Dark Waters

by G. R. Halliday

  You have to slow down, you have to breathe gently. Somehow she managed to do what the voice said. Try tilting your head to the side. Annabelle did as she was told, and there was a fraction of an inch of give. She was able to slide her arms back by an inch then brace her hands against the tunnel walls to slide her hips forward along the floor.

  After another minute of desperate wriggling the tunnel began to open out slightly. Annabelle found she could move more freely. She reached down for the torch, suddenly fearful that it had broken. Thankfully the light shone up in her face and she felt a moment of pure relief. She realised that there had been no sound from the Doctor behind her for a few minutes. Maybe he went down a different tunnel? She paused, listening carefully, still trying to slow her breathing. Maybe she could escape after all? Maybe she could wait here for a while then creep back to the surface? For the first time she actually started to believe it.

  It was then she felt the Doctor’s hand close around her ankle again. This time his grip was solid as iron. No matter how hard she screamed and kicked, Annabelle couldn’t break free.

  CHAPTER 92

  The sirens drew closer down the long glen. Monica took a breath and felt a fraction of the tension ebb from her body. It seemed that whatever else happened, at least she and Crawford weren’t going to be killed in this lonely place. Not tonight. She sensed that it had been close; she’d seen the look in Marjory Slate’s eyes. Monica knew murderousness. She’d spent her life around it. And she was sure the woman in front of her had too. If she and Crawford had come to that door on a different night. A night when they were unsuspecting, unguarded …

  ‘Where’s Annabelle?’ Monica resisted the urge to grip Marjory Slate’s neck and pull her close. To lean forward and grab her and find a way to make her speak. ‘Where is she?’

  The woman stared back into Monica’s eyes. The sirens drew ever closer. ‘Well, I just hope they find her,’ she replied finally. A smile flickered around her eyes. ‘But if you ask me, I don’t think they ever will.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Oh, once they’re gone a few days, these kinds of girls don’t ever come back. Better to forget about them. Better to leave them in peace.’

  The sirens screamed outside. The blue lights skipped around the room, joining the flashing colours of the disco lights. Crawford shouted something over the din and ran downstairs. Monica’s eyes didn’t move from Marjory Slate’s. She knew Annabelle was close. And that they would never find her.

  Monica heard a muffled sob. Karen Sinclair, curled up on the chair, had a hand over her face. The little girl, Lily, was beside her, face pushed into her side.

  ‘Karen feels for the girl. Imagines what it would be like it was her wee one,’ Slate whispered with just the shadow of amusement in her voice. ‘All we have is family, isn’t it? We lost my husband just last year. Things have been harder since then.’

  Monica could hear other sounds under the sirens now. Shouts from the armed response team outside. They would search the house and they would find no trace of Annabelle. She was sure of it, could read it right there in Slate’s eyes. Monica felt her anger flicker and rise.

  ‘Where is she?’ Outrage crept into her voice, and Slate’s smile grew perceptibly wider. Taking pleasure in the detective’s impotent rage. Monica felt her blood stirring. One of Monica’s turns, in her mum’s parlance. She pushed both her hands down into her coat pockets. Not quite trusting what she might do with them.

  ‘You’re the detective,’ Slate said finally. Taking a step away from Monica as the shouts of the armed response team carried up the stairs. ‘Shouldn’t that be your job, detecting her?’

  Monica wished she could have just a minute alone in a room with her. Karen Slate let out another little sob and Monica turned to look. Tried to catch her eye, appeal to the mother in her, but she now had both hands over her face. Lily was still beside her. The little girl was young, maybe just a couple of years older than Lucy, or small for her age. Monica stepped away from Marjory Slate, walked over and crouched beside the girl.

  ‘You said you were going to take me to Annabelle. Where is she?’ she asked quietly. Lily kept her face in Karen’s side, didn’t reply. ‘You need to show me where Annabelle is.’ Monica reached for the girl, grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up onto her hip. In one movement she turned and started out of the room.

  ‘Marcus is away!’ Marjory Slate shouted, reaching for Monica’s elbow. ‘It was all in her head!’

  Monica shrugged her off and hurried down the flights of stairs. ‘Leave her alone!’ Marjory Slate was shouting after her. ‘She’s not yours, she’s mine!’

  Monica emerged into the darkness of the early morning. She squeezed Lily tight against her chest, caught the mossy smell of the forest from the little girl’s hair.

  ‘Where’s Annabelle?’ she whispered. Feeling the heat of that skinny little body against her arm. So like Lucy. ‘You need to show me where she is right now. If you don’t, you’ll never get to see your family again. They’ll take you away. They’ll all go to prison and it’ll be all your fault.’

  She felt the kid tense.

  ‘You need to tell me. You need to tell me now or I’ll put you in that van, and they’ll drive you to a police station,’ Monica whispered into the kid’s ear. Even as she spoke Lucy’s face came to mind and with it a deep pang of instant remorse. She could feel the child’s tears on her cheek. Running down her neck. Her hot breath as the little girl hyperventilated.

  ‘She’s hiding over there. She’s playing a game. Hiding in the secret place.’ Lily gestured to a corner of the fence that surrounded the house. Close to where the steepening hillside became a cliff face. The fence was the temporary type used around construction sites, consisting of linked panels of tube-framed metal mesh slotted into concrete-block bases.

  Monica felt a hand grabbing at her arm. ‘What is it? What are you doing?’

  She glanced down at Crawford’s concerned face and pushed Lily into his arms. Ignoring his shouts she ran towards the battered fencing. Monica knew from her uniformed days working at public events that the panels were secured together by small metal clamps. Only here the clamp wasn’t properly tightened. She turned the bolt to loosen it further, twisted it off, then lifted one end of the panel out of its base and swung it back, then pulled the torch out of her pocket.

  The path was narrow, cut through the dense undergrowth close to the cliff face. She hurried along it, ducking as branches and thorns from the brambles caught at her hair and coat. After fifty metres she could make out a bulge in the cliff face. The path skirted round it. On the other side there was a ramshackle shed. Tight up against the cliff.

  ‘Annabelle?!’ Monica shouted as she tried the handle then hammered on the locked shed door. Praying for an answering cry. There was nothing though, just voices from outside the house, carrying through the dark of the forest.

  Was she in there?

  It took Monica minutes to pry the wooden door open. Inside there was no sign of Annabelle, but another door. Wide and metal this time, it seemed to lead directly into the mountain. For some reason her mind served up an image of a Renaissance painting from an exhibition an old boyfriend had dragged her to see. A saint or pilgrim going down into limbo.

  She shook her head at the strange recollection then turned at the sound of feet on the dirt floor behind her. Crawford stepped past and tried the handle on the door. It clanked but seemed to be bolted from the inside.

  ‘Can you get Souter?’ Monica said quietly. ‘I think Annabelle’s in here.’

  CHAPTER 93

  Annabelle screamed. She shook her leg as hard as she could, but it barely moved in that fist. She tried to kick out at the Doctor’s fingers, momentarily forgetting her other leg was gone. What was left of her leg kicked thin air.

  She screamed again and sat up. She tried to bite the hand, close her teeth on it and rip one of the fingers off, but couldn’t bring her mouth close enough. Her ankle bone t
hreatened to snap as the Doctor twisted it and began to drag her slowly back towards him. She slapped ineffectively at his hand, the light from the torch bouncing wildly.

  She kicked and tried rolling to her left to lessen the pressure of his grip, felt the spasm of pain as something hard connected with her already bruised hip. Something in her pocket. It took half a second to remember Scott’s knife. Could it still be in there? Annabelle dug in her pocket and felt the cold metal, squeezed it tight in her right hand. Teased the blade open the way she’d seen Marcus do when he was about to cut her food up. It made a clicking sound when it locked into place.

  The Doctor jerked her closer and she fumbled the knife. Dropped it on the ground. He was reaching up to her waist now. She screamed and slapped madly around on the rock floor. Her fingers touched metal and she grabbed it a second time. It felt smaller in her fist than she’d imagined when she’d practised swinging it.

  She sat half up. With her left hand she grabbed the Doctor’s wrist on her hip. Then swung the blade. His screams filled the tunnel. She felt the knife sink into his flesh and twisted it hard to the right. There was a snapping sound. He jerked his arm away. Annabelle kicked out, and her foot connected with what she thought was his face. She twisted and crawled blindly away down the tunnel.

  After a long, long time she realised that there was no sound behind her. She stopped moving and held her breath to listen. Still there was nothing, just the sound of her own breath. The same as last time, just before he grabbed your leg. Pain from her leg and tiredness washed over her. She was too exhausted to move any further, even if he had been only inches away in the dark. Annabelle laid her cheek down on the rock floor. And in that dark place, miles from the light of day, she somehow dropped off into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER 94

  The angle grinder squealed then finally quietened. The first sound of a rescue effort that would become one of the most famous in Scottish police history. The officer operating the power tool stepped back from the metal door, reticence in his movements. And much later, when she recalled those tunnels, Monica sometimes wondered if he’d somehow sensed what was waiting for them behind that door. She certainly didn’t, as fixated on finding Annabelle, she hurried down the tunnel. It was the smell that struck her first, the damp stone, like the vaults below a cathedral. And a medieval stink, the wretchedness of a condemned human animal.

  ‘This is one of the hydro tunnels Fisher was talking about?’

  Monica didn’t reply to Crawford’s question. She had already spotted the door on the left of the corridor, and despite the shouted protests of the armed officers she was heading straight towards it. It was open, and Monica saw the body on the floor, the face smeared dark with blood. Annabelle? She took in the shoulders, the body shape and weight of the jaw. It seemed more likely to be a man. She crouched beside the figure and felt for a pulse. ‘We’re going to need a helicopter evacuation.’

  Monica heard Crawford relay the message.

  ‘Marcus?’ She leaned in close. A shallow breath dusted her cheek. If this was Annabelle’s captor then had she escaped? She raised her head to shout for the medic and her eyes landed on the wall. The words carved into it: THEYR EATING ME

  Lucy’s dream, the girl held captive and the monster waiting to eat her.

  ‘Fuck! Jesus!’ The words, laden with primal horror, echoed up the tunnel, immediately pushing the dream from Monica’s mind and simultaneously obliterating the brief moment of hope for Annabelle. They’ve found her body, of course they have. You were too late.

  Slowly Monica stood, pulled her eyes away from the hideous words on the wall as the team’s medic pushed in beside her to attend to the casualty – Marcus, or Lily’s unnamed uncle, presumably. She paused for a moment in the tunnel to compose herself. She glanced back into the room for a second and took in the grimy bed, the concrete walls marked with strips of glue. In that moment she hoped Annabelle had done it, hurt the man who had shut her up in there, smashed his head in somehow, gone down fighting. But then what difference would that make? If Annabelle had been cut up like those other two?

  There was another door further down the tunnel. An armed officer was holding it open with the barrel of his gun. As she approached, Monica could see the shock plain on his face. A glimpse into hell that would last his lifetime.

  As if in a dream she raised the torch that was still in her hand, clicked it on and wordlessly stepped past the officer. The stink was almost overwhelming. With one hand she covered her nose and mouth. In the torch beam it took a moment before she could fathom just what she was looking at. The body was naked. A man. All four of his limbs had been crudely amputated. There were several fresh scars on his torso, roughly stitched with dark thread. He had been secured with a blue cord which cut into his deathly pale stomach.

  Monica felt the bile rise in her throat. The man moved. He was still alive. She let out an involuntary gasp of horror. It took every ounce of the mental strength she had to meet his eyes. The horror of his physical mutilation was nothing compared to seeing into the man’s soul. Seeing the spark of intelligence there, the shame at what had been done to him. She tried to speak, to communicate something other than the utter horror and disgust coursing through her body.

  ‘You’re safe,’ she managed to say. ‘You’re safe.’ She forced herself to shrug her long coat off and covered what was left of him. She crouched down. ‘You’re safe now.’ She touched a hand to his bare shoulder and felt the fevered heat of his skin.

  ‘We need that helicopter right now,’ she shouted to Crawford, as if she hadn’t said almost the same thing less than five minutes before. There was no reply. She turned to look at where he was standing in the doorway. His hand had involuntarily gone up to his mouth and his hair seemed to be standing on end.

  ‘It’s … o-on its way,’ he finally managed to stammer. ‘It’s on its way.’

  CHAPTER 95

  It was rare that Monica drank alcohol. Even rarer that she’d ever gone out to drink with a colleague, but tonight was one of those times. By the time they’d finally driven back down Glen Turrit, through Little Arklow and on to Inverness almost twenty-four hours had passed since they’d chopped the lock on that gate. It was long after Lucy’s bedtime already. And after seeing the man in the room, discovering just what the Slates had done to him, she and Crawford both needed something to take the edge off. Particularly as it had quickly become apparent that Annabelle was gone. Either she was already dead, or she had escaped or been taken down into the complex of tunnels under the mountain.

  After the helicopter arrived to evacuate the two casualties Monica had gone back to the waiting police cars to ask Karen Sinclair for help in finding Annabelle. Practically begged her. She’d stared blankly away as if unable to hear the woman in front of her. Finally Monica and Crawford had followed the armed response team deeper down the main corridor to where the electric lights gradually faded into gloomy infinity.

  ‘I can’t believe this is real,’ Crawford had whispered from beside her. ‘This place is hell.’

  It wasn’t a statement she felt like disputing as the darkness slowly swallowed the team. The lights became more intermittent. Eventually they ended altogether and there was only the glow of their torches. Little comfort against the darkness and their belief that someone was deep down there, terrified and desperate for help.

  ‘Annabelle?! Annabelle!’

  Their shouts were claustrophobic, fathom after fathom down. So deep down. The tunnel had become narrower, then side passages began to split off, and it became impossible to tell which way she might have gone.

  ‘We’re not finding her today, are we?’ Monica had said to Souter as they’d stood together glancing between the maze of passageways arrayed ahead of them. Moments later the radio on Souter’s vest crackled. He had contacted the surface, requesting expert assistance when they had begun to appreciate the extent of the tunnel system.

  ‘I’m just off the phone to Cave Rescue.’ The voice was patchy
, distorted by the poor connection. ‘They don’t have any record of tunnelling down there, other than the main hydro excavations.’

  ‘How long do you think it’ll take them to work through all the tunnels?’ Crawford’s question brought Monica back to the present. A pub in Inverness at the bottom of Church Street.

  Automatically she checked her phone. Frustration prickled her skin again at having to wait impotently for news on Annabelle, news on the poor man they’d found. He was still unidentified. Placed in a medically induced coma while the doctors tried to save him from the trauma of the amputations and the infections coursing through his blood. The other man, presumably Marcus Slate, was still unconscious too. Skull fractured but likely to make a full recovery in time. Probably not in time to help us find Annabelle though, Monica thought. Another frustration. Surely he knew what had happened to her. And the memory inevitably led on to those words on the cell wall. THEYR EATING ME. Like in Lucy’s dream, as if her daughter was somehow at the centre of this case in a curious way that Monica didn’t understand, bound together with those dismembered bodies and Fisher’s out-of-character behaviour that night at The Clach.

  Instinctively it had all felt connected at the start, and turned out that in a strange way it was. Well, Fisher’s behaviour and the bodies are connected in a coincidental way through Annabelle, her internal voice chipped in. Probably you’re simply projecting your worries about Lucy and her sleepwalking onto the case though? It seemed a far more likely explanation than the alternative: Lucy had genuinely had a dream insight into Annabelle’s plight. Monica didn’t have to remind herself of what a familiar trope of fairy tales the story was.