Robin got home a little after 1:00 p.m., his head still buzzing with Matthew’s words. Emma’s had faded into the background, and the hardback he was carrying seemed to pulse with the secrets he had written down.
He threw his keys on the kitchen table. The room wasn’t a total mess, but it wasn’t exactly clean either. There was an organized stack of dirty dishes on the draining board, which Sam would never have accepted. Robin, on the other hand, had let standards slip since she had gone. He only really tidied up when he was expecting company, and besides Emma, no one came around anymore. His friends had been Sam’s friends as well, and meeting them felt wrong without her. Evidently they felt the same way because he hadn’t talked to most of them in a year.
He put the kettle on and turned to find his laptop on the kitchen table. He looked at it for a few seconds before sitting down in front of it. He opened it up and logged in. Emma’s voice was in the back of his head telling him not to, but he went to Google and typed the one word that had been swirling around in his head for hours: Standedge. He clicked Search and was absorbed.
Standedge was the name of a canal tunnel in Marsden, Huddersfield.
Huddersfield.
That couldn’t be a coincidence.
The last time he saw Sam was in this very room. He was sitting in this very chair, poring over a laptop just as he was now. It was 8:15 a.m. on August 28, 2016, and he had been up all night, trying to make an article slightly more interesting. Sam came into the room with her suitcase, and he didn’t even look up.
He did now. The kitchen was empty, but he could almost see the ghost of her standing there in the doorway. She was going to the station. She made her money as a traveling lecturer, always on the move. Robin didn’t like her being away but was proud of her for being so proactive. And she was good at her job. Universities were always fighting over her.
That day she was going to the University of Huddersfield. She kissed him—he didn’t savor it enough—and she told him again how to look after her cacti, after he had somehow managed to kill the last batch.
He looked away from the empty doorway to the kitchen windowsill. Her cacti were lined up on it. The same ones from that day. Alive and kicking. Waiting for her to come back.
Huddersfield.
What did it mean? Did it mean anything? He didn’t know. But it was another piece of the puzzle. There was no way the number, the nickname and Huddersfield could be a coincidence.
He pressed on.
The first website he clicked on was the Standedge Visitor Centre. Standedge was the longest canal tunnel in England and looked like it was a fairly successful tourist spot, with guided tours in the summer on canal boats. Was this what Matthew was talking about—going through?
The second website he visited detailed the history of the tunnel, which he skimmed. It seemed to have an extensive past—built over a period of sixteen years from 1795 to 1811, costing around sixteen thousand pounds, being the deepest and the longest canal tunnel in Britain, connecting a village called Marsden to one named Diggle. Any other time, he probably would have been quite happy to peruse these details with interest, but it wasn’t what he was looking for.
Scrolling through the rest of the results, he found nothing really relevant.
So he searched “Matthew Standedge.” This came up with mostly the same results.
He searched “Matthew Standedge disappearances,” and he finally found what he was searching for on the third result.
It was an article from a Huddersfield regional paper. The more he read, the closer he got to the screen.
This was it. He opened the copy of Without Her and ripped out the marked-up page, clicking his pen top.
The Mystery of the Standedge Five
by Jane Hargreaves
Police are baffled as five local young people go missing inside Britain’s longest canal tunnel. At 2.31 p.m. on the 26th of June 2018, six local university students and a Bedlington terrier entered Standedge canal tunnel from the Marsden end, on a traditional narrow boat. Two hours and twelve minutes later, the boat emerged on the other side (the Diggle end) with only one of the students, knocked unconscious on the deck, and the terrier. Five of the students, Tim Claypath (21), Rachel Claypath (21), Edmund Sunderland (20), Prudence Pack (21) and Robert Frost (20), disappeared without a trace inside Standedge. The survivor, Matthew McConnell (21), claims to have no knowledge of what happened to his fellow students.
The disappearance of the Claypath twins is of personal importance to the Chief of local police, their father, DCI Roger Claypath, who issued this statement earlier today: ‘My wife and I are devastated by the disappearances of our children and we are actively seeking to bring the right party to justice. We are pursuing a number of leads, but it seems that Matthew McConnell, who we thought of as our children’s friend, had the means and the knowledge to carry out a horrific act of deception and murder. As is public knowledge, McConnell was employed by the Canal & River Trust to give tours inside the tunnel, which is why the students were allowed to pass unattended. Given his station, he knew of the various ways out of Standedge from the inside. Timing is still an issue and we are still trying to create a timeline of what exactly happened. We ask that the press respect the families of those dealing with this tremendous loss, including my own.’
McConnell is currently recovering from a head injury (that the police believe was self-inflicted) in Anderson Hospital. He will be transported to a holding cell when he recovers while the investigation team finalises the case against him.
The bodies of the five missing young people have yet to be recovered. A source said, ‘The bodies are not in the tunnel, as the police have sent divers into the canal. They seem increasingly frustrated in trying to find out what happened to the five students. DCI Claypath has people working around the clock to try and bring this story to an end, no matter how tragic it may be.’
Huddersfield Press reached out to the Canal & River Trust for comments on the situation. They refused to comment, other than to give sympathies to the families affected by this tragedy.
Robin stopped reading and looked down at his notes. He’d been writing without knowing it. He’d listed the names: Tim Claypath, Rachel Claypath, Edmund Sunderland, Robert Frost and Prudence Pack. And he’d circled McConnell. Matthew McConnell. Everything he read lined up with what Matthew said. Five kids, students, went missing inside the tunnel, but Matthew was left behind.
This supposedly happened on June 26 this year? Less than two months ago. How the hell had he not heard about this? This should have been national news; this should have been in every newspaper in the country. But he hadn’t heard a thing about it—hadn’t even known what Standedge was.
And leaving the paper’s website, he found that the other results were irrelevant. Only one result about this mass disappearance—it didn’t make sense.
He searched “Matthew McConnell Claypath Standedge Tunnel 26th June 2018.” This only brought up one page of results. In addition to the newspaper article, there were a number of articles, all from one other website. He clicked on the first link and went to a site that seemed like it was from the early days of the internet. At the top of the site in big red text was the masthead, THE RED DOOR. Robin was immediately suspicious—it felt like a site that housed a million viruses—but as he read the first article, it did seem to have useful information.
McConnell Pleads Innocence in the
Crime of the Century
by The Red Door 17/07/18 16.44 p.m.
Matthew McConnell, the lone survivor of the Standedge Incident, has once again pleaded his innocence, as he was transferred from Anderson Hospital to HMP New Hall. The Red Door (the only outlet to witness his arrival at New Hall [Ed: What’s up with that?]) heard McConnell’s shouts that he was innocent and didn’t remember anything after entering the tunnel on the 26th of June 2018.
You guys know I love a good mystery but the deck is stacked against McConnell on this one. There are just too many factors that go against him. You see, Standedge is, actually, a set of four tunnels. The left one is abandoned, the right two are working train lines and the ‘middle’ one is the canal. McConnell worked as a tour guide, meaning he would know this and be able to navigate the abandoned tunnel with ease. What’s more, he’d have the keys to be able to unlock the large gates blocking the tunnel entrance. And furthermore, a couple of McConnell’s acquaintances (you know, the ones that weren’t spirited away) said that the guy had a beef with the guys he went on his swan song voyage with.
Now, this is still crazy. How McConnell pulled off this crime is insane. He killed everyone, transported the bodies to a secret location, got back to the boat and cleaned up after himself, all in time to bonk himself on the head and collapse on the deck before the boat reappeared at the other end. That’s seriously wacky!
Unless... Maybe McConnell’s innocent. Maybe Tim Claypath, Rachel Claypath, Pru Pack, Edmund Sunderland and Robert Frost just simply disappeared. And whatever force evaporated them also knocked out McConnell in the process. Food for thought.
Maybe I should investigate some more! God, I love this job!
What do you guys think? Comment down below and be sure to subscribe to The Red Door feed to keep up to date with all the weird news you can handle. Peace!
The article was far less eloquent than the one from the paper, but the information still lined up. And it said that Matthew had been moved to New Hall. The same place Matthew was calling from—there was no way this wasn’t real.
The only thing Robin didn’t—and no doubt wouldn’t—find among the articles was Matthew’s link to Sam. If Matthew was telling the truth about Sam, she had called him out of the blue. He didn’t know her. He had said she was “flustered.” Why hadn’t Sam called Robin? If she was in trouble, why hadn’t she called him?
Robin spent the rest of the day and evening on the internet. When Emma rang him, he ignored it. He started to print out the important articles he found and opened a folder to put them in. The Standedge Incident seemed to be somewhat of an anomaly—an unusual crime that was not covered by the national news. Most of the information he found was on The Red Door, a site that only got weirder the longer he spent on it. Why were no official outlets covering this? When he did find a more official article—newspapers and websites—the snippets were always short and vague.
Robin found a group picture of the missing students with one of The Red Door articles. They were standing by Standedge Canal Tunnel—Robin recognized it from the Visitor Centre website. In the foreground stood Tim Claypath, a dominant force in the picture with everyone else seemingly gravitating toward him. He was youthful, attractive, alive. His eyes seemed to glint, even on the screen. Next to him was his sister, Rachel. Robin could tell, even without the caption. She shared the same eyes as her brother, the same fire, the same beauty. Beside the Claypath twins were three more young people. Edmund Sunderland, sandy haired and tall, stood close to Tim, looking into the camera with a strong intensity that made Robin feel his slight smile was deliberate. On Rachel’s side, two people stood, slightly turned into each other as though in conversation just before the photo was taken. This was Pru Pack and Robert Frost, and their beaming smiles indicated their sheer joy at just being there. If Robin had to guess, Pru and Robert were in a relationship, and weren’t exactly hiding it. At the front of them all, jumping up to fit in the frame and therefore being immortalized a little fuzzily, was a gray Bedlington terrier. The caption said: Amygdala (Amy). The date of the picture was June 26, 2018. The day of the voyage, and the day these people (minus the dog) vanished.
Robin stared at the faces of the Standedge Five, his eyes sliding across the picture, and then he noticed that someone else was in the picture. If the caption hadn’t pointed him out, Robin may have missed him. Behind Edmund Sunderland, a few steps away, standing next to the canal and looking over it and not into the camera, was another young man. He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, in comparison to the others’ smarter shirts and trousers and dresses, and he had his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t smiling—he had an entirely blank expression, as though he were thinking absolutely nothing. He obviously wasn’t aware of the picture being taken. The caption said that this was Matthew McConnell.
Robin peered at him, getting closer to the picture, turning it, as though that would help him to better see past Edmund Sunderland. Something in one of the articles nagged at him, and he looked at the expanding mess of printed articles scattered across the table. A few minutes and he found what he was looking for. The Red Door article that said Matthew may have had something against the rest of the group. This picture seemed to illustrate that, and what was more, maybe the rest of the group had something against him. Matthew hadn’t mentioned anything to indicate that. But seeing as he was in prison charged with their murders, Robin guessed it wouldn’t be the first thing he’d talk about.
Robin scratched his chin, feeling the stubble that had appeared since the morning. The natural light in the kitchen was dying, and he got up to turn on the overhead light. From his new vantage point, he looked down at the table. It was a mess. And it didn’t really amount to anything.
All Robin knew was that it was real. Matthew was telling the truth about Standedge. His friends were gone. And he was left. He’d left out the dog, but that hardly seemed important. His friends vanished—they were gone. They went into the tunnel and they didn’t come out.
It was definitely a mystery—a rather tantalizing one. One of the articles had detailed how long the journey took—two hours and twelve minutes. Two hours and twelve minutes of untracked, unseen and unknowable events. And the only lifeline into that world, that chunk of missing time, was Matthew McConnell, unless the dog started talking anytime soon.
Of course the police would suspect Matthew. Of course they would arrest him. Because, with all the facts Robin had, there was no possibility other than Matthew killing his friends. The puzzle for the police would be where the bodies were, and they would lean on Matthew until he told all the truths he had to give.
Did Robin think Matthew was guilty? Or innocent? He didn’t have enough to go on. But he was intrigued. Even without the fact that he had questions for Matthew. About Sam.
“Are you leading me somewhere, Sam?” Robin muttered, under his breath.
There was no answer. Except from the traffic noise on the street and a whoop from a passerby who was no doubt enjoying the benefits—and not yet suffering the drawbacks—of alcohol on a Saturday night.
Robin turned the light off again and decided to go to bed.
After a quick shower, he climbed into bed, lying on the right side of the double. Three years later and he still kept to his side, even when he was fast asleep and not consciously thinking.
He thought of Matthew McConnell and he thought about what he had said to him, and more important, how he’d said it. If he took everything Matthew said as true, Sam had told him that he, Robin, was someone to trust.
Why had she told that to a total stranger? Why had she called Matthew?
He lay in bed for half an hour—sleep nowhere to be found. One question swirled around in his head: How could six people go into a canal tunnel and only one come out?
Robin thought for a moment of the voice on the phone that morning, the young man asking for his help, realizing he had known what he would say for hours now.
Yes.