Running with Rogues

CHAPTER 60 - AND IT GETS MESSIER

They were not just empty tunnels, as I had imagined. Every single one was filled with stagnant water - sometimes several metres deep, and that made it difficult to retrieve the remains. We stood waiting on the muddy bank while they brought waders and nets.

It was lucky that Liam knew where to look, because there were a dozen shafts in this part of the woodland alone, and it would have taken days to search them properly. He hadn't let me persuade him to sit out, even though his wounds were still healing. He was right down there in the mud with the rest of us.

"We've got something here," one of the men called, after only a few minutes of poking around in the murky water. He had snagged something with his boat-hook, and now a handful of the others went wading in to help him bring it up. It looked heavy. Three of them were struggling to lift it, and it wasn't long before Liam went to lend a hand.

They managed to haul it onto the bank with no small of cursing. It was a black tarp, fastened with wire and weighed down with half a dozen stones. The whole thing was nearly six feet long and two feet wide. It didn't take a genius to guess what might be in there.

I wanted to be sick. These poor people had been down there for years, rotting in the water. It made me shudder just thinking about it. Being buried in the dirt was one thing. This was another.

I helped carry it up the bank. We had to go slowly and carefully on the loose scree, with the ropes to steady us at the steepest bits. The crowd at the top had long since fallen silent. We lowered the body down gently where Seth and the other doctors were waiting. They'd erected a few makeshift screens so that the families wouldn't have to see this next part.

Because they were going to have a hard time identifying these bodies. They had dental records, and that was all. I doubted they'd be able to pull DNA from the bones with the facilities they had here.

As soon as the first body was safely in their care, we went back down again. We were halfway down the rocks when we heard a call from below. They'd already found a second body.

I had a feeling it was going to be a long evening.

And that feeling was spot-on. An hour later, we realised that we needed more pairs of hands. Volunteers were sent into the other quarries, just to check, and it wasn't long before they had plenty of work to occupy themselves with.

The fighters worked tirelessly. They didn't look nearly so arrogant when they were up to their waists in brown water, fishing for bodies. I could tell that they thought it was strange that I was helping, because they kept eyeing me and exchanging quizzical looks with each other. But they didn't dare voice it, and I didn't really care anyway. Like hell was I going to leave Liam to do this alone.

We ended up with seventeen bodies. Liam had only known about nine of them. Some were buried in shallow graves beside the flooded tunnels, but most were just weighed down with a few rocks. In the tunnels themselves, it wouldn't really matter if they slipped free. They could rot just as quickly floating in the cavern, only to sink again when they were far enough gone. The Vaughans had been clever in picking their personal graveyard.

"Some of these date back fifty years," Seth was saying. "As best we can tell, anyway. We've got fourteen women and three men. Two have already been identified. One had a medical alert bracelet with her name engraved - Elinor Saunders."

Saunders? A relative of mine, then. On my mother's side. I wondered if it had been the aunt who had raised her for the first few years, only to disappear inexplicably. The more I thought about it, the likelier that seemed. My visit to my grandparents' grave had made it very clear that the Saunders family had not been welcome in this pack.