Submersion Read online

  ‘And you can trust me?’ I questioned, wondering how he could be certain.

  ‘Elinor trusts you, that’s good enough for me,’ he answered, finally pausing from his fiddly work and turning to face me. There was something vaguely familiar about him; something in him I recognised from another person, an old friend. ‘So, you’ve finally come about the rat?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, surprise in my voice, my musing instantly abandoned. It hadn’t occurred to me he’d been expecting me to call round about it. Maybe there was a message from Billy I’d missed. ‘No, I’ve come about something else. Something Papa Harold said you could help me with.’

  ‘To do with the girl?’ he asked, approaching me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said and took the item I had brought for him out of my pocket.

  ‘Ah, one of those,’ he said, smiling, his face flourishing with the same joy I had seen Papa H restrain. ‘Why don’t you strip off that gear and help yourself to coffee, whilst I see what I can do to get it working.’

  ‘You’ve got coffee?’ I asked, surprised. Everybody seemed to have coffee these days.

  ‘Get a supply from a good friend.’ Jessie, it had to be Jessie.

  So, I stripped off the protective clothing and sipped at a cup of thick, gritty coffee – suspiciously as bitter as that served by my pal – whilst Old Man Merlin studied the small cassette player I had discovered in the denim bag at the train graveyard.

  I hadn’t seen this particular model before, but Elinor did own a tape recorder – a bulky black machine, with a microphone on a lead that Jessie had given her. She’d amused most of us on many occasions, poking the microphone under our noses, as she pretended to interview us, like a news reporter, capturing our voices and snippets of our lives, making stories in her very own way.

  A sequence of tuts, mutterings and shakes of his head suggested old Merlin was having little success with this other machine. He left the room numerous times, bringing with him a couple of pairs of ancient headphones and a little plastic tub of corroding batteries – similar to the tub that had served as the rat’s coffin. After a good hour, he finally addressed me again.

  ‘Could you leave it with me?’ he asked and I knew that my face instantly betrayed a reluctance. ‘I understand,’ he said, without another word from me. ‘You don’t know me from Adam, not really. But I’ve been good enough to trust you on the word of a twelve year-old girl, so maybe you can return that trust on a similar basis. We are good friends, Elinor and I. Billy, too. If you give me more time with this, I might be able to get it working. And it might provide a clue as to her whereabouts.’

  ‘Assuming it’s hers,’ I added.

  ‘Oh, it’s definitely hers,’ the old man confirmed, a chuckle in his voice. ‘Or it might be Billy’s. You see, it’s definitely one of mine. I don’t remember handing it over, but maybe I did. My memory is not what it was. But, one thing I know for certain – other than you, they are the only visitors I’ve had in this house for years. So, it was taken by – or given to – one of them. Leave it with me, then?’

  I looked into that face again and, drawn in by his earnest words and that trace of familiarity I had glimpsed when first setting my eyes upon him, I nodded.

  The next afternoon, I re-entered the house with my companion.

  ‘Ah, Jessie my lad, and how are we doing?’ old Merlin said, greeting Jessie with a solid handshake, his eyes glistening at the sight of my friend. Instantly, I knew the old man had lied when he’d said Elinor and Billy were his only recent visitors. This was confirmed when Jessie casually helped himself to coffee and cleared a space on an old chair, where he promptly sat. There was a comfortable familiarity between them, a warmth.

  ‘Did you have any joy?’ I asked, hiding my annoyance at the old man’s small deception – puzzled by its lack of necessity, too.

  ‘Yes and no!’ old Merlin exclaimed, seemingly thrilled by this result, as he disappeared further into the back of his warren-like house, returning moments later with the small stereo on a tray – dissected like a rabbit in a lab.

  ‘Looks like a definite no,’ I commented, my irritation rising further at the sight of the destroyed machine. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have trusted-.’

  ‘I couldn’t save the tape machine,’ the old man interrupted me, putting down the tray and retrieving something from his pocket – the cassette. ‘I did manage to get another old machine working, though. So, we can listen to the tape.’

  ‘Have you?’ I asked, and I instantly heard my voice flood with hope. Jessie came to his feet, his physical response to the news.

  ‘Yes,’ Merlin confessed, walking out of the room, taking to the stairs. ‘Come on,’ he told us. ‘This way.’

  He took us up to the second floor and into a room that was sparsely furnished, in contrast to the wreckage of machines and parts that filled the ground floor. He beckoned us both to sit down in two stout arm chairs, whilst he unlocked one of two cabinets opposite.

  ‘I haven’t used the tape deck on this in years, haven’t had to,’ he said, pushing buttons, turning nobs. ‘I was never keen on the cassette format, so I didn’t bother to repair it. But, I worked on it today. Fiddled about. Cleaned the heads and wotnot. And by some miracle, got it working again. Are you both ready?’

  I don’t know what I was expecting to hear. Elinor’s voice, I guess. Or the recording of a conversation between her and another – maybe Billy, maybe one of her interviewees. Or maybe the tape would be something they had devised; a play or a fake radio show. I’d overheard them doing that before. Another alternative didn’t occur to me – that it might be full of music. I don’t know why – maybe because it wasn’t what I was looking for. I was looking for a clue, for a trace of our lost girl, not 45 minutes of pop. But it held none of these.

  ‘It’s blank,’ Jessie said, the first to comment, after a minute or so of listening in silence.

  ‘Listen,’ the old man commanded, as if we had been doing something else in the quiet.

  Jessie raised his eyebrows in my direction, but I kept a blank face. I was willing to keep going. To aid our lacking abilities, Old Man Merlin turned the volume up on his speakers, filling the room with the blank hiss of the tape, a white noise filling the room with its aural mist. Listen, he repeated, mouthing the word this time and something made me concentrate. Something in his insistence told me he had already played the tape. He knew there was something on it.

  Jessie came to his feet, signaling his impatience and lack of faith that this would produce anything of value, but I reached out, pulling him back into place.

  ‘Stay, do as he says,’ I whispered and Jessie complied, sighing to convey his reluctance.

  We listened to a further three minutes before we heard what Merlin had clearly heard before – breathing. Raspy breathing, close to wherever this had been recorded. Then, as we became accustomed to the hiss and the breathing, we tuned in on something else – voices in the background. Occasionally raised, the words were indecipherable, as were the voices.

  After a few minutes, the recording was marked with a clear click, as if the recording was stopped, then another click as it started up again. This happened a dozen or so times. In total, there was over 40 minutes of recording, in many separate sections, the high level hiss accompanied by the raspy breathing and the muffled conversation on every occasion.

  We sat in silence for several minutes once old Merlin stopped the tape.

  ‘Nothing on the other side?’ Jessie eventually asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Could it be one of her silly interviews?’ I suggested, but Jessie shrugged.

  ‘We don’t even know it was her, not for certain we just think it might have been,’ he stressed.

  ‘He’s right, Tristan. We don’t know a thing yet.’ The old man paused, thinking for a minute, then spoke again. ‘Could you leave it with me, a bit longer? I could play about with it, see if I could separate out the sounds. Somewhere amongst all my…’ As Merlin searched for the
word, Jessie mouthed Junk in my direction and grinned. ‘My belongings,’ he eventually chose, ‘I know I’ve got bits of old recording equipment. If I can get it working, might be in with a chance. Still, can’t promise it’ll prove anything.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, agreeing to the request. We had nothing to lose. ‘But can we keep this between us? No word to Agnes. I don’t want to raise hopes, and no word to the others because I-.’

  ‘Don’t know whether to trust them?’ the old man completed and I nodded, a little shame in the movement. ‘A wise move, and the girl must come first, mustn’t she?’

  Over the next few weeks, Jessie and I continued to go out searching, though less and less frequently. We ventured no further and we saw nothing new. I went back to the spot in the train graveyard, in case she had returned, left further clues, but it was a false hope with no returns. We weren’t the only ones. Agnes’ Uncle Jimmy went out in his boat most days, not travelling far, but it was still an effort. And Ronan checked in regularly with old pals he knew in the authorities, but again nothing new was forthcoming.

  ‘Like we can trust the government for information,’ was Jessie’s cynical reaction, but I was still grateful for Ronan’s persistence, as was Agnes.

  We checked in regularly at the Cadley residence, but old Merlin had little to update us. I’m still working on it, he’d report. Working as fast as I can. Some instinct told me this was another false lead, that the recording was probably nothing, even an accident, maybe, buttons pressed in error. So, my interest waned a little.

  Had it not been for the incident with Billy, I might have returned to the tape sooner. But the corpse of the dog was a big distraction – it took me back to my original suspicions: that the bad, old times had returned and Elinor was caught up in that.

  I hadn’t been home long when I heard Billy’s cries and I didn’t have to think twice about wading into that water without protection. There was genuine fear in his screaming, pure terror at the bloated, lifeless creature that was pushing against his boat.

  Later, after we had showered and scrubbed ourselves and our clothes thoroughly, I wondered and waited for a reaction. Maybe a rash on my skin, prickling gradually, starting as a small patch and creeping its way slowly across my body. Maybe a shortness of breath, maybe something caught in my lungs, slowly reducing my ability, suffocating me in millimetres. Or maybe something more dramatic – a heart attack or a delayed, yet sudden impact of whatever poison had been fed to the waters over the years. We had good reason to be fearful – three years back, a sixteen year-old lad, Clay Radley, had fled his house after a row with his parents, forgetting his gas mask in his storm of fury and died a day later of respiratory failure. Rumours eluded to the fact the argument was drugs related, which, if true, had doubtless acerbated his condition, but the majority view pointed elsewhere: there was something in the air, something in the water.

  Yet, for us, there was nothing, nothing at all.

  It sat there, unspoken between us all for a while. Esther considered it luck – we had both been lucky, despite our foolishness, she told us, but we had to remain vigilant for signs. She meant my foolishness, I knew, despite the fact I had rescued Billy from his own petrifaction.

  But Agnes and I talked about it; the implications. What if there was nothing in those waters but a bunch of lies from the authorities? What if one method of control – the dogs – had simply been replaced for another, less aggressive one?

  ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Just what we’re all so afraid of?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Maybe when we get her back, we can do something about it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  We left our conversation there. Agnes was beginning to talk, beginning to open up about what might have happened, but I wasn’t going to push her.

  Instead, I focused on what I had: evidence, in the guise of an ugly, dead dog.

  ‘A puppy,’ Ronan confirmed, coming back from a visit to Papa H’s the day after.

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked him.

  I was in Agnes’ bed, under strict instructions to rest from Esther, who was determined to contain any possible outbreak within Agnes’ four walls. She had been pleased when her sister complied with this notion, less pleased when she realised exactly where Agnes’ intended I recuperate. Yet, something about our encounter with –with what? Death, near-tragedy? Not quite that, but something about the incident, so soon after Elinor’s disappearance, led Agnes to re-evaluate how we were conducting our relationship.

  No more hiding it, she seemed to be saying with her actions – her kisses, her touches when others were around, moving me into her room, even though guests were around.

  Ronan, however, didn’t bat an eyelid to discover me between Agnes’ sheets.

  ‘Any other discoveries?’

  ‘The authorities have it,’ Ronan confirmed.

  ‘You let the police take it?’ My disbelief and disappointment was unshielded.

  ‘Come on, Tristan, you didn’t think Harold could hang on to that, somehow perform his own autopsy, did you? You didn’t think we could keep it a secret, either, did you?’

  ‘So you called it in?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Ronan stated, defensive, annoyed at my tone. He had only come to deliver news, after all.

  ‘Sorry, it’s just. Well. It’s…’

  ‘Frightening?’ Ronan suggested and I agreed. ‘It is, and downright sinister, Tristan.’

  ‘Think it could be linked to Elinor’s disappearance?’ I asked him.

  For once, he didn’t seem irritated as I refuted the authorities’ crooked version of Elinor’s absence.

  ‘You really don’t think she’s dead, do you? It’s not just your anger speaking?’

  ‘No, Ronan, I know she’s not dead. None of it adds up that way. When I do the maths in my head, I keep coming up with a very different answer.’

  Ronan nodded and sat with me, contemplating for a minute for so.

  ‘I’ll talk to some old pals, see if I can come up with anything.’

  I thanked him and, with that he left me. Ronan was a good sort, meant well and loved Esther and Agnes as if he was their real father, despite Esther’s coldness towards him. So, I knew he’d be true to his word, but I also knew his old boy’s network – ex-police, ex-government employees – would be a pointless exercise. Those who knew would not be telling and days later he returned to me to confirm that.

  ‘Nothing to be suspicious of, Tris. I hope that’s of some comfort?’

  I told him it was and he instantly believed it – my acceptance was of clear comfort to him.

  As the incident with the dog faded away and Billy and Esther finally moved back home – after a rather ungracious row between the two sisters – it began to feel like we were all simply accepting the fate we’d been dealt. I had all but forgotten about the cassette we’d left with Old Man Merlin and, on the rare occasion I popped by the Cadley residence to check his progress, I always got the same answer: Still working on it, young Tristan, still working on it. Agnes was getting better too – she didn’t go back to work the day she was supposed to and couldn’t really explain why – but she started talking more openly about Elinor. Crying too – but crying in front of me, getting it out of her system, getting it out of mine too, when I’d join her in a bout of unstoppable tears. And I was fine about her not working – her boss said he was coping for now, that they could carry her absence for a while longer and I still had the job with Jessie. So, as the trail grew cold on our lost girl, I focused on that – on work, as did Jessie.

  Jessie still didn’t trust me with the route – the habit of blindfolding and cuffing me remained. But I’d stopped questioning him after the first three or four trips – thereafter it was pointless, his position was clear.

  So, each time, the first thing I would see would be the entrance to our latest haulage job. On the outside, once we had worked our way through a shroud of thorny overgrowth, it looked like t
he many corrugated metal structures that went on for miles in the industrial south. But inside… Inside was something different. Inside was something that had to be kept secret.

  ‘A laboratory?’ I had announced on our first visit, curious about the need for such high level secrecy.

  ‘A government laboratory, Tris. One I’m certain we shouldn’t be in. Certainly not one we should be helping ourselves to.’

  ‘So, we’re stealing – that’s what you’re saying?’

  ‘No, we’re definitely salvaging. Didn’t it look abandoned to you?’

  ‘Yeah, dress it up how you like,’ I told him, still moving further in, despite my reservations, ‘I reckon we’re stealing.’

  ‘Okay, we’re stealing – you happy now? From the government, too. So, it couldn’t be any worse for us if we get caught. You with me still? Or am I blindfolding you this minute and taking you back?’

  I was with him. He knew that without the threats to return me to base.

  ‘So, now you’re here to stay, get your hands dirty!’

  Each time we visited, it was the same routine – we picked a section of the building and sorted out the crap from the treasure – working until we had enough of the latter to fill up the speedboat, ensuring it was carefully concealed, should we run into anyone of authority. Then we would close up the laboratory, covering our tracks as best we could as we went, returning home along the long river road. Unlikely as it was that any normal person would have the means to venture out this far, we didn’t take any chances.

  Once home, Jessie wouldn’t unload the boat until after dark, doing this by himself once I had returned to Agnes’. Upon our next trip out, any traces of the hoard would have gone – delivered, no doubt, to Jessie’s undisclosed employer.

  ‘Anyone I know?’ I would ask on occasion, but an answer was never forthcoming.

  And so we continued like this for several weeks. The incidents with the rat and the dog occurred and Agnes started to get better, started to accept that Elinor would be lost – if not forever – for a long time yet. Everything started to feel routine again, albeit that life was tarnished, a little emptier.