Dark Shadows

by Sibel Hodge

  ‘I keep losing time. I… I think I’m sleepwalking, but it’s in the daytime. I do things, and I can’t remember what. I’m at some place, and I don’t know how I got there. At night, I have bad dreams. Nightmares.’ She shook her head. ‘But it’s the daytimes that are more scary, because I can’t remember.’

  I leaned forward. Not enough to invade her space but enough to send a silent signal of comfort. That I was there for her, taking her seriously. ‘Can you explain a little more for me? It’s normal for people to sometimes forget how they got to places. We all go into autopilot mode at times. I’ve driven to places many times and zoned out completely, thinking about other things. And when I got to my destination, I have no clear memory of how I arrived. Is that the kind of thing you mean? Or is this something different?’

  ‘No, this is different. Very different. It’s…’ Her face twisted into an anguished expression. Anxiety came off her in waves.

  I waited for her to explain more in her own time. She didn’t, so I prompted her. ‘Can you give me an example of what’s been going on? When one of these events happened, what’s the last thing you remember, and where did you end up?’

  She was silent for a moment as she flattened her lips into a tense line. Then she looked up at the ceiling. ‘Last week, I was in my room. I’m in one of the university’s accommodation blocks. The last thing I remember was… I was in the en suite bathroom, and I was doing my makeup. It was about nine o’clock in the morning. I had a couple of study periods, so I was going to work at my desk before my lecture started at eleven. Then the next thing I know, it’s one in the afternoon, and I’m in Verulamium Park, sitting on the grass under a tree.’ She swung her head in my direction, her eyes huge pools of confusion. ‘I lost four hours! I don’t know what happened. What I was doing.’

  ‘Okay.’ I nodded and scribbled a few notes in my client notebook that I’d later transfer to our computer database.

  ‘Then another time, I found myself at the bottom of the accommodation block I live in. In the stairwell. I was just, like, sitting on the floor, and I don’t know how I got there.’

  ‘Can you think of any physical reason it might’ve been happening? Have you been feeling unwell at all?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not really, no. And I’m scared to see a doctor. What if they say I’ve got a brain tumour or something.’

  ‘It’s possible there could be some physical reason, but maybe it’s hormonal. Or maybe you have a virus of some kind. It could be something simple that a doctor could discover from a blood test.’ I paused. ‘Or it could stem from something like stress or anxiety. That’s very common with students. There can be a lot of pressure here.’

  She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t stressed or anxious before this started happening.’

  ‘Okay. Have you been feeling lonely at all? It’s a big step coming to university. For most people, they’re leaving home for the first time. Away from the usual family and friend support structure. It’s a very brave step. A lot of people struggle with adjustment issues.’

  ‘No. I’m not lonely. I have friends, and I don’t mind my own company.’

  ‘Did something happen to you before these periods of sleep problems and lost time? Has there been anything traumatic going on in your life?’

  ‘No. But—’ She broke off. ‘It all sounds mad, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. I’m sure we can get to the bottom of this for you.’ I nodded encouragingly and broached the next question. ‘I have to ask you this… Are you taking any medication or recreational drugs? Because if you are, this could be a side effect.’

  ‘I’m not taking anything. And I hardly drink alcohol.’ She wailed and put her head in her hands. ‘I knew this was going to be useless. You don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m trying to. I’m just seeing if we can figure out together what’s happening.’

  She sat upright and flung her arms down by her sides. ‘None of what you’ve suggested would account for the other things.’

  ‘What other things?’

  ‘I don’t know how to explain.’ Her face crumpled in on itself. She looked down at her lap and mumbled something so quietly that I didn’t quite catch it, but I thought she said, ‘I’m hearing voices.’ Then she looked up at me, tears in her eyes. ‘This was a bad idea. You can’t help me. Maybe I am crazy.’ She stood abruptly and hurried towards the door.

  Before I was even on my feet, she’d yanked on the door handle and hurtled out into the waiting room. I called her name as I rushed past Janet behind the reception desk like a whirlwind, trying to catch up with Marcelina, who was running out of the building and into the open air of the campus.

  By the time I got outside, she was sprinting past one of the medical faculty blocks. I hesitated for a moment. Should I follow her and make sure she was okay? Or should I respect her right to walk out of the session?

  Of course I couldn’t leave her. And she obviously wasn’t okay. So I ran after her.

  Dodging students sitting on the grass, taking in the unseasonably warm May day, I gave chase. As I rounded the medical block, she was nowhere in sight. I ground to a halt and looked about, trying to spot her in the crowd of students who’d just exited lecture theatre block two.

  As I was giving up hope, I saw a flash of her blonde hair in the swarm, heading towards the university’s entrance gates and the main road beyond. I jogged after her, calling her name.

  Marcelina slipped through the gates. There was a pelican pedestrian crossing with traffic lights on the main road, but she didn’t stop and press the button to halt the traffic whizzing by. In one second, she was there on the footpath, looking across the road to the other side, but by the time I got within a few metres of her, she’d taken a step off the kerb into the oncoming traffic.

  ‘No!’ I yelled.

  But it was too late. A big black 4x4 slammed into Marcelina, sending her flying up into the air before she bounced on the tarmac like a rag doll.

  Chapter 7

  Glover

  Glover stood on the opposite side of the road from Marcelina, slouched against the wall of the house, with his phone pressed to his ear. But he wasn’t making a call. He’d been preparing. He’d been watching and waiting.

  No one would notice him amongst the others looking on at the accident scene with horror, and there were no traffic cameras at the lights. He’d already checked before Marcelina started questioning things.

  He wore jogging bottoms and a light sweatshirt with a hood that was pulled up. Sunglasses masked his eyes. He could be just another student out of the thousands in the area. What no one would know was that he’d filmed the whole thing with the high-definition pinhole camera in the messenger bag hanging from his right shoulder.

  Some of the bystanders in the milling crowd were screaming; some had tears in their eyes. He surveyed the scene with satisfaction then watched the driver of the 4x4 get out of his vehicle, hands shaking, his mouth gaping open in shock.

  Glover watched a young woman with long dark hair shouting for someone to call an ambulance while she kneeled on the tarmac beside Marcelina.

  He pulled the phone away from his ear and dialled a number. This time, he really did make a call.

  Chapter 8

  Detective Becky Harris

  For the first time in a long time, my stomach grumbled with hunger. After Ian and I had split up on the first occasion, we’d been off and on again more times than I could remember, falling into yet another unhealthy pattern. But six weeks ago, he’d finally left for good. And now I was going through the process of sorting out the divorce paperwork, which had completely obliterated my appetite, an unheard-of occurrence for me. Since I hadn’t had time to do a supermarket run before I arrived, I headed to the student union building, which, according to my welcome pack, had a food court, coffee shop, the Terrace Bar, a nightclub, a hairdressers, and even a bank.

  I pulled open the double doors to the union and paused inside the entrance to look at the
large notice boards lining one wall. I scanned the leaflets and flyers pinned to the first board. If there was some kind of radical group or cult operating here, then would they blatantly advertise for people to join?

  I found ads asking for students to flat share, a leaflet for the student counselling service, and flyers for sponsored events to raise money for UNICEF, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and a local animal shelter. There were lots of items for sale and other leaflets that all seemed innocuous. I moved on to the next board and found much of the same. I didn’t spot anything that looked particularly religious or fanatical, so I headed into the café next to the Terrace Bar.

  The offerings were far better than in my school days of sloppy boiled cabbage and snotty tapioca pudding. I got a medium-sized pizza and an orange juice and then headed outside onto the terrace, where a large seating area was busy due to the unusually nice weather. As I stood, tray in hand, searching out an empty seat in amongst the picnic tables, a memory slammed into my head from my school canteen—being called ‘Piggy’ and ‘Porker’ by the bullies while trying to make myself as small and unnoticeable as possible under the weight of their jeers and stares. Thank God I wasn’t a teenager again.

  But no one noticed me scanning the crowd. The majority of them had their heads down, gazes trained firmly on their smartphones. On one table of eight, every single student was looking at a screen instead of interacting with the others.

  Included in Sutherby’s information had been photos of the students’ friends, taken from their uni ID cards that he’d got from Anthea. I spotted Natalie’s friends, Jess and Millie. Jess had white-blonde hair in a pixie cut. Millie had long hair in a vivid plum colour. They sat in a group with three guys, and there were two empty seats at the table.

  I walked over, smiling. ‘Hi, do you mind if I sit here?’

  Millie and Jess looked up from their conversation.

  ‘Course not.’ Jess grinned. ‘We need more girl power on this table. They’re boring us about football.’ She jerked her head at one of the boys in the group and rolled her eyes.

  I smiled gratefully. ‘Thanks.’ I put my plate and juice on the table and leaned the tray on the ground against the table leg to make more room. ‘I’m Becky, by the way.’

  ‘I’m Jess.’ She pointed to her chest. ‘Millie, Shaun, Gaz, Tim.’ She pointed round the table.

  The three guys at the table gave me a distracted wave then went back to their conversation about a football game they’d seen. Millie and Jess looked at my pizza.

  ‘You going to eat all that?’ Millie laughed.

  ‘That’s nothing.’ I laughed back. ‘I could probably eat two.’ Luckily for me, my metabolism had gone into overdrive after my teenage years. I wasn’t stick thin, but I wasn’t the fat kid anymore.

  Jess pulled a face. ‘That’s so unfair. You’re tiny. I can put on a couple of pounds just sniffing the same air as food.’

  I picked up a piece of pizza and took a bite. It was amazing. I chewed, groaning in appreciation. ‘Tastes horrible anyway,’ I said to Jess. ‘You’re not missing anything.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ She grinned.

  I swallowed another mouthful while I quickly ran through in my head what I’d read about them in Sutherby’s files. Both of them had given statements to the police. Jess and Millie hadn’t seen Natalie drive into the elderly man at the pedestrian crossing, but Jess had been in the uni car park when Natalie arrived back in her Mini afterwards. Jess had noticed the broken windscreen, dented bonnet, smashed grill, and blood on Natalie’s car and asked Natalie what had happened and if she was okay. Jess had said Natalie got out of the car and stared at the bonnet as if she were completely surprised it was in that state. Jess had asked if she’d hit an animal. Natalie had said she couldn’t remember doing anything like that and had seemed completely ‘out of it’.

  The guys at the table got up to leave, said their goodbyes, and sauntered off.

  ‘Were you in our lecture just now?’ Jess asked me.

  ‘Yep, that’s right.’

  ‘I thought so. Have you joined halfway through the term?’ Millie asked. ‘I haven’t seen you before.’

  I came out with the cover story I’d invented to hopefully elicit some kind of insightful information—mature student who’d been travelling Europe for a few years, blah, blah, blah. ‘I missed the first couple of terms, but the uni sent me some of the coursework and lecture outlines, so I’ve been working from home until now. I had a car accident, you see. Well, I wasn’t driving. I was cycling and got hit by a car. Broke my leg.’ I pulled a pained face and rubbed at my shin for emphasis. ‘I didn’t want to be hobbling around campus on crutches with books and bags and things.’ I took another bite of pizza and waited for them to take the bait.

  ‘Ouch. Sounds painful. Luckily, I’ve never broken anything.’ Millie tapped the wooden table. ‘Touch wood.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about car accidents.’ Jess shuddered. ‘There was a bad one here a while back.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’

  Jess looked at Millie for a moment then said to me, ‘One of our friends hit someone with her car and drove off.’

  I did the fake-gasp thing again. I was getting good at it. I followed it up with a wide-eyed ‘wow’ look. ‘Sorry to hear that. Are they both okay?’

  Millie looked down at her fingertips still on the table and rubbed at an invisible spot. ‘He died. He was an old guy.’

  ‘That’s awful. And how’s your friend?’

  ‘She’s in a secure mental health place at the moment, getting treatment,’ Jess said. ‘I saw her after she did it. In her car. She parked up in the car park, and it was really weird. She was kind of spaced out and didn’t seem to realise anything had happened.’

  ‘Maybe she was in shock,’ I said.

  ‘I asked her what she’d done, ’cause I saw her car all dented with blood on it, and it was like she didn’t even remember doing it.’

  I frowned. ‘Do you think she could’ve been trying to cover up the fact she’d hit someone by saying she didn’t remember?’ But I doubted that was true. If Natalie had wanted to try to cover it up, she would’ve hidden the car until it was fixed. Or at least cleaned the blood off the bonnet. Or said the car had been stolen. And how could she even think she’d have a chance at hiding what she’d done when there had been multiple witnesses on the street?

  ‘No, it was like she seriously couldn’t remember what had just happened. It was almost like she was sleepwalking. But she’d been a bit weird for a few weeks before that, hadn’t she?’ Jess said to Millie.

  Millie’s lips pressed together for a moment, her face etched with sadness. ‘Yeah. And she thought someone was following her.’

  ‘Around campus?’

  ‘Yeah, and off campus, too, when she went into town. But she couldn’t say who it was.’

  That was news to me. None of the statements had mentioned that fact.

  ‘And she was having bad dreams and stuff,’ Millie said. ‘Not sleeping. She kind of distanced herself from us, like she was annoyed with us or something. But we couldn’t work out why she was pissed off. Every time we invited her out lately, she made excuses.’

  ‘Oh.’ I nodded sympathetically and thought back to what I’d read. People distancing themselves from existing friends was one of the ways cults isolated potential targets. ‘Maybe she was hanging around with someone else. She might’ve joined a club or something and widened her circle of friends.’

  Millie shook her head. ‘No, I never saw her with anyone else. And she wasn’t into any of the club activities stuff.’

  ‘We think she was seeing this guy, though, and didn’t want to tell us about him,’ Jess said.

  ‘Who was he?’ I asked. Again, that was news to me. Natalie’s parents said she wasn’t involved with anyone, and neither Jess or Millie’s statements had mentioned a relationship.

  Jess glanced around the busy eating area before leaning in closer. ‘We think it
was one of the professors.’ She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Which one?’ I asked.

  ‘We saw her chatting to him a couple of times, and it definitely looked like there was something going on with them. And one time, it looked like they were having a bit of an argument,’ Jess said.

  ‘Yeah, he’s gross, though. And old,’ Millie said.

  ‘So who was he?’ I asked again.

  Jess’s gaze darted to an oversized watch on her wrist. ‘Oh! We need to go finish off that essay before three!’ She jumped up and grabbed Millie’s arm. ‘We’re coming down to the Terrace Bar tonight if you fancy joining us.’

  ‘Thanks, that would be great. I don’t really know anyone else yet.’ And I needed to get an answer to my question, but it would look too suspicious to ask again before they left.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I figured. It’s horrible when you’re new. Let’s exchange numbers.’ Jess pulled her phone from her large handbag.

  I told her my number and put hers in my phone.

  ‘Great. Be down here at six.’ Jess hoisted her bag over her shoulder and tugged Millie away.

  ‘See ya!’ Millie cried.

  I took a swallow of orange juice as I watched them go, mulling over what they’d said. I wondered how the coroner’s officer could’ve completely overlooked a possible boyfriend and the video Shakia had shown me. Was that because they just hadn’t asked the right questions? Often, witnesses didn’t volunteer certain information because they didn’t know they held an important piece of a puzzle that linked to another piece. But there were definitely pieces missing here. And I intended to find them.

  Chapter 9

  Toni

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ I yelled into the crowd as I kneeled beside Marcelina.

  She lay on her back, one leg bent beneath her, the other outstretched. Her head was twisted towards her right shoulder, with blood pooling out from a wound on her forehead.