by Joy Ellis
Gary smiled and raised his hands, palms facing the boss. ‘I know, if superstition is alive and well and living anywhere in England, it will be in Lincolnshire.’ He lowered his hands. ‘But even I don’t like this part, and I really don’t believe in boggarts.’
‘But your sister did?’ Rosie passed him back the photo.
‘Oh no. Anne didn’t believe in fanciful stuff, but she did have some sort of odd sensitivity to atmosphere. Difficult to explain, but there were certain places that upset her badly.’ He looked out over the sedge and reeds of the watery marsh. ‘And this was one of them.’
Jon regarded him silently. Anne stood close to his shoulder, and although Jon knew that the woman had already passed through the velvet curtain of the crematorium, to him she looked as real as Rosie or Kate.
Gary took the picture back, stared at it for a moment and then carefully returned it to his warrant card holder. ‘Frankly, although I believe everything Anne felt was true, there may have been other reasons for the locals keeping away.’ He gave a knowing wink. ‘They say that they’ve seen someone in dark clothes walking the danger areas at night. They say that only a devil would walk those paths in darkness.’ He grinned. ‘But I say that a smuggler would. This marsh meets the Wash, and the Wash meets the North Sea.’ He raised an eye-brow enquiringly.
‘And the North Sea meets boats stuffed with illegal incoming drugs.’ Kate nodded. ‘I see your point.’
‘We’ve got rid of most of the trade in this area, but you’ll never stamp it out,’ said Gary realistically. ‘There’s always some silly sod ready to take on the marsh and killer tides.’
‘So what was the original folklore story about this spot? And why was your sister so affected by it?’ Rosie leaned forward her elbows resting on her knees.
‘I forget the whole story, but it is documented to be one of those places where weird natural phenomenon occurs when the weather is just right. And you can imagine what the old web-foots make of them.’ He pulled a face. ‘Mind you, although all marshes have their ghost lights, it’s the sheer abundance and regularity of marsh lights that makes this place different. That, and the noises. A whole plethora of weird sounds come from Hobs End. My sister heard something one day when our Dad had taken us on a nature ramble to the Wash bank. I never heard it, neither did our father, but Anne said she heard whisperings, voices that were saying things that she didn’t want to know about. It scared her half to death.’ Gary shrugged. ‘Even a few years back, my old dog did a runner after coming out of the vet’s, and we came down here looking for him, Anne heard things then.’
‘The same sort of whisperings?’ asked Rosie, sounding remarkably like a school girl in the dorm at midnight.
‘No, she said it was more like music, singing..,’ he shrugged, ‘… it had her in pieces. She fair ran off the marsh, she did.’
Singing? Jon gritted his teeth together. What more proof did he need that they were in the right place?
‘Where the hell is our University geek?’ grumbled Kate. ‘We are sitting around telling bloody stories, when Emily could be breathing her last.’
‘I’ll go back to the house and look out for him, Guv.’ Rosie got up and brushed dried grass off her trousers.
‘I’ll go with you.’ said Kate.
Jon watched them walk away and then turned to look back over the lonely stretch of marsh. He wanted to be gone from here. He felt that he was being drained, as if something was sapping his soul. And it wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
He rubbed the back of his neck, massaging the tight and stressed muscles, and realized that a headache had begun as they passed through Windrush’s iron gates. But considering the place was full of ghosts, it was hardly surprising. And then there was his confusing feelings about Rosie, and spirits were bombarding him, day and night, with information that he didn’t understand. Singing monsters and sinister tunnels, what the devil was that all about?
‘Sarge? You look worried. Anything I can do?’
Jon saw concern in Gary’s eyes. He took a deep breath. ‘I think there is something I should tell you. This may not be the right time, but sometimes there never is a right time.’
‘Sounds ominous. But spit it out, Sarge, I’m a big boy, I can take it.’
Jon smiled. ‘Actually, I think you can.’
It took ten minutes for Jon to explain about his gift, and about thirty seconds for Gary to say, ‘Well I’ll be damned! I knew there was something special about you guys! No-one could do that well, without some sort of divine intervention! Unless you were super-heroes, of course, and I haven’t noticed any of you wearing your underpants over your trousers.’ He had shaken his head and grinned from ear to ear. ‘That’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant! I suppose I’m now sworn to secrecy, am I?’
‘No-one knows, Gary. And no-one must ever find out, or we are all history. You do understand that, don’t you?’
His face became serious. ‘I’m only laughing because I don’t know what else to say, but believe me; I will take this to my grave. You can trust me.’ He pointed towards the drive. ‘But it looks like our man is here, Sarge. Shall we go?’
Jon stood up and felt as if a weight had been lifted. He clapped his hand on Gary’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, mate. I’m really glad you’re on the team.’
Gary grinned. ‘Not half as glad as me, Sarge. Believe me.’
A white van, dirty, dented and almost at the end of its life, groaned to a halt behind the police car, and the young man who got out had to be an archaeology student. His wavy hair touched his shoulders and he wore round and very un-cool wire-rimmed glasses, and a thoroughly home-spun, pot-pourri of mismatched clothing.
Kate greeted him and rushed him into the foyer, closely followed by the sergeant.
‘The Fire Chief sent you this little beauty, ma’am. Lovely bit of kit!’ The sergeant looked at the thermal imaging camera with undisguised longing before passing it to Kate. ‘I hope you know how it works?’
‘If you’re stuck, Chief Inspector, I do.’ Ted Watchman flashed a bright row of even white teeth at her. ‘Hey, that’s not your average hand-held job either! That’s a state of the art industrial model.’
‘As long as it works, I don’t care what it is.’ Kate mumbled something about boys and their toys, then added, ‘So where did the Fire Service acquired that from, if it’s not standard issue?’
‘The sergeant smiled grimly. ‘I’ve been told to tell you to guard it with your life. It’s on loan from a Search and Rescue Team and apparently it’s worth a couple of grand more than my car.’
On hearing that, Kate passed it quickly to Ted. ‘Then I’ll leave it to the expert, thank you. But before I let you out to play, Mr Watchman, we need your help.’
Gary handed Ted the geophysical surveys. ‘This is the area that interests us, sir.’ He circled his finger around the storerooms and the barn. ‘We are looking for anywhere that may conceal a missing girl.’ His voice was grave, ‘And time is of the essence.’
‘Call me, Ted,’ said the student, taking the plans and staring at them. ‘Hey! This was the Roman Villa Dig, wasn’t it?’
‘Apparently.’ Kate said, watching as he flopped down to the floor and spread the sheets around him.
‘I’ve seen some of these before. It was an absolute travesty that this dig was aborted. The University was certain that they could have made a monumental find here.’ He bent closer to the print-outs and let out a low whistle. ‘Whoa! There’s a lot going on here.’ He looked up at Kate. ‘Can I see the actual area, please? I need to tie these into the topography of the land.’
‘Sure. Come on.’
As Ted strode alongside the boss, he said, ‘I’ve got some equipment in my van. I brought everything I could think of that could be useful.’
‘Good, but I cannot stress enough how quickly we need to move.’ said Gary.
‘Okay, we’ll check out what we’ve got first, and then take it from there. That camera that you’ve borrowed could save us hour
s.’
Jon’s heart sank. ‘We don’t have hours, Ted. This is not like working with the historically long dead, if there’s a girl down there, it’s critical that we find her.’
For the next fifteen minutes, Ted paced, measured, consulted his surveys and talked to himself, then he began drawing in a large plain A4 notebook.
Jon and Kate were just about to take him by the throat and shake him, when he let out a long noisy breath. ‘Right, well, normally at this point I’d do checks of my own, use an EM conductivity instrument, maybe even run a ground penetrating radar check to confirm my initial interpretation of this, but if time really is so important..,’
‘Believe me, Ted, it is.’ Kate growled.
‘Then this is what I consider to be beneath this area, given all I have are old geophys surveys.’ He thrust the drawing at them. ‘There was another building here. Looks like a large, long structure. Its foundations are clearly seen and they extend beyond the present storerooms and the barn.’ He blinked at Kate and pushed a swathe of long hair from his eyes. ‘My guess is that it was a much earlier storehouse of some kind, with an extensive cellar system of its own. The upper part was demolished and the present barn, stores and yard erected over the top of it.’
Jon looked carefully at his sketch. ‘And these?’ He pointed to a network of double lines.
‘Tunnels, Detective Sergeant. Probably six or more. Some going under the main house, some extending towards the highway, and some, rather mysteriously, disappear right out onto Hobs End Marsh.’
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Kate had no proof that Emily was being held in the tunnels beneath the marsh.
She had no proof that the tunnels were even accessible.
Her only lead came from her sergeant, who secretly spoke with dead people.
She had coerced a small army of uniformed officers into searching a dangerous wreck of a building with little or no reason, and she had got her manager to sweet-talk the Fire Department into loaning her equipment that could cost her her pension should it get damaged. Even the University had sent one of their finest, complete with enough technology to unearth a small lost city.
And now she had requested reinforcements, in order to find the entrances to six underground tunnels that may or may not exist, and the only way she’d made that happen, was to lie through her teeth. “We’ve heard noises, Super, and they were coming from below ground. All the evidence, and it’s supported by a university expert, points to underground structures that could easily be used as places of concealment for a abducted girl.” God forgive me, she prayed silently.
As she watched men and women gird themselves up for the search, she considered her position, and came to the conclusion, that all in all, she was not in a very good place right now. The ice that she was skating on was paper-thin, and she dare not look down or she may see the sharp teeth of the open-mouthed monsters that swam only millimetres beneath her feet.
And for all this, Kate still knew in her heart that Emily was there.
And why? Because Jon Summerhill had said that she was. And somehow that evened up the odds.
Even as three o’clock came and went, and the search parties determined that four of the six tunnels were either collapsed or inaccessible, Kate still knew that they would find her.
The call came just before evening began painting purple shadows across the marsh.
‘We’ve found an entrance, ma’am!’ The police woman was red-faced and sweating profusely. ‘It’s the marsh tunnel, ma’am, and it runs for about quarter of a mile out into Hobs End.’
Kate swiftly glanced across to Jon, and saw a flush of both excitement and fear appear on his pale face.
‘Where is it?’ She asked, then beckoned to Rosie and called out for her to get the others.
‘There’s an old building of some kind, ma’am, its little more than lumps of concrete and partially collapsed walls. I suppose it was an old cottage that was abandoned because of the threat of flooding. It’s not far above sea level, but there’s a hatch that leads into some kind of root cellar, and then a door into the tunnel itself.’ She wiped her forearm across her brow. ‘We’ve been down as far as the door. It’s locked, but we want permission to break it down. We can’t just bust in without authority, ma’am?’
‘In order to protect a life you can, and I believe that someone is in mortal danger. As soon as the rest of the team arrive, we’ll follow you, constable, and we go in.’
The marsh path was narrow and uneven, but somehow their personal safety didn’t seem to count. They ran together, slipping and tripping, until they reached the derelict remains of the building.
As she paused to get her breath back, Kate saw Jon looking thoughtfully at the moss covered piles of masonry and ancient brickwork, eaten and corroded by water and time. He raised his eyes in her direction, nodded silently to her, and she knew that they were in the right place.
One by one they eased through the old hatch, and found themselves in a tiny root cellar. The stench of damp, mildew and rotting plant-life made them gag. It was obviously in its original state, but unlike the cellar, the door to the tunnel had been replaced. Kate looked in fascination. The wood was strong, and the lock was a heavy-duty modern design and there was fresh oil glistening around it.
A police constable stood waiting, a weighty metal enforcer hanging from one muscled arm. ‘Ma’am?’ He looked at Kate expectantly and swung the piece of equipment upwards in readiness.
She glanced across to Jon. This was it. In for a penny, she thought, and then her heart began to race. She looked around at her team and knew that they felt the same. Even Ted Watchman, who gently cradled the precious thermal camera like a newborn baby, looked like he had been wired to a socket and was waiting for the switch to be thrown.
The constable needed half a dozen blows to shatter the lock. And after the echoes of the splintering wood had died away, they moved forward.
‘This is the place,’ whispered Jon. ‘They are all around me telling me so, and someone is singing.’
For some reason that information made her shudder. Who would sing down in this stinking pit? ‘And Emily?’ Kate whispered back. ‘Do you believe she’s still alive?’
‘I don’t know for sure, but something is telling me that she is.’
Kate began to pray that he was right, and broke into a run.
The light from their torches bounced off the walls and made bizarre patterns on the ceiling of the tunnels, and she began to wonder where they were going.
‘We must be getting close to Windrush house now, DCI Reynard.’ Ted puffed along side of them. ‘According to the survey, the tunnel should be finishing soon.’
‘There’s a door up ahead, Guv,’ called back Rosie, who had sprinted on in front. ‘And we’re going to need that enforcer again.’
‘Wait, all of you, and keep the voices down for a moment.’ The gravity of the moment took hold of Kate.
They had no idea of what they would find inside. For all they knew, their psycho-abductor could be waiting with a knife to Emily’s throat, or she could be sitting on a deftly-wired home-made bomb. Or it may be any empty room.
‘Okay, Ted, this is your moment.’ Kate said grimly. ‘I need to know if there’s anything alive behind that door.’
She heard him exhale nervously, and move closer to the big, heavy-hinged wooden door. He carefully unfolded the display screen on the camera and pressed a series of buttons. The screen came alive, and he moved it steadily from left to right.
It felt as if the whole search team was holding their breath.
Ted remained silent, angling the camera this way and that, and then he gave a little sigh, and Kate’s heart sank.
She could think of nothing other than the fact that they were too late.
Then there was the slightest intake of breath. ‘Yes! There’s a heat source! It’s faint, very faint, but it’s there.’
‘Just one?’
‘Just one, I’m certain of it.’ Ted
stepped back. ‘Chief Inspector, it seems to be a very big area in there. If it’s the kind of storeroom that I think it is, it’s massive.’
‘Constable! Break it down.’
As the big policeman moved forward, they all stood back to give him room to swing the enforcer, and as the first blow rang out, Kate stood there quietly praying that neither of her boys would ever decide to follow in their mother’s foot-steps.
She felt sick with apprehension. Was it Emily? Or a stray cat?
And if it was her, what state would she be in? What would they find they went inside? And if it were a cat? Kate thought about the massive search party and everything it entailed, and saw again those sharp pointed teeth snapping at her ankles through that gossamer thin ice.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
As the enforcer crashed into the door, Jon automatically cross circled his solar plexus and began psyching himself up. This was one of those times when he needed to block out his gift completely if he were to function properly as a police officer. Psychic or not, right now he had no idea of what lay on the other side of that door, although he had a shrewd suspicion that it might haunt him and rob him of sleep for some time to come.
The enforcer was still hammering blows into the thick wood, and when Jon looked around at his colleagues, he saw that they were all becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Right now they didn’t need time to think, they needed action, but the unexpected strength of the door was allowing other terrible things that they had seen in the past creep back into their minds.
And it was making them edgy. All except Kate, it seemed.
As blows rained down on the now yielding door, Jon watched her.
She stood immobile. She was the Senior Investigating Officer, and as such, she would be the first in. And Jon understood that whatever fears were going through her mind, she would put them to one side for the sake of Emily, and for her team. She was the consummate professional in a bad situation, and he respected her for that.