The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  Collins began moving towards the stairs. "In my experience,' he said, "it's a pretty good generalization, if there is such a thing."

  *

  2

  "Due to the appalling weather conditions in the small town-" the anchor man told the gathering at The Railway Inn "- power cuts are anticipated. This is as a res-"

  The television went black with a faint popping sound and the lights in the bar flickered out. Only the stand alone generator from the cellar hummed beneath their feet.

  "Well, you don't fucking say," Jerry Haines said out of the darkness.

  *

  3

  They were halfway up the stairs when the power cut began. Weaver froze behind the detective. "Great," Collins sighed and switched on his torch. "That's all we need."

  For the first time since it had happened, Weaver found himself thinking about the night on the stairs to his apartment. It was with absolute certainty that he had known that someone was waiting on the stairwell, waiting in the darkness. A stifled laugh in the darkness, the sound of breathing from above. That had been the beginning he thought now, as he followed Collins to the top of the stairs. That had heralded the weirdness.

  No. It had all started in the Summer of 1976, he thought. Everything else was window dressing.

  But the last leg of the journey had started in the darkness on one set of stairs and here he was on another, trying to help the policeman who had broken his leg and nearly drowned while trying to save the young Davey Weaver all those years ago, trying to help him find clues to explain what Collins was now openly referring to as The River Madness- capitalization clearly indicated in the detective's voice. Weaver didn't think that Collins would be a policeman for much longer as soon as that particular piece of information did the rounds.

  The DCI had called him at Susan's. Mercifully, Susan and the girls were curled up together, sleeping the sleep of the traumatized, on Susan's bed- on the new mattress he had bought on the advice of the forensic copper. It had been an odd conversation in which Collins had thanked Weaver for his help and for perhaps even saving his life. But it soon became apparent that Collins was not at the station. He was calling from home. Weaver heard a woman in the background telling him to please sit down and eat- you must before Collins said something he couldn't make out. There was the sound of a door closing and then Collins was back.

  "Heaney's out of the game now, David," Collins had told him. "He needs to be with his son. He needs to find out what happened to the other boy. Terrible business. Heaney's wife- Christ, I don't even know her name- is hysterical. He has to be with his family now. That leaves me alone with- how to put it- the less mainstream theories about what's going on here."

  "Why don't you just share the information from the tapes, Mister Collins? Surely that would be enough to make even the most skeptical listen to alternative ideas." It seemed obvious to Weaver; the older man was obviously fatigued beyond reason.

  "It's not that simple, David," Collins sighed. "For a start, the force isn't quite as up to speed on using or considering alternative methods as the entertainment industry would have you believe. If you believed half of that tripe, every station in the country would have a genius on call to summon psychiatric profiles out of thin air and a resident psychic getting into the mind of every murderer. It's not quite like that."

  "But the tapes, Mister Collins-"

  "Harry, please, David-"

  "Okay, sorry. Harry, the tapes-"

  "Are wiped clean," Collins finished. "Gone." Just like the men at Carter's field, Weaver thought.

  "What?" Weaver was confused. "Are you telling me someone at the station has tampered with them?"

  Collins paused and swallowed something strong by the sound of it. Weaver wished he had something strong to drink himself at that moment.

  "Maybe that's what happened," Collins told him and Weaver heard a clink of glass on glass as the other man poured himself some more. "Or maybe they simply wiped themselves."

  "Harry-"

  "Why not, David?" Collins insisted. "You heard a voice on those tapes that neither myself or Heaney heard. So- who knows? Unless of course you were making it up?"

  Weaver looked at his covered canvas leaning against the hallway wall and, for the first time, noticed a thin smear of blood high up on the doorframe that led into Sarah's room. When he spoke his voice was low and sounded tired.

  "Do you really think I would make something like that up with everything that has happened to me and my family over the past few days, Harry?"

  He listened to the other man drink for a moment.

  "No," Collins said, "I don’t think you were lying and- for that matter- I don't think Heaney did either." He sighed again sounding old. "I’ve missed something. That's what keeps me awake, David. There must be some reason for all of this river madness but I’ll be damned if I can make any sense of it."

  It was then that Collins had asked Weaver to accompany him to Andrew Davies' house. Weaver had asked him what time in the morning they would meet. Collins had laughed dryly and told him that- as they were to be breaking the law- the cover of night would be best. Weaver had baulked at the idea. Get other police, he'd suggested.

  "This is not a police town this evening, David," Collins said. "As of 7.30 this evening, the Marines moved in."

  Weaver had picked Collins up from his home on Greenfield's in Paul's VW and headed down onto High Street before veering left toward the south of the town. As they had crossed the Old Bridge. Weaver had glanced down onto the burst waters that had claimed the trees and ornamental statuettes of the garden alongside the river and pushed debris from flooded homes up against the walls of the sandbagged buildings along Riverside. They had been stopped by two armed Marines on the far side of the bridge but Collins had flashed his badge and got them through.

  "I have a feeling that won't work for much longer," Collins had told him. He noticed the smile on Weaver's face. "What are you so happy about?" Collins demanded.

  "You don't know who owns this car," Weaver said, thinking of his friend- the anti-police, conspiracy theorist dope fiend.

  *

  Collins shone the torch perfunctorily around the three neatly kept bedrooms, pushing clothes out of the way to examine wardrobes. Again, nothing. Back in the hallway he directed the torch at the attic hatch.

  "You're not telling me that they didn't search the attic," Weaver said nervously.

  "They did search it, yes," Collins responded "but they searched all of the other rooms as well and we've looked in them again."

  Weaver sighed shakily. "Okay."

  Collins reached up and pulled the cord that hung loosely from the door and pulled. Weaver gasped and leapt back as the figure reached for him.

  "Don't worry," Collins said, "it's the ladder." He held the light over the square hatch above them and onto the angled rafters. Weaver's heart was still sprinting after his ladder scare and could not shake the feeling that at any moment a face would appear out of the darkness and peer at them in the torchlight. He set his teeth against the thought. As if he didn't have enough reason to feel afraid without wild imaginings. Collins set off up the ladder with hardly a pause and pulled himself over the lip of the hatch. When he pointed the torch onto the attic, Weaver was in left in total darkness. In his mind a hand reached out to touch his cheek. He stepped onto the ladder and moved hurriedly after Collins.

  Collins crouched under the wooden beams illuminating the boxes that his colleagues had left in the loft. He remembered from the inventory that they had collected several box files from the loft but all of that had proved to be fruitless. Again, old notes, nothing more. Weaver had no choice but to stand next to the other man given the tightness of the attic. Collins shone the light at their feet and examined the well-laid boarding, a cut above the usual loft boards that he used in his own attic at home; these were actually interlocking; far more expensive. More evidence of Davies' particular nature.

  As they descended the ladder, the lights fli
ckered and then came on. The two men stood looking back up at the hatch. Collins shrugged and made a move to push the ladder back up into the recess.

  "Hang on," Weaver said. "It doesn't make sense to me that such a large upper floor should have such a tiny attic space."

  Collins looked at him. "Hmm. I agree. Not only that, did you notice the quality of the floor boards up there? More in line with loft conversion than storage boarding."

  In the attic once more, this time with electricity lighting the tiny space, Collins examined the brickwork. Air escaped his lips in a whistle as he touched it. It was not brickwork at all. Weaver watched the policeman run his hands over the papier-mache boarding. He pushed at it and it wobbled but did not give. Then Collins laid his hands flat against the false wall and moved it to one side. It was a sliding door.

  The other side of the divide lay in shadow. Collins used the torch until he located a light switch on a vertical beam. Andrew Davies' work space was revealed to them.

  *

  4

  Bruce hefted the weight of the SA80 against his chest and looked out from beneath the bridge to the river. He sat on a heavy duty dinghy, cross-legged and bored shitless. His Bowman radio spoke to him: "Everything alright, Brucey Bonus?" Bruce winced at his nickname but everyone in his platoon had one so he had to wear it or look a cunt. It was that simple. It was the inevitable big-chinned Bruce Forsyth impersonations that he struggled to deal with though.

  "All quiet, Sarge," he said. "Just me and the rats under this bridge."

  "Say hello to my mother-in-law, then, would you?"

  This was a waste of fucking time. Here he was in the pissing rain watching the turds float by as some of his mates were out in the deserts fighting a real enemy instead of a few fucked up suburbanites. He wasn't the only one to have such feelings; most of the platoon agreed with him.

  His fellow section buddies were stationed at various points along the river. He was one of the lucky ones; at least he had shelter. Dennis the Menace was nestled in among the reeds near the weir and Johnny-come-lately-Courtney informed them via the Bowman that he was dug in a feet away from a sewage farm. Nice place to be during a flood. It was ridiculous, a joke.

  What did they expect to happen any way?

  He attached the SUSAT optical sight to his SA80 rifle. The sight, although not designed for sniper use was equipped with tritium powered illumination for night sighting. Anything to alleviate the boredom. He looked through the sight and scanned the river. There was nothing to see but floating vegetation and crap from people's houses. He trained the sight upstream and- sure enough- among the reeds was Courtney. Johnny sat with his knees drawn up to his chest and nursed a cigarette between his fingers. Even at this distance and despite the winter fatigues they all wore, Johnny looked cold.

  Miserable fucking weather. Give me the desert anytime, he thought. Hold up. What was that?

  He saw something moving among the reeds behind Johnny. He frowned and blinked several times as if to reboot his vision. He looked again. Nothing. He watched Johnny yawn. Boredom playing tricks, he decided when he saw movement once again. He trained the obelisk-shaped reticule on the area over Johnny's left shoulder. "Come on you bastard," he muttered. The shadow lurking behind Rifleman Courtney shifted and Bruce saw eyes eerily luminous in the night sight. "Fuck!" He grabbed the handset of the Bowman. "Johnny! Behind you, behi-"

  From either side of the dinghy, two figures launched themselves out of the filth. The dinghy capsized and the struggling figures immediately submerged. Bruce managed to thrust his mouth above the water once before a river mud blackened hand smothered his face and pulled him back down.

  Soon the waters were still.

  The over-turned dinghy, tethered to the black bridge, bobbed and dashed in the current.

  *

  5

  "You've got to be a sick motherfucker to set all of this up," Weaver said. "This is fucking creepy." Collins did not respond; he surveyed the loft conversion carefully before he began to search. He always stood taking in the whole scene prior to any search particularly at a crime scene; it was surprising how often this basic form of meditation came in useful later on when reconsidering details and clues. To Weaver it looked as though Collins was taking ownership of the room; he had seen a speaker do this before a seminar that the newspaper had insisted he attend. God knows why. He was the antithesis of all of that corporate bullshit but he had enjoyed the way the facilitator had taken hold of the space and the people within that space by using a series of breathing exercises and visualizations. Later in the day he had taught them all how to do it; Weaver doubted Collins had been taught this process; like everything else about the way the man did his job, it seemed to be instinctive.

  This was Davies' real study, as opposed to the box room downstairs; he had spared no expense on furnishing this long, narrow room. The walls were lined with heavy bookshelves loaded down with periodicals and leather bound texts. The lower shelf was devoted entirely to box-files each labeled and dated. Weaver knelt in front of the nearest section and pulled the file out of its rank order. Measton- Articles and Geographical Studies, 1780-1830, he read. He saw that the entire lower shelf of that particular stack was devoted to the same.

  "Hardly Indiana Jones, is it?" Weaver muttered but Collins was absorbed at a low table pulled up close to a leather armchair. He moved along to the next stack and saw that it was the same style of catalogue: The upper shelves were publications and periodicals while the lower shelf contained a neat row of box files. Davies neat handwriting informed him that these were Parish Records, Measton. The earliest he could see were dated 1512. Jesus no-middle-initial Christ. That was a long time ago. He pulled one and opened it at a whim. It contained a ream of photocopied documents from whatever ancient, yellowed manuscript he had found. The first page he studied was a list of deaths obviously entered by the same shaky hand in some sort of parish registrar. He read the first entry:

  John Putock- born in the Year of our Lord1500 and taken in 1509. Drownded.

  Weaver did a double take. Drownded. Even as a kid he had been told of the notoriety of the river- Collins' evil river- and its treacherous under-pull but a notoriety that went back centuries? Why shouldn't it go back that far though? As long as man had lived by water, these things had happened.

  "Here we are," Collins said quietly. Weaver looked up from the file. Collins sat on the edge of Davies' desk and grinned at the younger man. In his right hand he held a piece of well-worn A3 paper. In his left hand, he waggled a leather bound notebook to and fro. Weaver joined Collins at the desk and took the proffered notebook. He flicked to the opening page and raised his eyebrows at the handwritten title of the book.

  “And this is a map," Collins said and barked a laugh at Weaver. "He's made himself a real treasure map." To Weaver's dismay, the detective closed one eye and gave a passable Long-John-Silver Arrgh! Collins stared at Weaver for a reaction.

  "A map of what exactly?" Weaver asked as Collins spread the paper out on the desk, knocking another of Davies' neatly placed pen holders to the floor.

  "This, young David," Collins exclaimed, "is a map of Andrew Davies' obsession." He jabbed his forefinger into the centre of the map. Weaver squinted at the intricate lines and finely scripted notes set in text boxes ruled with painstaking accuracy at various points on the paper before them. "That book you're holding may lead us to whatever it was that triggered his change," Collins said and stopped suddenly listening; Weaver was reminded of the way a deer would stop grazing the instant a predatory lioness wandered onto the savannah. His eyes darted at Weaver. "Did you hear that?" He whispered. Weaver listened and was about to shake his head when he heard it too- the distinct echoing pop of distant gunfire. They listened intently for over a minute to the sporadic claps that travelled across the shiny rooftops of Measton.

  "Can you believe this, Weaver?" Collins said but it was rhetorical. "Gunshots in this town? In our town?"

  Weaver wanted to say that this was
not his town, never had been, even when he had lived here as a boy with his mother and gone along to Measton High with the rest of them; he'd always been an outsider, always someone that felt as though he didn't belong. He knew that it was largely due to the difference he had felt growing up without a father or even a father figure. Ironically, Eric Callaghan had been the nearest to a father figure that he had known as a boy but chemicals had put paid to their friendship in the form of body and mind changing hormones for the adolescent Weaver while alcohol had brought about Eric's gradual metamorphosis from uncle that had never grown up to the man that had imploded as a result of his own insecurities taking his marriage, filial relationships and career down with him. No. Measton was not home it was simply the place from which he came. He wanted to tell Collins some of this but he nodded and continued to listen to the gunshots. If the other man wanted to call it their town, so be it. Weaver felt as though Collins was dangerously close to a breakdown of sorts and didn't want to goad him. The man had experienced enough that was contrary to his beliefs in the boundaries of dream and reality without getting into semantics.