Heaney held up his hand in acknowledgement and sighed. "I'm sorry, Mister Weaver. It's just- we've never dealt with anything quite like this before. None of us have had much sleep and it all seems so-" The police man stopped, conscious that he had said too much, broken the golden rule and allowed Joe Public to sense the anxiety that ran through the station- Christ, the whole force- in the aftermath of the night that they were beginning to refer to simply as "the madness" which was, Heaney thought, apt enough given the nonsensical aspects of much, if not all, of what had occurred over the past week.
"None of it makes sense, does it, Detective Sergeant?" Weaver pressed. He understood that Heaney and his beleaguered colleagues were out of their depths; there was nothing of substance with which they could work; it was all vapours and odd connections between unlikely people. That was why they were getting nowhere, Weaver was sure. Until they began to look to the more bizarre angles, the disappeared would remain disappeared, the unsolved remain unsolved; what appeared to be senseless would remain a mystery and who knew what could occur next? The town was brooding and the water continued to rise.
Heaney shook his head in response. "No, sir, none of it makes any sense and I wish that what you've told me provided something to go on but-"
"It's vapours," Weaver muttered.
The policeman made a move to stand. The interview was over. "But you're not the only one to come in and talk about dreams and visions," Heaney sighed. "The people of this town, people that I've known most of my life and never taken for superstitious old women are seeing ghosts and signs everywhere. Even old man Pinchin was in here yesterday spoutin' nonsense about Japanese ghosts in the meadow." The detective shook his head and held out his hand. "I'll pass on your statement to DCI Collins. I can't promise that he'll get around to reading it at any time in the next century but I'll do my best."
Weaver shook the other man's hand and nodded.
Upon leaving the interview room, he felt much as he had done upon entering: embarrassed and foolish. Heaney accompanied him into the public waiting area. The room was packed with a cross-section of the town's population: an elderly couple sat huddled on a bench in the corner, clutching a photograph of their middle-aged son; pacing the corridor, a man in his thirties muttered savagely about the useless bloody police force- his wife had been missing since the night of the madness; an under-nourished looking boy, no more than fourteen, wanted to tell the police that his mom had gone missing the night of the fire and so had his baby brother but, like every one else, he had to wait his turn. Weaver studied the same emotion on each of the dozens of faces in the waiting room- the same horror, the same dislocation displayed in different styles. As he reached the heavy double doors that led out onto North High Street, he was surprised to see that Heaney was still behind him. Outside, in the ever-present drizzle, Heaney offered his cigarettes to Weaver. Weaver took one gratefully.
"Look, I'm sorry if I seemed to be taking the piss in there-"
"Forget it," Weaver said. "I'd usually be the one taking the piss myself." Before, he added to himself. It was always "before" now, wasn't it? Before the painting. Before the dreams. Before the screaming in the bathroom.
Before Susan, before Patsy, before Eric and now, before Mary.
Mary had disappeared on the night of his near death experience and Eric's suicide. It had been late into the day before he had tried to call her. There was the police to deal with and they had taken hours to arrive given everything else that had occurred in the town that night. And then he had his nieces to look after. The girls came first, of course. Having arranged for someone to watch over them while they slept, Weaver had to see Susan. Even worse than seeing the outline of poor old Uncle Eric's corpse seven floors below was the responsibility of recounting the events to his mother's sister as she lay, physically and psychologically bruised, in a hospital bed. In the moments following Eric's bizarre nose dive out of his daughter's window, Sarah had screamed; it was a scream the like of which he never wanted to hear again- a scream of grief and madness combined, a scream that marked the absolute death of innocence, an awakening to the utterly vile possibilities of life. Weaver had taken the girl in his arms his and half-carried her to the lounge where the older of the sisters came rushing in to the room, remarkably undisturbed by all that had happened (the telltale earphones still dangled from her neck). He had held them close to him, rocking them gently, stroking their hair, murmuring meaningless comfort until the police had arrived and- mercifully- a paramedic able to give the girls something to give them blessed oblivion for a few hours.
By the time he had reached Mary's shop, Martha had already reported the broken window and the sign of a struggle to the police. The older woman had looked washed out. She had been dealt with briefly before the police had to move on to the next incident. In retrospect, Weaver knew that Mary's disappearance had only been one of many along with many other crimes that had taken place that night; criminal activity had been so widespread, rumours sprouted among the locals that the police had experts checking the water supply for chemical influence; riot squads had walked the streets of Measton the night after "the madness" to ensure that an unofficial curfew was obeyed. The streets were deserted; a peaceful night aside from those worrying about the disappeared or grieving for the dead.
Heaney spoke breaking Weaver's reverie.
"I hope that your nieces are feeling better today," he said. "I have read the report on Callaghan's suicide," he said and Weaver's cheeks flushed with further embarrassment. "-and I can't imagine how they must be taking something so terrible."
Weaver shook his head in agreement. "They've got their mother now which is something. Words don't meaning anything at times like this, do they? Her mother can give them the only comfort worth receiving, I guess."
The young boy from the waiting room stood in the shadows of the door behind them.
"Hmm." Heaney seemed to be deliberating.
"What is it?" Weaver asked.
"You told one of our PCs that Callaghan opened his mouth and screamed at you before he threw himself from the window." The policeman coughed awkwardly. "Can you remember what it was that he screamed."
Weaver studied the other man. There was something in his demeanour that smacked of more than facts and motives. Somehow Heaney had been touched by this as he had, as Mary had.
"It's difficult to describe really, Sergeant," Weaver began. " More vapours and weird stuff I'm afraid."
Heaney's expression didn't change. Weaver decided to tell the policeman everything about that night: the way that he had awoken absolutely sure that Mary was in danger; the attack and the scene in Sarah's bedroom- one that he was sure that he would never forget until his dying day- including the way Eric Callaghan had seemed to struggle with an internal force for control over his own personality. Weaver looked out into the rain as he spoke of the silent scream that had released the whispers, whispers that filled the room until they became screams inside your head, trying to get at you, wanting to destroy you.
He looked back at Heaney and expected to see the amused weariness again. Rain ran in rivulets through the policeman's hair and onto his unnaturally pale skin. It was the eyes that belied the fear. Heaney stared back at him unblinkingly. Weaver shivered in the drizzle.
"I think you better tell Detective Chief Inspector Collins what you just told me," he whispered. "Yes, I think that's best." He nodded back at the police station and Weaver followed.
That was when the young boy stepped out of the doorway.
"You were talking about Mister Callaghan, weren't you?"
"Excuse me, son," Heaney said and ushered the boy to one side. The boy was persistent. He followed the two men into the waiting room and, as they pushed through the throng, called behind them in a voice on the edge of breaking:
"Mister Callaghan was at my house all day and then my mum disappeared."
Heaney and Weaver turned to look at the boy for the first time.
*
2
Frank Osbourne spat onto the water.
Whatever happened to you, Ernie, also happened to me, he thought and took a flask out of his aged duffel coat.
The mouth to which he raised the bottle was no longer the strong, moustachioed mouth of the mid-seventies when he had been King of the Post Office and scourge of anything in a skirt. With Earnest's demise, his own reputation sank to the depths until his metaphoric submersion seemed more painful than Earnest's literal descent into the very water that he spat into now. Upon the discovery of Young's body, bloated and rotting, the looks began- at first subtle, when he was looking elsewhere but soon more challenging, lingering daringly into a challenge until he- the great Frank Osbourne- was shamed into looking elsewhere. Soon the conversations would dry up when he entered the canteen. It became increasingly clear to Osbourne that to them he carried the blame for the weakling's demise and subsequent suicide. Silly little bastard. Yes, them. The irony was beautiful: in dying, Young had treated Frank to a taste of what Young must have felt all of his adult life- the feeling that you were on the outside, that you weren't wanted. The after work drinks changed location from his favoured Railway to somewhere younger, more fashionable, and less- well- less Frank Osbourne. He would go to the pub regardless and tell Old Dave St. John how they were shutting him out, making him an outcast. Him! When inebriated one evening, he told St. John that it wasn't his fault that the silly little bastard had thrown himself in the river. Dave St. John, the landlord of The Railway Inn since time immemorial had fixed Frank with an icy stare at that and told him clearly that, if he ever mentioned the drowning of Earnest Young or anyone else for that matter in that river, he could find himself a new watering hole.
Even St. John had turned on him, it seemed.
It wasn't his fault. Fuck's sake! He studied the churning, muddied waters of the river as they passed beneath the bridge; a great deal of market gardening soil and produce had been washed away by the floods. He had even tried to speak to the silly little bastard.
Admittedly, that was an idea that had been imposed upon him from above but he had tried for God's sake. Was it his fault that the timid little man turned out to be barking mad?
No. Of course it wasn't. Loneliness can do that to a man, a lesson that he had learnt all to well in the intervening years.
With Earnest, an age seemed to die. Institutions that had stood unshaken for years began to crumble. Increasingly marriages ended. His was the first but others followed as the slow realization reached the provincial backwaters that women didn't have to stay married to a man that became Lord and Tyrant any more- they had choice. Laura chose life without Frank. As Osbourne's star began its descent, several of their mutual friends decided that enough was enough: Laura soon knew of Frank's philandering, arse-feeling ways. That, coupled with his increasingly violent mood swings as a result of his newfound isolation was enough. Laura was soon gone.
The drinking increased until his career ended abruptly after a stand-up row with his would-be protégé, Johnny Jennings. Ungrateful little bastard. Even he blamed Frank for Earnest and he used to take the right piss out of the scrawny little fucker. What made it harder to bear was the way in which Jennings had stepped seamlessly into Frank's role upon his dismissal. Fucking liberty.
And here we are, Frank thought as the main body of the Earnest’s old caravan passed beneath the bridge and out of sight. Twenty-five years on, wifeless and penniless- his payoff from the Post Office long spent on nothing but the poison that he poured down his throat and sucked into his lungs- the latter, whistling like a cage of sick canaries leading him to fear the worst. He knew that a trip to the doctor was long overdue every time he had to stop and put his hand on the stair rail as a coughing fit violently shook him and on the increasingly frequent times in which he became breathless on a flat road.
He stared into the foaming waters that seemed to attack the bridge at its foundations and mused upon the fact that a silver jubilee of years separated the old Frank from this frail shadow that was hardly noticed on the Old Bridge. Twenty-five years between Earnest Young's suicide and his own realisation that, for all the good it had done, he may as well as well have hopped into the river alongside his former employee because, when you really added things together and studied the results, his life had started to end on the day that Young had waded into the water.
Osbourne shook his head and smiled at the foam-specked swell swirling below. That was the fucking truth of the matter.
Ah, fuck it, he thought, why not?
No-one noticed the haggard old man clamber onto the bridge wall. There was no-one to see the way the wind and rain whipped at his old-fashioned flared trousers and seemed to lift the wispy bird's thatch of grey hair off his scalp or the brief waver at his knees that suggested that the old fool was about to stop being ridiculous. Similarly there was no-one there to note the conviction with which the old man's body straightened itself against that moment of doubt.
There was no-one there to witness the way he jumped off the bridge and into the water.
There was no-one there but the river and the river had seen it all before.
*
3
Weaver watched the screen for the third time but the cold chill that came over him had not abated with the familiarity of repetition. He glanced at Heaney who nodded- he felt it too. Collins had left the room to get a coffee. At least, that was what he had told them. Both men privately suspected that Collins was more than a little disturbed by the Rennick Hospital CCTV footage. Again he saw the figure of a man they referred to as Davies stand at the foot of another inmate's bed, his mouth stretched wide in a gaping yawp; the hissing background sound yielding nothing but a flicker in the hiss, as though there were sounds hidden within that white noise.
The closeness to what he had witnessed in his niece's bedroom was indisputable. The posture- hunched shoulders with arms dangling inert at the side, chin raised at about 45 degrees, eyes rolled back revealing only the whites and the seemingly impossible black O of the mouth- was identical.
In his mind he remembered the whispering, insidious presences in the room, probing and pushing at the corners of his mind.
Collins returned with three coffees, all black. He nodded towards a crusted sugar pot on his desk and sat back in his swivel chair, sipping the steaming, black liquid. Weaver noted the way Collins did not look at the screen upon returning to his office, not even once. Weaver heaped three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and stirred slowly, wincing at the overspill that burnt his fingers. Collins raised his eyebrows.
"Artist, eh? I can well believe it with your finesse."
Weaver grinned. "There is such a thing as a messy artist, you know?"
On the screen, Davies moved to the final patient on his ward and went through his ritual.
"So, David- you don't mind David, do you?" Weaver shook his head and shrugged.
"I feel like we've known each other for years," Collins told him and rubbed absently at the old break. "I think of y
ou whenever it rains," he finished nodding and smiling at the nonplussed expression on Heaney's unshaven face. "Don't worry Heaney, we haven't got "the madness", we met when David here was- what- five years old?"
"Six," Weaver corrected and nodded at the older man's massaging hand. "Does it still play you up, then, Mister Collins?"
"Mister Collins! Did you hear that, Heaney? None of your chief this andguv that. That's real respect for you. To answer your question David- yes, it does hurt from time-to-time but never quite as much as just lately."
Heaney scratched his head and said: "Do you want me to rewind the tape, Sir?"
"I don't think that'll be necessary, do you, David?"
Weaver shook his head. "No. I don't want to see that again."
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