Only Darkness (2 page)

‘Oh Christ, oh shit!’ She pulled the torch back as Kevin’s shone over her shoulder. She heard his exclamation as he turned away. The lower half of the woman’s face was covered with black tape that had made it appear shadowed from a distance. Her eyes were – not there. She stared at them from bloody sockets, her head held back against the post by the wire twisted tight around her neck.

Rob Neave turned over in bed, woken up by his radio. Half past five, just time for the shipping forecast and
Farming Today.
He usually woke at this time, early shift or not, and either listened to the radio as he got up, or lay in bed listening as the shipping forecast became the farming programme, and then
Today.
The farmers were worrying about pigs again this morning. He was getting to be an expert on pigs – the price of pork, anyway. He’d never seen a real pig in his life.

He decided to go in for the seven-thirty start again. There wasn’t too much to be at home for, and if he didn’t have to go to work, he found it hard to get out of bed at all. Didn’t seem much point really. He hadn’t got in until gone ten the night before, listened to some music, drunk a couple of beers. It had been a long day, so he’d made himself something to eat and gone to bed. Sleep hadn’t come easily. He’d turned on the radio in the end and listened through close-down and then the
World Service.

He was coming out of the shower, towelling himself when he caught the end of the first news bulletin …
The body of a woman was found on railway lines early this morning in South Yorkshire. A police spokesman commented that it is too early to say how the woman had died. Three women have been killed in the South Yorkshire region in the past eighteen months and their bodies left on or near railway tracks …

He listened to the end of the bulletin which just recapped on the killings, but gave no more information about the dead
woman. He could see Deborah Sykes in her light mac, struggling to hold her umbrella straight as she had disappeared into the storm the night before. He decided to leave breakfast, and started pulling his clothes on, looking round for his keys and cash. Ten minutes later he was braking for the first set of lights that held him on red in the middle of an empty road.

City College, Moreham, is so called because it stands in the centre of the town, five minutes’ walk from the train and bus stations, and just a stone’s throw from the fine medieval church and the chapel on the bridge. The college buildings display a selection of twentieth-century architecture. The North building, the most modern, nearly twenty years old, presents a face of smoked glass to the world; its entrance is hard to find and the casual visitor can get lost in a confusing maze of corridors. The Moore building, the middle sibling, is a box of glass windows and concrete, nearly forty years old, and shabby and depressing. Inside, it is more comfortable. On the other side of the road stands the oldest, and the most beautiful despite its run-down appearance, the Broome building, an elegant art-deco construction with an oak door in its curving facade. Its windows watch you like eyes.

Debbie had overslept, and had arrived at the station two minutes before a train was leaving. She usually read the paper on the journey, but as she hadn’t had time to buy one, she stared out of the window instead. The track side was overgrown with weeds and the high walls were covered with graffiti – mostly incomprehensible and, to the uninformed eye, indistinguishable, tags, and the occasional word.
Joke
was written in letters about two feet high across a wall covered and over-covered in spray paint. When Debbie had been at college, the graffiti had been political: anti-government slogans, ANC slogans, comments about the Gulf War, even some left over from the bitter miners’ strike –
Coal not dole, Thatcher out, Save our pits.
Now it seemed to be tagging, a meaningless cry of,
I’m here!
or the inevitable,
Fuck you, Wogs stink, Irish scum.

The train ran on through the industrial East End of Sheffield where the skeletons of the great steelworks were gradually disappearing and the streets and houses looked decayed and defeated. The toy-town dome of Meadowhall shopping centre stood among sprawling acres of car parks, already full. People struggled off the train, other people got on. They looked anxious and tense. The bridge that took the shoppers over the road was seething with people.
To the shopping,
a sign said.
Joke
… The train pulled out, past some tumbledown buildings, through areas of green where the canal ran sluggish and black close to the line.
Fisto
was spray-painted on a stone building, and again on a derelict shed. It looked quite decorative. The spire of Moreham church came into view, and Debbie picked up her bag as the familiar platform ran past her window.

The college day was in full swing when she pushed her way through the crowd of students on the steps leading into the Broome building. The day was fine after the storm of the night before, but cold. The steps served as an informal coffee bar, meeting place and, since the college management implemented a no-smoking policy, a smoking room for students and staff. It didn’t make a particularly attractive venue, as a busy road ran between the buildings, and conversation was interrupted by the noise of cars, and buses pulling away from the stop outside the main entrance. The air always smelt dirty, particularly on cold, still days.

Debbie nodded to Trish Allen, a psychology lecturer and hardened smoker, who was continuing her class through the coffee break with a small group of students, all huddled in a companionable, smoky ring. She saw the lanky figure of Sarah Peterson, one of her A-level students, standing uncertainly in the entrance, drawing awkwardly on a cigarette. Debbie greeted Sarah as she went past and received a quick, eyes-averted smile. She felt tempted to go back out and join the group on the steps, spend ten minutes talking to another human being – something she hadn’t done since nine-thirty the previous night, but she pushed through the double doors into the dark, high-ceilinged corridor beyond.

One of the first people she saw as she pushed through
the doors was Rob Neave coming down the stairs towards her, heading out of the building. He stopped when he saw her. ‘Get wet last night?’ he asked. Debbie nodded and he laughed. She began to feel more cheerful.

‘There was something I wanted to ask you about,’ she said. ‘I had a bit of bother last night, during my class.’

‘OK. I’m on my way to a meeting now.’ He pulled an eloquent face. ‘But I’m free later. I’ll come along to your staff room – four-thirtyish?’ He directed a smile at her that made her feel pleasantly buoyant, and she turned towards her staff room. Chatting with Rob Neave was one of the grains of sugar in the otherwise worthy muesli of Debbie’s working life.

The lie on Debbie’s timetable was that Friday morning was her morning off, as payback for her evening class. The lie on her contract was that she worked a thirty-five-hour week. She was usually at her desk by ten on Friday mornings, catching up with her marking and the never-ending paperwork that was now a feature of the job.

She let herself into the small room she shared with Louise Hatfield, who was in charge of the English section which, these days, meant her and Debbie, and the changing faces of part-time staff who were employed through an agency. When Debbie had started at City, the English section had consisted of five members of staff, but financial crises and falling student numbers had led to a series of early retirements, and now there were just Louise and Debbie. ‘There goes my empire,’ Louise had remarked to Debbie at the end of last term. ‘Our days are numbered too. You mark my words, girl.’

Debbie had been hoping that Louise would be in the staff room, but the locked door told her that she must still be teaching – so no one to talk to. She began to sift through the pile of mail on her desk. She was tired. When she’d gone to bed, she hadn’t been able to sleep, and had lain awake listening to the radio until gone three. Now she was at her desk, she couldn’t concentrate. She wanted to talk to someone about the odd scene at the station the previous night, laugh about it to get rid of the lingering feeling of – what? – dread? – that the silent figure had evoked.

Don’t be stupid. It was nothing.

She sighed and turned over the pile of post that had arrived on her desk that morning. Most of it was circulars and advertising from companies selling textbooks and training. Bin the lot. There were a couple of memos, one from the principal about an audit of class registers, and one from the union about the ever present threat of redundancy.

Debbie ran her hand through her hair, worried. She felt vulnerable. She wasn’t sure how she would manage if she lost her job. There was no point in thinking about it for the moment. She had other things on her mind – like marking. She pulled her work folder towards her, and tried to pin back a lock of hair that had freed itself from its confinement of combs. The disturbance brought the whole lot down round her shoulders, and she irritably pulled it back off her face and wound a rubber band round to hold it. Fifteen A-level essays to mark, and about thirty GCSE pieces. She picked up the first one and started reading.

She wasn’t even halfway through at twelve-thirty when hunger drove her over to the canteen in the Moore building.

Fridays usually weren’t too busy in the canteen. Most students didn’t have classes on a Friday afternoon, and a lot of those that did ‘wagged’ it. Debbie collected a mixed salad from the salad bar, struggled with her conscience and got a side order of chips, and looked around for somewhere to sit.

‘Hey, Debbie!’ Tim Godber, media studies lecturer, journalist
manqué
and at one time a lover of Debbie’s, was waving her over.

‘Hi, Tim.’ Debbie was wary. She’d been very attracted at one time, but once they had fallen into bed together after a departmental party, he’d turned into a game player who’d tried to control and manipulate her through different hoops via charm and indifference, and Debbie was nowadays more put off than interested. They’d gone out for drinks together a couple of weekends ago, and again ended up in Debbie’s bed, but she’d told herself the next morning that that was the last time.

He pushed his hair back from his forehead and moved his
empty tray to make space at the table for her. ‘How are you, sweetheart?’

‘I’m not your sweetheart.’ Debbie had learnt to be brisk. ‘And I’m fine. How are you, lover boy?’

‘I’m not your lover boy, and I’m fine too.’ Tim no longer found it necessary to charm Debbie. They chatted in a desultory way as they ate, exchanging gossip from their different staff rooms. Debbie was fielding an invitation for a drink, when there was a flurry of discord from the coffee bar at the far side of the canteen, shouts and the sound of breaking china –
breaking glass
– that meant either horseplay or a fight. She got up from the table to see what was happening, though she had no intention of doing anything about it. Some of the young male students could be quite intimidating. Someone seemed to be dealing with it anyway. The shouting had died down. Rob Neave was talking to a group of students over where the trouble had been.

Tim, who had no more desire than Debbie to get involved in student fights, looked relieved, but continued to watch the situation with interest. ‘Machismo fascismo,’ he said, ‘wins out every time.’ Debbie looked at him. ‘Your friend the ex-policeman. The one laying down the law over there.’

He did look a bit authoritarian, actually, but Debbie was damned if she was going to agree with Tim about it. She liked Rob Neave. ‘I don’t think he’s laying down the law. Why should he be doing that? He’s just sorting them out. Is he an ex-policeman?’ Debbie thought that she ought to have known it.

Tim knew everything. It was partly his journalist’s love of gossip, and partly his connections at the local newspaper. ‘That’s his job. Security, antivandalism, keep the buggers down. You remember that business with the lift last term?’

Debbie shook her head. Tim’s story gradually came out about how some students at the end of last term had vandalized one of the lifts in the Moore building so badly they’d jammed it, trapping themselves inside. When they pushed the alarm button and summoned a rescue party, Neave, working the situation out, had delayed the rescue for two hours, claiming they couldn’t get the lift moving. The caretakers
had stood around outside the lift, threatening to light a fire in the shaft. By the time the pair were released, they were pretty subdued, and the college authorities, faced with a bill for the lift repair, weren’t in any mood to listen to complaints. Debbie laughed as he got to the end of the story. Tim was a good raconteur. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘the railway strangler has struck again.’

‘What?’ Debbie dropped her fork.

‘Didn’t you hear? It’s been all over the radio this morning. It’ll be in the paper as well, I should think. They found a body on the line last night.’

Debbie felt cold. ‘Where? When last night? Who was it?’

‘On the way to Mexborough, I think. They haven’t given a name and they haven’t said it’s him again, but it must be.’ He picked up one of Debbie’s chips and ate it. ‘You’ll get fat.’ He ate another.

‘Not at this rate. Look, Tim, this woman, she wasn’t killed in Moreham, at the station, was she?’

‘Don’t know, shouldn’t think so for a minute.’ He began to look at her more closely. ‘Why? Come on, tell me.’

Debbie found herself telling him about her encounter at the station last night, and the way the strange figure had made her feel. ‘He looked sort of, well, dangerous,’ she finished, lamely. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘No, go on, it’s interesting.’ She had his attention now, and he plied her with questions she couldn’t answer. Had she really heard the sound of breaking glass coming from the station? Not from anywhere else? What did he look like? Was she sure he didn’t catch the train?

‘Perhaps you saw him – the strangler,’ he said, half seriously.

‘Rubbish! If it was over at Mexborough it can’t have been anything to do with what I saw.’ Debbie was annoyed because she felt uneasy.

‘It’s the next stop up the line.’

She thought about it, and then saw what time it was. ‘Oh, God, I’ve got to go. I’m teaching in five minutes.’

Tim smiled at her encouragingly, and as she left was getting out a notebook and pen. ‘I’ll just stay here and get
some work done. It’s quieter than in our staff room. See you later.’

As she left the canteen, she saw Rob Neave leaning against the wall watching the students with a conspicuously bleak expression. He caught Debbie’s eye and winked. As she went past him, he said, ‘It’ll be nearer five than four-thirty. Is that OK?’

‘Yes, it won’t take long. It’s nothing much.’

He looked sceptical. ‘Your last
nothing much
took half my budget,’ he said, referring to the time when Louise and Debbie had decided to take advantage of the fact that the college had actually appointed someone with responsibility for security. They’d campaigned for better lighting in some of the isolated parts of the campus, assuming that the boyish face and easy charm of the new appointee meant he would be a pushover. He’d proved to be a tough negotiator, who was, fortunately, on their side. They’d got their lighting.

Debbie noticed as she looked more closely at him that he was tired and drawn. She wondered if he was another person who’d had a sleepless night. She almost told him about her experience at the station. She felt in need of expert advice.

Debbie’s Friday afternoon A-level class distracted her and she forgot, for the moment, about the incident at the station. The students were studying ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, and making heavy weather of it. Debbie had asked them to think about the lines:
God save thee, ancient Mariner!/From fiends that plague thee thus!/Why look’st thou so?’ With my crossbow/ I shot the Albatross.
Why, she had asked them, did the mariner shoot the albatross that had brought good luck to the ship? Somehow, the discussion had got hijacked into an animal rights argument that was interesting, but not what Debbie wanted them to do.