Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Epilogue

(Alden Spiess)

UnityPoliceForce turn to TheUnitySociety for help on an impossible problem that has left them DeadInTheWater...

guest starring Jude Law as MrFlanagan

Episode 1

OfficerDown comes to 122 with a concerned expression, and even more concerning news: FrankShort has had a fight with Lloyd McDonall, and has turned in his badge. OfficerDown doesn't know much, but thinks it's something to do with the Farley case, which will now be in the hands of SergeantBent.

Hayes remembers that Frank stopped in to buy a bottle of 'tea' a few days ago. Given that Frank doesn't normally drink, this is not a good sign, and they head over directly. Frank is... not at his most coherent. He's been through Hayes' moonshine, and most of a case courtesy of GilCobbett. He can't do much more than get out the words "She was only 16...", "What's the point?". The eagle-eyed team do spot a smudged, cried-on and incomprehensible letter on the desk, and they make out the words "Mathew", "I'm sorry.." and the name "Lissa".

Frank's wife, doesn't turn up much of help, except that Frank's been troubled lately, but they do get the name of Frank's brother - Mathew.

Having cleaned Frank up, they leave him to sober up a bit, and go looking for information. They turn up a Thomas and Elisa Farley in the county records - a dock worker and his wife, who died recently. A little bribery of one of the town's more prestigious undertakers turns up very little except that dockers in the slums don't normally get expensive funerals - but they are pointed at the ParishChurchOfSaintAdrian, on the edge of the slums.

The church graveyard contains a fresh grave, with a simple wooden cross with the name "E Farley" on it, and a rather more informative church ledger, guarded by the cantankerous and fiercely Northern Irish verger, MichaelPartridge. The ledger records both the burial of Elisa Farley - with the mysterious motto "UPHQ" and a tick beside it, and her marriage a year earlier to Thomas Farley, under the name Elisa Short.

The motto "UPHQ" is quickly determined to mean "Unity Police Headquarters", and the tick means paid in full: Elisa was buried by the police, and may be the daughter of Frank's brother.

They return to the Shorts to talk to Frank about it, but Frank refuses to discuss it, and strongly tells the group to leave the whole mess alone. As they leave, he asks Hayes how he sleeps at night.

Soon after leaving, a previous cast for information turns up unwanted results, when RobertaHenry calls back. Though she didn't know anything about the Farley case when Rebecca called her before, she's dug up gold: a body keeps appearing in the river each night, and disappears from the morgue by morning. She drags them to the river to watch Sergeant Bent reclaim it.

Episode 2

A little more digging uncovers more of Elisa Farley, nee Short's, short and tragic story. Sent to board at the Gerhardt School of Juvenile Advancement, she was expelled at about the same time as JamesBlunt (son of the Blunt shipping co.), who is only now recovering his footing in good society following a nasty scandal.

The group decide to call on Sgt Bent, and he fills in the end of the story - he picked up Elisa for prostitution, not knowing who she was, as she wandered from the slums towards the better parts of Unity. She died in the cells, and was buried in the graveyard at St Adrian's. And it's her body they keep pulling out the river. Bent has no idea how the body is removed from the morgue - he watched the door all night after the first time it happened, and no-one got in or out, but it still disappeared. The night after that, Frank sat up with the body, in the morgue - and the morning after that, he had his fight with Lloyd, and quit. Bent makes it quite clear that anyone who wants to cast aspersions on Lloyd over this had better have something to back it up with, but offers to help the group out anyway.

Bent gets the group into the Police HQ, and down into the morgue, and 'borrows' the station log for them to look at. It makes interesting reading: Elisa's cause of death was "Opium Sickness", and is signed by one MarkStein, who Bent explains is the doctor that handles the poor cases, unlike QuincyJones, who doesn't like to associate too much with anything to do with the slums.

There are 4 other girls dead of Opium Sickness in the log, going back to August 24:

• "M Benet, Vice, 21, CoD Opium Sickness, 28 Nov 25, MS"
• "Betty Hawford, Prostitution, 17, CoD Opium Sickness, 11 Sept 25, MS"
• "Clare 'Rivers', Public Drunkenness, 23, Opium Sickness, 03 Jan 25, MS"
• "'Lydia', No surname, lewd Conduct, Prostitution, no age given, CoD Opium Sickness, 17 August 24, MS"

Suddenly, the body sits bolt upright. It looks from side to side, then slowly gets down from the table. It pauses, buttoning its blouse, then slowly walks over to the side of the morgue, waits for a moment, then walks through the wall, as if it was nothing but mist, disappearing from view. Johnson and Jackie, who are down in the morgue, search, and quickly find a secret door where the corpse walked through the wall. It opens onto a staircase that leads through another secret door into Lloyd McDonall's office. As they step into the office, the corpse turns round and walks out - Jack tries to stop it, but it drag him with it, collapses down the stairs, and then climbs into the empty coffin in the morgue. When they open the lid, the corpse is gone. This pushes Jack over the edge, and leaves him obsessively trying to straighten the edges of the coffin lid until morning comes.

Episode 3

A quick trip to Dr Jackson's later, and Jack is mostly back to normal, albeit with a set of small pine-scented wooden cubes to fiddle with, whenever things start getting a bit much for him.

The next step is clearly to pay a call on Mark Stein, and see whether he's got anything to add to the history of the girls, and Elisa. The group had only found a single needle-mark in Elisa's arm, marking the 'Opium Sickness' line somewhat less than entirely convincing.

According to Sgt Bent, Stein has not been in work for a few days, but he knows Mark's home address, and the group go there. Mark Stein lives in a crumbling, large, and once rather nice house on Church Street, facing the river. Now surrounded by the slums, and down-river of the industrial district the area is rather less desirable, and Mark's house fits in perfectly.

Rebecca has brought Henry with her, and he immediately starts acting up as the group arrive, snarling and whining. They knock, and though they hear movement within the house, there is no answer. They sneak round the back, and see a serviceable black trap, with pony hobbled to it, in the walled rear yard, but nothing else of note.

Rather than take precipitate action, they group calls on Sgt bent again, and arranges a return visit to the morgue, this time to include all the party. They help Bent fish the body out the river, which gets them into the station, but are unable to persuade Bent to sit up with it in the morgue with them. They drag the empty coffin out the morgue and leave it by the cells outside (somewhat startling the inmate) and bind the corpse to the table with surgical wire.

Their efforts have little effect, unfortunately - the corpse sits up as before, leaving the unbroken wire still hanging from the table, and walks through the wall. Rebecca rushes off to get Bent, but the corpse is gone by the time they get back, so she drags him upstairs through the offices, and past Lt Neiss, to Lloyd's office. Unfortunately, by the time they get there, the corpse has turned round, and there's nothing to see but a startled Robert and Jack. The corpse falls down the stairs in the secret passage as before, gets up, and then lies down in the spot on the morgue floor where the coffin has been. Then, before Hayes' rather surprised eyes, it simply vanishes.

Neiss and Bent are... not altogether convinced.. by the group's story of walking corpses, and vanishing bodies, but are interested by the secret doors and passage, which Neiss immediately identifies as recent alterations to an old feature which had been boarded up. The group are kept in for questioning, but eventually released without fuss - partly because Neiss can't figure why the group would show him the secret passage if they were behind the body's disappearance, and partly because he doesn't want it too obvious that he's let a bunch of civilians wander around in Lloyd's office.

Having alienated themselves from the police, the group decide to tackle Stein's house again. This time, however, the door is answered by Stein's spooky housemaid, who insists that Stein is not receiving visitors (in a clipped voice, with un-natural intonation), and will not budge when pushed. Henry _really_ doesn't get on with her, and eventually almost drags Rebecca away. The group leaves, planning to return later.

A call to the operator turns up Mark Stein's number, and a quick test call is answered by the spooky housemaid (who insists that he can't come to the phone), so the group arranges for Flanagan to call at an arranged time, and while the maid's engaged they sneak in round the back.

Hayes examines the back door, and to his surprise it turns out to be unlocked. Apparently. The group sneak in, and a quick and quiet search of the ground floor turns up a heavily bloodstained old wooden dining table in a room full of surgical implements, and a pantry full of human parts. Rebecca puts a hand in her handbag (where else?!), and the characters leave before the maid finishes her call, and comes to find them.

Episode 4

The group return to 122 to discuss tactics, and examine the hand - which twitches. This occasions some surprise, and once eliminated as sufficient evidence for a police raid, the hand is quickly packed off to 12DevonLane.

While tempted by a combination of outright assault and arson, the group settles on a more subtle approach, and goes through the newspapers, turning up, amongst other things, a request for information on SarahPrice, Lloyd's maid, who went missing several years ago, and some veiled references to a nasty business in the University in Providence, with Mark Stein failing to make the grade in the final exams, but graduating anyway, and several unsolved murders of young girls at around the same time.

Rebecca sketches the face of Mark Stein's maid, and while familiar to none of the families of the dead girls, all of them (that can be found) find it familiar. However, Sgt Bent recognises it immediately - it's Lloyd McDonall's current maid: or at least of a couple of months ago.

The group decides to stake out Mark Stein's house, and see if there's anything they can learn. They hole up in the half-built SandersonHouse, across the river, and watch through Jack's binoculars. As dusk falls they see a cloaked and hooded figure riding off from the house in a pony and trap, and dawn sees it return. A light burns in an upstairs window all night.

Jack sneaks round the back of the house. He can't scale the wall of the yard because of the broken glass set in the mortar at the top, but he stands on a bin, and lobs a vial of Rebecca's perfume at the trap: it misses, but comes close enough to splash it.

The following night, Rebecca takes Henry for a walk, and they follow the trail of scent from Stein's house to a rather posh residence in Old Unity. Robert Johnson recognises it from a society function his wife dragged him to: it's Lloyd McDonall's home.

The group decide to gamble on the figure on the cart being the creepy housemaid, and breaks into Stein's house. He hears them on the stairs, and when they burst into his study, he's ready: slumped and defeated, he relates his twisted confession...

"TBD: Stein's confession"

The group order him to his feet, and take him to police headquarters to relate his story there. He seems co-operative enough, but as they reach the river he exclaims "I can't do it!", and runs for the river edge. Hayes and Jack both fire, but the bullets go wild, and Stein dives in. RobertJohnson plunges into the icy February water after him.

Robert surges strongly against the arctic flow, but Stein is younger and fitter, and has a good lead, he swims under the bridge, climbs aboard a rowing boat, and has it untied and moving with the current by the time Johnson arrives. The cold has cut through to Robert by this point, and it is all he can do to hang on.

Hayes and Jack spread out to cover both banks of the river, and Robert, through chattering teeth, warns Stein that there is no-where he can escape to, as he heads for the centre of the river when a woman's dead hand pops up, to float to the left of the boat. Another quickly follows, off to the right, and a dead woman's face, ahead and to the left. The limbs begin to move and drift closer. All Robert can see is foam and icy water, and all he can hear is his own voice screaming.

When Robert comes round he is on board the rowing boat, which is drifting slowly to the bank where Sgt Bent waits patiently for the body of Elisa Farley to arrive. There is no sign of Mark Stein. The boat beaches on the shore, and shortly after, one by one, 6 bodies of young girls drift to the shore, all with missing parts, and some badly decomposed.

Rebecca rushed the nearly frozen Robert Johnson to hospital, while Jack and Hayes dragged Sgt Bent to Mark Stein's house, and showed him the pantry full of body parts in jars. He promptly classified the house as a crime scene, and stood guard until Lt Neiss turned up to begin a full investigation.

Epilogue

Robert Johnson was diagnosed with pneumonia, but thanks to prompt action by Rebecca and the hospital staff, he made a full recovery.

The bodies recovered from the river were given a full burial at St Adrian's. They did not rise again.

Lt Neiss impounded the contents of Mark Stein's house, and began an investigation. No conclusion has yet been reached.

Mark Stein's housemaid did not return to the house the following dawn, and has not been seen since. Mark's body was never found.

With Mark Stein's death, and the disappearance of his maid, there was insufficient evidence to link the terrible events to Lloyd McDonall. He continues as Police Chief of Unity.

Frank Short could not bring himself to either face Lloyd, or return to work.

RobertaHenry was tipped off that Lloyd had been taking advantage of young girls, and Mark Stein had silenced them. To date, no story has appeared in print.

Next: RogerBaconsOtherHead