The Dark Water

by Helen Moorhouse

  Martha rolled her eyes. “Why do you keep asking me this, Gabriel? You brought me here but you’ve refused to explain why! Isn’t it about time you told me what you’re at?”

  Gabriel cut her off with a black look. “Stop your nonsense!” he barked, and she did, closing her mouth suddenly and looking at him in shock. It was a tone that he hadn’t used on her since they had first met. “You know as well I do that something’s changed in you,” he said. “Or something’s emerged that might always have been there. Angeline saw it in you and once she pointed it out then so did I. You knew, Martha. You knew that Martin Pine’s spirit was hanging round my flat, you knew exactly what was going on here the night of the storm but most of all you . . . you . . . were able to take care of yourself that night at Calderwood. The night that you say Jack Ball went away, that Laurence came back to me. You can deny it all you want, Martha, but I’m serious when I say that I think you’ve got the gift. And now, knowing what you managed to do when Ball invaded your home, who you managed to summon –”

  “Shut up, Gabriel!” Martha snapped.

  She’d had enough. All this talk of her having the same gift as he did, of being able to communicate with the dead. She didn’t want to hear any more of it. Most of all, she didn’t want to have it. She didn’t want to see what Gabriel saw, be burdened with the responsibility he carried. She didn’t want to have to attract more death into her life – into Ruby’s life – than she already had. Attract even more danger . . .

  “It was Dan, you know,” said Gabriel quietly, interrupting her thoughts.

  Martha decided to ignore him but then changed her mind. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Dan,” he replied. “Who brought Ball with him. To your door. It wasn’t you. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? That it was you? You that put yourself and Ruby in danger, that lined her up for that hideous spirit to hurt?”

  Martha avoided his gaze. He was absolutely right, of course.

  “Dan had something – some quality – which Ball liked and to which he attached himself,” said Gabriel. “Ball was a destructive spirit – he had no specific plan, no particular target, so get it out of your head that his sole aim was Ruby. He was, in death, as in life, a troublemaker. A violent, destructive . . . evil troublemaker. An opportunist.”

  Gabriel watched Martha closely as she flinched, shrugged her shoulders slightly as if to shake off what he was saying to her.

  “He came back here because Martin came back here. Because the events of 1963 were being replayed after death, somehow. Martin came to find me but he was here as well to keep an eye on things, to make sure that Ball didn’t get what he wanted – and what he wanted that night at the lake was to sort out some unfinished business. He wanted all the players back on set again. He needed to finish things off with Martin Pine and the only way to get Pine’s spirit down to the lake that night was to use bait. To use a lure. Martin vowed that he’d never allow Ball to hurt another child. Ball knew that somehow. Unfortunately the bait he used to test this vow happened to be the only child who had visited that place in a very long time. Ball wanted to finish what he started back in 1963, but you stopped him . . .”

  “Pine stopped him. It was Pine who protected Ruby on the jetty – I saw him,” interjected Martha and regretted it instantly. Telling Gabriel that she had seen Martin Pine’s spirit surround and protect Ruby was just adding more fuel to his fire. Next thing he’d have her attending his spiritualist church, engaging in séances with bloody Angeline Broadhead. She wanted none of it. She just wanted this to be over. It was maybe one benefit to having Will out of her life – no more ghosts. But then again she’d have fought an army of ghosts if it meant having Will back. She scowled, her temper growing more foul by the second, and checked her watch again with an angry sigh.

  “He presented as a mist,” Gabriel offered quietly. “Trying to summon attention. To get help, somehow. Laurence wanted help, too, but he couldn’t ask it of me. That’s why he went away. In case he brought Ball to my door.” Gabriel smiled from the corner of his mouth, focusing on a shaft of sunlight which came through the window and fell on a perfect square of faded wood on the floor.

  “That’s where the filing cabinet was?” asked Martha tentatively.

  Gabriel nodded, his expression one of disgust as he tapped the square of light with his foot. Sue had explained what she and Will had found in the room – the photographs, the camera marked with Ball’s initials in the bottom drawer. It was the police who had lifted up the dirty pink eiderdown covered in cat hair and found the remaining pictures. They were nothing like the ones in the upper drawer. At least thirty of them, unbearable, proof enough that Ball was a predator. It seemed more likely than ever that Pine was to receive his posthumous pardon.

  “At least he’s gone now,” murmured Gabriel softly. “We both feel now that he’s not here any more . . .”

  Martha tutted and shook her head. “We can’t miss the train back, Gabriel. I’ve got to get home to Ruby. I’m going to go and wait for the taxi,” she said and limped from the room without another word. She didn’t want to talk about it any more, to be the subject of his probing questions. Heaven knew life was tough enough at the moment as it was. It was so difficult returning to an empty home, night after night, lit now with fairy lights and a tree which had been half-heartedly erected to please Ruby. Martha couldn’t even think of Christmas, facing, as she was, into a future that didn’t include Will. There had been times over the past weeks when she thought her heart might break with sadness at their separation and regret at her own stupidity.

  She made for the stairs, intent on leaving, once and for all, and hopefully never returning again. In her haste, she completely missed a small figure emerging from one of the rooms further down the passage, and crossing the corridor into the room that she had just left.

  Gabriel let her go and turned back to the window. He sighed and leaned his forehead against the pane of glass. It was so impossibly beautiful, he thought, with the low sun turning everything he could see before him to gold. And it had concealed such horror and unhappiness. He couldn’t help, however, feel a frisson of gratitude and relief as he sensed Laurence once again nearby. He had missed his brother terribly.

  What he wouldn’t miss, of course, was Will. It had been almost two weeks now that he’d been cluttering up his space. Moping about with a face like a miserable fish. Cluttering up the apartment with his equipment and his papers, working all hours of the night, sleeping till lunchtime. Gabriel decided that his first task on returning to Edinburgh was to sit him down and talk some sense into him. He was sick of Martha’s depressed state too. And he wanted his space back.

  He was startled suddenly by the creak of the saddle-board behind him and he turned suddenly, a bolt of fear slicing through his body. The figure in the doorway was a shadow at first, but when she stepped into the light Claire Hibbert managed a weak smile.

  “Sorry to startle you,” she said in that ever so soft voice of hers.

  Gabriel took a deep breath. “That’s all right,” he replied.

  “Your taxi will be here in a minute,” she said, nodding toward the open door of the bedroom. “I think it was wise of you to get the train up here today – I can feel frost in the air already. Such a cold night ahead. Too cold to be out on the roads.”

  Gabriel dug his hands deep into his pockets. “I don’t suppose my godfather has come back yet?” he asked, tentatively.

  Hibbert shook her head. “He’s been in and out of that police station these past weeks like he’s the sergeant,” she said. “Answering questions about his uncle, about Martin. About what he said in court . . .”

  “I’m sorry to have missed him,” said Gabriel. “But I suppose if it means that Martin might achieve what he wanted to, then it can’t all have been in vain, can it?”

  He realised that they were speaking in hushed tones, in case they were overheard, even though there was no one to hear them.

  Clai
re nodded in agreement, her breath catching. “I’ll miss him,” she said, simply.

  Not ‘I miss him’ or ‘I missed him’. Gabriel looked at her in surprise, although he knew, having spent weeks without Laurence, exactly what she meant.

  “I’m glad I caught you – I wanted to give you this,” she said, suddenly, reaching in her pocket and extending her hand toward Gabriel.

  He couldn’t make it out at first but after a moment recognised the item as something he had seen so many times. In particular, in the picture of his brother that looked down at him daily from his mantel in George’s Street. The picture that had been disturbed so often by the ghostly fingerprints of his ghostly intruder.

  He reached out his hand and took the cold metal of Laurence’s swimming medal from Hibbert’s hand. He stared at it, everything else in the room fading for a moment. He felt the heavy weight of it in his hand, looked at the engraving of a swimmer in a swimming cap and goggles, represented to show one arm forming an upside-down ‘V’ in the water as he swam through wiggly lines, indicating waves. He turned it slowly over and ran his thumb over the words ‘Laurence McKenzie, 1st place, Lifesaving’ carved into the back and then with his other hand, ran the grubby red, white and blue striped ribbon through his fingers. He was silent for a moment, overcome by the irony of it all.

  “He gave it to me to mind the night it all happened,” explained Hibbert. “I put it in my pocket and then forgot about it. I’ve always had it with me, not as a keepsake, you understand, but it’s somehow always been there. I want you to have it back now, for your mother to have it. She should have had it all these years. I hope that it will bring her some peace, perhaps.”

  Gabriel closed his hand over the medal and pocketed it with a sniff. “Thank you very much for that, Hibbert,” he managed, dignified.

  “I’d best be off then,” she said suddenly. “We’ll see you soon again, I hope?”

  Gabriel nodded. “After Christmas, perhaps,” he offered. He needed some space away from here, he knew.

  “The very best of the season to you, then,” said Claire. “We’ll see you in the spring.”

  And before he could answer, she was gone, her small frame bustling out of the doorway and back to work.

  The taxi was already there when he let himself out the front door, pulling it behind him and clutching his coat tight as he crossed over to the car.

  The engine was running, the driver sitting patiently behind the wheel and a cloud of exhaust billowing out into the freezing air. Martha turned and smiled at Gabriel’s approach, trying to show remorse for having stormed out earlier on. He grinned back and watched her climb in behind the driver’s seat, then he turned and took a final look back at the building. Something about the moment seemed so significant, somehow. He wanted to memorise the place as it stood now, frozen in time, dark grey against the bluest of skies. His own breath came in clouds before him as he took it all in. He smelled the air, detected a hint of snow and shivered, regretting the absence of his gloves. He dug his hands deeper into his pockets instead, feeling again the cold metal and silk of Laurence’s medal on its ribbon.

  Gabriel turned then and looked out over the view – the manicured flowerbeds, the distant trees and purple mountains. He inhaled the air deeply, feeling the hit at the back of his throat, then that it was time to get into the taxi and leave.

  Had he not, however, taken one last look back at the Castle, he’d never have seen him sitting there, on the bench that was positioned under the library window overlooking the front of the house. His skinny legs were spread wide before him, a plume of smoke rising up into the air from the cigarette between thumb and forefinger. Gabriel paused to take in the vision before him, one that was at once familiar and startling. He looked so out of place, he thought. A thin young man in his shirt sleeves on such a freezing a day, puffing away to himself, having a break.

  Martin Pine’s ghost raised its hand in a wave in Gabriel’s direction and then suddenly was gone, leaving Gabriel with his own hand raised in response. There was nothing left but a faint trace of smoke in the air which then dissolved – so faint that it might not ever have been there. And Gabriel felt a familiar sense of completion. A wave of emotion washed over him and then was gone, replaced by a sense of satisfaction, of something achieved.

  He muttered aloud, “Good luck, mate.”

  This time Martin Pine was truly gone for good.

  CHAPTER 47

  December 23rd

  “So you didn’t dispose of it then,” said Gabriel, shutting the glove compartment with a bang.

  Will didn’t respond to his satisfaction so Gabriel made sure to snap it open and shut a second and third time, with a loud cough for effect on the last bang.

  It did the trick. Will turned his gaze slowly away from Calderwood’s front door and looked at Gabriel blankly. “What?” he asked in a voice that said he was still far away. Gabriel mimed slipping a ring onto the third finger of his left hand. Will looked back at the house, making a sound somewhere between a grunt and a cough. Gabriel leaned forward in the passenger seat to try to catch better sight of his face and also to try to regain his attention, but Will’s gaze was firmly fixed on the door of what had been his home.

  “The ring,” Gabriel said loudly, giving the glove compartment door another loud bang for effect. Will swung his head around. “Ssssssh!” he hissed. “You’ll wake Ruby.”

  Gabriel turned to look at the toddler asleep in her car-seat. She never stirred, her pacifier hanging limply, as always, from her lower lip and Hugo clutched loosely in her hands. Her cheeks were rosy red and her knitted hat was slightly askew from the struggle to get her into the seat in the first place. Gabriel rolled his eyes. “The Trumpet Voluntary wouldn’t wake that child,” he observed, and returned his glance to Will, a provocative twinkle in his eyes. “Speaking of which, I’d thought you might walk down the aisle to that . . .”

  “Drop it, Gabriel,” said Will with a sigh. “It’s not going to happen.”

  The radio, which Gabriel had tuned to a Christmas station, was the only sound in the car for a few moments as Will continued to stare at the facade of Calderwood. He blinked in surprise suddenly as his focus shifted and he noted the first flurries of snow finally begin to fall. It had threatened all day, another shower to top up the six inches that had fallen overnight.

  Gabriel sat back in the passenger seat and looked straight ahead to the lamppost in the garden. “This is a lovely Christmas-card scene, William,” he said, “but I can’t feel my feet at the moment so any chance we could move it along a wee bit?”

  Will sighed. “I suppose I should just take Ruby in,” he said.

  Gabriel stayed facing straight ahead. “Oh no, Will, let’s hang on out here awhile staring into the freezing bushes, eh? I mean, my meeting at the Ghosts R Us offices is only in, oh, half an hour or so.” He paused to look at his watch. “Plenty of time to get from here to the other side of town. No rush. Even if we have to dig ourselves out.”

  Will ignored the sarcasm and gave a sigh, turning the key to silence the ignition and removing it to pop it in his jacket pocket.

  Gabriel gave him a sidelong glance. “Don’t worry, William,” he remarked drily. “I’m not going to drive off in the Volvo of all things. Wouldn’t add anything to the street cred of the new permanent medium for Ghosts Wanted to be seen scooting down the road in a tractor now, would it?”

  Will still didn’t respond and Gabriel sat up in his seat, looking back again at Ruby.

  “She loves you taking Ruby, you know,” he said suddenly, his tone kinder. He realised he wasn’t going to provoke Will into any banter today, despite his own happiness at being on his way to hand in his notice. The call had come by surprise the previous week and he’d needed little or no time to answer it. The new year would bring a new job and Gabriel relished the prospect.

  “I always think it’s going to be . . . you know . . . the last time I hand her back,” said Will grimly, looking down at his hands
.

  “Jesus H, man,” said Gabriel, alarm in his voice. “You’ve only taken her to see Santa in Jenners. Keep it together, for heaven’s sake!” He waited for a response but got none. “The last time for what, though? The last time Martha lets you take Ruby or the last time you see Martha?” He left the thought hanging in the air, knowing that either and both scenarios were Will’s concern. He’d sensed a change in him over the last few days, a softening.

  Another silence fell between them while a shelf of snow formed quickly on the base of the windscreen.

  Gabriel was patient for at least half a minute before he tutted and opened the glove compartment once more. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, just go up to the door and give her this,” he barked, thrusting the box containing the diamond and sapphire ring toward Will.

  Batting Gabriel’s hand away, Will turned and stepped from the car with a sigh. He closed his own door quietly and opened Ruby’s, focusing on getting the little girl out of the car-seat as gently as he could without disturbing her. She’d loved seeing Santa, had refused to relinquish her gift, the copy of Room on the Broom, until it had fallen from her hand as she nodded off in the car on the way home. It was the third time that Martha had permitted him to take her out. And every time he handed her back he felt a physical pain of separation.

  He hoisted Ruby up as gently as he could on his shoulder and she snuggled in there, a little arm still wrapped around Hugo, the pacifier sucked securely back into her mouth. He bent awkwardly to retrieve her book from the floor of the car and straightened himself. Now came the hard part. Crunching across the gravel, ringing the front doorbell on the home that he had thought would be his and Martha’s to share. A home in which to start their own family . . .

  Martha had been happy so far to let him take Ruby – it was Christmas after all – but as life went on who knew how long that would last? He was no blood relative of Ruby’s – Calderwood was the only thing that bound them. As time went on, Martha was sure to meet someone else who would replace him. And then there was the issue of Dan, of course, and his baby – Ruby’s half-brother – a boy called Alexander.