Dark Waters

by G. R. Halliday

  CHAPTER 41

  Lucy ran ahead of Monica down the path among the trees. The kid ducked under a branch and leaned so far over that her blonde curls were touching the ground to inspect the first spring shoots of a fern pushing up through the earth. It was an unexpected day off nursery for Lucy. Unexpected for Monica at least, for she had neglected to mark it on the calendar that hung by the phone in the kitchen.

  ‘I can’t take her this morning, Monica,’ her mum had explained over the phone, her voice rising defensively. ‘I’ve got plans already. I’ve told you I’ll help more when Lucy starts school in the autumn.’

  ‘Couldn’t Lucy come with you? It would just be for a few hours.’ Monica had cast a guilty glance at her daughter, sitting in her favourite spot on the couch with her obligatory bowl of Cheerios.

  ‘I’m visiting Auntie May,’ her mum had replied finally. Enough said. Auntie May didn’t like Lucy and always found fault with the child’s supposed eccentricities and lack of proper manners.

  So Monica had brought Lucy with her to the Little Glen. It was the section of woodland a few miles before Little Arklow where Colin Muir’s car had been discovered almost forty years before. Since then the lay-by where the vehicle was left had been expanded into a small car park, with a short forestry walk laid out nearby. She could take Lucy for a walk while still doing something potentially useful for the investigation; the fact that the path was used by walkers allayed any fears about danger to Lucy.

  Monica glanced at the trees on either side of the slightly overgrown trail. Tried to imagine what might have drawn Colin Muir to this place and wondered how he might have died. Her eyes flicked ahead again to where Lucy, dressed in a blue puffer jacket and red wellies, was now poking at the fern with her chubby fingers.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Monica said, crouching until the hem of her coat touched the dank soil. Lucy stared intently at the plant, glasses balanced on her nose as she felt its shoots between her fingers. The smell of the earth and wild garlic mixed with the sound of the nearby river splashing over rocks. This glen was narrow and almost claustrophobic with dense woodland and steep slopes on either side. They had been walking for about ten minutes. Up ahead the path petered out at the head of the short valley. Monica knew from a Google search that it was here that Colin Muir’s body had been discovered. An uneasy feeling ran up her back as she glanced around at the trees again. Suddenly coming here felt like a mistake.

  ‘It feels really soft,’ Lucy whispered.

  Monica cleared her throat, tried to dismiss the feeling. There had been no other vehicles in the car park that morning, but the path was relatively well worn. The place seemed a popular spot for visitors. Another case of paranoia, she decided.

  ‘Do you remember what happened the other night, honey? When you came through to the living room?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Lucy whispered, still moving the fern between her fingers.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Monica tried to keep a lightness in her voice. She had no idea why she’d asked the question here of all places, at the bottom of a spooky glen where a body had once been discovered. Maybe the same reason she’d felt an odd peacefulness staring at a dead man’s face.

  ‘I think I was speaking to someone in my dream. The one I told you about. He has black teeth and blue skin. He says he’s called Long John. He says he used to be my grandad.’

  Monica felt her breath catch in her throat.

  ‘Where did you hear that name?’ she said finally, resisting the sudden urge to reach for her daughter’s head and tilt it up so she could see into her eyes.

  ‘Sometimes he speaks to me when I’m in bed, that’s all. He says he keeps bad people in prison.’ Lucy stood up quickly and hurried to the burn by the path, splashing down to kick at the shallow water with her wellies.

  Monica glanced around, down at Lucy. She felt her phone begin to vibrate in her coat pocket. At that moment the connection to civilisation felt incredibly welcome.

  ‘DI Kennedy? Is that you?’ DC Fisher’s voice, the sounds of a busy office behind him telling her that he was back at headquarters. ‘It’s about the Sinclairs’ garage? In Little Arklow? I got your message. I’ve been digging into it this morning.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So, it was left to Sebastian Sinclair as part of his inheritance from his father. But it changed hands a few months ago.’ Monica was listening now. ‘Sold to a man named Francis MacGregor.’

  ‘Francis MacGregor?’ The name seemed to chime for her.

  ‘He owns a few garages, a bunch of other things across the north of Scotland. Aged fifty-nine. I think you’ll want to speak to him.’

  ‘He’s got previous?’

  ‘From his youth. A string of convictions in the 1970s. He’s not been in trouble since then, though.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Monica glanced over to check on Lucy, who was crouched in the shallow water poking at something with a stick.

  ‘A lot. Robberies, serious assaults. He broke a man’s legs by driving a motorcycle repeatedly over them. That was his last conviction. But we’re talking about forty years ago.’

  CHAPTER 42

  The first thing Annabelle became aware of was the pain. From below her knee, up her leg. She shifted her body slightly, and the pain spasmed. It faded quickly though, lost in a strange softening of her senses. She opened her eyes and saw that the room was illuminated by candlelight. Annabelle was sure she was dreaming, then she heard the voice in her ear.

  ‘I tried to warn you. You should have listened to me.’ Slowly, through a haze of medication, she realised it was Marcus. He was sitting beside her with the hood of his coat up.

  ‘Marcus,’ Annabelle whispered. She tried to reach out a hand to him but it barely moved.

  ‘The Doctor switched off the electricity as a punishment for what we did. He …’ Marcus coughed. ‘He had to perform an emergency surgery. The bone was going bad. From the knee down, it had to go.’ Annabelle knew that what Marcus had just said should be perhaps the most horrible thing she had ever heard, but in the glow of the candlelight, with the medication in her body, the feeling of being held in the softest hands of a mothering nature, they couldn’t have been less threatening if they had been the words of a lullaby.

  The second time she was woken by the screaming. It echoed up the concrete tunnel from somewhere deep, deep down. Annabelle tried to sit up, and the pain immediately seared up her leg, deep and agonising. The previous gentleness was gone, and in its wake was a cold, empty horror.

  The screaming redoubled, and for a moment Annabelle wondered if she was really hearing it at all. If it wasn’t her agony and terror driving her own mind beyond the edges of sanity. She turned her head to the side, gritting her teeth against the pain. Marcus was still sitting by the side of her bed.

  ‘Who is that, Marcus? Is Scott still here?’ The idea came fully formed into her head. But this time Marcus was hunched forward with both ears covered by his hands. He didn’t reply. He didn’t even move until the screaming from the corridor had stopped. And it went on for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER 43

  After she’d dropped Lucy off at her mum’s house (‘I don’t know why I bother visiting Auntie May. She’s always the same, asking rude questions about Lucy: “Is your wee granddaughter still not quite right? Still away with the fairies in her wee heedie?”’), Monica picked up Crawford from headquarters. They drove back out on the same road that led past Cannich and on to Little Arklow.

  ‘Sorry about yesterday morning.’ Crawford sounded hesitant. Monica realised that she hadn’t spoken for the first twenty minutes of the drive. Probably he was worried she was pissed off when actually her mind had run back to Lucy and Long John, her imaginary friend who used to be my grandad. Surely the kid had heard someone use the name, maybe one of Mum’s friends when they were out shopping in the Marsh? But Monica couldn’t recall anyone outside her dad’s circle of close work friends calling him that. She had to have heard someone sa
y it, Monica told herself. There was no alternative explanation that made any sense. She realised it might be a good idea to talk it over with one of the other mums at the nursery. Maybe they’d had similar experiences of their children sleepwalking?

  ‘Just be careful,’ Monica replied finally. It seemed like the kind of thing a boss should say.

  ‘Sure. Won’t happen again.’ Crawford sounded relieved. Monica glanced over at him. Thin body spread wide in the passenger seat, obligatory can of Red Bull in his white hand. She remembered that he’d told her once he’d grown up without a father, living on the west coast with his young mother and grandparents in a strict Presbyterian family. He leaned in to the mirror and ran a hand through his red hair, back to its regulation sculpted quiff today.

  ‘What were you like when you were a kid?’ she heard herself asking. ‘Did your mum worry about you? Because you didn’t have a dad? I’m asking because of Lucy …’

  Crawford cleared his throat. ‘She was young. Only fourteen when she had me. I don’t think she knew to worry about me at first.’ He sounded matter-of-fact but Monica could see that he’d shifted on the seat.

  ‘Sorry, Crawford. It’s none—’

  ‘She worries more now, when I’m working. When I’m not working. That I’ll be like my dad probably.’

  And Monica wanted to continue, drill into who Crawford’s dad was, what it was about him that his mum didn’t like, try to gain some insight into how other mothers dealt with worrying about their children. But she had her own secrets, her own fuck-ups that she wanted to keep buried. There was a limit to how much honesty two people should share.

  It took another twenty minutes to reach Cannich and the turn-off that led them towards Glen Turrit and the scruffy village of Little Arklow. As she glanced at the silver birch forest on either side of the road Monica couldn’t help bringing to mind the creepy story from the website, the one about the unnamed crofter supposedly almost driven mad somewhere near here. There was nothing about the man on file, and none of the older police officers she’d asked had ever heard of the case. Still, she couldn’t shake the disquiet that this area seemed to bring with it. They passed the outlying buildings of Little Arklow, wooden shacks and abandoned caravans being slowly consumed by the scrubby woods. In another twenty years the place would be swallowed completely. And maybe for the best, Monica thought as they drove into the small village, the mountains of Glen Turrit visible beyond, dark red and melancholy in the flat afternoon light.

  The pall of rottenness that the settlement seemed steeped in drifted into the car like a fog. For a moment Monica felt that it was inevitable the investigation would lead to this place, to the Affric Men, and as she looked out of the window at the dark houses, the boarded-up windows and the woodsmoke hanging in the air, a big part of her wondered again if Euston Miller had stumbled on some garbled truth about the area. That it was bad, that terrible things would always happen here.

  As if to reinforce her impression, the group of men from last time, slouched smoking on plastic chairs, dressed in worn tracksuit bottoms and thick plaid shirts, turned to stare.

  ‘What a hellhole,’ Crawford muttered.

  Monica didn’t reply but continued past the shabby Turrit Arms to the end of the street. She took a left. The satnav had given up, but after another five minutes she spotted the battered-looking white garage at the end of a track. Surrounded by the gloomy birch forest that enclosed the settlement on all sides.

  The place looked abandoned. Two of the upper windows were boarded up with plywood, and the track up to it had deteriorated into a mess of potholes. An old ripped saltire flag fluttered from a rusty pole. A reminder of more prosperous times? Monica pulled the Volvo to a stop and got out. The car park in front of the garage was empty.

  ‘How much did Fisher say Francis MacGregor paid for this place?’ she asked.

  ‘Two hundred grand. That’s an absurd amount for this, isn’t it?’

  Monica didn’t respond but went up to the front door of a small office. A shutter was pulled down over the vehicle entrance. The bell didn’t seem to work so she rapped on the glass with her knuckles. Through the grimy window she could make out a desk with a pile of letters on it, some dusty old newspapers and mugs.

  ‘Could it be a redevelopment project? Something like that?’ Crawford went on.

  ‘Or money laundering,’ Monica said, thinking out loud.

  Unsurprisingly there was no reply to her knock. She tried the handle but the door was locked.

  ‘I’ll have a look round the back.’ Crawford stomped off along the overgrown slab path that led past the shuttered garage round the side of the building. Something troubled Monica about the place. It seemed to carry the distilled essence of the oddness of the village, the whole area. She shook her head at the thought. Her unsettled feelings no doubt lingered from Lucy’s odd story that morning. She forced herself to take a deep breath and walk a little way round the opposite side of the building. Brushing past the trees that clawed at her coat, the mossy smell of the forest. The familiar tightness of high alert in her stomach, the unshakable feeling of being watched. As if her father’s ghost really had followed her from Lucy’s dream. At the end of the pathway a small shed stood against the garage wall.

  The shed was unlocked but empty. She closed the door again and glanced up at the shed roof. Wondering if she could climb up onto it and squeeze through the boarded-up window above. Probably a bad idea, given how rotten the roof of the shed appeared, but better than waiting for proper authorisation to enter.

  ‘Monica!’ Crawford’s shout echoed through the densely packed trees, interrupting her chain of thought. She’d almost forgotten that he was there with her. She followed his voice back to the front of the garage. He was standing with his hands on his hips, brown leather jacket spread wide off his thin frame, face lit up in an inviting triumphant smile. ‘You have to see this.’

  CHAPTER 44

  Much later Annabelle removed her hands from her ears and opened her eyes. The screaming had been replaced by an eerie stillness. Marcus must have gone and come back because now there was a tray on the little table beside her. The same meal as before. He was sitting quietly in the corner, watching her.

  ‘I couldn’t eat,’ Annabelle said. As she did so she glanced down at the space where her leg had been. The sheet was flat. There must have been some of the painkiller, sleeping pill or anaesthetic still in her system because her horror at what she was seeing was muted. Shut off behind panes of filthy glass.

  ‘No food, no painkillers,’ Marcus said. ‘Or we could put the mask on if you want to make a fuss?’ His voice was dictatorial again and carried a new coldness. Clearly he hadn’t forgiven her betrayal. ‘It was a serious operation. You need your strength, you need to eat. And believe me when I tell you, you’ll need the painkillers soon.’

  Annabelle looked at the swelling on the side of his eye where the Doctor’s punch had connected. ‘Is your head OK? I’m sorry …’

  Marcus ignored the question and leaned behind her to stack the pillows so she could sit up more easily.

  ‘Where’s my leg?’ A question from a pantomime that should have been funny. ‘I need to see it.’

  ‘That ugly tattoo’s gone now at least,’ he said in reply. Holding up a forkful of food but still refusing eye contact.

  ‘Tattoo?’ With a deadened sense of shock she slowly remembered. Probably she hadn’t looked at it in six months, had almost forgotten about it. There on her ankle. The little car she’d got when she was eighteen and passed her driving test at the third attempt. A symbol that she was independent, that she was free.

  ‘Where is it?’ she said again, the absurd horror of the question washing over her as her stomach tightened and she began to dry-heave.

  ‘If you really want to know, Granny Slate took the foot. She’s gone to Inverness with the family and she’s carrying it in her shopping basket. She likes to imagine what people would say if they knew.’ He gave a little laugh at
Granny Slate’s eccentricity. ‘She thinks that if you don’t put some part far away from the rest it’ll work its way back together and come looking for you in your dreams. That’s what Grandad Slate always used to say when he was alive. She might even scatter your toes at Ferry Point, just to be safe.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now are you going to eat something so I can give you a painkiller, or do we need to put the mask on?’

  As if in a dream, Annabelle somehow managed to chew and swallow the food that Marcus cut up for her. Finally he leaned in to wipe her mouth with a paper napkin, then produced a clutch of brown plastic medicine bottles from his pocket. He tapped out a handful of pills.

  ‘Opioids and some sleeping pills. They’ll keep the discomfort at bay.’

  Annabelle swallowed the drugs with what was left of the tea and sank back onto the pillows.

  ‘What were those noises? Last night? The screaming? I thought I heard them saying something. Was it Scott?’

  Marcus flinched and looked away, put the cutlery on the plate and set the mug down beside them. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘let’s just say it doesn’t concern you for now.’

  CHAPTER 45

  Monica followed Crawford along the path round the side of the garage, birch twigs catching in her hair and face.

  ‘What is it?’

  Crawford pretended not to hear, keen to drag out his moment of suspense for as long as possible. She shook her head and followed in silence. After thirty seconds the path, which seemed destined to end at the back of garage, turned away from the building, heading to the right. Through ever more dense foliage, her frustration mounted with every step.