Echoes of Guilt

by Rob Sinclair

  ‘Please?’

  Ana hesitated but then took the pen and paper and began to scribble.

  ‘The place where Alex and Victor took you, did you know about it before?’

  Ana stopped writing.

  ‘Ana?’

  ‘I knew there was a place. A way to… deal with problems.’

  ‘Problems? As in dead bodies?’ Dani said, her revulsion clear. ‘Is that what that place is? Somewhere to dispose of bodies?’

  Ana nodded. Dani could hardly believe what she was hearing now.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I have no idea!’

  ‘Then think. Think about what you’ve seen, what you’ve heard.’

  Ana didn’t say anything for a good while. Then, ‘I’m so sorry.’ She was sobbing now, and Dani was torn as to whether she should feel sympathy or not. Could Ana have done more, sooner?

  ‘Where’s Victor now?’ Dani asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Dani sighed. Word from the surveillance teams was that they’d seen nothing of Victor, Alex or Ana all night. Clearly there was good reason for the last two. But what about Victor? Did he know Ana had escaped? Was he in hiding now?

  Dani was at a sticking point. Yes, they’d made some headway in figuring out who Jane Doe – Maria – was, and they had Silviu Grigore in custody, but there was still so much that she didn’t know.

  ‘You said you saw someone on a hill, watching you. Do you think it was Victor?’

  Ana closed her eyes again for a few moments. ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ she said, looking back to Dani. ‘But maybe it wasn’t a man at all. Maybe it was a…’

  Dani gave her the time, but she didn’t finish the sentence. ‘A what?’

  Ana looked out of her window to the dark forest beyond. ‘No, you’ll think I’m insane.’

  ‘What did you think it was, Ana?’

  Dani jumped when there was a knock on the window. Heart racing she turned around and heaved a sigh when she saw the bright yellow jacket and a face she recognised – Michael Robinson, the sergeant she’d left in charge of the search.

  She stepped from the car.

  ‘Anything?’ she asked, although his stoic face already indicated the answer.

  ‘The dogs have found nothing. Not even a whiff for them to start tracking. And we’ve gone all around the two hills you noted, and there’s literally nothing there but trees and grass. No buildings or caves or anything of the sort.’

  Dani sighed and looked at her watch. They hadn’t been searching that long. She could ask them to continue looking. But was that fair when they might not even be in the right place? Perhaps it was better to call them off, and re-organise a more widespread search in the daylight.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Robinson asked.

  Dani thought. She slumped. ‘Call it a night,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘You’ve done what you can.’

  He nodded and headed off. Dani got back into the car. Ana’s face was creased with concern.

  ‘They didn’t find it,’ she said.

  Dani shook her head.

  ‘But you do believe me?’

  Dani thought that was a strange question. Had she somehow suggested otherwise? Why on earth would Ana not be telling the truth?

  ‘Yes, I believe you,’ Dani said, despite the doubt that Ana had herself placed.

  ‘So what now?’

  Dani thought about that for a few moments. She stared straight ahead, out of the windscreen, watching as the collection of officers, cold and sullen – though likely relieved that their night-time traipsing was over with – got themselves ready to clear out.

  They were likely relieved. Dani was the opposite.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Dani said.

  They waited another ten minutes. Until the taillights of the last of the patrol cars, no blue lights now, had faded into the distance.

  ‘We aren’t going too?’ Ana said.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything?’ Dani said, turning to glare at Ana, who looked a little unsettled by the accusatory tone.

  ‘Why would I lie?’

  A good question. But Dani really didn’t know what to think or to believe any more.

  ‘I’m not lying to you!’ Ana said, her voice raised. ‘Why would I lie about being out here? About them bringing me here. About attacking Alex?’

  ‘But how did you manage to attack him? How did you escape?’

  Ana looked even more worried now. ‘I told you. I managed to untie my wrists. When he got close I surprised him. I got to the knife before he did. It was luck more than anything. And I didn’t even mean to… to hurt him. Not like that. My only thought was to get out of there.’

  The two women stared each other out for several seconds.

  ‘It’s the truth!’ Ana said.

  Dani said nothing. She started up the car and was about to turn around to head back the way they’d initially come, but then had an alternative thought. Yes, it was ridiculously late, she was ridiculously tired, and wanted nothing more than to crash out in bed, but a few more minutes wouldn’t hurt now. So instead she pulled onto the road and carried on going straight ahead, heading further north, before she looped west, moving even further away from home.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Ana said, as though picking up on the fact that they weren’t yet going back, and sounding all the more worried for it.

  Dani didn’t answer. Her mind was too busy working overtime.

  ‘When we came off the A5, through Norton Canes, you said you recognised the pub. But you didn’t remember specifically going through that village?’

  ‘No… but…’

  ‘But you did say there were houses, not long after you’d come out of the forest in the car.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And there was a hill, with a man, or something at least.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ana said.

  Dani didn’t say anything more after that. She carried on, snaking along the edge of the Chase, several miles until they came to the western edge and the A34, deep within the territory of Staffordshire Police now. Dani wouldn’t let that deter her tonight.

  Dani turned onto the A34, heading south, back towards Cannock.

  She glanced over to Ana, the bemused look on her face slowly clearing.

  ‘Wait… I—’

  ‘You recognise it?’ Dani said.

  ‘That’s the pub,’ Ana said, pointing to the building a couple of hundred yards in the distance. ‘The same one from earlier?’

  ‘No. It’s not the same one. But it is a similar set-up. Dual carriageway. Roundabout. Pub.’

  ‘Down there. Yes, this is it!’ Ana said, more animated now. ‘I remember that building too.’ She pointed to a small industrial unit. It was pretty nondescript but Ana seemed sure enough.

  ‘It’s left here!’ Ana shouted.

  Dani slammed the brakes and took the left. She hadn’t even seen the junction in the dark, the road was so obscured by foliage. They found themselves on a twisting country lane. Dani slowed the car, giving Ana the time to properly look around, though the featureless and unlit road could have been anywhere. They drove on for more than a mile, without any indication of life, yet Dani’s satnav showed that the town of Cannock was still only a couple of miles off to their right, and within a mile they’d be entering its outer suburban reach. The entire area off to the left of the screen was blacked out. Wilderness.

  Dani slowed further. Then a flicker of movement caught her eye, somewhere up front, in the sky. She stared at the space beyond the glass but couldn’t catch it again.

  Yet she was sure she’d seen something.

  After another few hundred yards, with the orange glow from the ever-nearing houses continuing to build in the sky in the near distance, Dani pulled the car over into a lay by.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ana said.

  ‘Just trust me.’

  Ana looked really unsure about that, but Dani opened her door and stepped out. A moment later An
a had done the same from the passenger side.

  ‘What do you see?’ Dani said. ‘Anything?’

  Ana looked around, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It’s so dark.’

  Dani reached in through the open car door and turned off the headlights. She was sure Ana gasped in panic as she did so, as though she didn’t trust Dani’s intentions, but Dani had done it for both of their benefit. It took a while, but slowly her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She kept her eyes fixed on the spot where she was sure she’d detected movement moments earlier.

  Sure enough, when the clouds above them parted, and a bluish-white light from the moon swept over the area, Dani caught a glimpse of it again.

  A prominent hill, a few hundred yards in the distance. And at the top of the hill…

  Dani looked to Ana, whose face said it all.

  ‘I was sure it was a… I thought I was being watched. You don’t even want to know what I thought was watching me.’

  What had she thought? Strigoi? It’s certainly what had come to Dani’s mind.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Dani said.

  ‘It’s just a flagpole,’ Ana said, laughing as if in disbelief.

  ‘I think so,’ Dani said, as her eyes fell on the faraway object, the tall pole, the fabric wrapped around it flapping in the breeze.

  ‘We found it,’ Ana said, now sounding horrified by the fact.

  ‘Not yet,’ Dani said. She closed her door. ‘Come on, this way.’

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she turned and headed across the ditch by the side of the road, and into the pitch-black woods.

  Chapter 46

  Dani clicked her torch on and shone the wide arc of white light left and right. Despite the beam’s power, it did next to nothing to help, as all Dani could see in front, all around, was the thick trunks of trees. She couldn’t even see the top of the hill, or the flagpole upon it any more, though she still had a good idea where it was.

  ‘Why are we doing this?’ Ana said, her voice quaking. She was already two or three steps behind Dani who slowed slightly to let her catch up.

  ‘When you came out into the woods, and first thought you were being watched, where exactly was the hill?’

  ‘It was on my right.’

  Dani waited for her to add to that description. She didn’t. ‘But how far away? Can you remember where the moon was?’

  Despite Dani’s apparent rashness at heading out in the dark, she really didn’t want to be rambling aimlessly for hours, and if they could at least narrow down the search area even slightly, it would be of great benefit.

  ‘Ana?’

  ‘I don’t know the distance. A hundred metres maybe. Two hundred even. And I’m sure the moon was right behind it, lighting it up from behind, because the figure… the flag, its shadow, was reaching right down towards me.’

  Dani glanced to Ana and even in the thin moonlight could see the look of terror in her eyes as she recalled her escape.

  ‘The moon’s right in front of us now,’ Dani said, ‘but it must have moved a fair bit in the last couple of hours, so we probably need to bear left from here.’

  Ana looked unsure, but she didn’t protest as Dani veered left. So far they’d not found any semblance of a track, and Dani had no clue how far away they were from one. The ground underfoot was soft and wet, but not particularly muddy, largely being made up of piles of discarded leaves and pine needles all soggy from the cold and damp autumn and winter.

  ‘Stop!’ Ana said, her voice quiet though intense.

  ‘What?’ Dani whispered.

  ‘I thought I heard a noise.’

  Ana was hunched down, looking back in the direction they’d come from. Dani shone the torch that way, but it looked exactly the same as everywhere else. Trees. No life.

  ‘It was probably an animal or something,’ Dani said, trying her best to sound calm and confident, even though she’d been in much the same position as Ana now was, back at her house earlier, when she’d heard a noise, hoping it to be innocuous, moments before having the fright of her life.

  But there was no one else there now. Dani was sure of it.

  ‘Come on, let’s keep moving,’ she said when the eeriness of the situation got the better of her.

  She pulled on Ana’s arm and the two of them were moving again, albeit more slowly and more cautiously and more silently than before, as though both of them were now straining every sense that little bit more.

  ‘If you see anything at all that you recognise, just shout,’ Dani said.

  ‘This wasn’t it,’ Ana said, shaking her head. ‘It was more of a trail than this. This is…’

  She didn’t finish the sentence, and Dani wondered what she’d been about to say. This is pointless? This is hopeless? This is stupid?

  A part of Dani agreed with each of those options, though it was a part which she was managing to keep pushed somewhere to the back of her mind for now.

  Soon they’d been walking for more than fifteen minutes with no identifying features in the landscape at all. Cloud had once again covered the moon, meaning they couldn’t even use that to help pinpoint their direction, and Dani was becoming more and more disorientated, unsure if they were moving in a straight line or not. If they had been, then they surely should have come to the edge of the hill by now, yet they were still on the flat.

  She dipped the torch down and took out her phone, but there was no signal and without one the map app was useless. ‘Shit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She put the phone away.

  Should they turn around and head back? Dani was becoming more tempted by the second to do just that. Yes, they both had decent coats on, but they were hardly equipped to be spending the next five hours out in the freezing cold, before morning came, roaming around relying on hope to see them through.

  But they didn’t stop and turn back. Dani marched them on. Right up until they finally came to a track. Or a semblance of a trail at least. Dani shone the torch up and down, eking the path out from the darkness as best she could. The narrow strip of hard-trodden mud was all of three feet wide and formed a twisted route between the trees and undergrowth.

  ‘Could this be it?’ Dani said.

  ‘I… I don’t know.’

  Dani sighed, which received a petulant glare from Ana.

  ‘Come on, this way,’ Dani said, heading off to the right.

  The trail twisted for a couple of hundred yards, and Dani’s sense of direction was soon thrown. Yet she kept on, trying to remain undeterred. Then the torch light captured something up ahead, sending back a bright flash of light. A metallic reflection. Dani twisted the torch, trying to hit the same spot again as she moved. There it was again. She squinted in the darkness, trying to figure out what she was looking at. She glanced over to Ana, whose keen stare suggested she’d seen it too.

  ‘What is that?’ Ana said.

  Dani didn’t answer, just kept on walking. They were all of ten yards away when she figured out the answer.

  ‘A fence?’ Ana said.

  A metal fence, more precisely. Six feet tall with spiked prongs at the top. A security fence, although it had certainly seen better days. The structure was mangled and had fallen in on itself in places, and was covered in evergreen growth, largely ivy, in others.

  Dani shone the torch along the ground and saw that the trail snaked alongside the fence as far as they could see.

  ‘You must have seen this before?’ Dani said, her tone almost accusatory.

  ‘No. I didn’t. I mean… perhaps I did pass here, but I don’t remember a fence. I didn’t have a torch though.’

  Fair point.

  They’d only moved ten yards alongside the fence when Dani stopped again. She stepped right up to the fence, a spot where the metal was almost entirely lost behind twisting green growth. She was sure she’d seen something poking out from underneath. She reached her hand out and dug into the intertwined stems, and her hand disappeared into t
he unknown. Her mind flashed with a scene from an Indiana Jones movie. The one where the heroine pushes her hand into a crevice filled with giant cockroaches and writhing centipedes, looking for the switch to release Indiana from a death trap. Dani shivered at the thought of those monstrous creepy-crawlies, but had soon cleared away the growth to reveal nothing but a rusted and dented and faded sign.

  ‘Danger. Keep Out. Unstable ground,’ Ana read.

  ‘A mine?’ Dani said. It had to be. Or a quarry perhaps, although there were no markings on the maps she’d seen to suggest either. Unless they were completely off-track.

  ‘Come on,’ Dani said, moving again.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Ana said. ‘I really don’t.’

  ‘We must be getting close.’

  ‘But I didn’t even see any of this! This isn’t the right…’

  She stopped mid-sentence. Had stopped walking too. Dani was sure she knew why. Up ahead, there was a section of the fence that had caved in, about five feet wide, though the metalwork was almost entirely lost under a tangle of ivy that was congruous with everything around it.

  They both moved towards the spot, side by side, passed over the broken fence in unison, pushed through undergrowth for several yards. The form of the hill was now visible in front of them. The ground rose steeply into the distance.

  Then Dani spotted it. Right at the base of the rise, disguised by yet more twisted branches and creepers, was what looked like a hollow in the rock. All of five feet tall, barely more than three wide.

  ‘We found it,’ Ana said, absolute terror in her voice.

  Chapter 47

  Dani tried her phone again. Still no signal. What the hell should she do? She’d much rather have a team to support her here, but how long would that take? First she and Ana would have to traipse nearly back to the car to even get a signal, then sit and wait, then make the whole journey back through the forest again.

  As much as she’d rather have other officers with her now, she really didn’t want to go through any of that.

  And anyway, if Alex was already dead inside here, then what was the worst that could happen?

  Dani crept up to the entrance, shone the torch inside, but it was so black and featureless beyond that the torchlight did little to help show what they were facing.