‘It wouldn’t be any old woman, would it? I mean we’re not going to ask Mrs Walker from the post office to do it, are we? There are women out west who work on the task force. One of them could do it with a gun tucked down her bra for good measure.’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t live with myself if they got hurt. I would rather do it myself, and besides, Henry is a very clever man. He knows most things about me. He knows what I look like from a distance. He’s not going to be fooled so easily.’
‘Well, let’s see what Will has to say. Come on, it’s better than nothing. Some of those birds in task force I wouldn’t mess with. They’re harder than me and you put together.’
Cathy wandered over towards them. ‘He has a point. There are two of them who wouldn’t blink at what we’re thinking. It’s probably what they live for – the chance to go down in history – but more than that a chance to actually shoot someone and get away with it.’
‘I don’t know; it doesn’t feel right.’
‘Come on, Annie. Does it feel right that we’re all walking around scared of our own shadows? Does it feel right that he’s going to come for you no matter what we do? Call it a pre-emptive strike. We’ll have the upper hand.’
‘Look, children, have a think about it and we’ll discuss it tonight after dinner, when everyone’s together. I think Kav will say no at first, but I’m sure I can talk him around. But, Annie, the only person who might make Will agree is you. Jake, if you manage to keep your big mouth shut to a certain degree and not make it sound too dangerous, then he might start to come around.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Now, you two eat some lunch and find something to do in the office because it gives me heartburn every time I watch you drive away in that bloody panda car. I want you both inside until finishing time unless an emergency call comes in and it’s all hands on deck.’
They both nodded. It was fine by Annie. She wanted to do some research on Beckett House and see if there were any local newspaper reports about the place. She also wanted to do some digging around and see if she could find anyone who might be able to help them search the sewers under the house. Jake threw himself into the chair opposite and began logging on to the computer. He didn’t say anything, which was unusual for him, but if whatever it was he was doing kept him quiet, Annie would be thankful. Her head was pounding enough as it was without having to listen to him going on and on.
Annie had typed the name Beckett into the system, but nothing came up apart from the missing person report for Seamus Jones. That was a good sign. At least there wasn’t any family history of them being mentally ill or mass murderers. She went on to the actual internet and typed Beckett House into the search bar and was surprised to see a full page of links appear on her screen. She clicked on one that took her to a photocopy of a newspaper report from 1930. The headline: ‘Son of Wealthy Businessman Goes Missing on New Year’s Eve’ in bold black print filled the top part of the page.
Annie scanned the article. It didn’t tell her anything that she didn’t already know, although whoever the reporter was must have disliked the Beckett family because the whole piece suggested that the boy had met with some kind of foul play at the hands of one of the family members. She was surprised that Martha’s parents hadn’t sued the paper and the reporter for defamation of character; then again she didn’t think they would have bothered to read the newspapers at the time. They wouldn’t have needed reminding about it because they were living the nightmare. Poor, poor family. How awful to have had to live through something like that. If this monster lived in the sewers under their house it must have free run of the connecting sewers to other houses, though.
She cleared the search bar and started again: ‘Missing persons in the Lake Windermere area.’ She let out a small gasp when the pages began loading the articles of people who’d gone missing in or near the lake. There were so many, although there hadn’t been any recently, until Seamus a few days ago. The last one, whose body had never been found, was more than twenty years ago. An elderly man who had a boathouse not far from Beckett House had last been seen tinkering around on his boat on 5 May 1994. It was believed that he had fallen into the lake, possibly hitting his head and drowning, because he’d never been seen again. Divers had searched the lake over the months following his disappearance, but he’d never been found.
She looked at the next link below that and saw that a month earlier a sixteen-year-old boy had been out on the lake with his friends. He’d had a bet with them that he could swim to the shore from the boat and had jumped in, to the accompaniment of their delighted whoops and cheers. He’d been swimming just fine until he almost reached the shore near Beckett House, where it was believed he’d got caught in the current and been taken under. His body was never recovered from the water. Annie felt a cold chill descend down her spine.
She sent the two articles to the printer and began searching some more. There was a gap of twenty years before she found another, this time in 1974. A woman had been out sailing. She was going to meet her friends who lived on the opposite side, but she never made it. Her empty boat was found bobbing along near Beckett House.
Annie kept on scrolling through. Almost every twenty years there were missing persons reports, but no one had ever thought to put them all together. She doubted if anyone apart from Martha Beckett even took any notice of them. The journalists who wrote them were all different. If it only happened roughly every twenty years there wasn’t much chance of the same journalist still working on the small local paper. They would have moved on.
The same could be said for the police force. The gaps were too huge for anyone to remember. Not only had there been two deaths already this year in the lake, but also both of those bodies had been recovered. People died every year. It was one of the biggest lakes in England and was used by a lot of inexperienced sailors. The water was freezing cold even on a hot summer’s day.
She carried on reading article after article until she found one about an incident dating back to 1 September 1929. Two workmen who had been building the house had stayed behind to sort out a problem in the cellar with a blocked drain and had never been seen again. Annie shivered. Whatever it was that lived in the tunnels beneath Beckett House liked to eat humans, and once it was full it would sleep or hibernate until it was ready to start all over again, which just happened to be every twenty years or so.
Poor Martha Beckett. What would she do when the time came to sell the house? She couldn’t very well tell the estate agent to advertise that the house came with its very own, human-flesh-eating monster, but as long as you don’t go down into the cellar you’ll be just fine. And what about all these missing people? Some of them had gone missing from boats on the lake. Whatever it was knew enough not to take people who were in a group. It must wait until it saw the perfect kill out there all alone and then go for it. That was how it had stayed hidden all this time. She shuddered at the thought of being dragged down into the sewers and eaten. If she had a choice she’d rather face Henry Smith than some scary man-monster that liked to chew on human flesh. She sighed. Could her life get any worse?
Chapter Twenty-Four
The journey home from Bowness was uneventful. There were no strange cars following them. Annie watched the whole time in the passenger mirror, not trusting herself enough to relax. In a way she wanted to see him again. She hadn’t forgotten what he looked like, but he had faded a little in her mind, even though he looked like a complete monster. Jake didn’t drive straight to his house. Instead he took the long way around, going through a maze of streets until he was happy enough they had no one behind them. He parked Annie’s car further away, in the next street to his, and they got out, looking all around them before they began to walk back to Jake’s street.