Dark Waters

by G. R. Halliday

  ‘You were angry with him?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be?’ His eyes darted off to the bar. ‘I’m the one that holds our family together, looks after our mother when she’s up and down to the hospital. He’s off doing whatever, and in her eyes he’s still the fucking blue-eyed boy. “Where’s Theo? Where’s Theo?”’ Gall put on an elderly woman’s voice.

  ‘What was he doing?’ Crawford asked.

  ‘You’re police,’ Gall said. ‘What wasn’t he doing?’

  ‘We only see what was on his record,’ Monica said. ‘Car theft, arson, falsely claiming benefits, assault, driving while under the influence. As far as we’re concerned, that makes him a petty criminal. Same as a hundred other men in this city. It’s a long stretch from that to turning up dead halfway up a glen in the middle of nowhere.’ She let the silence hang over the lacquered tabletop, the weak yellow light reflected back off the glossy surface like it was the top of a pool of evil dark water. ‘Why would Theo be up there? Why did he end up in that river?’

  ‘I’ve just told you!’ Gall’s voice rose unexpectedly in the quiet bar. The barman glanced over, amusement across his face. ‘He was bad, ever since he was wee. You know my earliest memory of my brother?’ His posture had changed to alertness. For the first time since Monica had met him a couple of hours before he actually seemed fully awake. Small grey eyes lit up bright on either side of his thick nose. ‘When I was four years old I saw this wooden nutcracker in a shop window. The kind that’s a soldier, and there’s a handle at the back that breaks the nuts open in his mouth?’

  Monica and Crawford nodded in unison. Gall reached for his glass, and Monica watched his thick fingers close around it. A working man’s hand, strong enough to beat another man to death. Mark Gall had told her he was a joiner. He would have the tools – saws, blowtorches – to torture then dismember a body if he wanted to. Could his resentment towards his brother have run that deep? But even if it did, it didn’t explain the other body.

  He took a sip, creased his face up and added another splash of Coke.

  ‘I wanted that fucking thing for months. God knows why, it wasn’t like we actually ever had nuts in the house, except monkey nuts at Halloween. My mum finally gets it for my birthday. I was delighted, put it on the windowsill beside my bed. I wake up the next morning and it’s gone. I went screaming to my mum …’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘We go round looking for it and find it lying out in the back grass beside the shed, all smashed up into bits. My brother, Theo, was sitting watching us from the top of the fence. Waiting to see the look on my face when I saw it.’ Gall shook his head again. ‘That’s my first memory of my brother. Him delighted he’d hurt me. My mum looking down at me. “Stop crying like a baby,” she said. “Theo didn’t mean to do it. Did you, son?”’

  Monica swallowed. There was something distasteful about Gall’s long-held resentment. And disquieting. If he still nursed a grudge after forty years, what resentments might her own four-year-old daughter grow up to harbour against her?

  ‘So you’re saying that he never changed?’

  ‘I’m saying that he was born like that. Stealing, hurting people. It was just how he was. When he was fourteen he got sent down to Polmont Young Offenders for fire-starting. Stole my dad’s car, my mum’s purse every chance he had. He floated about when he was out of Polmont, in and out of prison. Glasgow, London. Eventually back up here, moved in with a woman up in Hilton estate, you know?’

  Monica nodded impatiently, Hilton was a 1970s housing estate north of the city centre.

  ‘He was a career criminal,’ Monica said. Something she’d known before Gall had even started speaking. ‘Did he still have links to anyone down the road? Glasgow? London? Did he ever mention any names?’ It could fit with their original theory that the murder was gang-related.

  ‘I steered well clear of him and his friends. Except Pauline, his most recent wife. I heard she kicked him out a few months ago. Since then I’ve got no idea where he’s been. She’d know more probably. She’s spent enough time clearing up his messes in her life anyway.’

  CHAPTER 22

  When Annabelle next woke, Marcus was still sitting in the chair by the door, hunched forward reading a paperback book. The cover was black and white with a close-up of a soldier’s face on it, the words WORLD WAR TWO in white letters.

  Marcus must have noticed she was awake because he said, ‘You went out like a light after all that food. Must mean the bone’s healing. The Doctor said that would happen.’

  Annabelle nodded, noticing the way Marcus held a hand over his mouth as he spoke. The idea came to her fully formed: He’s lying. There’s no doctor, that’s the first of the secrets about this place. He operated on your leg. He’s keeping you here.

  She glanced away from him, scared he would read her eyes and know what she was thinking.

  ‘When will the Doctor come back to check on me?’ It was out of her mouth before she could stop herself.

  For a moment Marcus looked reticent, eyes on the floor, hand over his mouth. He picked up a piece of cardboard from the table and slid it into his book to mark his place then dropped the paperback into the pocket of his coat. ‘I’m not sure.’ He stood up and dusted something off his sleeve. ‘He’s busy with other things.’

  ‘It’s just …’ Annabelle’s voice caught in her throat. ‘Do my parents know where I am? They’ll be worried …’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ He dropped his eyes again and glanced around the room. ‘You want to go already. I thought you’d be more grateful. You might have died out there by the road.’

  ‘No! No, it’s not that,’ Annabelle said, panicked. ‘It’s just …’ She searched her brain for the right thing to say, words that would placate Marcus. ‘I’m worried about my leg. I watched a hospital programme once where someone got an infection …’

  Marcus shook his head and gave a dry little laugh. Then he stepped closer and touched his hand to her chin like she was a young child. She tensed but managed to avoid flinching at the contact.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about that. The Doctor gave you an antibiotic injection. There’s no danger of infection.’ He stared at her a moment longer as if daring her to question him. Her dad’s face flickered into Annabelle’s mind again. The way he would look at her when she’d displeased him somehow. The same paralysing indecision when, as a child, her mouth couldn’t form the words to defend herself. Finally Marcus turned away, making it clear the conversation was over.

  After a minute he said, ‘Come on,’ sounding relieved that she hadn’t questioned him further. ‘I’ll take you to the toilet again. But after that it’s bedtime; you really need to rest.’

  She stared at his slim back as he reached for the wheelchair where it stood folded beside the door. And somehow managed to slide her hand under the pillow, felt her fingers close around the cold phone.

  CHAPTER 23

  It was just starting to rain as Monica and Crawford left Mark Gall, still nursing his second double vodka and Coke in the Raigmore Motel. Outside the grey sky and the spits of rain gave the evening a particularly muted and depressing feel. As if this mediocre world was exactly the kind of place that men like Theo Gall should inhabit. Thieves and liars who saw even their closest family members as little more than objects to be exploited.

  ‘I’m feeling a serious dislike for our second victim,’ Crawford said, chiming with Monica’s own thoughts. He looked up and down the grey street before climbing into the passenger side of the Volvo. Monica got in beside him.

  ‘You saw the state his body was in. We don’t have to like Theo Gall. We just need to catch the person who killed him.’

  ‘What’s the next step then?’ Crawford asked. ‘Speak to Gall’s ex-wife Pauline? Tomorrow?’

  ‘If we can work out what connects Gall with the first body, I think we’ll be halfway to solving this case.’ Monica looked through the streaks of rain on the windscreen at the darkening sky. Not for the first time in that long winter an
d spring she found herself wishing for summer and the endless white nights of the north Highlands. The clock on the dashboard read 8.30 p.m.; inevitably she’d already missed Lucy’s bedtime. In less than six months Lucy would be starting primary school. It’ll all be different then. This is the best time, Monica – you should enjoy it while you can. She could hear her mum’s voice in her ear. The sooner they solved these murders, the sooner she could get back to some sort of routine with her daughter. Even if the investigation seemed to be having an unsavoury but cathartic effect on her. ‘What’s wrong with going to find Pauline now?’

  An hour later Pauline Gall looked up at the sound of her name. The woman had brown hair and a thin, tired face. She exuded the tension of a single parent who worked twelve hours a day for a pittance and lived in fear that an unexpected expense or illness might spell disaster for her and her family. Monica knew from a short phone conversation with the woman’s eldest daughter that Pauline worked three jobs. Up at 5 a.m. to clean offices. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. she sold bread and cakes at a bakery, then came home to make dinner for her daughters. Later she left the eldest daughter in charge for three hours while she went back out to clean more offices at the Highland Council’s offices on Tomnahurich Street from 7 to 10 p.m.

  It was here that Monica and Crawford had tracked her down.

  ‘That’s right,’ she replied, a shaky hand shooting up involuntarily to check her hair before she turned off the music on the device she was listening to and removed the headphones from her ears. Her face was alive with concern as she took in the two unexpected visitors.

  ‘Your girls are fine,’ Crawford said as he jogged down the stairs of the auditorium towards her. Monica glanced at the red hair on the back of his head and felt a flicker of affection for him, that he’d taken the woman’s feelings into consideration.

  ‘What, what is it?’ Pauline laid the dusting cloth she’d been holding on the top of the lectern and folded her arms tight across her chest.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news,’ Monica started. ‘It’s about your husband. Theo Gall.’

  ‘Husband in name only,’ Pauline whispered finally when they’d finished telling her the grim news. She had stood with her face set hard as they explained Gall’s body had been found deep in a Highland glen, that it had shown signs of a violent death. She was gripping either side of the lectern, knuckle bones pressing through her pale skin. As if she were about to deliver a nerve-wracking speech to the empty chamber.

  ‘Do you have any idea who might have wanted your estranged husband dead?’

  ‘Who wouldn’t? He’d hurt enough people over the years. Hurt me and my daughters more times than you could imagine.’ She shook her head at the memories. ‘If there had even been a reason for it. If it had even made sense …’

  ‘Are you talking about something specific?’

  In reply Pauline raised an arm and pulled up the sleeve of her jumper. A scar was revealed, a patch of melted skin. Monica flinched at the sight. ‘Theo gave me that last year, poured a kettle of boiling water down my arm. He didn’t even seem angry when he did it. He just did things like that, for no reason. He would burn my things in the fire when I annoyed him, take things – money I tried to save mostly, but other things too. My daughters’ video games even. If he’d been doing it to buy drugs or drink or something it would have at least made sense, but …’

  Monica had met enough career offenders to recognise the profile that Gall fitted. The psychopath, the born criminal hardwired for selfishness. But this seemed to reveal something new about his character, a sadism that wasn’t apparent from his criminal record. Could he have been tortured and killed out of revenge?

  ‘You split up a few months ago?’

  ‘Four months ago, just after Christmas. Happiest time of the year.’ She laughed.

  ‘You were married five years?’ Crawford asked.

  ‘Five and a half,’ Pauline corrected him. ‘What a waste, and putting my girls through that …’

  ‘And have you had any contact? Any idea what he’s been up to since you split?’

  Pauline shook her head. ‘I had to come off Facebook when we broke up. Everything he was posting about me …’ She dropped her eyes to the floor. ‘That I was a slut, working as a prostitute.’

  ‘You should have come to us,’ Crawford said. ‘There’s things we can do now.’

  Pauline flicked her eyes up to his face but didn’t reply. Monica recognised the expression; she’d seen it on the faces of countless abuse victims over the years: You don’t know what it’s like, you don’t understand what he’s capable of.

  ‘And he didn’t attempt to contact you apart from that?’ Monica had no doubt that Pauline’s abuse at the hands of Gall was a personal tragedy, but she needed to focus on who had killed him. Catch that person.

  ‘At first he’d turn up outside the house, try to meet the kids when they were leaving school. We changed routines, ignored him until he finally seemed to get bored of it all. He was always like that, gets bored of everything eventually.’

  ‘But you reported him missing? Even though you hadn’t been in contact?’ This didn’t fit with the rest of Pauline’s story, and Monica wondered if she knew more than she was telling them.

  ‘My daughter asked me to,’ Pauline said finally. ‘It turned out that she’d been in touch with him on Messenger. He’d been filling her head with rubbish. About how it had been someone else who wrote all that stuff about me, how he had a new job, how he was going to buy her expensive clothes, take us all on holiday.’

  Monica’s ears pricked up at that. ‘What did he say about his new job?’

  ‘It was a fantasy, just another one of his fantasies. About how he had a lot of money coming his way. The kind of thing I’ve heard him coming away with at least a thousand bloody times.’ She shook her head. ‘He said that he’d got himself in with the Sinclairs – you know, the builders? Can you believe that?’

  CHAPTER 24

  Marcus helped Annabelle slide into the wheelchair again, carefully shifting her splinted leg onto the rest.

  ‘Easy does it,’ he said softly. His moment of irritation when she had asked about her parents seemed to have faded just as quickly as it flared up. And he seemed genuinely focused on ensuring her ankle hurt as little as possible. She squeezed her eyes tight shut as the pain throbbed, but kept the phone tucked tight in her hand. At least partially hidden unless Marcus happened to look closely. He pushed her out of the room and back down the sloping corridor. Then stopped outside the bathroom again, slid the bolt back and repeated the protracted procedure of backing the chair in and wandering through the room to find the light switch that actually worked. When he finally left her alone in the cubicle she held her breath and pushed the buttons to switch the phone on.

  ‘Please, please, please,’ she whispered, praying it still had battery life.

  She couldn’t bear to watch and looked away, up at the tiny skylight. Outside it was pitch-black. When she dropped her eyes back to the screen the white apple had appeared. Then the passcode screen. With shaking fingers she entered the digits. Finally the homepage with her apps was revealed. The icon at the top left of the screen flickered, searching for network connectivity.

  ‘Please, please, please.’

  For some reason she imagined calling one of the girls she used to know at school or university. Some of them had been nice to her. Sometimes she hearted their Instagram posts. Maybe they would remember who she was and help her?

  ‘Annabelle? Are you OK? We should hurry.’ Marcus’s anxious voice carried from out in the corridor.

  ‘I’m nearly done,’ she managed to reply, trying hard to keep her voice level as she stared at the screen. For a moment she thought it might actually connect. But then they appeared again. The same uncaring words as last time: ‘No Service’.

  Annabelle sank forward. She knew now that there was absolutely no chance of rescue. She was Marcus’s prisoner for as long as he decided to keep her
.

  CHAPTER 25

  Monica paused in the corridor outside her flat. It was after 11 p.m. now; the day seemed to have stretched on interminably. She glanced up and down the quiet hallway. She could almost feel the microscopic particles of Theo Gall’s body clinging to the inside of her nose and mouth. To her skin and clothes.

  A noise echoed from downstairs, a door slamming shut. And for a second an absurd thought flashed in her brain: It’s the remains of Theo Gall, pushing and dragging himself through the doorway and up the stairs. The second corpse (Sebastian Sinclair, surely now) bloated and stinking alongside him, leaving a trail of decomposing flesh behind them on the carpet. She blinked and realised she was actually watching the top of the stairwell intently, body tensed as if the stump of an arm might really appear there in front of her.

  ‘Jesus, you should be used to this. It’s only been six months,’ she whispered. Patting herself down for the door key as for a second she allowed herself to imagine a normal life. Coming home from the office to some kind of life partner, someone to slide into bed with at the end of a long day. Someone who helped look after her and Lucy. Well, you’ve got your mum at least, that’s something. Better than an empty flat. Monica tried very hard to feel grateful for everything her mum did.

  She turned both locks on the door and stepped inside, pushed it closed behind her. Locked and bolted it. Relieved that her mum continued to follow Monica’s demand she keep the door properly secured. Up until the case six months ago Angela had always left the door to her own house unlocked, seemingly convinced that the crimes and murders she read about obsessively could never happen to her own family and belonged squarely in the realms of fiction. The idea that the decomposing versions of Gall and Sinclair could appear outside her flat might be horrifying, but it was the living that concerned Monica. The living who had given her the nightmares.