Remember Me

by D. E. White

  Penny was excitedly tearing at undergrowth with her gloved hands, chucking up mud-laced snow, ‘Look! It’s an opening, but it has boards over it. It must be an old mine entrance or something. Do you remember that one we used to go exploring in over Manrith way?’

  If you didn’t know where to look, it would have been almost impossible to think that the snowy ridge held an underground entrance. In normal circumstances the SAR teams would have covered this area with more advanced equipment, and probably discovered something, but the weather had been on the perp’s side from the beginning. Ava felt herself sway and frowned, putting a hand out onto a stunted hawthorn to steady herself, but Penny was still moving grass and mud and didn’t appear to notice. ‘Penny, I know,’ Ava said quietly.

  Penny swung round, breathing heavily, a smudge of mud on her forehead, her cheeks red from exertion. ‘I know you do. It certainly took you long enough. You started off well, but, goodness, lovely, you could have saved Bethan days ago.’ She shook her head sorrowfully.

  Ava froze, tense and incredulous. To have her admit her guilt, with about as much emotion as if she was ordering bread at the shop, was sickening. ‘So tell me, because I’m having trouble with this. You were my friend.’

  ‘Oh, I still am your friend, Ava.’ Penny chucked another tussock of brown, winter grass down the hill. She paused, and met Ava’s gaze. ‘I will always love you, but there are things I need to do.’

  ‘Is Bethan alive then?’ Ava checked that the rucksack was still way above them, balanced on the ledge. Penny’s coat was slim-fitting and belted. The pockets couldn’t possibly conceal anything more than a small knife. Whilst Penny was obviously moving towards a very definite goal of her own, she seemed to be taking Ava to Bethan, so unless that changed, she would keep things civil, even though her stomach was churning with horror. As she spoke, Penny was nothing but a pretty, empty shell, devoid of emotion.

  ‘Oh yes. She’s not in a good way though. You’d better hurry.’ Penny heaved the last board away and threw it into the snow.

  ‘Is Paul with her?’ Ava enquired.

  ‘Paul? Of course not. He’s at the hospice like I told you.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘It’s just you and me, lovely, and that is how it has always been.’

  ‘Did you kill Alex?’

  Penny ignored the question, placing a gentle hand on Ava’s arm. ‘This is where it all started you know, so it is so lovely we can finish in the same place.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ava, you made me a daisy chain.’ The green eyes were wide and innocent, lips slightly parted from exertion, but there was something behind the expression, some hardness, or wildness that had never broken through before.

  Ava took a step towards the dark hole and Penny smiled approvingly. It was a tunnel, just wide enough to crawl along, giving off into blackness. The air smelled of earth and dead things. ‘I still don’t understand why you would do this. Did you kill Ellen?’

  ‘So many questions, and you’re always harping on about Ellen, aren’t you? Yet you made my daisy chain before you made Ellen one. I have loved you, Ava, as much as I could love anyone. Paul has been my rock, and you were my fix, and now for one last time I have the both of you together again. One last time. You see, on the outside everything has always been perfect, but underneath I am rotten, and squirming with maggots. You look shocked. Now, I can hear that helicopter too, lovely, but we have a few more squares to cover before we get to the finish, so we need to get a move on. The police will be here soon, but they can’t come yet. I’ve planned it all so carefully… Ava, are you all right?’

  * * *

  Was it night again? Ava’s head was thumping, and she groaned. Her eyes were gritty, so she raised her hands to rub them, childlike. Her fists bumped wood. Slowly, clarity returned, but the darkness remained. She tasted musty wood, earth and damp on her tongue, and as she shifted a foot, that too knocked up against wood.

  Memory returned, and snatches of Penny’s soft voice urging her forward, into the darkness, her arm around her shoulders, and her just wanting to lie down. Panic flooded her brain, and she jerked both feet downwards, fists hammering upwards, eyes wide in the darkness. She was locked in a box. What the fuck had happened to Penny? She yelled her name, but the air inside her box just seemed to get a little hotter, a little harder to breathe.

  The box was just big enough for her to lie on her back. If she raised her hands, she had maybe fifteen inches until her nails scraped wood.

  The memories burned in her mind, and suddenly she was thirteen again, locked in a box under East Wood, whilst outside Huw counted down the minutes remaining. It was ‘True Lies’ all over again. But how long would she leave her in here? Surely she had been telling the truth when she said that the game wasn’t over. How long before the air gave out, and where the fuck were the police?

  Ava searched her mind. She remembered nothing else. The helicopter had been circling though, the rotor blades thunderous in the silence of the icy valley. Sophie and her team knew where she was. It wouldn’t be long.

  The back of her head was very sore. Was there blood? She couldn’t reach to check it out, but she managed to turn her head so her cheek pressed against rough wood, easing the pain a little. The nausea and the dizziness had come on before she even entered the cave, hadn’t they? In trying to coax Penny into taking her to Bethan, making sure she didn’t upset her, she had eaten the biscuits. Had they contained a drug? Had Penny hit her as well? She tried yelling for Bethan, then for Penny again.

  The silence was ominous, the minutes ticking by. Furious, she kicked out at the box again and again. She tried to distract herself, much as she had done years earlier, playing ‘True Lies’…

  * * *

  ‘You really gonna do it, Ava?’

  ‘Of course. I’m not scared, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare.’ Penny was looking on with wide eyes, but Ellen pushed her to the side.

  They were all watching. The darkness swirled around the wood like a living thing, and in front of her the box gaped like an open wound. Leo was grinning, a cigarette hanging from his fingers. ‘Go on, Ava, you lost, babe, so in you get.’

  She did.

  The lid was thumped closed and the claustrophobia hit. She couldn’t breathe. She could hear laughter, followed by a thump of earth on the lid of the box. She jumped, heart pounding so hard it felt like her chest would burst.

  Outside they counted down her time underground, and she blocked the terror and counted with them, visualising the numbers in her head as big neon digits.

  ‘10, 9, 8, 7… oh, the watch has stopped. Sorry I need to start again…’ Huw was laughing.

  ‘Huw! Just fucking get on with it.’ That was Rhodri, his voice edged with worry.

  ‘Okay, all working now, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5…’

  * * *

  Ava had no idea how long she’d been down there. It was too dark to see her watch, and every breath seemed magnified a thousand times. She could do this. If she was right, Bethan had a chance as long as, she, Ava, played the game.

  She must have passed out again for a while, but a sound of digging, a spade hitting earth and clinking off rock, roused her.

  ‘Hallo? Who is that?’ No answer. She still didn’t know for sure that Penny was working alone.

  ‘Penny?’

  The noise abated, and she thought she heard the clunk of boots. Then silence again. She screamed, but her screams echoed around inside her head. Then another sound caught her attention. The buzz of a phone receiving a message. What the fuck? How was there a phone signal underground? Unless she wasn’t far from the entrance. Hope surged through her, giving a fresh burst of energy. Without thinking further, she thrust her hands upwards again and this time the roof of her prison moved. Just a little. Desperation gave her strength, and she shoved as hard as she could. The lid of the box moved sideways and she sat up, head spinning. It was still dark, but there was a torch on the floor, casting a beam
of yellow light onto her phone.

  Ava crawled out of the box, inching towards the phone, grabbing it and pulling it close. There was a signal, very weak, but there was a signal. She hit the number for DI Miles, and waited, propping herself against the cave wall.

  ‘Ava? Where are you?’ Her voice was distorted, and she asked something else but she couldn’t make out the words. ‘Ava?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’m in an old mine working under… It’s obvious, the entrance hole to the tunnel is… I… Penny is… Hallo?’ But with a buzz and a bleep, the phone gave out again.

  Ava shoved the useless object in her pocket and picked up the torch. Her knuckles were cut and bleeding from battering at the box. She slowly swung the light around. It was a large cave, with a passageway passing through either end. She studied the two exits, trying to work out what to do next. A wrong move, and it could cost Bethan’s life, and her own. And at every turn she expected Penny to appear from the darkness, knife in hand. It was then that she saw the chalk message on the wall.

  ‘Congratulations, Ava Cole. Next question. After Leo went in the box that night, what did Huw have to do before Ellen arrived?’

  Chapter 37

  Ava touched the spidery handwriting with a fingertip. What night? It must be referring to the night Ellen died. She forced her thoughts into order. Leo hated the box, so his punishment in ‘True Lies’ was quite often to get in it. Huw was pretty good at playing the hard man, but there was one time the act slipped, and it was, if her memory was right, the night Ellen died, the night she was late to the party. Fuck, she hoped it wasn’t a re-enactment of that particular game. Paul had especially enjoyed that, she remembered suddenly, her breathing quickening.

  It was the one time they got Huw so scared he ‘nearly wet himself’, so he told them afterwards. Penny had tied a cord around his neck and pulled until his breath came in gasps, just for a few seconds. That had freaked him out. What had they been thinking? Of course, the drugs and alcohol had been partly to blame, but how had a bunch of teenagers even come up with that? It made the sickness in her stomach rise as bile in her throat. Was that Bethan’s fate, or her next ordeal?

  In a panic of indecision, she scanned the passageways. The one to her right was empty, but the other had a bunch of daisies placed right in the middle. Where the hell did Penny get daisies in the snow? She bent down and touched them with a shaky finger. They were fabric, immaculate and perfect, but fake.

  The tunnel was musty, but dry, and the walls were uneven with the marks of old mining scarring the rocks. Ava walked cautiously forward, instinctively checking her phone every few strides, although she knew it was useless.

  The path led steeply downwards, a little to the west, cutting deep into the hillside. Occasionally smaller paths wound off into the darkness, but she followed the main tunnel, peering at each intersection for any clues. Sometimes she called out, ‘Bethaaaaan! Penny!’ and her own voice flung mocking echoes around the tunnels and caverns.

  The police would be at the entrance to the tunnel by now, but images of Bethan hanging by her neck drove her on. Penny and Paul? The names seemed to be branded on the walls in front of her. Penny had only admitted her own guilt, but could one person really be responsible for all of this? Then there was Ellen’s murder… She stopped abruptly as the gleam of water caught in the torch beam. Thick, oily and foul smelling, it was a huge underground lake, presumably in a vast cavern which had seen much working.

  There was no other way around, and no other way out. She would have to swim. Ava hesitated, then hauled off her windbreaker, zipped the phone carefully in a pocket and tied the whole thing to her neck, as high as possible. The torch went swiftly between her teeth, and she waded in, feeling carefully for each step.

  Four strides in and the depth dropped suddenly off a ledge and she was swimming. The thin yellow torch beam waved wildly, casting grotesque shadows across the walls. Her own breathing sounded loud and the sound travelled around the cavern. She even wondered if she could hear her own heartbeat in the deep, dark caves.

  The water was freezing, and she gasped and floundered her way across. Eventually, when her body and limbs were numb with cold, and the stench of deep rotten things threatened to choke her, she felt her feet touch the rock again. Slowly she struggled up a steep ramp and into the next tunnel. The path wound upwards this time, still breaking on into ancillary workings, but the main artery held true. There was no sound but her laboured breathing and the squelch and thud of her feet and clothing.

  As she rounded yet another bend, she heard a noise ahead. Someone else was struggling for breath, and there was another sound like a box being kicked over, hitting the rock with a bang.

  ‘Bethan?’ Ava called.

  Only her own footsteps echoed mockingly back, but the desperate breathing became a wheeze and then a gurgle. She ran, rounding the turn into another larger cave.

  Bethan was hanging by her neck from an old piece of machinery. Her eyes were rolling back, her tongue hanging out, and her hands were still clawing at her neck, but weakly.

  Without thinking, Ava jumped up onto the rusting metal pulley and yanked at the rope, trying to free the girl. ‘Bethan, I’ve got you. Just keep breathing…’ Her fingers were shaking as she fought to untie the rope from the metal ring, but the girl was heavy, and the rope tight and wet. ‘Fucking hell!’ Ava swore. ‘Bethan, stay with me…’

  She looked desperately around for anything to hack through the rope, a convenient rusting tool… but there was nothing, and Bethan’s eyes were closing, her hands dropping limply. Then her eyes followed the rope back and she realised it was a pulley system. She could wind the wheel and lower the girl to the ground. The rusty wheel turned easily, and almost sobbing with relief Ava scrambled over to the girl, checking for signs of breathing. ‘Bethan, can you hear me? It’s Ava. You’re going to be all right.’

  The sound of clapping made her spin around, crouched ready to spring at her attacker.

  Ava jerked round. ‘Stay away from me, Penny. It’s over, and the police know exactly where we are.’

  Penny was smiling. She held out her hand, and the torchlight picked out a glimmer of silver. A knife. ‘Do you want to take this knife, Ava Cole? It’s the same one I used to cut you that night I spiked your drink. Your cut was real, but they aren’t all real. Remember that. Perhaps I might have got carried away once or twice, but generally it’s mostly been froth and fantasy. All you have to do is get the other person to believe… I’ve really enjoyed our final game.’

  ‘Penny?’

  ‘I asked if you wanted this knife?’ Her voice was sharp.

  ‘Put it on the floor.’ Bethan was breathing, but it was slow and faint. Her skin was icy cold. Ava kept her voice steady, low and encouraging, despite the fact she was shaking with cold, and her muscles, stuck in the crouching position, were cramping painfully.

  ‘Okay. Here it is then.’ Penny smiled encouragingly and held the blade out, tempting Ava to come closer.

  ‘Just put it down on the floor. Has it all been you and Paul?’

  ‘I said come and get it.’

  There was no way Ava was leaving the girl on the floor unprotected. ‘Tell me why you did it, Penny. I want to understand, because I’m having trouble believing all this is actually happening.’

  Penny frowned. She seemed to be listening, to be engaged, and Ava prayed she could keep her talking until the police arrived. Surely they would find her soon, and in the meantime she would keep Bethan alive. She had to, for Ellen and for Stephen, and also at the back of her mind, she finally acknowledged, for herself.

  ‘I’ve left you a gift, Ava, and it is a good one. Everything is explained by my final gift, because that is the way I want it to end. There is nobody else involved. It has been me all along.’

  ‘Did you kill Ellen?’

  She smiled, face lighting with amusement, and the charm that was her trademark. ‘You dafty, of course not, and neither did Paul. In fact, all that pa
nic was for nothing. My uncle killed and raped Ellen. He was a paedophile, you know. All through my childhood and beyond, I’ve been tied to him, and his business. You never guessed, did you?’

  ‘Fucking hell, Penny, why did you never say anything? You knew who killed Ellen, and you were being abused…’ Ava pressed one hand to the cold stone floor, still crouching, brain spinning. This changed everything. ‘You mean, when Huw and Leo made us all bury Ellen, we kept quiet for your uncle…’ She almost couldn’t breathe with the sheer horror of past events, at her blindness. It was fine to be a fucking excellent detective when your own emotions, your own people weren’t involved, but she had let all these things cloud her judgement, both then and now.

  ‘It was odd how a random chain of separate events could screw up so many people’s lives, and yet the man who was responsible for so much of it walked free. I’ve thought a lot about how we almost certainly saved Uncle Alf from becoming a convicted paedophile and murderer. There must have been some evidence on Ellen’s body they could have used, and we whisked it away. How funny is that? But as for telling someone… Come on, Ava, don’t be stupid. Who would have believed me? He came into Aberdyth like a knight on a white horse to take care of Mum and me. The social workers, the police, the football team, he fooled everyone. Nobody would have believed me,’ she repeated dully, before brightening. ‘But I always knew I was your best friend, and you knew it too. We didn’t need Ellen. No, don’t look down at her, we’re almost finished. It took you a while to figure out the daisies, but I knew you’d get it in the end. I had loved you since you came to Aberdyth, Ava, and because you made me the first daisy chain, I knew I’d finally found someone who loved me back. You did love me, didn’t you?’

  ‘I… I do love you, Pen, and I wish you’d told me all this before. I could have helped, done something to stop it.’ The words sounded genuine, and her chest was tight with emotion, but again Penny frowned.

  ‘Nobody could have helped me.’