Dark Waters

by G. R. Halliday

  ‘Sorry … Sorry I’m late.’ He sounded uncharacteristically flustered. Even the delicious smells he’d doused himself in couldn’t divert Monica’s attention from his clothes. She clocked the same suit, the same white shirt with red stitching around the buttonholes, as when she’d dropped him at his Audi the night before. No doubt he’d gone out somewhere, found himself in someone’s bed. It was already 11 p.m. when I dropped you off. How do you find the energy, Crawford? Though on reflection she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know. She shook her head and stared at the road ahead, the faded glamour of the Victorian buildings, relics of a time when the city was steeped in a romantic vision of the Highlands.

  ‘The DNA from his son came back then? Confirmed the first body was Sebastian Sinclair?’ Crawford asked, sounding distracted. Monica glanced at him; he was still jabbing at his phone.

  ‘First thing this morning,’ she said slowly. ‘His sister Heather is going to meet us at her house. Same as when I called you thirty minutes ago?’

  ‘Sure … I remember … Just …’ His phone buzzed twice with messages, and he swore under his breath.

  ‘Is everything OK, Crawford?’ She glanced at him again, aware that she should probably tell him off. Maybe she would have, if he hadn’t been so apologetic. On the drive over to collect him she’d considered some kind of reprimand for his lateness but decided against it. One of the things he excelled at was picking up information from unlikely sources, and it meant he occasionally turned up for work late or hungover.

  He shook his head, his usually gelled and sculpted red hair falling into his eyes. ‘Just … I don’t know. I’ve been seeing someone … Then I ended up going out last night … She tried to find me at my flat but I wasn’t …’ he babbled.

  ‘Well, make sure it doesn’t affect your work,’ she said softly.

  ‘Right, boss.’ He flicked the phone to silent, dropped it into his jacket pocket and took a long drink of his coffee. ‘Quadruple espresso. Need it this morning,’ he muttered, shaking his head. Monica put the car in gear and started down the road. There was no doubt Crawford was annoying, but he was never boring to work with. She realised that she might have even missed his company.

  ‘So why does a respected businessman find himself dead in a glen with a career petty criminal?’ Crawford asked after a minute, keen to prove his mind was back on the case. ‘It just doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘We don’t know for certain that they ended up there together,’ Monica reminded him as she slowed the car for the roundabout at the bottom of Chapel Street, indicating right towards the Kessock Bridge, which would take them across the Moray Firth to the Black Isle. ‘It’s possible the killer targeted them separately somehow,’ Monica said, going back to one of the first rules of criminal investigation: assume nothing, challenge everything. Though in truth this version of events sounded unlikely after what they’d learned the night before about Gall claiming he’d found work with the Sinclairs. ‘Let’s hope Heather Sinclair can give us a clue as to who might have wanted to kill her brother.’

  CHAPTER 30

  Marcus laid the tray across her lap again. It was only the second time he’d done it, but somehow it already had a routine feeling. Similar to how she’d watched flight attendants deliver those little containers to a whole plane with such order. Annabelle was sure only a few days had passed since the crash, but part of her felt like she’d spent a lifetime in the room. Everything that had happened before then existed only as some kind of dream. She stared down at the plate. Another hideous-looking all-day breakfast like before, steam rising off it in the damp room, although if anything there was more food this time.

  Hesitantly she picked up the fork and knife from the sides of the plate. You need to get Scott’s knife and stab Marcus in the neck. The horrible thought came back into her head as she cut into a piece of bacon with the blunt table knife. She tried to keep her eyes fixed on the plate as she chewed. Worried he might somehow guess what she was thinking if he saw her face, the way her hands were shaking. The meat tasted like leather in her mouth as she forced it down. All the time Marcus sat on his chair by the door, watching her eat.

  ‘I can’t cut it very well.’

  ‘Oh, should I help again?’ Marcus stood up and came over to kneel by the bed. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and produced the folding knife. Slowly he teased the blade out with the nail of his thumb. Then he took the fork from Annabelle’s hand. She watched his rough hands as he cut the meat, tomatoes, eggs and mushrooms up into a mess of small pieces.

  ‘I thought I heard Scott last night – I think he was shouting something to me,’ she said, eyes on the knife.

  Marcus nodded slowly but didn’t reply. He skewered some of the bacon and egg on the fork and held it up to her mouth, knife tight in his other hand.

  She chewed slowly, a piece at a time, washed down with mouthfuls of sweet tea. Her eyes kept drifting to the blade of the knife, part of her hoping he would lay it down on the tray so she could snatch it, part of her terrified by the idea of actually stabbing another human. What if it didn’t work? What if he fought her off? He would put that metal mask on her.

  ‘Maybe we could go outside for some fresh air?’ she said impulsively.

  He drew his breath in through his teeth in an exaggerated shush. ‘There’s lambing snow on the mountains. Sgurr na Lapaich is plastered again. You’d catch your death.’ He stood up abruptly, picked up a paper napkin from the tray. Annabelle watched as he wiped the locking knife quickly and folded it away. Then he turned his back on her and looked at the metal door.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you. I did what you asked yesterday,’ he said slowly. ‘But I’m afraid it’s bad news … About your parents … I tried to contact them, to tell them where you were and ask if they’d be able to come and get you.’ He paused, still facing away from Annabelle towards the door. ‘I’m sorry to say this, but I’m afraid neither of them was interested in coming for you. I’m afraid they don’t want you back.’

  CHAPTER 31

  The morning drive across the Kessock Bridge to Heather Sinclair’s mansion on the Black Isle proved fruitless. The high metal gates that guarded the driveway were closed and there was no response to Monica’s buzzing on the intercom. In the distance she could just make out the front of the house through the mature oak and beech trees scattered in front of it.

  ‘Didn’t she say she’d be here?’ Crawford muttered. ‘You think it’s suspicious? Brother dead and she doesn’t want to speak to us?’

  Monica gave the buzzer a final try, then turned the Volvo back in the direction of the southbound A9. In truth she wasn’t sure what to make of it. It only added to her jarringly incomplete picture of the Sinclair family. The two-dimensional Sebastian Sinclair, seemingly an old-fashioned businessman who had somehow ended up associated with a career criminal. Now his sister ducking a meeting with the police the morning her brother’s body is ID’d as a murder victim.

  ‘We’ll find out,’ she replied finally. Because as the last person known to have spoken to Sebastian Sinclair, his sister was currently their best lead in the case.

  They drove back across the bridge to meet Fisher and Khan before they continued the search for Heather Sinclair. The spring morning had tilted towards warmth despite the fresh snow Monica could see on the distant western mountains at the head of the Beauly Firth. Framed by the pure blue sky, the postcard epitome of a majestic Highland day. Except for the bodies, Monica thought. Two of them, chopped up. And the locations continued to niggle at her. So conveniently situated. Why leave the bodies somewhere they would be seen, but try to make it look like they’d come to rest there accidentally? Or was it pure coincidence? Was she reading too much into it? And for the first time that day the other death came back to her – Euston Miller from four years before, the one she’d asked Fisher to look into.

  It was the first thing Monica asked him about when she and Crawford crossed the busy Incident Room to where the yo
unger detective was sitting at a desk alongside DC Khan. Fisher nodded attentively at her question. Turned to his laptop and opened a file, his hand going to his glasses in a nervous gesture. He seems to be on top of things anyway, Monica thought. It was reassuring after what had happened at The Clach.

  ‘Deceased was one Euston Miller, aged seventy at the time of his death,’ Fisher said. ‘His body was recovered from the wreckage of his Toyota pickup truck beneath Dog Falls in Glen Affric. His blood alcohol content was up at zero point two four. Had two previous convictions for driving under the influence and was banned from driving at the time of his death. Cause of death was drowning, declared death by misadventure.’ He turned the laptop round to show a picture of a green pickup, its cab underwater and tail sticking up into the air at the bottom of a thirty-foot cliff face. ‘This is close to the road in Glen Affric. He crashed at night. Could have been a suicide, but the investigators weren’t certain. He was so intoxicated they thought it possible he accidentally turned into the car park at Dog Falls and drove straight off.’

  As Monica had discovered in the last six months, fatal car crashes like this weren’t an unusual occurrence in the Scottish Highlands. Narrow rural roads, steep-sided glens. Even if this was more dramatic than most.

  ‘Anything from the autopsy? Other intoxicants or unusual marks on the body?’

  ‘Nothing that stands out. He had abrasions on his forehead, but the pathologist thought they were consistent with trauma from the crash, hitting his head on the steering wheel.’

  Monica nodded again, satisfied that despite Gillian Keegan’s protests there was no connection between Euston Miller’s death and their double murder. Better to focus resources on the solid leads in the case than chase shadows through a conspiracy theorist’s website.

  ‘You two start digging into any known associates of Sebastian Sinclair, and especially Theo Gall. Someone must know how these men ended up connected. A petty criminal and one of the owners of the biggest company in the north of Scotland.’

  As the detectives nodded in unison, Fisher’s phone buzzed on the table beside his laptop. He picked it up and Monica caught his expression as he looked at the screen then glanced around the office. Seemingly hunting for whoever had sent the message, although this time there was no amused-looking group of detectives pretending ignorance.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ she asked because he actually looked rattled.

  ‘They’ve been doing it all week,’ he said. ‘This one’s … creepy though.’

  CHAPTER 32

  Annabelle stared at Marcus’s slim back, the shape of his shoulders under the army jacket. The way they were hunched slightly forward.

  ‘But … what did they say? What …’ Annabelle’s objections died in her throat because for a moment it made sense. She felt the horror of abandonment in her stomach as her mind raced back to another memory from her childhood. Not long before her dad left when she was six. They were in a park somewhere in London. Her parents were arguing and Annabelle had wandered off towards the climbing frame. Two older girls were standing a little way away, close to some trees. They smiled at her. She remembered that it had felt nice, being noticed like that by much older girls. They gestured to her, and she’d gone to them. Their smiles were as wide as the world as they each took one of her hands and began to walk her away across the park.

  ‘Your mummy asked us to come and collect you; we’re friends of hers.’ The voice had a tightness, and what she was saying didn’t make sense, but the girl was almost an adult and Annabelle didn’t speak to adults; she certainly wouldn’t have contradicted one. Instead she nodded and continued to walk with them towards the trees and the row of cars by the fence beyond them.

  The shouting started then, from behind them. They turned together. Annabelle’s parents were visible on the other side of the climbing frame. Her father watching, her mother screaming and running towards them. The girls let go of her hands and ran. Annabelle began to cry. Her mother grabbed her tight, and moments later her dad was there too.

  She stared up at him through the blur of tears, not fully understanding what had happened, what she’d done to upset her mum.

  ‘You don’t just wander off, Annabelle.’ He was red-faced and angry. ‘Now stop crying, both of you. You’re making a scene.’ He dropped to his knees and slapped Annabelle hard across the face.

  She stopped crying. It was the only time she could remember her dad hitting her. Practically the only time she remembered him touching her. Her mother had stopped crying too and began to clean a stain from Annabelle’s jacket, as if nothing had happened.

  The curious horror of the long-forgotten memory raced through her mind in a second. Surely she was misremembering; surely it hadn’t been like that?

  Finally she stammered to Marcus, ‘What did they say?’

  He continued to look at the door, his back to her. She noticed his hands had dropped to his hips though. ‘Very little, actually. I think it’s better you put it behind you.’

  ‘No!’ Annabelle heard her voice rise. ‘Tell me what they said!’ Surely they would have wanted to know she was OK. Her father had bought her a car just months before. Even if he had seemed most excited about posting photos of himself giving her the keys on Facebook, he had at least shown some interest in her. Her mum still called sometimes, even though they hadn’t spoken properly for years, since the last time Annabelle had tried to talk about her childhood. ‘You didn’t even speak to them, did you? You’re lying!’ She managed to stop herself then, and silence filled the room. It seemed an unspoken covenant had been broken. In some strange way this place had become an extension of her childhood home, with its unsaid things and all its strangeness. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered finally. ‘I didn’t mean …’

  Her voice faded away, and for a long time Marcus stayed completely still, his back to her. She grabbed her phone, certain that he would confiscate it now. Her last piece of proof that she had ever even existed outside this room. Finally he turned, body tense, apparently struggling to contain a frightening rage. He reached for the wheelchair, propped against the wall, and roughly unfolded it.

  ‘I better take you to the bathroom.’ His voice was low and flat. ‘After that you should rest. I can see you’re tired. The Doctor might be along later to check on your progress.’ Annabelle felt hot tears running down her face. There’s no doctor, Marcus. You’re lying, you’ve been lying all along. But she couldn’t stop herself from nodding. He helped slide her across the bed, then lifted her into the chair and placed her leg carefully onto the rest.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marcus,’ she whispered, desperately trying to reestablish a connection with her captor, ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he whispered back. But she could feel his anger through the chair as he pushed it down the tunnel, her leg wobbling on the rest, sending shocks of pain through her body that made her gasp.

  He pushed the chair roughly past the bathroom door. Unbolted it and backed her inside. This time he stormed across the dark room to switch the light on without a word. She looked back out at the tunnel. The white icicles that hung from the cracks where water had leaked through. It made her think of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The mine. And the cackling witch. Annabelle remembered lying on her living-room floor staring at the screen and jerked in the wheelchair at the memory of her terror. As she stared at the white icicles a strange thing happened. The chair began to move towards them. It took her a moment to understand that the floor of the bathroom was on a slight incline. In his simmering fury Marcus had forgotten to put the brake on, and her movement had been enough to rock the chair into motion. She could hear Marcus’s footsteps, twenty feet away at the back of the room. Almost without thinking she dropped the phone onto her lap. Her hands went to the wheels of the chair and she pushed down once. The chair rolled slowly out into the tunnel. She leaned back for the door, her fingers just reached the metal handle and the heavy wooden door began to swing closed.

  �
��Annabelle? What—’

  The door clunked shut, muffling the sound of Marcus’s voice. With a shaking hand she reached up as far as she could, ignoring the pain that was screaming again from her leg. Her fingers rested on the end of the thick bolt. She slid it home, trapping Marcus in the room.

  CHAPTER 33

  Four years earlier

  Euston Miller glanced at the time on the dash of the pickup. Almost 11 p.m. He sighed and took another mouthful of the Famous Grouse. Felt the whisky burn his throat and then his stomach. Shift him into a gentler version of reality. The liquid made a slopping sound inside the glass bottle. A two-thirds-gone sound, Euston guessed. He held the bottle up to the dim light from the moon. Closer to three-quarters.

  He sighed again, shifted in his seat. Felt the familiar comfort of the soft fabric against his back. A thin layer of sweat on his skin from the heater. The whisky had been meant to take the edge off. Just a couple of mouthfuls, how had he gone through most of a bottle? Before he was tempted by another drink Euston managed to screw the cap on and push the bottle carefully into the door pocket. Instead he rolled a cigarette and scanned the dark lay-by. Dog Falls, halfway up Glen Affric. There were thick forests on four sides, the black sky overhead. It was a remote spot, a place that should have felt eerie and threatening. Maybe it would have if not for the whisky.

  There was no sign of anyone outside, no lights approaching down the long glen. Nothing had passed in the hour he’d been there. Another time waster? It didn’t quite fit. More likely the old man got scared. Euston shifted on the seat. Realised his hand had gone to the Grouse again, that he’d already lifted it from the pocket and unscrewed the cap. He looked down at the welcoming bottle, the smell sharp in the vehicle’s interior. Rude not to. He took a deep pull, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.