The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  "Neither do we. Eh, Heaney?"

  "No, Sir."

  Collins sighed deeply and rubbed his eyes. He blinked at David with bloodshot eyes. "Shall I put Heaney out of his misery, David?"

  Weaver shrugged again. "It's your station, Mister_"

  "Please. Call me Harry, David."

  The younger man nodded feeling rather embarrassed.

  "You see, Heaney," Collins began, "a long time ago young David Weaver and I knew each other for a while, didn't we?" Weaver nodded and took out his cigarettes. Heaney pointed at the No Smoking sign. Weaver put them away again. "Yes. Have I ever mentioned ol' Pete Sandals to you? My old mentor? No? Well, let me tell you- he was the best- what the old British bobby was all about. Hard but fair: a clip around the ear'ole and a stern word with your father. That was Pete's style. Christ. What would the old bastard make of all this?" The older man shook his head and sipped at his scolding coffee. Jesus, Weaver thought, his hand still burning from his careless stirring, the man must have a mouth of asbestos.

  "Well, Sergeant, we were called out after we had a complaint from British Rail: boys being silly buggers on the train tracks on the black bridge. We all did it, didn't we? Put stones on the tracks to see them pulverized? Sooner or later, we all have to be told to stop though and on that very hot day in 1976 it was their turn. Little Davey Weaver and bad boy Grant Moran. Grant was the son of a petty thief and general scoundrel known affectionately as Madman and the brother of the very lovely and- as reported- very missing Mary Moran, proprietor of Cornfield Stores."

  Collins paused and looked at Weaver with narrowed eyes before continuing. "There are wheels within wheels in all of this, Sergeant," he said and nodded reflectively. "Why David is so interested in the sister of the boy that died to save his life all of those years ago is a question for another time perhaps-"

  "And irrelevant," Weaver snapped.

  Collins smiled. "That may well be David. But if you expect me to take dreams as testimony, I may allow myself to cogitate over the less salient points for a while. If that's alright with you."

  Weaver conceded.

  "1976. What a scorcher, as the tabloids say. Do you remember the heat, David?" Weaver nodded. Of course he remembered. It was the hottest day ever. Everyone knew that. "To cut a long story short, what should have been a simple tap on the wrist, resulted in this-" he pulled back his neatly pressed dark blue trouser leg to reveal a long jagged scar running from the middle of his shin up to a misshapen knee bone where it zagged off around and up to his inner thigh. "I took a dive off the black bridge after this fellow fell off the catwalk. I landed on the debris of the bridge that came down in 1904. The doctors thought they would have to amputate. I was lucky."

  "Ouch!" Heaney said.

  "Indeed," Collins agreed. "But that wasn't the worst was it, David?"

  Weaver sighed. This was torture. What was the older detective trying to do? He was off-guard enough as it was without raking over the guilt that accompanied every breath of life he had taken since that long summer. "No it wasn't, Mist- Harry."

  "Poor David broke both legs. Any lasting damage?" Weaver shook his head. "My mate and mentor Pete Sandals dragged me out of the water and then saw the other boy- Grant, his name was and he hated us, hated all us police because of his dad- well, he dived in after young Davey as they called him then. Leapt off the bridge- careful not to make the same mistake that I made- without so much as a second thought." Collins shook his head and looked bemused for a moment. "Pete could never explain how he found you, David. Did you know that? He said that the current had taken you before Grant hit the water. He also couldn't believe that you would still be alive having been down there for so long." Collins shook himself. "You know Heaney, we dragged that river for days and found not a single trace of the boy Moran. It was almost as if he had never existed at all. We wanted to give him a hero's funeral you see, Heaney. Old Pete told me in the hospital that he had never seen such heroism. The old bastard had to pretend he had something in his eye when he told me. It cut him deep, that boy's sacrifice."

  Then three men sat in silence; the younger men awkward for vastly different reasons. Heaney felt the way he did when his own father drank too much and repeated the same old tired stories in front of Heaney's friends while Weaver felt the way he had felt when his mother had used his own survival in the light of Grant's death as a club with which she could beat him during his moments of adolescent rebellion and teenage lethargy.

  Collins broke the silence.

  "So, how similar is the footage of Mister Andrew Davies at Rennick Psychiatric Hospital to what you say you witnessed on the night that Mister Eric Callaghan attacked you and subsequently took his own life?" The wording of the question was sharper, focused again. The indulgent old man of a few minutes before had gone.

  "Pretty much identical," Weaver said.

  "And did you hear anything when Callaghan-" he struggled to find the expression. "-opened his mouth at you like that?"

  "Yes but it was confused like-" What had it been like? "It was like many voices. At first they were whispering, barely audible-" He thought hard. "But it was like- no; you'll think I've lost it. Shit, I think I've lost it!" The policemen looked impassively back at him, waiting for him to proceed. "It was `as though the volume control was turned gradually to full. Yes, so loud that the words were distorted."

  Collins looked at Heaney meaningfully. "So, David, you could make out no words at all?"

  Weaver focused on that night but, whenever he thought of the screams, the screaming voice in his bathroom in Brighton returned to him. He shook his head. "Suggestions. Bad thoughts. Darkness." He shook his head finally. "No. I don't remember any specific words."

  Collins looked from Weaver to his Sergeant and back to Weaver. "Well, David," he said. "Perhaps we have something that may jog your memory."

  Collins looked at Sergeant Heaney and nodded once curtly. The younger policeman rose from his chair and left the room. Collins folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes- a man needing to close his eyes through sheer exhaustion. Weaver waited for Heaney to return.

  When Collins spoke, Weaver started slightly; Collins' eyes were still closed.

  "Nothing about this makes sense." He opened his eyes and looked at the younger man. "Even those nutters that went running off into the night haven't turned up. Where the hell could they be? How far could you get in a howling gale dressed only in a hospital gown? We expected to pick them up fairly quickly but to date we haven't turned up a single one of them. Twelve in all. Vanished into thin air."

  "Like Mary," Weaver added.

  "Yes," Collins agreed. "Like Mary Moran and over one hundred others."

  "One hundred!" Weaver gasped.

  "At least," Collins added grimly. "Those are the ones that we know about and- as you saw yourself in the public waiting area- there are others to process."

  "But where can they be?" Weaver muttered echoing Collins' sentiments.

  "Over one hundred," Collins repeated and closed his eyes once more, "ranging in age from six months to eighty-eight."

  *

  4

  "It's all clear! Come on!" The voice seemed to emanate from the wild bushes at the edge of the wooded area with the foul nickname. A head with dark and curly hair jutted out of the shrubbery looking furtively left and right. Droplets of rain nestled in the tight curls.

  "Let's go," he whispered, loud enough to be heard across the river, if there had been anyone there to hear him. He stepped forward and his welled foot sank into the slime of the river bank. "Shit," he said matter-of-factly and motioned to the unseen boys.

  The sound of something heavy being pushed and dragged through the undergrowth as it gave way to the slick, sludgy slide of the rowing boat. Two boys pushed the boat over the bank and, as it met the overflow of the river, the first boy hopped in with practiced expertise. The smaller of the two boys followed suit while the older boy's boots scrabbled in the mud slick as he struggled to throw his feet
over the side. The boat was on the river proper before the tall boy managed to get in- his jeans soaked up to the thigh, the knees black with river mud.

  "Piss!" He gasped as he fell into the boat which sent the younger boy into paroxysms of laughter. The first boy, his brother, hushed him with a hand over the younger boy's mouth but smiled all the same. He understood the excitement; he felt the same adrenalin pumping through his veins because what they were doing was wrong. Stay off the river, their father had told them gravely. It's especially dangerous when it floods. To Paul Heaney though, such a warning was like a red rag to a bull, especially when it came from the I-know-best-boys-even-though-I-don't-know-how-to-be-a-good-husband lips of his old man. Young Andy didn't harbour the same resentment towards his father- he had been five when their father had left his mother and sons for another woman and therefore too young to really understand- but would follow his big brother anywhere without question; Paul was fifteen, Andy was ten.

  "My mother's going to fuckin' slay me!" Damien Dean said wiping the green black river shit from his fingers on the backside of his jeans. That sent Andy on another bout of hysteria; swearing was at the top of the humour tree for Andy at the moment. He didn't do much himself but found the way that Paul and his friends cursed titillating beyond measure. This time he clapped his own hand over his runaway mouth, the stifled high-pitched giggles echoing among the trees of Fuck Forest.

  "Jesus, the water's high!" Paul whispered. He rowed with assurance along the river bank and leaned over to look into the water. "Look at that, down there!" Both boys looked and saw the vague outline of a wooden structure at least a man's height below the boat. "That's one of the larger jetties along this stretch," Paul explained. That was just the beginning. As they moved under the black bridge and out toward Rennick, the flood water became more obvious; trees jutted out of the water along- what experience alone informed the boys- was the riverbank. Paul was exhilarated by the thought that, if for one moment, he allowed the current to take the boat, they could end up in the trees, tangled and stuck, perhaps damaged enough to sink. But that was not going to happen. He had been fishing in this rowing boat with his father since infancy and had continued to do the same despite his father's absence. Paul felt at home on this water with the feel of well-worn oars on his already calloused palms and Andy had absolute trust in his brother's ability.

  Damien Dean was not of the same disposition. He had only come along for a laugh. He didn't even like fishing. The fact of the matter was he was bored out of his skull and, with only the Heaney's to talk to as a result of the closure of the school and his mother's explicit instructions that he was not- under any circumstances to go out of the house without her or his father, this merry jaunt had seemed like a good idea. But he was not a child of the river like Paul or his stupid little brother- he of the donkey laugh- Andy. The unnatural expanse of the water, its camber curving away from the boat in a way that made him feel disorientated and the dizzy height of the river left him feeling exposed. His eye was drawn from one whirling current to another until he had to swallow hard to avoid nausea. He pulled his hood tightly against his face; he was soaked and freezing already.

  The sound of rushing water increased in intensity as the boat headed towards the weir.

  Damien did not like the weir. As a young boy, his father had shown him that you could stand on the weir, the water rushing beneath your boots but not enough to knock you off your feet. His father had walked confidently to the middle of the waterfall and grinned at the young Damien. Damien had taken several tentative steps when his father had lost his footing. Afterwards, they had laughed at the way his father had hit the water smoothed stone beneath the water with a splash and grabbed on with desperate fingers to avoid slipping into the white water and out of sight. He had made it comfortably and how they had laughed but- oh, for one unforgettable moment- Damien's heart had stopped and not only at the thought of his father in danger but also at the look of absolute fear that had crossed his father's face in that instant before his scrabbling fingers caught something substantial enough to prevent his downward momentum. That had been the day that the young Damien had realized that his father was capable of real fear and that- more than drowning, more than anything else- was truly terrifying. He coughed nervously.

  "I don't want to go near the weir, Paul," he said, trying to sound casual but not quite pulling it off. Paul glanced over at him and grinned.

  "Don't worry, we're not going that far," It was Paul's idea to simply moor up against one of the submerged tree trunks and cast off from there. In his mind's eye it would be cool to do that, in amongst the trees like swamp dwellers among the mangroves. Paul guided the boat towards the trees. Damien looked into the water as they drifted into the shallows. Where the grass was at its longest, it almost broke the surface of the water but not quite. Instead, it swayed in the currents like tired blonde hair, not all that dissimilar from his mother's thin, grey-blonde locks. Hair in the water. Damien shuddered.

  "Get the rope ready," Paul instructed his brother. Andy did as he was told and squatted next to his brother. Both boys watched the nearest tree draw closer. When the prow of the boat was two feet from the tree trunk, Paul placed the blade of one oar against the bark to avoid a collision, slowing the boat's impetus. Andy reached around the tree until he had the rope looped; he tied a proficient knot and sat back in the boat.

  The boys worked in silence while Damien felt like a complete outsider as they connected reel to rod, attached weights, floats and hooks and sprinkled wriggling maggots onto the water. Paul cast his line across the water with a sharp whipping flick of the wrist. The line cut the air with its whir. Andy mimicked his older brother to perfection.

  "What now?" Damien said stupidly.

  Andy grinned at him. "We wait for a bite," he said. Paul was as lost in the river as he always had been; the excessive rain had increased the river's mass and his fascination had grown accordingly. If pushed for a reason to explain the river's allure, he would struggle to explain suffice it to say that it had mystery. Paul became easily bored with the predictability of his peers' interests. He liked girls, of course he did, but he wasn't fascinated by their mystery, rather he was mystified by their obvious triggers. It was all rather shallow. The river had hidden depths and unpredictability while many of his peers wore their hearts and desires well and truly on their sleeves. There were times when he would prefer to sit in his father's old boat than go to watch the latest film at the Odeon in Worcester because the green screen around him had far more to offer than the silver screen before him. He preferred the river by a country mile.

  He watched the clumps of vegetation spin through the trees and listened to the familiar plop of a fish taking food from the surface, probably one of their maggots. It wouldn't be long.

  In the distance the rumble of train attracted Andy's attention. From where they had moored, he could see the far edge of the black railway bridge and squinted to make out the blurred pale Os looking out from the train’s windows on to the underwater land below them. On the news, it had said that Measton was the only town suffering from the flood because of all the rain. Andy felt a little bit famous.

  On the opposite river bank three Welsh Cobs stood in the misty dampness eating the moist grass. Beyond the paddock, the land rose to market gardening land and then, higher still, the rows of cultivated gardens that marked the lower end of Greenfields. The roofs of the houses there were hardly visible in the dull haze; they stood in a line on the horizon like druidic megaliths rather than semi-detached suburban dwellings.

  The rain continued to fall. Nothing happened.

  Damien was about to say that he didn't see what the brothers saw in this fishing lark, when Andy felt tension on his line.

  "It's a big 'un," he said to his brother excitedly. The line pulled taut causing the ten year old to lean back, gritting his teeth. Paul handed Damien his rod and gripped the rod inches above his brother's hold. Both boys leaned back against the force.

&n
bsp; "God almighty!" Paul cried through clenched teeth. Damien held the other rod with the distaste of a non-smoker holding someone else's cigarette.

  Andy's silvery line cut into the water a little over twenty metres away but as they pulled and reeled it drew closer. Paul looked at the place where the line submerged and told his brother to stop pulling. He also stopped. Damien could now see the cause of the weight on the line. A number of branches and brambles had locked and formed a floating object of considerable size just below the surface of the water.

  "Shit," Paul commented and this time his brother did not giggle but looked solemnly at the approaching submersible. "Probably get a lot of this because of the flood," he sighed and pulled at the rod in short jabbing motions to speed up the object on its approach.

  "Why not just cut the line?" Damien ventured trying to get involved. Paul looked at him like he was stupid and shook his head slowly.

  "Two reasons," he replied. "Firstly, it's dangerous and irresponsible to river wildlife to leave fishing wire around and secondly, you don't buy these floats at Woolworth's." Andy smiled at Paul's unconscious use of one of their father's expressions.