” she asked.
“I'm not sure but it's what he might do. He wouldn't go through all that trouble just to dump them in the canal.”
“It's not just the canal remember, it's the sewers,” she reiterated.
“But it's sewers or streams that run close to the canal. The canal isn't the purpose for the killings but it's how he must be taking and then killing them. He's using the water to move the bodies. But why?”
“You think he's killing them in one location and bringing them to the water?”
“No, he's killing them in or close to the canal. He wants to see their blood mix with the water. He wants to see the water turn to blood.”
“Religious nut?” she said.
“I thought it too but apart from the rivers running red there's nothing that stands out as overly religious.”
Paine pulled over at the Swain Lane entrance of Highgate Cemetery. There was already one patrol car near the entrance.
“Time to get to work,” she said, before stepping out of the car and strolling over to the officers.
I took my time getting out. I was apprehensive about seeing Stansey King in person again. I found it hard to get the image out my head. The cuts on her body, the fear in her eyes, the confusion on her face. I didn't know what was worse; seeing Stansey King in my basement like that or seeing the photo of a dead Jess Ashby.
Somehow both of them were connected and it hurt me that I couldn't work out why. It also killed me inside that Jess was gone. A victim of something she had warned me of. If only I had believed her earlier about the Blood Streams.
“Damn Blood Streams,” I said to myself, as I stepped out the car.
I slammed the door shut and walked over to where they were. Paine turned to me and nodded.
“The last CCTV image shows her heading to this entrance. The tour office here at Highgate says someone had gone through with a tour group about twenty minutes ago.”
“The East Cemetery?” I asked.
Paine nodded, “the tour group has been led out and Stansey's not with them. She's in the cemetery somewhere. Let's go.”
“You know this cemetery's huge right?” I said but got no response.
Another unmarked police car pulled into the entrance car park and came our way. I saw who it was before they even arrived, it was the erratic driving. The Two Bergs screeched to a halt and in a perfect display of synchronisation, exited the vehicle at the same and shut the doors right on cue.
“Do they need to be here?” I said to Paine.
Berg had overheard me. “We were in the area matey,” he said. “Anything we can do to help the cock-up you've inflicted on us all.”
“And where I have gone wrong here? Berg, eh?”
Berg looked at Paine, “can't believe you're even entertaining this prick.”
“Oh I'm the prick!” I said.
“That's what I said, you want me to repeat it?”
Paine kicked some stones off the ground and pointed her finger at us all one by one, “don't any of you jeopardise this. It's not about you and your grudges. We've got a mentally traumatised young girl running scared and it's our job to find her before someone else does. The girl is the focus, not your bickering and side-swipes.”
There was a bit of silence until Berg broke it, as he always would. “You kick like a girl.”
Suddenly one of the tour guides jogged down to us from the entrance, a man named Bob, he was huffing and puffing.
“What is it?” I asked.
Out of breath, he said, “one of the tour group said they saw a girl who climbed over.”
“Where is she now?” Paine said.
“The other side.”
Paine looked confused and I jumped in to answer her untold question.
“She's in the West Cemetery,” I sighed. “The most haunted place in all of London.”
Twenty Three
>
Highgate Cemetery, a monument to Victorian extravagance and resting place of over 170,000 people. Which of course gave rise to an extraordinary amount of hauntings. Seeing as I lived less than a mile away, it was a given that I'd researched the place inside and out.
I hadn't intentionally chosen to live beside the largest burial ground in London, and I'm sure it wasn't my grandparent's choice at the time – but I couldn't be sure of that. I had run a number of articles on the Highgate Vampire and those stories still had a large reach.
As soon as we reached the West Cemetery entrance, Paine split us up and I had a feeling it was going to happen. She said we were better focused if we used two different detective minds on each route.
“Berg, you're with Lake, you're going left. I'm with Hallberg to the right. Anything out of the ordinary then phone it in.”
“Really?” I said.
“You'll learn to love each other,” Paine said before leading Hallberg away with her.
Berg huffed and shook his head, “come along then big boy.”
I wasn't necessarily a violent person but I really wanted to slap Berg. Partially for the fun of it but mostly because his mere presence riled me the wrong way.
We followed the trail onwards. I was headed to the Terrace Catacombs as I was sure if you wanted to hide anywhere in Highgate then it would be the best place. A spooky underground hallway of catacombs and arches that provided many a story over the years.
The Cemetery was incredibly photogenic for the horror hound within me. The graves and mausoleums within its boundary were the result of architectural imagination overload. The Victorians even built an Egyptian Avenue into the West Cemetery, lined with impressive structures and Gothic tombs.
As we approached the Terrace Catacombs, I heard Berg checking in on his partner.
“Anything yet?” Berg said.
“Nothing yet but it's hillier than I remembered.” came the reply.
I shook my head, it was only a couple of flights of stairs on the other side, nothing more.
“Highgate Vampire anyone?” I said to Berg.
“Does that mean I get one of your stories to cheer me up on this walk?”
I ignored his question and began anyway, “the legend of the Highgate Vampire first appeared in 1969 and began with a sighting of a vampire roaming the catacombs. In the years that followed, the locals marched on the cemetery armed with crucifixes and wooden stakes. They needed to kill the vampire who was tormenting the region.
“They didn't find a vampire but they did find a man destroying specific graves. He claimed he was driving stakes through the hearts of the recently deceased as they had visited him in his home. Since then, there is only one vampire sighted within the cemetery.”
I glanced at Berg who raised his eyebrows in ignorance, “is he all sparkly, is he?”
“Just you wait until you see it,” I quipped.
“I might just do that, Lake, I might just wait here for a mythical vampire to crawl up my ass and take residence where it belongs.”
“It's not really an image I want in my head,” I squinted at him.
“I hope it burns itself in.”
We arrived at the barriers to the Terrace Catacombs. Usually, the only access was via a tour group but we had a special permission to go anywhere we needed to go. In order to get this girl out of their hair so they could resume the tours.
I hopped over the barrier and Berg followed by moving it and putting it back.
“What is it between us, Berg? Are you holding a grudge over a comment in a magazine?”
“Little bit, yeah. Why, do you wanna kiss and make up?”
I put a finger to my lip to tell him to shut up for a bit as we traipsed quietly along the walkway of the Terrace Catacombs. The tombs were lit only by the cleverly built holes above but it was only enough light to make it feel like a mild dusk inside.
Some of the tomb coverings had succumbed to natural decline whilst others had been reconstructed. Surprisingly it smelled better than the Maida Hill tunnel and that was with the thousands of dead all around me, in the ground and above it.
I spoke quietly to him, “so what do we do if we find her?”
“Protect her from herself, simple as that,” Berg said. “She might be the only one who has more knowledge about the Blood Streams than anyone else.”
“She's a witness?”
“Better believe it matey. She named you by the way, did you know that?”
“I'm fully aware of the recording, thank you.”
“I've never met a vampire,” he said.
“You believe in vampires?”
“Course I don't, but I never seen one.”
“Surely you would have to believe in vampires in order to see one. It's like when people say I'll see you in hell. They're making the assumption they would already be in hell for me to have met them there.”
Four birds flapped their wings in front of us and we both jumped back in fright. They circled until finding their way through the holes above.
Berg's radio crackled and he stopped to answer it. His breath had quickened and I could tell the birds had completely side-swiped him.
“Hallberg?” he said.
Nothing, no reply.
“Are you pressing the little green button?” I jested.
He looked at me with a face of disdain, “Hallberg, you there?”
“Maybe it's the catacombs blocking the signal?”
“It's a short-wave radio. Why would a bunch of dead folk and a bit of concrete stop that?”
He had a point but I didn't want to argue with him any more than was necessary.
A stone dropped from one of the holes up ahead and I stopped in my tracks. Another one came through and tapped the floor with a small echo. Someone was above us. I beckoned at Berg to go back the way he had come while I carried on through to the other exit.
Surprisingly he did as he was told and crept back along the Terrace Catacombs to the first entrance. I followed the route we had intended and within a few seconds if neither of us found anyone then we would meet again at the top.
As I approached the hole above, I tentatively glanced upwards to see if anyone was there and to stop myself being seen. No one was there, no animal or no face peering through. All of a sudden I realised I was alone in the catacombs, the atmosphere seemed to close in on me in an instant.
The death throes of history were all around me in the designs of the dead. The Gothic tendencies of my teenage years rushed back to me. If I had found my way here, back when I was youngster, I'd be having the time of my life. I was a metal fanatic, used to love rocking out. My hair was below the shoulder-line and I wore graded leather like it was going out of fashion.
I had friends, lots of friends, until one day everyone just grew up and I was left behind. I wanted to continue as long as I could before life took hold as it always would, taking people away from me and leaving me lonesome.
I reached the end of the walkway and headed back up the steps to the ground level. I hugged close to the nearest head-height tomb and edged my way along, ready to see who was at the top.
My heart was racing, hammering against my ribcage. I wasn't one for confrontation and didn't know how this was going to go down but Berg couldn't have been too far behind.
I took a step out from behind the tomb and he walked straight into me.
Berg flapped his arms in the air and shouted out his contempt.
“Fuck's sake, Lake!”
I thought my heart was going to break through to the other side. “What were you doing coming around that way for? I said go the other way.”
“You didn't say anything, you just beckoned.” He motioned with his hands as if he was copying what I had done, “what the hell is that? You're like a bloody puppet-master.”
“You didn't see anyone?”
“No, I didn't see anyone. Do you think if I had seen anyone I'd be playing footsie with you now?”
I answered sarcastically, “th
ese images you put in my head are outstanding.”
He shook his arms to release the tension then stepped away from me to look at the tombs around us. Before quickly getting back on his radio.
“Hallberg, come in?” There was silence and then he shook the radio at me, “it's not the bloody signal, see.”
Suddenly the radio crackled and Hallberg spoke in a broken sentence.
“Man down... man down...”
Twenty Four
We didn't know their exact location so we jogged along the main route, believing we would at least see them – or bump into them.
The more I jogged, the hungrier I got. I realised it was around lunchtime and the hunger pangs were tapping away at me. It seemed like a strange thing to think of when an officer had just shouted man down, but if this was going to be the way of things then I needed the energy.
Berg was ahead of me, only slightly. I shouted to him, “anything?”
“Nothing yet,” he called back.
“They were following the route in the other direction.”
“You think I don't know that? They can't be that far from the entrance.”
I could see the West Cemetery entrance in the distance, only a hundred metres or so. The scenery was flashing past me so fast, I was starting to feel dizzy. I didn't have low-blood sugar but it sure started to feel like it.
And then I saw Hallberg at the same time that Berg did. My heart virtually sank out of my chest. He was laying on the ground on his back with his arm outstretched and the radio in his hand.
Berg dropped down beside him, “talk to me, brother!”
I reached them as Berg lifted him into a seated position. I heard Hallberg groaning and he seemed to be in better shape than I first realised.
“He took me by surprise. Whack to the head from behind and I crumpled.” He got himself to his knees.
“Where's Paine?” I said urgently.
“I come around and she had gone,” Hallberg said. It was the most I'd ever heard him talk if I was honest.
Berg quickly motioned at me to get Hallberg to his feet. He then got on his radio, “two officers down! I repeat, two officers down! Get everyone here now, send an ambulance.”