The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  She'd probably know what that smelt like, too.

  Janice, or Jan to her friends, had left over a grand in her bank account untouched. She had literally disappeared without a trace. They had even tracked a group of new age travelers that had passed through the town prior to Janice's departure. The police had reasoned that she may have fallen for some charming crusty and abandoned her erstwhile middle-classed hippydom for the real thing. It happened. No joy though. That one remained unsolved.

  This was a strange one. But Collins had learnt from experience that nothing was out of the question when dealing with the human element. In Andrew Davies, there was a consummate professional, healthy it seemed, of mind and body, popular among his students (several of whom were in a mild state of shock after his bizarre revelation) and to all intents and purposes, a normal bloke.

  Yeah, he thought, normal: a simple, overused word that dictated degrees of outrage at given points of history. Define normal.

  Normal had no definition, he thought. He'd read a book a few years before that explored the idea of tunnel realities. It wasn't an easy read. Full of esoteric nonsense for the most part and a lot of quantum physics that Stephen Hawking would get someone to scratch his head over but that idea, the idea that all realities were subjective had stuck. To some extent it had helped him understand the fecund nature of crime and motive. He was a small town policeman but in twenty-five years he thought he'd seen about all there was to see within that type of society. Crimes of passion aplenty, murder, manslaughter, abuse and rape. Drug offences were commonplace and the petty thefts went on and on but one thing that never ceased to interest him was the neighbours' reactions. Well he always seemed pretty normal. Like they were experts in the norm when, in actuality, perception of normality was governed and influenced by experience. And the interpretation of experience was, of course, controlled by the media who would, he mused, have a field day with yet another disgraced member of the teaching profession. It was as inevitable as rain.

  The link between Davies and the case had begun with the head teacher's call. When two bobbies had arrived at the school they found Davies with his nose pressed against his chalkboard, apparently in a state of catatonia. The offending words were still etched above his head. Apparently, he hadn't moved since writing those four words; the chalk was still in his hand. The lights are on but no-one's at home, Detective Sergeant Heaney told him later and, having tried to interview the teacher in the holding cell, Collins had to concur. Davies had sat with hands in his lap with his head bowed forward and eyes staring listlessly at the floor. They had been unable to get a single word out of him. It was eerie. Andrew Davies seemed to have departed. Collins' daily reports from Rennick informed him that there had been no change.

  He headed back towards the road mulling over the few solid facts at his disposal. He was pretty sure that the fresh mud samples taken from Davies' tire treads would match the samples taken from the track leading to the edge of Ross's wood. Christ. Who needed forensic for that? He had seen the fresh tire tracks himself and they were obviously from a large vehicle with four wheel drive. They had been led to Ross's by the recently used diving gear found in the Land Rover; it was filthy, the suit and cylinder plastered with river mud and reeds. Hence the search.

  When he reached his car at the brow of the hill, he turned and surveyed the scene: dog handlers and PCs brushing through the undergrowth. Earlier one of his constables had found a pair of knickers. They had been bagged as possible evidence but he didn't hold out much hope. Finding soiled knickers in Ross's wood was like finding a condom in a brothel; the kids called it Fuck Forest with good reason. Collins even had one or two stories of his own to recall if he had a care. He hadn't.

  From his vantage point, the far side of the railway bridge was visible through a break in the trees. He rubbed absently at his thigh and the break that had never seemed to completely heal even after all of the intervening years.

  "Perhaps it's the extra weight," he mumbled.

  "Sorry, guv?" A young PC had appeared at his side and heard him talking to himself.

  "I said, now we have to wait," he lied. "What's up?"

  "The divers will be here within the hour."

  "Okay, thanks." The PC nodded looking pleased and headed down the track.

  He watched the young man trot back down the hill to resume the search and thought of himself as a young man on a very hot summer day walking down that very track. He looked back at the bridge. You could see them from here, he thought and on the heels of that (for thousandth time it seemed): we should have sat in the car and waited for them. Drank some tea out of old Pete Sandal's flask and let him tell me more of his hilarious stories about what it had been like when he had joined the force about a thousand years before, back when bobbies answered callouts on pushbikes.

  They had sent divers in then too and dragged the river but the Moran boy had gone. From his own youth he remembered the old gossips talking about the undercurrent and who it had claimed and when.

  Life was like that though he mused getting into the car. There always seemed to be something tugging away beneath the surface. Hidden agendas. Nagging doubts. Desire. Guilt. Booze.

  It was easy to get pulled under.

  His mobile rang. "Yeah."

  He listened to his DS for a few seconds. Parents had made up their own mind about the case. Davies was surely the murderer and for some reason there was a demonstration at the school. He hung up thinking of the mob up north that had attacked an apparent child molester. It seemed that the man was a paediatrician. That story just about summed up modern day England, he thought. Jesus Christ. The land of Shakespeare.

  "He we go," he sighed.

  Collins felt as though he was being pulled under.

  4

  At 5.45 pm, The Crown and Trumpet was as full as it ever would be on a weekday.

  The clientele was an assortment of white collars from estate agents, banks and dealerships, dusty and paint splattered builders, a few college kids and a furtive couple that sat in the darkest corner of the pub looking as though they didn't want to be seen together for fear of discovery. An ancient couple sat at the table nearest the wall-mounted television and ignored each other as they probably did every night of the week. On the silent television, the camera panned around the familiar terrain of Ross's wood. The reporter began to speak into camera.

  "Turn it up, quick," the landlady said. Her husband pointed the remote at the television.

  "-two days after the disappearance, the police search has yielded nothing-"

  Close up on a diver shaking his head at his colleagues aboard the dinghy.

  "However, police sources have revealed that they have taken a local man into custody but would not release any further information until the man had been charged."

  Close-up on sign: Measton High School.

  "Some of the local townspeople seem to have some pretty strong ideas of their own."

  Angry group of parents shouting abusively at the school gates. Fat spotty face of woman with dyed red hair snarling into the camera.

  "That's Julie Pedlar," said one of the white collars. "She was in my year at school. Christ. The years have not been kind."

  He was shushed en masse.

  "-it's disgusting it is- the way these teachers get to teach our kids. These sickos. And the government knows all about it too. What about police checks eh? My kids ain't goin' back until I know that there are no more perverts working there. Then I suppose I'll be prosecuted for keeping them out of school."

  The reporter again. Now the protesting parents are in the background. He is on the opposite side of the road.

  "These sentiments echo those raised in the tabloids over the weekend highlighting the need for more stringent police checks on teachers. Donald Fraser, Measton, Midlands News."

  Back in the studio. The anchor man is a household name.

  "As concern mounts over the whereabouts of Patricia Bourne, her parents made this appeal this afternoon.
"

  The Bournes on screen in the harsh glare of flashbulbs and TV lighting. Both are exhausted with bleary eyes. Mother's eyes are blood red from continual weeping.

  "She's dead." The same white collar.

  "Will you shush?" The landlady.

  Close up on Mr. Bourne's unshaven face.

  "I bet he did it."

  No-one disagreed.

  5

  Brighton

  The flat had a south facing sash window and, beyond the jagged teeth horizon of dirty chimney stacks, allowed a sliver thin glimpse of the channel. Weaver had taken the flat on the strength of the light. As the estate agent practiced his patter pointlessly, he had seen himself set up on the corridor, glorying in the light throughout the day, alternate times of day complimenting altered moods. Even after dark, the sheet of darkness beyond the glass, speckled with transient lights from distant shipping lanes along with the comic strip insight into the lives of others living in bedsit land would be an inspiration. In reality he had painted in front of the window only a handful of times and with little success. The cluttered dinginess of Paul's studio was far more conducive to his serious work. That was a laugh. Nirvana IV under a dust sheet.

  The white canvas mocked him. He felt a momentary urge to strike the canvas but shook his head, sighed and sat on the window ledge, looking out into the yellow light of the late afternoon February sun. He lit a cigarette and drew deeply listening to the dim clatter of plates from two flights below as the café finished for the day. Embarrassment pricked at his neck again as he thought of the way that the waitresses has looked away from his hurriedly passing figure as he passed the open kitchen doorway that morning. He had so desperately wanted to remain innocuous but he had been seen any way. Fuck it, he thought, he had to face up to what had happened eventually. If only fuck it made it all go away. It was a posture, an attitude, not a real solution. Various thoughts crossed his mind. A letter explaining –what exactly? - had happened and expressing his deepest apologies. His cynicism added the subtext of the letter: please don't think I'm insane, please don't think I'm insane. He could ask the manager to be able to talk to them all after work giving him the chance to show them how rational he was really, how perfectly, acceptably normal. The irony was not lost on him in a town that attracted those that so desperately wanted to be anything but the 'n' word. He shook his head and faced the virgin canvas once more. He envisaged the young women that worked at the patisserie trying to remain straight-faced as he sat earnestly before them, each of them frantically pushing their thoughts away from the memory of his skinny arse. Christ. It was even worse than the time that he had passed out at a party as a student. He had been in the process of trying to fuck Claire somebody but had drank too much and smoked some skunk weed. The lethal combination. That and inexperience in the art of promiscuity, something that he had never mastered. Upon coming round, disorientated and nauseous, he was looking up at a circle of smirking faces. Disgusted by his passing out, Claire had invited a few of her housemates into the room and they seemed to be enjoying the spectacle he created, half out of it and exposed, shrunken penis lying defeated on a bed of pubic hair. There was no cool exit from that situation either but at least he had been able to justify the embarrassment to himself. Claire somebody's heartlessness had eased the process considerably. No amount of imagination helped in this case.

  His hand had found a stub of charcoal from his pencil box and he approached the canvas. He stood for a moment in an attitude of contemplation. The hand reached out, he thought. Start with that. As his hand worked with practiced ease the spread fingers formed quickly. Déjà vu. He felt echoes of the child that had drawn with crayons, the boy that had used pencils, the teenage sorties into the medium of gouache. The wrist and forearm were squeezed into shade to add to the sense of perspective and then he was at the shoulder and the head. His hand blurred as he blacked in the darkness of the face, a face without features. It disturbed him and welcomed him by turn. The image forming beneath his fingers was something out of a nightmare that he had tried and failed to expunge from his psyche. It was undoubtedly a childish imprint of the boy that had died in his stead but it felt good to draw. The shape complete, Weaver feverishly added shade to the partially sighted torso and extremities before working on the whirling current surrounding him with extravagant loops and jags. Beneath the figure there had to be more darkness, he thought and began to create a sense of vacuum, a sense that the figure was reaching from the darkness-

  "Davey!"

  Weaver convulsed and froze, his hand inches from the canvas. A boy's voice from behind him. A voice that he recognized even though he had not heard it for more than twenty-five years. In cold terror, he turned to the source of the voice.

  There was no-one there.

  His heart thudded in his chest as he breathed heavily as though he had been running. I am not losing it. I am not mad. The drawing, the experience, paranoia. It was a mistake to try to recreate the picture he rationalized. Especially in my current frame of mind. Blowing hard he walked unsteadily along the corridor before nervously checking the lounge, his bedroom, the kitchen, his nerve almost failing completely when he arrived at the bathroom. But there was nothing in there either. He shook his head and returned to the corridor berating himself for getting worked up again, for doing it to himself. He looked at what he had drawn and froze again, the fear that had dissipated returning. Words had been scrawled in charcoal at the bottom of the canvas.

  Stick it in your eye

  Weaver squeezed his eyes shut. You're doing it to yourself. Stop it, stop it, stop it. He opened his eyes again and the words were still there. He opened his palm and looked at the piece of charcoal and the imprint it had pressed into his shaking hand.

  The telephone rang causing him to let out an involuntary cry.

  6

  -elshwitchwelshwitchwelshwitchwelshwitch

  Madman's voice echoed down the tunnels to her even though he had been dead for many years. Mary knew that she was dreaming.

  In her dream she was Grant and it was a hot day- the hottest day ever- and she felt the dual perspective of the dreamer- observer and participant. She knew this to be the day that Grant had died and a faint desire calling from her consciousness to warn him faded as she succumbed to the mischievous drive of the boy contradicted by the underlying affection and responsibility that he felt for the little boy running in his wake- little Davey-

  -elshwitchwelshwitchwelshwitchwelshwitch

  Weaver- the boy that ran after him on all of his adventures, loyal to his –badboy- friend no matter what his silly old cow of a mother said to him. Mary felt the hatred burn brightly in her long dead brother: the eternal scapegoat for all that went missing or was vandalized on Cornhill.

  The bridge strode towards them like a Wellsian nightmare from Mars and they were sucked onto the railway tracks. The structure shook around them and the boy fell. Mary/Grant looked down into the darkness of the river and saw a thousand yawning, screaming bestial faces eagerly anticipating the childish flesh. In her dream, Mary felt the river's hunger. She felt Grant within her as he tensed himself before

  jump

  ing

  in to the living chasm of darkness. The whispering screams of the darkness drew closer and sucked her towards Grant's death and still Madman called her

  -elshwitchwelshwitchwelshwitchwelshwitch

  Mary sat up in the darkness of her bedroom and said: "Welsh witch."

  She sighed deeply. She was used to dark dreams. Something new was happening.

  7

  Weaver allowed the biting wind to push his hair back from his face. He leaned on the rails and looked at the grey seas from his vantage point on Palace Pier. Around him the amusements whirled and span as they had done for generations no matter what else occurred in the non-spinning world. Brighton was, after all, the perennial seaside town and coloured by the sideshow-carnival-cornucopia of Kiss-Me-Quick hats and teeth-rotting candy floss. The penny arcades rang and whooped d
iscordantly amid futuristic computer generated explosions and brake squealing turns of respective alien invasion shoot'em-ups and driving games. Somewhere a bingo caller said was she worth it? Seven and six to a few hopeful old-aged pensioners. Vinegary chips pervaded the air, indicative of the archetypal seaside fish n' chip vendors. Weaver looked back in the direction of Grand Parade and the Pavillion and saw Diana's familiar figure approaching, gathering her scarves and flowing garments from the thieving wind only to have them recaptured again.

  Diana loved the pier. It had been her idea to meet here. She had met a friend at The Grand that afternoon for a "catch-up". The pier would “complete a real Brighton day”, she had told him. Weaver suspected that- in truth- the catch-up had more to do with Diana's propensity for whatever supernatural fad was currently all the rage. Her love of the seedier aspects of the seaside town was real enough though. For his part, it was rare that he allowed himself anywhere near the kiss-me-quick side of things. He lived in Brighton in spite of the tourists, guest houses and sickly pink rock; the Ferris Wheel was an often glimpsed, rarely acknowledged flashing and screaming ornament on the way to somewhere else.