After the Cabin (13 page)

Finally I locate a camera overlooking the train station, and I start going back through the archives to find footage from the night when I thought I was being chased. I know roughly where the hidden cameraman must have been standing, so I figure it shouldn't be too hard to get a shot of him. When I try to open the relevant files, however, I get an error message about the original sources not being in the correct location on the drive. I try a few more with the same result, before clicking on another and managing to bring up an image. This one doesn't give me the angle I need, but as I look through more and more, I start noticing a pattern.

Every file that might help me is gone. It's as if someone went through the system and deliberately removed the files that I might come looking for.

I freeze for a moment, trying to work out how...

Freddie.

I turn and look around, but there's no sign of him. Still, if he sits here night after night, he'd certainly be able to keep track of pretty much anyone in town. He'd need an accomplice, someone out there who could follow orders and hold the hand-held camera, but from this little control room at the edge of the industrial estate Freddie would be almost like a god, overseeing the entire town. He claimed not to have the password for the camera I needed the other night, but I have no way of knowing whether he was telling the truth. If he and Bryson were working together, they could easily have tracked every move I made over the past few weeks. I know the whole thing sound insane, like some kind of paranoid conspiracy theory, but right now it's the only thing that makes sense. I have to trust myself for a few more hours and hope that I haven't completely lost my mind.

Pulling my phone out, I bring up my mother's number.

“Anna,” she says as soon as she answers, “where -”

“Just listen to me,” I reply, before she can ask any questions. “Mum, has anyone been to the house looking for me?”

“No, but -”

“Someone will,” I continue. My chest is so tight with fear, I can barely speak. “Whatever you do, don't let him in. He'll say he's from the police, he'll have all the right badges, but you have to promise you won't let him in.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks. “Anna, why would the police be looking for you? Have you done something?”

Staring at the banks of monitors, I see grainy image after grainy image showing shots from cameras dotted all over the town. There are people out drinking near the center, cars heading toward the roundabout, smokers outside the pub next to the train station, and more besides. After a moment, I spot a camera covering the hotel's front door, and a plan starts to form in the back of my mind.

“Anna, talk to me!” Mum continues, her voice filled with worry now. “It's almost ten, why aren't you home? Are you staying out again?”

“I don't know,” I whisper, as I start searching through the archives on the computer.

“Anna, you're starting to scare me. I want you to come home immediately. Don't you remember what happened the last time you pushed yourself like this? You need to -”

“Rest, I know,” I mutter, feeling a flash of relief as I see that the hard drives I need are apparently in a storage section, which means they might not have been wiped. Getting to my feet, I head through to the next room and find a set of cabinets. “Mum,” I continue, “you just have to trust me. Believe me, I know how hard that is right now, but just try for a little while longer. Either I'm right, or I've lost my mind, but I'll know soon enough. The police are dangerous, or at least one of them is. He's part of this, and I think he's working with the people who control the cameras in town.”

“What cameras?”

“The security cameras!” I hiss, opening the first cabinet and finding stacks of hard drives. I start checking through them, hoping to find the one I need. Why can't she keep up? “It's complicated, but one of these people was in Norway, one of them was hiding at the cabin while I was being tortured. I thought there were four of them after Marit died and before Cole showed up, but there must have been five all along.”

“Oh, Anna...”

“I'm not making this up!” I shout, slamming the cupboard door shut and moving on to the next. “You'll see, I'll prove it. I just have to find the footage so I can work out where Matt and Karen were when they disappeared.”

I look through more drives, but after a moment I realize I can hear my mother sobbing on the other end of the phone-line.

“Mum?”

“You need help, Anna,” she whimpers. “Oh my poor dear baby, you need help. Come home and we'll make sure that -”

“You're not listening!” I tell her, trying not to sound too upset. “You'll understand when -”

Suddenly I hear the sound of the doorbell at Mum's house.

“Wait a moment,” she tells me, sniffing back tears, “I have to -”

“It'll be them,” I reply, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. “It'll be Detective Bryson or someone else from the police. They're not on my side, Mum! They're trying to get me! Whatever they tell you, it's a lie!”

“Anna -”

“Stall them,” I continue. “Don't tell them you heard from me!”

“Anna, please, come home.”

I open my mouth to reply, but a moment later I hear over the phone that Mum has opened the front door.

“Mrs. Matthews,” Bryson's voice says, “is Anna -”

Cutting the call, I quickly switch my phone off so they can't track my location. Once I've checked the second cupboard, I go to the third, and then the fourth. Starting to feel exasperated, I can't help wondering whether the hard drives I need might have been deliberately moved out of here. I wouldn't put it past Freddie to be so sneaky. After all, he and Bryson must be pretty smart to have set all of this up in the first place. Wherever he is now, Freddie can probably still see me. Hell, I bet he's laughing his head off. Slamming the fourth cupboard shut, I pull open the door to the fifth and final -

Suddenly something heavy comes slumping out, landing against me and knocking me back. I manage to stay on my feet, but I watch in horror as Freddie's dead body hits the floor. I can immediately see the thick gash in his neck, and there are thick patches of blood dried all over his chest.

I should scream.

I should cry out and run.

Instead, I lean down and check that he's really dead, and then I step over him so I can keep looking for the right hard drives. Maybe I've become desensitized to all of this, and I swear I can feel a scream trapped somewhere in my chest, but right now I'm driven by a single-minded determination to find the right hard drive. I can break down later, I can sob and wail and moan once I know what's really happening, but there's no time for that now. I have to find the truth. Just as I think I'm not going to have any luck, however, my fumbling hands finally locate the drive with the footage from outside the hotel. I look down at Freddie's body for a moment and feel a shiver of sorrow, but I quickly hurry past him, heading back through to the main room.

“I'm sorry,” I stammer, trying to stay calm as I plug the drive in. “Really, I swear. I just have to know.”

Getting to work, I locate the archive footage for the day when Matt went missing. Part of me expects to find that the footage in question is missing, but to my relief I find that no-one has tampered with the drive at all. I sit and watch through the black-and-white images on triple-speed until finally I spot Matt emerging from the front of the hotel, talking to someone on his phone. This footage isn't so useful in itself, but the time and date information will allow me to work out which cameras should have picked him up next. It takes a while, but eventually I locate another hard drive and pull up the footage from a CCTV camera near the bus station, and sure enough I'm able to see Matt wandering along on the day of his disappearance, still talking on his phone.

There are thirty-two monitors on the wall, and I think I'm going to need them all. It's like putting together a vast, constantly-changing jigsaw puzzle of moving images.

I work like this for hours, jumping from one camera to another, following him about town as he drops by a couple of shops and eventually starts wandering home. He spends some time waiting for a bus on Maitland Street, but eventually he seems to change his mind and he starts wandering toward the train station. He takes a couple of detours along the way and I lose him once or twice, but through a process of elimination I manage to pick him up again each time. Checking my watch at one point, I see that it's almost 3am, but I keep going, occasionally having to go back into the storage room and grab more drives. I know I should call someone about Freddie, but I can't trust the police so I figure I just have to keep working. Once I've figured all of this out, I'll be able to make everyone understand what's really happening.

Eventually, I see a shot of Matt getting into a car. I don't see who's driving, but I get a clear shot of the number-plate and I'm able to follow the car as it heads away from the town center. I don't have access to the town's traffic cameras, but I can still make do with images that show streets in the background, even if this approach is slower. Eventually I realize that the car is getting closer to the industrial estate, and finally I watch as it pulls up outside a large building in a deserted area. I don't have a very good shot this time, but I can tell that Matt gets out of the car with the driver, and then they head into the building. I keep watching, biting my nails to the quick, but several hours pass at triple-speed before the driver – whose face I can't make out at all – emerges from the building and drives away.

I keep scrolling through the footage, but still Matt doesn't come out of the building. The car comes back a few times, and the same indistinct, pixellated figure goes in and out, but Matt seems to still be in there. Eventually I look at the time-stamp and see that it's well past the time when he went missing.

“He's in there,” I whisper, staring at the footage of the building, as the mysterious visitor emerges and once again drives away. I rewind and lean closer to the screen, trying desperately to work out whether I recognize the visitor, but the image is way too distant and blocky. I keep watching for a while, but there's still no sign of Matt.

I need to call someone.

I need to get help, but there's no-one left to trust. Finally I realize that as insane as it sounds, I have to uncover the truth myself.

***

There's no car outside the building when I finally get there a few hours later, shortly before sunrise. The industrial estate is mostly shrouded in darkness, with just a few lights here and there to illuminate doors. From what I saw on the footage, the only person who ever goes in or out of the building at the far end of the row is the same person who comes in the car, so I figure the coast should be clear right now.

I glance over my shoulder, but there's definitely no-one following me. Out here, beyond the edge of town, I'd definitely see if I was being watched. At least, that's what I tell myself.

I make my way quickly over to the door at the corner. When I try the handle, I find to my surprise that the place isn't locked, so I quickly slip inside. My heart is pounding and I know I'm putting myself in danger, but I also know that I don't have an alternative. If I call the police, Bryson will find me, and right now I feel as if every possible contact is compromised. Even my own mother might have turned against me. I just need to get an idea of what's happening here, and besides, I've got a can of mace spray as well as a wrench that I picked up while I was leaving the surveillance company's office. Unless someone pulls a gun on me, I'm pretty damn confident I can look after myself.

It's not like I have any choice. I have to know what's really happening.

Making sure to stay as quiet as possible, I look along the dark corridor, with just a solitary light in the ceiling to show the way. Once I'm certain that there's no sign of anyone, and that there don't seem to be cameras around, I make my way cautiously toward the steps at the far end, and then I look down into the darkness that I guess leads to some kind of basement. Standing like this at the top of a set of steps, I can't help thinking back to the wooden steps that I found in the cabin. When I went down those three years ago, I ended up being dragged into a nightmare, but I force myself to remember that it's different this time. For one thing, I'm not the same naive, trusting girl, and for another, I'm more than capable of fighting back. Besides, if I turn around now, I have nowhere else to go.

I'm so close to the truth.

When I reach the bottom of the steps, I find myself in a dark room, unable to see anything except a faint glow of light at the far end, seemingly coming from another room. Reaching out, I manage to find the wall and I start edging through the darkness, but I stop after a few paces when I realize I can hear the faintest scuffling sound coming from up ahead. I tell myself that I'm just imagining it, that there's probably no-one here and I've misjudged the entire situation, but once I start walking again I'm able to hear the scuffling sound more clearly. Whatever it is, it's just around the next corner, in another room and -

Suddenly I stop as I see a camera on a tripod, set up near the door and pointing further into the room. There's a red light on the side, and even from here I can tell that there's an image flashing across the viewfinder. My chest feels so tight, I actually might have a heart attack, but after taking the can of mace spray from my pocket I edge forward, prepared to defend myself at any moment. I almost expect the camera to suddenly disappear, for it to be another hallucination, but with every step it seems more real. Finally I get to the doorway and look through.