Only Darkness

by Danuta Reah

  And having once turned round, walks on

  And turns no more his head

  She wished she’d stuck to the road now. There was a cold wind that blew against her face, making her shiver. She wrapped her coat tighter round herself, but the shivering wouldn’t stop. The wind was moving the bushes now, making a soughing sound, and a rustling as though some large animal was moving in the undergrowth. Her steps quickened until she was almost running.

  Because he knows a frightful fiend

  Doth close behind him tread

  She made a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. She could write a good essay for Debbie about the poem tomorrow. The stream was ahead now, she could feel the extra coldness in the air, the dampness of a place that never got the sun. Where was the light? Of course, you couldn’t see it until you were over the bridge. The wind rushed through the undergrowth, drowning out the sound of her breathing, and blasted into her face, almost knocking her off her feet. She staggered and regained her balance, gasping. She had to go on. The road was only just over the next rise. She could see the gleam of water between the banks, the bridge. Just across that and then she would be able to see the light, the road. The damp smell of the river was disgusting. It was rank and fetid in her nostrils. It didn’t usually smell like that after rain, it smelt like that in the summer when the water ran low.

  A cloud crossed the moon and the bridge was in darkness. So black it seemed almost solid. The smell was strong now, sharp and nauseating. Sarah’s feet felt like lead. She stepped on to the bridge, and the darkness solidified in front of her. The smell was overwhelming, and cold hands gripped her round the throat and pulled her into it.

  10

  Debbie stayed in Goldthorpe until Monday. Fiona was having a party that evening, and she felt in more of a party mood than she had done before Christmas. She left in the middle of the morning, persuading Gina that there was no need to come and see her off at the station at that time of day. It was cold but bright and sunny, and she felt her spirits lift as she walked down the road, turning and waving to Gina at the corner.

  Even the station, with its grimy concrete functionalism, couldn’t spoil her mood, and she began to look forward to the evening. She also, she admitted it to herself, began to look forward to the start of term when she could get back to the students, and back to her colleagues. She felt a bit of a twinge when she thought about seeing Rob, but told herself that the sooner they could re-establish a friendly relationship the easier that would get. She wasn’t going to think about it, anyway. As she stood on the platform waiting for the train, she looked up at the sky which was blue and cloudless. Life was good, on the whole it was very good. Even though it was cold, she could feel the sun warming her face, and she smiled.

  The journey back took her through countryside and towns and villages. Sometimes she was looking out on fields white with frost, and sometimes she was looking into snatches of people’s lives – a little boy wobbling on a new bike in his garden, a woman hanging out washing in the sun, a group of children skateboarding on the pavement. In the bright frost, even the industrial dereliction looked less raw, less ugly. The signs of decay and neglect – the dumped rubbish and the abandoned cars – were covered with the shimmering of frost. Christmas decorations, Debbie thought. Even here, there are Christmas decorations. As the train pulled into Sheffield station, she collected her things and joined the queue for the doors, to give herself the illusion of speed. She wanted to be home.

  She nipped into the newsagent’s at the station to buy a paper. She was queuing to pay for her Guardian when a photograph on the front of the local paper caught her eye. She picked it up and looked more closely, looked at the headline, read the first lines of the story again, feeling, after that first thump of her heart that had almost brought her to her knees, cold, feeling nothing, feeling that strange blankness she remembered feeling when her father died. Sarah Peterson stared back at her from the front page of the paper, smiling, the photograph bringing out her muted prettiness. It’s a good picture, Debbie … The headline said: Moreham student killed. The article was short. Sarah’s body had been found on Friday – there must have been something in yesterday’s paper. The police said that she wasn’t a victim of the railway strangler. A man was helping police with their enquiries.

  ‘Are you paying for that?’ The checkout girl was looking at Debbie with irritation.

  Debbie stared at her. ‘Oh. Yes.’ She scrabbled for her purse, and fumbled with her change as the queue shifted restlessly behind her. Mindlessly, she crossed the road outside the station, climbed the hill that ran up beside what used to be the poly, and walked through the subway under the dual carriageway that split the city centre in two. The homeless man who sat at the far end of the subway was there as usual. Debbie stared at him blankly as she went past, only realizing later that she hadn’t stopped as she usually did to say hello and give him a pound.

  The city centre was full of people. They all seemed to be rushing towards Debbie, making her stop, sidestep, veer off her path. She still wanted to get home. The bright light made everything look stark and ugly. She wanted to shut her door behind her and try to think about what had happened.

  She let herself into the house, absently greeting Buttercup, who brought her a catnip mouse by way of a welcome home, and dumped her coat and bags on the chair. She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. When the tea was ready, she took a cup into the front room, sat down and took the paper out of her bag. She read the article again. She was finding it hard to believe. Sarah! Sad, inoffensive Sarah, who wanted to do well, who wanted to please. Why would anyone kill Sarah? She looked at the paper again. A man is helping police with their enquiries. She went upstairs and got her briefcase out. There was a folder of marking from the A-level group. Sarah had handed an essay in on – Debbie thought back – not the last week, Sarah had missed the last class – the Friday before. She flicked through the work waiting to be marked – Rachel, Chris, Leanne – there was a surprise – Kirsty, Sarah – there it was. She looked at Sarah’s last essay, an essay on symbolism in Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.

  The rhyme of the ancient mariner was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and it is about a man who shoots an albatross. He tells a wedding guest about it. Coleridge uses a lot of symbolism in this poem, for example …

  Debbie’s eyes felt sore and she blinked rapidly. She had wanted Sarah’s last essay to be good. She read on. It was an unstructured mixture of narrative, comments Debbie recognized as her own, quoted back to her almost word for word, some quotations from the poem that had marginal relevance. Then at the end, Sarah said: The mariner is all right in the end. He gets home but he has to tell his story to people. But the albatross is still dead and it fell into the sea. No one really remembers it. Strange fruit that discussion had borne – Sarah’s original thought, poorly expressed, but her own. There wouldn’t be any more. The phone rang and she hurried downstairs. It was Louise. ‘Have you heard the news?’ she said. Debbie told her about buying the paper at the station. ‘I can’t believe it,’ Louise said. ‘I saw the girl in college at the end of term. She was having a heart to heart with Tim Godber.’

  ‘With Tim? She doesn’t know Tim. When was that?’

  ‘It was Monday. Late Monday. I know because I was just coming out of one of those meetings with Davis, and I was in a foul temper. Debbie, you must be feeling awful. I didn’t really know the girl, but you’d taken her under your wing.’ Louise was concerned.

  ‘That’s odd. She wasn’t in class that Monday. Listen, Louise, do you know anything else? It didn’t say much in the paper, except it sounds as if they’ve got someone already. I just can’t understand it.’ Debbie thought back to that Monday. She’d gone home early. What had Sarah come into college for?

  Louise, as usual, knew a lot. ‘It’s the boyfriend, they say. A nasty bit of work, and a bit of a bully. Apparently he beat her up just before Christmas. The students were full of it. Mind you, I kno
w the father, and he’s just as bad. Poor Sarah. They found her on that bit of wasteland down by the river, you know, up the top of Broomegate.’

  Debbie knew the path. It was a pleasant place in summer, an unexpected patch of green in the middle of rows of Victorian terraces, not unlike the area where Debbie lived. But it would be a lonely and intimidating place in winter, in the dark – a lonely place to die.

  She was standing by the phone wondering what to do next, when the doorbell rang.

  Lynne Jordan had only been in Sheffield for four years, but she knew enough now to come to the back door of terraces that opened on to the street. She rang the bell and waited with West to see if there was anyone in. This was their second visit. They had called round earlier in the day, and were just making a second call on the off-chance as they were passing. Berryman had filled her in on the details of Neave’s story, and she was feeling distinctly irritated with him – with both of them, actually. Berryman for sending her on a wild-goose chase, and Neave for his long and unexplained – by him – silence. She was about to press the bell again when there was the rattle of a key and the door opened.

  Lynne smiled. ‘Deborah Sykes?’ she said, and when the woman who’d opened the door nodded, she introduced herself and West. ‘Could we talk to you?’ she asked.

  The woman, Deborah Sykes, looked a bit blank, as though her mind was on something else, but she stepped back and invited them in. Lynne looked at her closely as Deborah led them through the kitchen into the front room and asked them to sit down. Small-boned, pale. Dark, pre-Raphaelite hair. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, or something?’ A quiet voice, local. Another of Neave’s faerie children. Lynne, who had planned to be an English teacher herself, until she’d realized what a mug’s game it was, had met Neave’s wife a few times and had nicknamed her – for private consumption only – La belle dame sans merci. It had proven all too prophetic. She had seen Neave, caught in some bleak wasteland of the mind, become a hollow shadow of the man he used to be, the man she had met and liked when she first joined the Moreham force. Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms? The words drifted through her mind. Deborah Sykes was speaking again. ‘Is this about Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah?’ Lynne asked.

  ‘Sarah Peterson. The girl …’

  ‘The Christmas girl,’ West said.

  Lynne remembered that the young girl killed post-Christmas had been a student at City College. ‘No, it isn’t about Sarah. Did you know her?’

  ‘Yes. She was a student of mine.’ Head down, hair obscuring face. She was upset.

  Lynne tried to make her voice gentle. ‘I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time, but I really do need to talk to you.’ She wasn’t expecting to find anything interesting – neither she nor Berryman were convinced by Neave’s interpretation of the college break-in – but if there was anything, then it would probably be easier to find out while the woman was distracted by this death.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s just that it’s been a bit of a shock. You don’t expect …’

  ‘No, of course not. I want to talk to you about Thursday.’ She checked her notes. ‘Thursday the twelfth. The evening of Thursday the twelfth.’ She kept her face towards her notes, but she saw the woman flush. ‘We know there may have been some kind of break-in at the college. Could you just tell me what happened?’ She made some notes while Deborah talked. ‘So you didn’t see anyone?’ she confirmed, as the story came to an end.

  ‘No, but Rob, Rob Neave, said the door was unbolted. If there was anyone, they got out the bottom.’

  ‘You said you heard footsteps. Are you certain about that?’ Lynne was trying to work out how much she could rely on this woman’s story.

  Deborah Sykes flashed her a sudden smile, and Lynne warmed to her. ‘I was at the time, but I’d just been on those stairs frightening the students with ghost stories. I’m not usually that nervous, I don’t usually hear things in the dark, but I was as well set up for it as I could have been. I certainly heard something. I didn’t imagine that.’

  A sensible woman after all. Lynne was getting on to the tricky bit now. ‘You left your bag at the bottom of the stairs. Was anything missing from it when you found it?’

  Deborah paused for a minute, then shook her head. ‘No, there was only my purse, really. Not that there was much in it. But, no, nothing was missing.’

  ‘Did you check straight away?’

  ‘Not at once, no.’ She didn’t expand, and Lynne gave her nine out of ten for tact.

  ‘When did you check? When you got home?’

  ‘I didn’t go home. I spent the night with a friend. But I would have noticed in the morning if anything was missing.’

  Full marks. Lynne was amused, and decided that she didn’t need to tease out that final bit of information. She looked at Deborah thoughtfully. ‘Since that article appeared in the paper …’ She saw Deborah flush at this new topic, another one that was clearly difficult for her. ‘Have you had any unusual phone calls, thought that anyone was following you, anything at all that made you feel uneasy?’

  Deborah shook her head. ‘The other detective …’ She reached for the name.

  ‘Steve McCarthy?’ Lynne supplied

  Deborah nodded. ‘I think so. He asked me all of this. Is there any reason to …?’

  ‘Look, Deborah, this is purely routine. But you were identified as someone who saw the Strangler. I think we told you at the time to be careful.’

  Deborah pulled a face. ‘I didn’t see anything useful, that’s the stupid thing. I was so angry when that article appeared.’ She looked at Lynne, who nodded. Deborah Sykes didn’t strike her as an attention seeker.

  ‘And you’re not aware of anything unusual, anything at all?’

  ‘Only visits from the police telling me to be careful.’

  Lynne laughed and put her notebook away. ‘I don’t think you need to worry too much, Deborah, but there’s no harm in playing safe.’ She got up to go. ‘If there’s anything else you remember, or if anything happens to bother you, you can contact me on this number.’

  Deborah took the card she was holding out. ‘Who told you about that Thursday?’

  ‘It was reported,’ Lynne said vaguely. ‘We thought it needed checking.’ She assumed that Deborah knew exactly who had talked to Berryman. But there was nothing here that pointed to the killer.

  Vermin. Fire and snares are what you use for vermin. It is important to protect the creature you hunt, keep it safe and sleek and ready for the chase, for the blooding – blood that is warm and alive, not cold and dead – and for the kill. He sits at his layout and broods for a moment over the scene. He pushes a lever. A train pulls slowly into Moreham station and then stops. Can he repeat himself? Moreham would be easiest. He pushes the lever again and manipulates the points. The train moves out of Moreham and on through Mexborough, Conisbrough, Doncaster, Kirk Sandall, Goole … more difficult. He needs to think.

  He’s been very successful so far, though he knows the dangers of complacency. ‘Don’t count your chickens,’ his mother used to say. A hunt is never successful until the kill – the trophy taken and the hunter safely home. Still, a successful beginning is a good omen for a successful end. The skilled hunter follows the spoor of his prey, knows where it is and where it is going, knows the best time and the best place to set the trap and spring it. The skilled hunter can find his prey anywhere and can follow it wherever it tries to hide.

  And he now has some formidable weapons in his armoury. A bunch of keys, some labelled in his handwriting, some not, yet. Some photocopied pages from a diary, going back some months. July 20th – Department party, 7.30, Drama studio. Got off with TG!!! July 30th – Mum’s, 12.30. Shopping. NB buy black top for tonight. November 5th – Brian, Chris et al, bonfire party at Katy’s. 10th RN in pub!!! 11th December, DS McCarthy … Dates of holidays, dates of meetings, phone numbers and addresses.

  He presses buttons on the control panel again, and again the trains start to move, all in a time, all in a p
attern. He closes his eyes, and he can hear their rattle against the lines, the echo of their horns as they cut the darkness and are gone. And they leave the darkness behind them. He knows the dark places, knows them well. And so will she, soon, in good time.

  Moreham, then

  11

  With Christmas safely out of the way, Neave was in a position to do something about Pete Morton’s offer. They’d discussed it briefly when he’d decided to jack it in at City. Going into partnership in a security business wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind, but Morton had talked about getting into the investigation business as well when Neave phoned him. ‘There’s a lot of cross-over. There’s a firm of solicitors that always comes to me now – because they know I get results – and I’m advising some big companies. It isn’t the sleaze side of the business, it isn’t bashing kids up in nightclubs, it’s good work and it’s good money.’ It sounded interesting. It was time he got out of Moreham. He should have left two years ago.

  He almost missed the paper. He didn’t usually bother with the local, and the story, if it had made the nationals, hadn’t made a splash. It was as if eighteen-year-old women were murdered every day. Well, they probably were. It was the photograph that caught his eye, though he didn’t recognize it at once. He read the story, thinking at first that it was the Strangler again. He looked at the girl in the picture and remembered her – the girl behind the bar at the Broomegate. Killed later that night. He ran the evening through his mind, trying to remember faces in the pub, people she might have talked to, when the name snagged his memory. He pulled out his wallet and flicked through the miscellaneous bits of paper in the back. Yes. He checked the list of names. He thought he had remembered it right. Sarah Peterson, the student who had signed out of the IT centre last thing on that Thursday night, one of the students Berryman was going to talk to.