Water Rites

by Guy N Smith

  It didn’t have to be tonight; tomorrow night or the one after would have sufficed. If anybody was using this place for illicit purposes then doubtless they had been doing so for some time and would continue to do so.

  It was the discovery of those bodies in the burning manure heap that had fuelled an impatience within him. Sure, they might be totally unrelated to the other two killings, there was no way a pathologist was going to be able to prove that two corpses, charred beyond recognition, had died from drowning. At this very moment Dick Bowman was under intense interrogation by the CID, he could well be charged with murder before morning. The popular theory was that the woman, whoever she was, had had his baby and was seeking maintenance from him. In a drunken frenzy, he had killed her and the child and had attempted to remove all traces of his crime by cremating them in the manure. Still, one must disregard theories until the facts were proven.

  Barr had few dislikes; rain was one of them, wind came a close second. Gales and lashing rain combined to make life intolerable.

  The meteorological office had forecast a deepening area of low pressure moving in from the Atlantic to bring an end to the long spell of unseasonable autumnal weather. Storm force gales with structural damage were predicted across Wales and the Midlands by midday Sunday. The ground was baked hard after weeks of incessant drought, the forecasters warned of extensive flooding following the storms.

  By dusk on Saturday the freshening wind had strengthened. Shortly after dark the first rainspots had splattered on the windows of the CID office. Within half an hour the rain was torrential and being driven horizontally by the wind.

  Barr could have changed his plans, postponed them without any loss of face, for he had confided in nobody. Only his conscience would have troubled him for he was his greatest critic of his own standards. Backing down went against the grain; he had decided upon tonight and he would go tonight, whatever.

  It was almost as if something was telling him that he must go to the reservoir tonight. In the past, hunches had, more often than not, paid off; you got a feeling and you played it, win or lose. He had everything to gain, nothing to lose, he decided.

  Except a soaking below his thigh-length storm-proof jacket where the rain cascaded down. His corduroy trousers were saturated long before he reached the gate in the barbed wire compound.

  One of the struts was broken, snapped since his last visit. He examined it briefly in the light of his flashlight. Somebody had climbed the gate, he noticed the flattened grass where they had fallen heavily on the other side. It could have been village kids trespassing for kicks. Anybody else would probably have crawled beneath the bottom strand of barbed wire, wouldn’t have risked the gate collapsing beneath their weight.

  He squeezed under the wire, straightened up, doused the light. He had no wish to advertise his presence here.

  The blackness was impenetrable, he proceeded cautiously, an arm held out ahead of him, an outstretched foot locating the first of the slab steps. The moss was slippery.

  All around him trees creaked as they bent over in the gale. Branches cracked, snapped off; there was a soft thud as one hit the ground somewhere close by.

  It was a wild night.

  Quiles’s expression had pleaded “don’t make me go up there with you.” The guy was scared of the dark, the detective wondered how the other coped in an emergency when he was on night duty. He probably psyched himself through it because it was his job.

  “I’ll drop the key back through the letter box when I’ve finished,” Barr had promised, hadn’t failed to notice the manager’s relief at not being asked to accompany his nocturnal caller. “I might be some time, don’t wait up for me.”

  At least it wouldn’t be raining and blowing a gale down in the reservoir, that was some consolation. By comparison, it would be snug and dry.

  Barr used his flashlight to unlock the door, locked it behind him. An unlocked door would arouse suspicion.

  He remembered that strange business in these same woods, it must have been ten years ago, he’d read about it in the papers and it had stuck in his mind. NUDE WITCHES IN HOPWAS WOOD AT SUMMER SOLSTICE, the headlines of one of the popular tabloids had announced with every vestige of sensationalism they could muster.

  In all probability it had just been an excuse for an orgy; there had been arrests, three people had been charged with being in possession of cannabis; the paper hadn’t missed an opportunity to link it with black magic.

  There probably wasn’t any connection with whatever was going on in the reservoir. But you never overlooked a possibility, however slight. Barr filed it back in his memory just in case he should ever need it.

  The damp, the cold, and that awful smell were waiting inside for him. Almost tangible. He only goose pimpled because of the cold, there was nothing in here to be afraid of. If anything lurked in the darkness then it had more reason to fear himself.

  He used his flashlight, did not switch on the lights.

  His hand went to his pocket, touched something round and hard. The ring, the one with the mermaid emblem and that strange inscription. That was his reason for coming back here tonight.

  He should have handed it into Lost Property, arranged for an advertisement in the “found” columns of all the regional newspapers. He hadn’t; he had not even reported his find to his superiors. Again, it was a hunch. The owner could recover it by sending a third party to claim it, cover their tracks. It was a slender lead. But there was always the chance that, whoever used this place for secret purposes, might return. It was a long shot.

  He went on down to the water’s edge; his light only reached a few yards, it was impossible to see across to the other side. There was nobody here, he was sure of that. When, and if, they arrived, they would enter by the outer door, the hole in the wall only offered access to a small creature. Barr was certain that it did not figure in his investigations.

  He turned back to the steps when he noticed something on the concrete, a patch that was darker in colour than the rest. Any other time he would have ignored it, concrete weathered over the years, a discoloration was not in itself remarkable. Except that tonight he would not overlook the smallest of details. He knelt down.

  It was a bloodstain, even in the dim light cast by his small flashlight he was certain of that. It had spread with the wet, seeped into the porous substance.

  Only a forensic test would confirm his suspicions. Most certainly he would not be returning the key to Phil Quiles tonight. It wasn’t an emergency but first thing tomorrow morning the experts would be out here to make tests.

  He debated whether or not to remain here. Again his fingers strayed to the ring in his pocket, toyed with it. Something inside him said to stay; tonight he would play all his hunches, there were just too many unexplained factors to this case and his intuition told him that they were all linked.

  He decided to compromise, he would wait for a couple of hours. Upstairs. It was going to be a long, cold wait and the odds were that nothing would happen.

  Outside, the wind buffeted the blockhouse as if it had some personal vendetta against it. The driving rain was seeping under the door and the stench seemed even stronger than when he had first arrived.

  Detective Inspector Barr switched off his light and settled down.

  Sounds were magnified within the confined space. The steady ticking from within the instruments box on the wall, a monotonous drip of water that you had to stop yourself from counting and waiting for the next, all against the incessant howling of the wind.

  It was the kind of place in which a man could go mad.

  Barr was experienced in long waits that were often fruitless. Mostly, patience was the only way to bring an unsolved case to a successful conclusion; you always convinced yourself that a suspect would show up, that the most tiresome and boring vigil would bear fruit.

  Like tonight. He fidgeted with the ring.

  He wondered how the Bowman interrogation was going; the man might have confessed, was right n
ow making a statement. Yes, I killed the prostitute and the vagrant, dumped the bodies to try to throw you off the scent. Then my girlfriend had a baby, tried to blackmail me, so I killed her and the baby, burned them in the muckheap. Thought you’d never find them. That ring, it’s hers, we used to meet in the reservoir, cold and damp, but safe. She lost the ring there, I expect. Anything else you want to know?

  Barr was tempted to abandon his vigil, in the cold and darkness the theory fitted. He was wasting his time here, nobody would come because Bowman was under arrest and the woman was dead.

  He tensed, listened. A sound, he couldn’t identify it, then the wind outside howled and blew it away. The instruments ticked on, that drip had speeded up, it was probably the roof leaking.

  A slight vibration, the concrete floor under his feet vibrated for a second or two. Like an earth tremor, it definitely came from somewhere below. He remembered what Quiles had said about the walls bowing. Christ, this bloody place would collapse if they gave way! It probably wasn’t that, it was maybe something to do with the pumping system, topping up another reservoir somewhere. The drought had been a long one.

  He remembered an article he’d read about the drought in the paper last week. His favourite indulgence was the dailies. The Met guys reckoned that it needed to pour with rain every day from now until Christmas for the reservoir levels to revert to normal. Both the Minster and Stowe pools in the city were a foot below their normal level.

  God, he loathed rain! It was beating on the door, the roof was leaking even faster. But we need the bloody rain, he got an urge to yell his frustration at it.

  There was a lull in the wind as it gathered force for the next gust That sound came again.

  Flip-flop.

  Barr knew without any doubt that it came from down below, down the steps by the water. It was like something being slapped on wet concrete.

  Or bare feet walking the ledge.

  He strained his ears, then the wind blew again. A dilemma, it was maybe trying to make a fool of him. Sometimes your imagination fooled around with you in the dark. A process of logical elimination; there was nobody down there, nobody had come in while he was here. Conclusion, it couldn’t be anybody.

  Something, then. What? A piece of plastic or PVC lying on the ledge had got caught by a funnel of wind finding its way in through that hole in the wall. Possible but improbable.

  All right, a rat had found its way in, tried to scale the wall and fallen back. A flip or a flop but not both. Two rats, then. A slight possibility.

  Flip-flop.

  Louder this time, he even heard it above the wind. Puzzled but not scared. Every detective had an enquiring mind that became an obsession. Every question had to be answered.

  He eased up from his crouched position against the wall. His job was watching the door, nobody could get in any other way. Abandoning your post was a disciplinary offence. He made the rules, the decisions, obeyed or disobeyed them.

  Flop.

  Just once this time, as if somebody had grown impatient of waiting and stamped a wet foot to attract attention.

  All right, I’m coming! Fiddling with the ring in his pocket again, he managed to slip it onto his little finger. It was akin to doodling on a pad in the office. Boredom, the inability to relax. Barr never relaxed.

  He moved stealthily, lowered each foot carefully. If it was a rat down there, he wanted to glimpse it before it bolted for cover. The object of the exercise was to satisfy his curiosity.

  A puddle splashed up, soaked his socks and squelched in his shoes! Damn!

  One groping hand found the hand rail, the other held the flashlight in readiness. He would flick it on when the sound came again.

  A step at a time, stopping to listen on each one. He started. The wind had found the hole in the wall, hooted like a half-blown trumpet.

  Down below you couldn’t hear the rain beating on the blockhouse walls. That, in itself, was a worthwhile diversion.

  Except for the wind in that aperture, there was silence. Barr reached the bottom, edged out onto the narrow ledge.

  A feeling, this time it had his scalp prickling. Like that time when he’d arrested the burglar at Mantons. A four-hour wait in the dark, like tonight except that it had been in a centrally heated office. A bona fide tip-off, the guy would show for certain. He had, but he’d moved so quietly that Barr hadn’t realized the other was on the premises until his scalp prickled. The way it was doing right now.

  There was somebody down here.

  This time there was no resounding smack from a bare foot being slapped on wet concrete. More of a slithering like whoever it was knew that he was here, too, and was maybe creeping up on him.

  Christ, it was as if it had gone ten degrees colder, and the stench was like an abandoned fisherman’s catch on a quayside.

  That was when Detective Inspector Barr flicked on the flashlight and what he saw in its beam had him almost screaming.

  It was a woman who stood precariously on the edge of the ledge. She was stark naked.

  At least, she was mostly woman. Mature beauty, she had to be approaching fifty, the curves were all in the right places but here and there her skin wrinkled like a winter apple. Barr’s eyes followed her body down; her breasts maybe sagged a little but they were full and the nipples stood out firmly.

  Her hands had been clasped across her pubic area but they opened as if to let him see what lay beneath. He wondered why she stood with her feet pressed together yet splayed outwards like that, it detracted from the rest of her dignified posture. It reminded him of a shark hanging from the side of a fishing boat. Not just the tail but a combination of beauty and ferocity.

  There was something strange about the texture of her skin, too. He played the narrow beam on it, saw how it glistened. That was probably because it was wet, but when you looked closely you saw a roughness; a coarseness that was uniform; maybe she had some kind of skin complaint or she had been sunbathing and her flesh had peeled.

  She smiled, just a parting of her lips. Her eyes seemed to inflate, orbs that were grotesque amidst such finely cut features.

  “What are you doing here?” The words didn’t come out with that ring of authority which the detective had intended.

  “I live here,” her voice was husky, it reminded him of the time when he was a boy and he had put a giant seashell to his ear. A sound that was reminiscent of a distant ocean, a mystique which he had never forgotten.

  “Oh, I see,” his brain had difficulty finding the intended words. Those large eyes had a repugnant fascination about them, like rock pools that hid a thousand secrets. Even when the tide ebbed, they never emptied and revealed their mystery.

  She was staring at his hand, her expression changed, relief mingled with anger. “I’ve been looking for that.”

  She meant the ring, of course. He experienced guilt, a shoplifter apprehended with stolen property. You offered to give it back, hoped that they wouldn’t prosecute you. “I found it, I’ve been looking for …”

  “Give … it … to … me!”

  Her outstretched hand touched his own. Any other time, any place else, he would have recoiled. Contact was like stroking ice-cold slime, disturbing its foulness so that it gave off an odour of putrefaction. He retched, cringed, but there was no way he could draw back from her.

  “So beautiful,” she seemed engrossed in the ring, slid it on to the third finger of her left hand. “I knew I would find it again.”

  The flashlight was starting to dim, yet he could see her more plainly in the waning light. It was as if her body had some kind of sheen that glowed in the darkness like luminous paint.

  His confused brain tried to come up with explanations; those nude witches from a decade ago, they were still game-playing. They painted their bodies, pranced around in the nude, used the reservoir as a meeting place. They had a secret entrance somewhere. God, she was beautiful, though.

  He wanted to say, “I’m a police officer, I’m arresting you on suspicion
of entering private premises illegally. I must ask you to accompany me to the police station, but I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down and used in evidence against you.”

  He didn’t say them, he made no attempt to arrest her. His mind was beginning to go blank.

  He knew he was becoming aroused.

  Suddenly, the slime and the smell, the cold and the darkness were gone. It was as if he and this ethereal female being were suspended in a void where they were the only two living entities. No other form of life existed; opposite sexes whose duty was to procreate. To breed their own life form.

  Her body entwined with his, he experienced a sense of envelopment, knew that they were in water. Floating as one, twisting and turning, clutching at each other.

  Beyond her was blackness. Nothing.

  She pulled him towards it and with it came oblivion.

  Twenty-four

  “I’m going to call the police!” Jocelyn Jackson shrieked at her husband. “I’ll have that man arrested, thrown into prison …”

  “Just calm down, Jos,” Barry turned away from the window where he had been engrossed in staring outside at the torrential rain. He seemed to have aged a decade overnight. “There is absolutely nothing we can do, distressing as the situation is. Thousands of women, most of them less than half Barbara’s age, just walk out through the front door of their homes and are never seen or heard of again. At least Barbara telephoned, and she isn’t going to be gone forever. She is merely going on a world cruise with Royston Shannon …”

  “But they’re not even married!” Jocelyn yelled.

  “For God’s sake.” He sank down into the armchair. “Don’t let’s go into all that again. She has every right to go off with him, and you can’t blame her after the way you behaved. No woman is going to stand for her tyres being deflated, the keys to the family car being hidden so that she can’t use it, along with the foot pump which might have enabled her to inflate her tyres again. You drove her straight into his arms. If anybody’s to blame for this business, it’s you!”

  “I’m going to phone her boss at the office, see what he’s got to say about it. He won’t stand for her walking out like this.”