Dark Waters

by G. R. Halliday

  They passed through the gate. The drive to the dam seemed to take forever. The winding sections, then the open straight with the single oak tree where it had all begun for Annabelle, finally the black line of the dam appearing on the horizon beneath the pink sky.

  ‘Do you think they found her?’ Crawford murmured as Monica turned left onto the track at the back of the lay-by, guarded by another marked police car. She shook her head and continued up through the dark forest towards the Slates’ house. They parked outside, beside the two forensics team vans. Monica glanced at her phone again. Still no news. Anxiety twisted at her stomach. The feeling before an exam or when waiting for results at a doctor’s office.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, climbing out of the Volvo. She followed Crawford’s slight figure through the gloaming along the narrow path towards the tunnel entrance. This was lit by a pair of industrial floodlights running off a generator. A uniformed officer was standing to the side of the wooden door, staring suspiciously out at the gloom beyond the lights. He gave Monica and Crawford a once-over, held out the clipboard for them to sign in. They hurried inside and down the strange underground road. Much further down a pair of armed officers was guarding the bottom of the tunnel in case Doc Slate came stumbling out of the darkness. They passed Scott’s room and took the right turn down the narrow tunnel to St Magnus’s Chamber. Monica had to stoop to avoid the low roof. She pushed the door open and stepped into the cavern.

  The place was illuminated by banks of floodlights as if the searchers were fearful of what might be lurking in the dark corners. Divers were emerging from the pool at the far end of the cavern. She could see that it was fed by a constant trickle of water from high on the back wall. She followed Crawford across the uneven ground, straightening under the ceiling, which was now far above. Her stomach tightened again as she took in the divers’ slumped shoulders, their lowered heads.

  Souter was standing with his hands on his hips. ‘The sump leads to a cave system. But there’s no sign of her. They spent twenty minutes looking around, shouting for her, but there was no response.’

  ‘How big is the cave? Did they explore it properly? Twenty minutes doesn’t seem …’

  Souter lowered his voice. ‘They’re close to exhaustion. One of the guys started hallucinating, thought he saw something in the dark. He nearly lost it. They had to come out.’

  Monica swore under her breath.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Only those three are dive-trained and they’ve been working flat out for pretty much thirty-six hours searching the tunnels. I can’t ask them to go back under after what happened … It’s not—’

  ‘She might—’

  ‘I’ll go.’ Monica and Souter turned at the sound of Crawford’s voice. ‘I’ll go. I’ve got a Technical Two qualification. I’ve dived down to sixty-metre shipwrecks. I can go under a sump.’ Monica could hear the catch in his voice though. She remembered what he’d told her back at the first dump site, his fear of the dark mountain water.

  ‘No, Crawford. You can’t go on your own anyway.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’ One of the divers had overheard and stood up. ‘I can do one more dive.’

  Monica started to protest, but Souter had already turned to start hunting through the rescue team’s bags to find equipment for Crawford.

  CHAPTER 106

  Monica sat staring at the dark pool of water. The other divers were hunched beside her, still kitted out in their suits.

  ‘They’ve been too long,’ one of the men whispered. ‘If they’d found her they’d be back by now.’

  Monica tried to ignore him and the feeling that letting Crawford dive had been a mistake; he was exhausted himself. They should have waited. She was aware of just how dangerous cave diving could be. Pitch-black, underwater in a restricted space. A mistake could mean lungfuls of frigid water, a terrible death … She tried to ignore the tightness in her throat as she couldn’t help but imagine that water filling her own lungs, and joined the others staring into the dark water. Willing something to happen. A hand to appear, something that would mean Crawford and the other diver were safe.

  ‘No.’ The man beside her stood up and began to adjust his suit. ‘We’re going—’

  An explosion of bubbles erupted from the water. Followed a moment later by a masked head, shoulders, arms and the rest of a body as a diver broke the surface. With the help of two other team members he heaved himself out of the pool and stood, water sloshing from him as he set his oxygen cylinder down, and finally, after what seemed like an eternity, reached up and pulled his mask off.

  ‘We’ve found her!’ The man took another lungful of air, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. ‘She’s in a hell of a mess. But she’s alive.’

  CHAPTER 107

  It was almost eight hours before the team was able to bring Annabelle out of the cave through the sump. Initially they’d been reluctant even to attempt the risky evacuation. The flooded section was relatively short, just over fifty feet, and a confident caver might even have been able to pass through simply by holding their breath and following a guide line. But Annabelle was badly dehydrated, close to hypothermic and had suffered a traumatic amputation to one of her legs. Consideration was given to drilling a tunnel to reach her before it was finally decided that the risk of her being down there any longer outweighed something going wrong in the flooded section. In the end she was dressed in a drysuit and oxygen mask. When a fresh team of rescue divers arrived, they went in and brought her back through the sump.

  Monica watched as the young woman emerged from the black water, was lifted out of the pool, taken out of the drysuit and wrapped in blankets. Her dark hair hanging around her face in wet streaks. Quickly she was loaded onto a stretcher for the trip to the surface. Monica hung back from the bustle, letting the paramedics and rescue team do their work.

  ‘What she must have been through …’ Monica whispered. Crawford had come back through the sump minutes before and was now standing beside her with his arms folded across his narrow chest.

  ‘She kept asking about a dog – Mr Pepper.’ Crawford shook his head, then glanced warily around the cavern. ‘Terrifying down there … She said Doc Slate, the Doctor, went down there after her. That she stabbed him in the arm. He must still be down there, mustn’t he?’

  Much later that night Monica finally made it home to her flat. After she’d checked on Lucy, showered and eaten the lentil soup her mum had left out for her on the hob, she finally undressed and crawled into bed. When she woke the next morning she had the novel feeling of being refreshed. Of having had a night without nightmares.

  CHAPTER 108

  Annabelle didn’t really believe it was true. The pure relief of the water on her cracked lips, the comforting voice saying her name. Even though the man stayed beside her for a long time, she wasn’t really sure if it was real until they finally carried her out to the tunnel. She stared up at the familiar string of electric lights overhead until they were replaced by the cold air off the mountains and the icy sky with a billion stars. She had never seen anything more beautiful, and she tried to ask the people who were carrying the stretcher to stop. Just for a second, to wait so she could look at that fresh infinity for a moment.

  They were hurrying though, and before she could frame the words she was in the back of an ambulance. She closed her eyes and let the smells wash over her: detergent, fresh bandages and ointments. A female paramedic looked over her battered body and said calming, authoritative things. Finally, when she felt the ambulance moving over the rough track, when she heard the sound of the siren, she sighed and let her eyes drift closed.

  When she opened them again Annabelle was in a room. There was a smell of disinfectant and the sound of distant voices. She understood then that it had been a dream. The tunnels, her rescue. Marcus and the Doctor had moved her, that was all. They were still going to eat her. Piece by piece.

  ‘You slept for twelve hours.’ A woman’s voice. Slightly husky with a
Scottish accent, but there was something reassuring about it. Annabelle tilted her head towards the sound. The woman had dark hair tied back in a ponytail and grey circles under her eyes. Her intense expression should have been frightening, but Annabelle noticed the little laughter lines at the corner of her eyes. ‘My name’s Monica Kennedy. I’m a detective.’ Annabelle glanced quickly past her and saw a hospital ward through the open doorway.

  ‘Where’s Scott?’ Annabelle felt a flash of panic wash over her. How could she have forgotten? She saw the woman’s expression change.

  ‘They couldn’t save him. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I promised I’d come back for him.’ She felt the horror. It was part of her now, the way the tunnels and the Doctor were part of her. And what she’d done to Marcus … Probably that was why the detective was here.

  ‘I killed Marcus.’ There was a tremble in her voice. ‘I murdered him.’

  ‘No.’ The detective almost sounded surprised. ‘You didn’t. He’s OK. He told us how to find you.’ Annabelle nodded slowly, unsure of what to make of this information. The detective stood up, and Annabelle realised just how tall she was. ‘I’ll leave you to sleep.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Annabelle whispered.

  Monica nodded slowly and sat back down again. ‘Well, do you feel like talking?’ She pulled her phone from her coat pocket.

  Annabelle wasn’t sure if she did, but she really didn’t want to be alone. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened? From the start? Don’t leave anything out.’ She pressed the red button on the phone’s voice recording function and laid it on the bed between them.

  Annabelle started to talk. About leaving Mr Pepper (Monica reassured her that Crawford had already contacted Miss Albright), the drive up from England, the fateful decision to take the road into Glen Turrit. Sometimes the detective nodded along with her, as if she already knew what Annabelle was telling her. Like when she spoke about the little girl suddenly appearing in the road in front of her. At other times she furrowed her brow and listened intently, like when Annabelle told her that the only members of the Slate family she’d actually met were Marcus, the Doctor and Lily.

  She kept talking, even when her throat ached and the cuts at the corner of her mouth stung. She talked about when the Doctor had taken her leg. Still matter-of-fact, though she could see the horror in Monica’s eyes. The overwhelming terror when she’d pulled the carpet square off the cell wall and seen those terrible words: THEYR EATING ME. The moment she’d hit Marcus. The terrifying race through the tunnels, and her certainty that she would die down there.

  At some point she must have stopped talking because when she woke up again she was alone in the room. It was dark outside, and the glow of the city’s lights had dyed the sky orange. And there was someone in the shadows in the corner of the room. Long and thin with strange staring eyes.

  Annabelle looked back at him for a long time. Neither of them moved until finally the dawn light drifted in through the window and the figure faded away into the nothingness of memory.

  CHAPTER 109

  The search for Doc Slate carried on in the tunnels for a further three weeks. The police eventually employed remotely controlled cameras to survey the miles of unsafe passages, but it was slow going and expensive. Finally it was decided that if he was still down there, there was no chance he had survived in the dry tunnels without food or water, and the search was suspended. Some on the team, however, believed there was another, deeper network of tunnels with water from the sump section of the caves, where it might be possible for someone to survive for longer.

  There were those who argued it was inhumane to leave a man to die in the tunnels. No matter how heinous his crimes. Once the entrance doors into the network were sealed an old phone line from the tunnel to a control room in the dam was reactivated. If by some miracle the Doctor had survived, he would at least have the option of summoning help.

  Doc Slate never called in the months after the line was reactivated, but a rumour swept the schools of Inverness. That the phone in the control room would occasionally ring. Always late at night, always when a lone engineer had been called out to the bottom of that lonely glen to work on one of the frequent leaks or turbine breakdowns that the increasingly decrepit dam was prone to. There was never anyone on the other end of the line, but if you listened hard, you might just catch the ghost of a voice. Echoing up from the rooms where the Doctor used to operate on his victims.

  Monica had been correct in her assessment that the forensics team would find no trace of Annabelle in the Slates’ house. However, there was other evidence. Slowly uncovered as the team spent weeks sifting through three generations of junk. Clothing that belonged to Scott MacConnell, a watch and rings that matched objects owned by Sebastian Sinclair. Theo Gall’s wallet. There was also DNA blood evidence from all three men in the filthy kitchen of the house. Doc Slate’s room, in contrast to the chaos of the rest of the house, was kept in perfect order. Rows of medical textbooks and papers, notebooks filled with anatomical sketches. And boxes of surgical implements and tools, several of which were eventually identified as taken from Sebastian Sinclair’s garage.

  The evidence from the house combined with Annabelle’s testimony was enough to convict Karen, Marcus and Marjory Slate of abduction and conspiracy to commit murder. Doc Slate (tried in his absence) was convicted of abduction and three counts of murder. Hamish Slate was found not to have any knowledge of the crimes. Various other small personal belongings and items of clothing discovered in the house, some dating back to the 1960s, led to speculation about the Slates’ involvement in other disappearances, though none of this evidence was strong enough to link them to a specific case.

  Despite the evidence and what Marcus, Marjory and Lily had separately said or hinted at to Monica, none of the Slates ever confessed in court or under formal interview to cannibalism.

  CHAPTER 110

  Annabelle’s insurance actually paid out on the written-off BMW M4, even though she had been on a private road. She replaced it with something a little roomier, a Mercedes-Benz GLC crossover – ‘More Space. More Fun. More Comfort’, according to the Mercedes website. Actually it cost more than the insurance money, but her dad had offered to pay the difference. Suddenly he was interested in her now that she was famous.

  She ignored his calls. She didn’t want to see him, or even speak to him. Not after all those memories she’d unearthed down in the tunnels, and once she’d opened that closet she’d discovered other dusty bones and fragments. The times he’d forgotten to pick her up from school, cancelled plans at the last minute without explanation, not even acknowledged her messages and emails. She understood that she barely existed in his mind. For him she was little more than one of those waxwork models from her fevered nightmares. She understood that this was never going to change. It was different with her mum. When they spoke at the hospital she’d agreed to talk about the past, to try to patch things up. It was a start at least.

  Since the tunnels she’d begun to understand other things about friendship and family too: that your family didn’t have to be the one you were born into. Because in her darkest moments it hadn’t been her parents she’d looked to for comfort but Miss Albright and Mr Pepper, the volunteers at the cafe, Scott, even her stepbrother Ben Fisher. She had accumulated online friends too on Instagram. Ten times as many as before everything had happened, without even posting a picture.

  She still wanted to go on driving trips and she had found the extra money for the Mercedes by selling her story to a newspaper. She wanted the bigger car because of Mr Pepper and Miss Albright. Taking them with her seemed like a good thing to do so they weren’t shut up inside all the time. She also offered to take one person from the cafe with her on each trip. Sometimes no one wanted to come, but other times she had to write the names on scraps of paper and put them in a mixing bowl in the kitchen to decide.

  Her new stepbrother even came down to visit her in hospital. B
en. They didn’t exactly talk about any of it – what had happened at her dad’s wedding or even the Slates – but having a kind of connection felt like something. He actually suggested she came back to finish her tour of the Highlands. ‘But with a police escort this time,’ he had said with a slightly arrogant tone that somehow made her think of Marcus, of those long days in that cell underground.

  So far Marcus hadn’t responded to any of her messages. Maybe that was a good thing, but she planned to keep trying. Maybe she would even visit him in prison, where it would be the opposite of before. Him locked up and her allowed to leave. In a way she felt sorry for him. Monica had told Annabelle about his childhood. He wasn’t a Slate and could have had a different life. In a weird way she felt like she was the closest thing he had to family now. And only he could understand the time she’d experienced underground. The way it had changed her into a different person.

  When she thought about it like that, Annabelle even considered doing what Ben had suggested. She was strong enough, of course she was. When the weather was warm and she’d taken Miss Albright, Mr Pepper and one of the people from the cafe down to Lyme Regis. Or even on to Dartmoor and Plymouth. When it was a hot day and they’d had an ice cream and laughed about how they all wanted another one. On those warm days she could imagine driving along those open Highland roads. Visiting picturesque, deserted beaches, admiring sculpted mountains. Sometimes it felt like she might actually do it.

  There were other times though. When the days were gloomy and the cold hinted at the far north-west. The Atlantic chill that made her shiver and hug herself. Feel the ache where her leg had been. On those days she would go quiet on the drive home. The shadows in the rear-view mirror would even take on a human shape. Someone with strange disconnected eyes. The words would come back to her. The ones she’d whisper to herself when she woke from the nightmares.