His name was Graham or Greg and he worked in IT, he said. Which could mean anything. She was about to get her second drink and he’d come to the bar, just behind her, making eye contact in the mirror and then asking if she was on her own and could he buy her a drink. He was Welsh, from Cardiff, and a few times she had to ask him to repeat himself so she could work out what he was saying. He was attractive in a sort of baby-faced way, with puppy-dog eyes and tousled hair. Rachel told him she worked in personnel. No need to confuse matters with her real identity. He was in Manchester for a conference at Manchester Central. It was hard to hear him above the music and when he suggested a dance she was happy to oblige. The drinks kept coming, the tunes kept playing. Rachel let the noise fill her head, let the dancing loosen her limbs and make her breathless, ignoring the ache in her battered muscles.
Graham or Greg leant in close and asked if she’d like to get some air. Not particularly, she thought, but a fag’d be good. She nodded and they set off for the exit, and he caught her arm and gestured. Her coat, she was forgetting her coat.
Her ears were ringing and the air was cold but dry outside. ‘I’m only just round the corner,’ he said, ‘if you fancy?’
Rachel began to laugh, which made lighting her cigarette very difficult.
‘Here.’ He took her lighter from her, used it and handed it back. ‘What’s happened there?’ he said. ‘Your hands?’
‘Skating,’ Rachel said. On thin ice.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘What d’you reckon then?’ he said.
‘All right,’ she said.
The street was cobbled, which made walking particularly challenging, but he took her arm and they made it to his hotel without her breaking her neck.
He kissed her in the lift, his breath coming quickly, groaning when they reached his floor and he had to stop.
His room was at the front, looking out over the city centre. Rachel had a sudden, sickening flashback to Nick’s flat, not far from here, and her at the window gazing out at the lights, him nuzzling her neck and begging her to come back to bed.
Rachel swung round and almost fell over. ‘Whoops!’
‘Steady, man, you’d better sit down,’ Greg or Graham said.
‘You got a minibar?’ Rachel said.
‘Sure. What’s your poison?’
‘Brandy,’ she told him. She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off her shoes. Watched him fix the drinks. He brought hers over. Took off his shoes and jacket. Joined her on the bed. Kissed her again, one hand going round her back, the other stroking her breast. Rachel felt a rush of excitement, imagined him on her, inside her. She felt for his crotch, felt him hard.
She pulled back. ‘One minute.’ She went to the bathroom and emptied her bladder. Looked in the mirror, grinning to herself, and feeling dizzy, wanton. Savouring the sensation.
‘All right, kid?’ Her father, in the mirror, grinning back, happy-drunk, a rollie in one hand, can in the other.
‘Fuck off!’ she said, the room tilting.
‘You okay in there?’ called What’s-his-face.
Rachel closed her eyes but that made her feel worse. ‘You will not fucking ruin this,’ she told her father. ‘You ruined everything else, well you can fuck off back to the mortuary.’ She ran cold water over her hands, pressed them to her cheeks. Went back out.
‘You were swearing,’ Taffy said.
‘Stubbed my toe,’ Rachel said. And then it came over her, like a wave, sadness as if someone had snapped the lights off, stopped the music. Filling her mouth and throat, her belly. Even as he held his hand out to her, his shirt open, belt gone.
I can’t, she thought, I can’t. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t— I’ve got to go.’
‘Aw, no, man!’ he said. She wondered if it was a Welsh thing, the man, or if he was trying to be down with the kids (though round these parts they all said bro or bruv these days), or if his parents had been New Agers. ‘What’ve I done?’
‘Not you, sorry, not you,’ Rachel said. ‘Just a bad idea.’
He looked crestfallen, sat and sighed. ‘Get you a cab,’ he said.
A good bloke. She was surprised, had anticipated nasty words, prickteaser, slapper, maybe something physical.
‘Reception’ll get me one.’
He gave a little nod.
She pulled on her shoes, the earlier elation now a sour sort of misery, an ache in her guts.
‘Take care then,’ he said at the door, with no hint of hostility. Somehow it made her even sadder. It might have been easier if he’d bitched about being led on, let down. His understanding made her feel even lousier. Not only was she fucked off with her wastrel of a father and her posh knob of an ex-boyfriend but now she felt guilty for messing the Welsh bloke about.
She felt sober and sick when she got home but she was still stumbling about. She threw up in the lavatory, drank a pint of water with some painkillers. In bed the room swayed and there was a drone buzzing in her ears, but eventually she slept.
She dreamt of the lake, her bed floating on the lake and a dog barking at the water’s edge and her father fishing. She was looking for something but could not remember what it was. She knew that something terrible would happen if she didn’t find it but how could she find it if she didn’t know what it was? She kept pulling at the duvet and the sheet as the bed spun round and round, searching, hunting for a clue, anything to help her recall what was lost. But there was nothing there, just her bed turning and the wide black water.
Day Five
21
Chris had spent the night at Gill’s again. Which meant she got even less sleep. It was his last night. He was moving on to spend the rest of his leave with friends who lived on Skye.
‘Oh, whisky and peat fires,’ she said, ‘windswept beaches. Take me with you.’
Before they’d gone to bed, she’d talked to him over a ridiculously late dinner about the deadlock in the case. ‘Janet’s the best we’ve got, but he’s withholding. It’s the only power he’s got left.’
‘Do you think he’d be any different with a male interviewer?’
‘No, or perhaps even more entrenched if that was possible,’ Gill said.
‘What’s the psychologist say?’
‘Same old. Be polite, stay calm, we’re playing all the right strokes.’
‘Can he keep it up indefinitely?’ Chris said.
‘I don’t know. I think the way she’s appealing to him as a man with a moral code, acting as though he’s still responsible for the family, I think that’s right. And I think if anything will break through the barrier that will, but so far – nowt.’ Gill shook her head.
She didn’t talk to Chris about Sammy, preferred to keep that quiet. Of course, Chris knew Sammy had moved to Dave’s and that Gill had been dismayed when he left so suddenly. But she didn’t want to share the latest developments, especially given the implicit criticism of their relationship by Dave, which was being aped by her son.
Chris got up in the morning when she did, wanting to start his journey north while the roads were quiet. She kissed him goodbye outside the house. It was still dark, the sky just beginning to lighten in the east, the air still and misty and everything drenched with dew.
‘It was great,’ she said, ‘even though I was at work most of the time.’
‘Quality,’ he said. ‘Good luck with it all.’ He kissed her again. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach him.
‘Do you know where you’ll be next?’ she asked him.
‘No idea. Soon as I do I’ll let you know.’
Gill felt a pang; she’d miss him. It could be weeks before they’d have a chance to meet again, especially if his next case was far from Manchester.
‘One for the road.’ He smiled. She could see his breath, a mist in the cold of the morning.
They kissed, a kiss to remember, one to savour. At last she drew away, said goodbye and got into her car. He followed her over the edge of the moors and down the hill to the main road, where they went their
different ways.
And Gill wondered, as she did each time he left, if she would ever see him again.
It had been agreed the previous evening that while the search continued at Kittle Lake, an initial assessment visit would be made to the canal to consider the best approach to a search there. Rachel was due to meet Mark Tovey on site first thing.
Rachel suspected Her Maj was keeping her away from Cottam, away from the heart of the inquiry, but if that meant getting out into the field looking for some clue, something, anything, to lead them to the missing kids, then that was fine by Rachel. Way better than sitting on her arse wallowing in reports, which she might have been told to do.
Fog was forecast and Rachel set off early in case of delays. Idiots piling into each other on the motorway, ignoring the hazard warning signs, FOG SLOW DOWN. Still going at seventy and then bleating when it all went tits up. If they’d still breath to bleat with.
Her hands were scabbing over but any time she did anything the skin opened again, and she needed to use her hands for practically everything. The itching sensation was worse and her shoulders and knees and ribcage ached from the impact of slamming into the ground when she was trying to stop Owen Cottam. She’d dosed herself up with painkillers and coffee to deal with that and the residue of a hangover which lingered at the back of her skull as though someone had cuffed her too hard on the head.
The good news was that the bridge had been identified as Dobrun Lane on the Leeds & Liverpool canal between Wigan and Lundfell. The bad news was that the local angling association had fishing rights on extensive stretches of the canal and there were many other access points to the waterway in the area. A snapshot of Michael Milne and Owen Cottam’s reference to drowning were the only tenuous links to miles of water.
Rachel arrived half an hour early and parked as directed on a rough patch of land shy of the Dobrun Lane bridge. The site of a pub in times past, now razed to the ground.
She had brought maps of the area with her. North of the bridge there was a scattering of houses and farms on either side of the canal, the properties few and far between. To the south it was mostly farmland.
It was cold sitting in the car and Rachel did not want to put the heater on and risk the battery. She decided to make use of the time by having a walk along the canal. She took a torch with her, as it was still dark. She did not want to end up in the drink herself.
Sound was distorted, she noticed, as she walked up to the bridge: her footsteps were harsh against the gravel but sounds beyond that, birds and a distant motor, were muffled. She took the steps down to the towpath carefully. They looked worn, wet and slippery in the light from her torch. Once she was on the path she lit a cigarette and smoked as she walked along. The fog, thick yellow-grey, smothered the place.
Dead or alive? If the Cottam boys were dead, the police would have to try to find and recover the bodies. From the water somewhere if he’d drowned them. She didn’t know much about canals but she did get that they were still water so there was a limit to how far the bodies would travel with no currents or tide to move them further afield. Finding them in the canal should be relatively easy, then, if they only knew which part to look in. If they’d been killed some other way, strangled or suffocated, then buried, they could be in any of the surrounding fields or woods. And if they were still alive they must be contained somewhere.
Rachel heard a splash by the bank, but no other noises followed. She swung her torch over the water but could barely make out the surface through the fog, let alone see anything else.
She retraced her line of thought. Alive equalled contained because you couldn’t just leave little kids somewhere; they’d wander off. That’s why people had playpens, used reins. So they had to be inside somewhere, shut in, or tied up. Another car perhaps, or an abandoned building: an outhouse, or a shed or a garage. Farms, like the ones on the map, would have loads of hiding places. Rachel thought back to Grainger, the geese, his miserable bugger-off attitude.
She imagined most of the landowners in the area would have made a search of any obvious places after the first appeal to do that was made. But since? Would they have repeated that search? Because there was every chance that Cottam had found somewhere to conceal the kids in the meantime. If Mark Tovey did agree to work up a strategy for this area, Rachel would chuck that in. Make sure that any appeals stressed the need for people to look again.
Light began to spread over the land and the fog seemed to rise from the ground in ragged shreds like some special effect from a horror movie, though it stayed hovering close to the water. Soon she could switch off her torch.
A row of houses on the opposite bank had gardens that reached the water’s edge, but there was no towpath on that side so they wouldn’t be easy to access for a stranger. That made her wonder how far he could walk with the children. A fair way, she assumed. He was a strong man; with one on piggyback and one in his arms he’d not be particularly hampered. Though he would be conspicuous and that might limit how far he’d travel on foot.
She decided to continue to the next bridge, which she could just make out, a smudge on the horizon, and then retrace her steps to the rendezvous with Mark. The world was beginning to stir, traffic zipping intermittently along the narrow road over the Dobrun Lane bridge behind her. The side of the path was thick with brambles and tall weeds, gone to seed most of them, dried out now, shrivelled and wispy. It wouldn’t be hard to conceal bodies in there. Though dogs being walked along the canal would soon sniff them out. But if they were right about his motivation, Owen Cottam wasn’t a murderer who wanted to escape detection and run free. All he’d wanted in his manoeuvres over these last days was to buy himself time to complete his plan – the mortal destruction of his family and himself.
Rachel carried on, walking more briskly now she could see the way. A pair of ducks at the far side of the water made quacking sounds and drifted in and out of the mist, dipping their heads down now and again. She looked ahead to the bridge. There’d been less traffic crossing this one, only a couple of cars. Betty Lane the road was called, according to the map, one of a warren of small lanes that ran by the farms and up to the B road.
Beyond the humped shape of the bridge, she could see some low-lying structure: huge horizontal bars, black and white, and railings. She glanced down at the map: a lock. The canal was littered with them. She walked under the bridge where it was dank and smelled of earth and the stones glistened wet, and up to the lock.
Here the canal banks widened a little then narrowed again for the lock itself. The black and white paddles, a pair at either end, were attached to the great lock gates. The paddles were used to swing back the wooden gates. She’d a dim memory of doing it in primary school. Sections of the canals had been built at different levels, and the locks were the way of transporting boats from one stretch to the next. The boat would enter through the first set of gates, which would be closed behind them, and then underwater sluices would be opened to allow water to flow in, or out, and raise or lower the craft. When it reached the correct level the second set of gates would be opened and the boat would be able to resume its journey.
At the edge of the lock she stared down into the chamber. The walls were covered in green mould and streaks of orange. With the huge gates at either end they formed a great box, water in the bottom. A long drop. The notion hit her like a punch, made her guts burn. The rope. To hang himself. She looked at the backs of her hands, at the biggest blister where the blue plastic had fused to her skin. He’d need a long drop to do it. Somewhere like this would work just as well as the woods, better really, since you’d not have to scale a tree. All sorts of places to attach the rope to, here. Okay, he might not be completely free hanging, might hit the walls, feet scrabbling for purchase, but most hangings it was the drop that killed you, the sudden wrench as you reached the end of the rope, which broke your neck and severed your spinal cord. When it went wrong, when the body was too light or the drop not far enough, quick enough, then the person
strangled slowly.
Rachel’s heart was hammering in her chest, racing, and there was a buzzing in her ears. She scanned the land beyond the verge: no dwellings close by. Looking ahead, further down the canal, just before a bend, she made out an old barge, the first she’d seen.
Boats. Somewhere else to search along with the farms and sheds. Another angle to cover. Unless Cottam opened up to Janet and saved them all the aggro. Rachel wondered if there were more boats parked further round the corner. Parked wasn’t right. Moored, that’s what they called it. There was still a pall of fog suspended over the water as she went on to look.
A ripple of dark shadow on the path ahead brought her up short. A rat, sleek and silent, slid over the edge of the bank and disappeared. Rachel swallowed and walked on. Something dark and fearful growing inside her. Just a rat, she told herself, millions of them all around, everywhere. Knowing that the fear wasn’t from the rat. She saw the lock gates, she saw Owen Cottam and his rope. And the bin bags. Why the bin bags?
By the time she reached the barge, she could see round the bend. There were no other boats there. Just this one. Ancient by the looks of it. Rotting into the water.
A car slowed and stopped in the distance; perhaps Mark Tovey arriving for the meeting? Above her there was a strange sound which had her ducking instinctively. Making her temples thud with pain. A cormorant, large and black, soared overhead, the beat of wings loud and powerful in the still air.
The barge was desiccated. It had once been black but most of the paint had peeled away and bare wood showed through silvery grey. Fragments of pink and green lettering decorated the prow. Some sort of fungus, a canker, sprouted lumps of ginger here and there. The cabin was partly covered by an old tarpaulin, faded and ripped in parts. The roof, splashed with bird-shit, dipped in the centre where a mush of skeletal leaves was trapped. Shuttered windows were thick with cobwebs. No flowers or fancy watering cans or signs of habitation. At the back, where the door was, lay a number of old plastic containers, cracked and dappled green with mould. Rachel looked at the door, rickety as everything else, crumbling. An old padlock hasp secured with—
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