Dark Waters

by G. R. Halliday

  ‘Jesus, Crawford,’ she whispered. But it seemed as good an idea as any. Better than hiding or blindly hoping things would turn out OK. She took a deep breath, stood up and walked downstairs. The voices from the other side of the door got louder. Slowly she drew the bolts back and pulled the door open.

  Outside three men turned in unison as they heard the door opening. Monica held her warrant card out like a shield and said the first thing that came to mind: ‘I’m police. Wait out here.’ It sounded absurd, even to her.

  The man who was closest stared up at Monica. His hair was thick and grey, the moustache had been replaced with a white beard, but his face matched the photograph she’d seen back at headquarters. It was Francis MacGregor. He was wearing waterproof camouflage trousers and a jacket. Behind him a dead stag lay across the back of a quad bike, steam still rising from its mouth in the cold afternoon. A rifle strapped down beside it. The two other men, both younger, were dressed similarly.

  ‘I’ve got armed backup at the end of the track,’ Monica said, still holding her warrant card out. Beside the dead stag Monica noticed a small chainsaw strapped to the quad.

  Slowly MacGregor reached down beside him for the rifle and began to slide it out from its straps.

  ‘Armed backup?’ He repeated the words as if they were genuinely funny. ‘You think I give a fuck?’

  ‘You’ve got a woman up there,’ Monica said. Feeling the hair on her arms stand up as MacGregor stared intently at her. She had no doubt from those piercing blue eyes that he was capable of shooting her right there on his own doorstep regardless of the consequences.

  ‘I’ll keep a woman where I want to keep a woman,’ MacGregor said. ‘What business is that of yours?’

  He yanked on the rifle until it was free of the strapping and held it loosely in his hands.

  ‘You want to think about what you do just now,’ Monica said, struggling to keep her voice level. ‘You want to think about it carefully.’

  ‘Fucking think about this.’ MacGregor pointed the gun at the ground and pulled the bolt back, clicking a round into place. His finger went to the trigger.

  ‘Stop there!’ Crawford’s voice came from the corner of the house. Monica turned to see him step round the side of the building. He was aiming a shotgun at MacGregor’s head.

  ‘Fucking hell! Like Inverness High Street here today!’ MacGregor shouted, swinging his head back towards the grey sky. He straightened up and stared at Crawford, eyes narrowing into slits. ‘Watch that thing, pal. Cost a couple of grand at auction. Antique conversion of a Civil War musket.’ Monica could see that as he tried to distract Crawford, MacGregor was slowly inching his rifle up towards stomach level. ‘Used at Gettysburg if you believe the sales pitch, and I always believe the sales pitch.’

  ‘Put the fucking gun down, now.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ MacGregor said, smiling widely at Crawford. ‘I’m not sure about that at all.’

  For long seconds no one moved. Then a sound came from beyond the pines. The sound of a car accelerating on the track. Time seemed to slow down, and she could take in every detail of MacGregor’s face. His heavy grey eyebrows, the weather-beaten skin of his cheeks and forehead, heavy lines at the corners of his eyes. All those moments of joy this world had served up for him. And she saw his jaw clench, a muscle twitch on his face. He was going to lift the rifle, he was going to fire it at Crawford.

  She knew she should do something, but he was ten feet away from her. If she moved he could fire the weapon long before she reached him.

  ‘Just lower the gun,’ Crawford said, taking a step closer.

  MacGregor smiled back, said something that Monica couldn’t hear because the car’s siren started up. Shrieking through the grey afternoon as the white BMW burst into view then screeched to a stop yards from where they were standing. Its blue lights flickering over them. The doors burst open and two officers jumped out, pistols pointing at Francis MacGregor. ‘Put the gun down!’

  For what seemed an eternity MacGregor kept hold of the rifle. Staring into the shotgun Crawford was pointing at him. Finally he dropped the rifle to the ground and raised a finger at the young detective. He smiled, nodded in a way that managed to imply all kinds of sinister intent, then slid both hands to his head and dropped forward to his knees.

  ‘We’ll see each other again, son,’ he said, still smiling at Crawford. ‘We’ll see each other again.’

  CHAPTER 57

  ‘Would’ve been the first time I’d fired a shotgun,’ Crawford said with a shaky laugh. His face still chalk white at the memory. ‘I honestly thought I was going to have to shoot the bastard.’

  ‘So did I,’ Monica said. Or that he might shoot you first. ‘Better not to think about it.’

  Crawford shrugged, took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘Well, it would have been one thing off the bucket list.’

  Monica raised an eyebrow at his macho posturing, because she had no doubt that if he’d had to fire that shotgun he would be devastated. Regardless of whether MacGregor might have deserved it.

  They were standing outside the house, just the two of them again in the gloaming light. Waiting for a patrol to arrive and secure the premises until the currently overworked forensics team could investigate the house. For the previous two hours the remote location had been a bustle of activity as Monica and Crawford helped the uniformed officers with Francis MacGregor and the two men – his sons, it turned out. MacGregor had been driven to the cells in Inverness in the back of the marked BMW, his sons in a police van that arrived from Dingwall.

  As soon as the three men were secure Monica had hurried back upstairs to release the straps trussing the poor woman. Held her hand as she waited for the paramedics to arrive. After her earlier screams she now seemed almost catatonic, completely unresponsive to Monica’s attempts to reassure her. When the paramedics arrived, a man and a woman in green uniforms, Monica had seen the horror written plain on their faces as they surveyed the room. And felt a strange moment of protectiveness towards the woman on the bed. As if she had been any less repulsed when she first entered the room. The paramedics were clearly experienced professionals though and overcame their initial shock to begin stabilising her. Finally, satisfied that it was safe to move her, they had shifted her onto an orange stretcher and carried her along that dark lacquered hallway, down the stairs and out to the ambulance. Monica was left with her thoughts, particularly the curious memory of Lucy’s dream.

  ‘You think MacGregor killed Gall and Sinclair?’ Crawford asked, mercifully distracting Monica’s attention. ‘Over whatever deal they really had going on with the garage?’

  ‘He’s got questions to answer,’ Monica muttered, stating the obvious somewhat. MacGregor made sense as the killer, linked to the victims through the garage and a previous conviction for a serious violent crime. But as she ran back over the scene outside the house something about it jarred with her. MacGregor had seemed relaxed, almost like he was enjoying the thrill of Crawford pointing the gun at him. Would he really have been so casual if he knew there was evidence linking him with a double murder at a garage he owned?

  And the woman upstairs only added to the confusion. Monica hadn’t begun to consider the implications, beyond the eerie connection to Lucy. It wasn’t exactly an unusual storyline, she reassured herself. A woman trapped in a room, a monster outside who wants to eat her. How many fairy tales centred on the same basic idea? Once they identified the woman, Lucy’s dream would seem less unnerving and a lot more like a coincidence. And it might bring them closer to solving the murders too.

  ‘We need to get Fisher and Khan looking through the missing persons,’ Monica said. ‘Anyone fitting her description.’

  ‘I called them while you were upstairs,’ Crawford said. ‘They’re on it.’

  In the distance at the end of the track the lights from the patrol car swept across the pines and turned down towards the house. The day had crept into a bitter evening but neither one of th
em had wanted to wait inside.

  ‘Should we do something with that,’ Crawford said, gesturing to the stag, which was still hanging across the back of MacGregor’s quad bike. ‘It’ll start to rot if it’s left out here for too long, won’t it?’

  Monica stared at its frozen dead eyes, its thick tongue hanging out like a slice of meat. She wondered again about the need some people had to control, to capture and contain. The kids with their jars of minnows. Francis MacGregor with a woman tied up in his house? And your dad, her internal voice cut in. What about the way he needed to be in control? She tried to ignore the unwelcome thought. Her dad had been autocratic but never actually abusive. MacGregor appeared to have taken things to a nightmarish extreme. She gestured to the approaching vehicle. ‘Ask this pair to move the stag –’ she began walking towards the Volvo ‘– or they can take it home to eat if they want. Maybe one of them knows someone who can butcher it for them.’

  CHAPTER 58

  Whenever the fear and pain eased off, Annabelle was swamped with boredom. Deprived of any stimulation, she lay staring at the concrete ceiling, imagining the layers of rock then soil and grass between her and the fresh air she’d tasted during her attempted escape. She could almost imagine floating high above the ground outside. Staring down at the mountains and the road that had brought her to this horrible place. Imagining following it all the way back down south to her comfortable flat. Where Miss Albright and Mr Pepper would be standing outside, wondering where she’d been. Maybe some of the volunteers from the cafe would be there too, waiting to welcome her back like the loving family she’d never known. Sometimes she even imagined her mum appearing, apologising for her part in all their rows, offering to talk about the past and start again. The fantasies would persist until they were punctured by fresh bursts of terror. The Doctor breaking into them, forcing his way in through her kitchen window, or crawling out from the cupboard under her bathroom sink.

  The memory of those vacant dark grey eyes would drag her back to the terrible reality of the situation. Her only way out was by killing Marcus. Despite everything the thought still seemed too awful to comprehend. You’re scared of him too, aren’t you? She cringed as she remembered her words to Marcus, the day before in the bathroom. How could she have been so unsubtle? Caught up in the moment of connectivity, the idea that she and Marcus had something in common. It’s because you’re afraid of doing what you really have to do, the harsh voice in the back of her head spoke up. You’re afraid of killing him.

  Annabelle didn’t try to argue, because what she’d said to Marcus certainly hadn’t helped. All it had achieved was to put him in a more distant and morose mood. He’d barely spoken to her after that as he wheeled her from the bathroom back to the cell, helped her into bed, then locked the door behind her. Clearly she had annoyed him. Maybe he was even insulted. The way she would still feel if someone else criticised her parents, despite all her problems with them. She cursed herself again for being so stupid. One minute you want to kill him, the next you’re obsessing over what he might be thinking. Like he’s some fucked-up boyfriend. Annabelle shook her head at the thought and practised the stabbing motion. She turned slightly on the bed. Tensed her hand into a fist as if holding the knife and punched it repeatedly into the pile of pillows. Feeling the air whoomph out of them as she imagined again what it might feel like. The knife breaking his skin. Would he scream? Would there be a lot of blood? She pictured him lying on the floor in a heap. Dark blood spreading out all around him. And what then?

  Her eyes fell on the crutches, propped behind the chair by the door. If she killed Marcus she would have to get a long way on those crutches. Next time she wouldn’t make the same mistake of trying to phone close to the tunnel entrance. She would take Marcus’s jacket for warmth. Find Scott and free him, then they would hide in the woods somewhere together. Or keep going until they found another road. This part of the plan would work itself out later, she was sure. But the crutches, they were important. She had to be able to move quickly. Marcus was right. Exercise would help her heal. She should practise. She should practise in here. It was so obvious.

  She could still feel the pain in her muscles from her previous try, but somehow they already felt stronger, and doing anything had to be better than enduring the endless cycles of thoughts. She slid to the edge of the bed, leaned against the wall with her left arm for balance and hopped across the room to retrieve the crutches. She sat down in Marcus’s chair, slipped the grey plastic supports over her wrists and gripped the handles. Then, pushing off on her remaining leg, she stood up.

  Without Marcus watching her, it actually felt much easier. She spent a long time just walking around the small space. From the door to the bed and back again. Quickly she found that if she concentrated on her balance it wasn’t necessary to grip the handles with so much force. She could sort of lean on them. The thrill of being able to move on her own rose into a kind of manic excitement and the idea resurfaced: Maybe you can help Marcus to see that keeping you and Scott here is wrong? Maybe he was just shocked by what you said because he didn’t expect it? The fantasy gathered pace and she began to picture an alternative future – she would persuade Marcus to free her and Scott, the three of them would find a car, drive to Inverness together. They would sit in a warm and comfortable hotel room, talk about everything they’d experienced together.

  With her new confidence Annabelle was suddenly sure she could pull it off. The first thing was to contact Scott somehow. She tottered over to the door and banged on the metal with the plastic of the crutch handle.

  ‘Scott?! Can you hear me? It’s Annabelle!’ She banged again and waited for a long time, listening for a reply that never came. Maybe he was gone. Or maybe he’d been taken somewhere else. Annabelle took a deep breath, tried to contain her disappointment. Marcus would know where Scott was; she just needed to persuade him.

  Annabelle realised that her arms were hurting and sank down onto Marcus’s chair, eased the crutches off and pushed them against the wall. As she did so her eyes fell on the strange patches of carpet stuck to the walls again. She leaned over and slid her finger along the edge where the top square of carpet met the concrete. The join felt tacky, as if it had been sealed with some kind of adhesive. That explained the glue smell. It felt like the silicone seal in the shower at her childhood home. Annabelle remembered peeling a strip of it off and causing water to leak onto the floor.

  Impulsively she pulled at the strip of glue. It came away easily and with it the corner of the carpet tile. She swore under her breath. Not what she needed, when she had already pissed Marcus off yesterday and was relying on him more than anything for her plan to work. She hid the strip of glue down the side of the chair and pushed the carpet back against the wall. It stayed there for a moment then slumped forward.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered, pushing at it again. Again it stuck for a moment then peeled away. Increasingly frustrated, she licked the top of her finger and dabbed at the wall behind the carpet. When she was a kid this had sometimes worked for sticking pieces of paper together if she’d run out of Pritt Stick. The tip of her finger came away a dirty brown. She stared at it for a moment then raised the finger to her nose and sniffed. The familiar chemical smell of glue. Another smell beside it, like iron. Could it be blood? She reached up and pulled the square of carpet away from the wall.

  Behind there was a dark patch. Smeared as if someone had wiped the concrete with a damp cloth before gluing the carpet square on top. Annabelle stared at the wall, her mouth hanging open with horror. The sound of her pulse was ringing in her ears and her hands were shaking uncontrollably.

  With a knife or a piece of metal someone had scratched into the concrete in two-inch-high letters: THEYR EATING ME.

  CHAPTER 59

  It was 8 p.m. when Monica and Crawford finally made it back across the Kessock Bridge to Inverness. The grey clouds above the city had cleared away leaving it cold and almost frosty. They had driven virtually the whole way
in silence, both exhausted from the previous long night working on the case and the events at MacGregor’s house.

  ‘I guess we’ll get back on it tomorrow?’ Crawford asked as Monica pulled the Volvo to a stop beside his red Audi parked outside the police headquarters opposite Raigmore Hospital, where the woman from Francis MacGregor’s house was now being cared for.

  Monica nodded. ‘Give MacGregor a chance to stew, give us a chance to rest.’ And as she said it Monica couldn’t help but imagine the simple pleasure of a hot shower. Of dragging her exhausted body under a pile of cosy blankets afterwards. The pure relief that they’d caught MacGregor, that she’d made the right call in pursuing the phone records. At the bare minimum they had saved the woman. It was something, no matter whether her uncertainties over MacGregor’s links to the murders were justified or not.

  Crawford nodded himself, climbed slowly out of the Volvo. He went to pull his leather jacket on then remembered. He gave a tired laugh then held the ruined garment up for her to see. ‘Of all the jackets I could have been wearing today …’

  Lucy was still awake, past her bedtime, playing on the rug by the TV, when Monica arrived at her mum’s house down in Rapinch. The lamp in the corner of the room cast a warm light, the smells of roasting potatoes and onions with rosemary and garlic, the sound of shrieks echoing across a dark pine forest. Monica blinked, shook her head and tried very hard to switch her brain from senior investigating officer to something like Mum mode.

  Her daughter glanced up with pure excitement on her face. She’d been concentrating so intently on something on the carpet in front of her that she hadn’t heard Monica come in.