Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

that it was a location sightseers liked to visit. If Overeem wanted to fully explore Lampton for his crime documentary, and inject a few unnecessary thrills, and pad the runtime, there was a chance he’d chosen to cover the Stanton Beast myth.

So, the boathouse. A long shot, but all Bennet had left. Besides, just like he’d told the Panorama’s manager, Gemma, ninety per cent of a copper’s work was a waste of time.

37

Bennet returned to the spot on the service road where he’d parked earlier to take a call from Hooper. The intact portion of wall, with a complete arch barred by mesh wire, didn’t interest him this time. A couple of metres to the right, he saw the old stone boathouse in the trees. He was surprised he’d missed it last time. He approached the mesh-covered arch, and got a surprise.

This was where, from the Arrow, he’d noticed a thinness to the trees from road to lake, and now he understood why. From that remote, elevated position, the tops of the trees had hidden what lay below. The ground was clear of trees in a ten-feet strip from the archway to the lake, lined on both sides by a border of mossy stones, many of which were missing or askew. Once it had been a concrete slipway for a boat, but it was virtually gone. Nature had spent years reclaiming it. Underground life, pushing for the surface, had ruined it. Trees crowding its sides had expanded the reach of their branches to smother it. It made Bennet think of a healing wound.

But something had happened here.

Bennet walked around the section of wall and entered the woods. Ahead of him was the boathouse. If the stone building had once stood in a clearing, that was gone. The boathouse was headed the same way. It had only three walls, so one side was open to the elements, and he could see all he needed to without getting close. All that remained of the roof were a few joists. Nature had claimed the floor. There was litter all over the ground, but the cans and crisp packets and bottle labels were all faded with age. Although it looked as if people had been here, there was nothing that looked as recent as Monday night. He doubted the film crew had stayed here and nothing suggested they’d been here to shoot a film scene.

But something had happened here.

He moved left, emerging onto the old slipway. Now, closer, Bennet could see definite damage. Branches to the side and above the slipway had been snapped and shorn. Some hung loose. There was a carpet of busted wood on the ground, where only smaller plants had been left untouched, everything else having been uprooted; but the remaining flora was bent towards the lake, as if straining to reach the water. Locals might have blamed the rampaging Stanton Beast, and Anders might have blamed supermarket engineers working on the sly. But one had no evidence and one was stupid. Liam knew what he was looking at.

But he needed to confirm it, so he walked back to the wall, and around, and approached the wire-mesh archway. Again, proximity equalled enlightenment. He could see a groove in the interior lining of the brick arch where the edge of the chain-link fencing had been slotted. But not with care, for in places it had slipped its housing. The people who engineered this barrier hadn’t done that; clearly the mesh portion had come free at some point and been sloppily reinserted.

He gave a push. The fencing yanked free easily and fell away. Bennet stepped into the arch and looked up. Double his height, at least. Ten feet wide. Big enough to fit the CaraHome. The damage to the tree branches and undergrowth looked like the work of a vehicle of similar dimensions.

If the film crew had entered the woods in their vehicle, why? There was no room to turn on the slipway, no path off it they could have taken. The CaraHome would have suffered scratches from the broken branches, and it would have had to reverse out again. It made no sense.

Unless they had been hiding…

He walked down the overgrown slipway, stepping in clear spaces where he could, and brushing aside long, thin branches that had flexed with the passage of a vehicle and sprung back into place in its wake. Now out of the woods, he could see the whole lake stretching away to his left. It was still. The treeline held a position a couple of metres from the water’s edge, creating a clear border around the lake. But it was not wide enough to permit a vehicle and the rocky earth would have posed a problem even for a bicycle. His eyes returned to the water. It was clear on top but faded to black just a few feet down, as if a film of water lay upon a mass of oil. But in that silver skim he saw another colour, specific to a point directly before him, and as his eyes soaked in the details it took a shape. Oblong, perhaps seven feet by ten.

Bennet took a step into the water, sinking his foot a few inches, leaning forward, staring at what appeared to be a submerged white floor, and his heart started to thump. But upon his next step, to lean ever closer and confirm a growing suspicion, solid ground evaporated. As if he’d stepped off a ledge, his entire foot sank and he pitched forward.

He felt his torso strike the cold water, but stop dead as if it was a sheet of ice. But it was his hands and knees that had broken his fall. This close, his eyes an inch above the water, he saw the white floor all around him, but directly beneath his hands was a square black abyss. He raised a hand and slammed it down, and felt the impact of his flesh against an invisible barrier across the