#3 Where Monsters Lay

Chap. 7_undisturbed grass and simple people?

"It's obvious now." The three of them were poring over a map of the cemetery that Frank had quickly dug up off line. "There's no way that anyone could've stolen these above ground. They're metres deep, there's no undisturbed grass or piled-up dirt anywhere."

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth," Sarah butted in, and Rob turned to face her. She really wasn't sure what sort of terms they were on. They'd kissed. And not just a little peck on the cheek or anything.

Rob was a married man. A man with a child. And despite his confession of not seeing his family all week, he still loved them. Sarah was utterly sure of that.

So why did she feel no guilt? Why did all of this simply excite her instead of appal her? What was she becoming?

She recalled a conversation that Rob had had with both her and Frank a month or two ago. It was simply to start up some conversation as Frank and herself weren't talking much. "Isn't it sad," he'd said, "that I now call my flat in town home, rather than my home with my wife?"

And it finally struck her when Rob had explained his dilemma to her that he slept there more than he did at home. He didn't want to go home because he'd wake Riley, or worse, Aaron. Yes, she thought, somewhat subdued, he still loves them.

Rob turned back after his brief moment of intrigue. He didn't want to look at Sarah. Memories would come flooding back.

"Right, Sarah," Frank continued talking, "they're coming from underneath, meaning that somewhere under the city, there's a way of reaching the cemetery. That's what we need to find. What did you say those university people were looking in Histon for, Sarah?"

"Well it was testing, I suppose," Sarah replied, "but they insisted on taking the body of the most hideous person they could. Dunno why. Sounds a little odd, actually."

"So they took someone from where monsters lay," Frank said, straight-faced. "No need to look around. You know you'd find someone there first shot."

"But they didn't, and that's our problem," Rob said. "There are 'monsters' disappearing from this graveyard. 'Why?' is the question we really should be asking."

"Or perhaps before we get there," Sarah said, "Where they got in."

The rest of the day seemed to move rather quickly. The night before, they'd all decided that the best option to not get caught having kidnapped Seb Adams was to just leave him there. They couldn't prise anymore information out of him that night, so Frank discreetly put a tracker in his pocket, and they left him there. Oddly, overnight, it didn't seem like he'd moved.

They'd come in the next morning, and Frank had shown them the map. But no more progress had really been made. They all looked separately at ways to get in underground.

The first shout, and most obvious, was sewers. Sewers swarmed like a labyrinth underground, but unfortunately, only in certain areas. To save time digging, the dense network of sewers were then connected to by a huge array of smaller pipes coming from houses and places that needed sanitary disposal.

Only a few of the smaller pipes went anywhere near the graveyard, as the nearest cluster of human-sized tunnels were over a mile away.

And thus the wait for a breakthrough commenced.

But eventually it came. And from the most unlikely of sources.

*****

There was a knock on the window.

Not the door, but the window.

A hand rapped on the window pane. A white, feminine hand. Long, but thin, with pristine nails and soft-looking skin.