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He patted Annie’s backside. Then, suddenly, he paused, tilted his head, seemed to be preoccupied by private thoughts and memories.

‘It’s not as spacious down there as you’d think,’ he said quietly, almost to himself. ‘In fact, it’s tight. Very tight. And noisy. Sometimes, you think it’s the noise that’ll drive you mad rather than the… the other things.’ He turned to Annie and smiled coldly. ‘It’s hard to describe, but you’ll see for yourself. It’s not a nice place, but at least we’ll have each other. Just you and me. Together. And I’ll be concentrating on you, dear – very closely –
all the time.’

Gould hooked his arm around Annie’s elbow.

‘Can’t hang about any longer,’ he said. ‘They want me back down there. I can feel them pulling in. But that’s okay – at least this time, I won’t be alone.’

He led Annie carefully towards the green glow emerging from the open office doorway.

‘You’ll not be going far, I’m afraid, DI Tyler,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘In fact, you’re likely to be sitting just where you are now for a really quite spectacular length of time. With nothing but your thoughts for company.’ He winked. ‘But don’t give up all hope. Your strength may return. And then you can head off somewhere, and take all your misery and pain with you. Which will be nice.’

He laughed, and steered Annie towards the sickly green light.

‘Goodbye, DI Tyler. One-nil to me, I think. Yes – most definitely one-nil to
me
.’

Sam felt the tears flowing down his face. They half-blinded him, turning the world around him into a distorted blur. His last glimpse of Annie’s face was a green oval set against black, drowned and obscured by gushing salt water.

But the tears did not freeze. They trickled down his face – just as water was starting to trickle down the jagged icicles hanging from the ceiling. Drips were falling from everywhere, at first sporadically, then like a summer shower, then like hard rain, and suddenly there was a deluge and the whole room was streaming with water. The icicles now looked more like upside-down fountains, pouring themselves onto the floor. Sam’s breath was no longer steaming about him. He felt warm air on his hands and face, and with it, strength seemed to return to his limbs. He stirred, lifted his head, raised his hand and dashed the water from his eyes.

And then there was a resounding crash, powerful enough to shake the floor like an earthquake, to rattle the gaming chips stacked on the tables, to spin the thawing roulette wheels, and bring down the thick icicles from the ceiling like a rain of falling spears.

‘Gould!’ a voice bellowed, cutting through the sound of rushing water. Sam knew the voice at once – and his heart leapt at the sound ‘Don’t you move, you vertical pile of suited shite! You are royally
nicked,
my lovely!’

There was a blur of beige camel hair and flash of white loafer, cutting through the overpowering gloom of hellish green, followed by a deafening shotgun blast and a blaze of light. A ragged hole exploded in the ceiling, brining down a cascade of melting ice and shattered plaster onto of the roulette tables.

Gould, with Annie still hooked on his arm, turned, saw who had just come bursting into his casino, and snarled.

Standing ankle-deep in running water, being drenched by the thawing ice, stood Gene Hunt, a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun in his hands.

‘
That
was a warning shot,’ he declared, and lowered the gun so it aimed straight at Gould’s face. ‘Next one’s the doozy.’

Gene stood fierce and resolute – and he did not stand alone. To his left stood Ray, very much alive and unbloodied, no gaping bullet hole in his chest, but standing there in his corduroy jacket and slack tie, chewing gum whilst smoking a roll-up. And to Gene’s right stood Chris, resplendent in a knitted, diamond pattern tank-top over a lemon yellow fly-wing collared shirt. Like the Guv, they both held shotguns too. Carroll, Walsh and Darby had evidently been despatched and disarmed. All barrels were aimed straight at Gould.

Standing together like that, there was an aura about them, like the rays of the sun, cutting through the icy cold and dispelling it, thawing the deep frost and bringing life to what was once dead. There was a chemistry that kicked in, an alchemical power that could only be realised by them coming together as a unit.

Sam felt heat and life surging through him. Sopping wet, he got to his feet.

‘It was you, Guv!’ he gasped, almost hysterical with relief. ‘You and Chris and Ray! It was
you
I saw on the road back there, following me! Wasn’t it!’

‘Well it weren’t Ken Dodd and the Diddymen,’ Gene growled back, not taking his eyes off Gould. ‘Nice bit of team work, Gould, don’t you think? Enough to warm this gaff up, anyway. Old Brenda Bristols was the bait, and Dopey-Bollocks Tyler here was the homing beacon leading me and the lads right to the heart of the action. So – Bristols, Bollocks, you’ve both played your part; a
Crackerjack
pencil and pen will be yours. Now get yourself clear from the zone of conflict, it’s time for Uncle Genie and his lads to dance the hot-shoe rhumba ...!’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Sam, strength flowing back into his limbs. He strode over, slopping his way through the water, and took his place beside Gene. ‘Game’s over, Gould. The boys are back in town.’

‘
And
girl,’ Annie added, and out of nowhere she landed a blow across Gould’s throat that sent him falling hard against a poker table. Chips clattered across the baize and fell into the water sluicing about on the floor. ‘I take it I’m back on the team, Guv?’

‘Course you are, now get clear you, gobby tart!’ Gene bellowed, and at once Annie threw herself to the side.

Shotguns roared. The slugs smashed into Gould’s body, jerking him up off the table and flinging him hard against his office door.

‘Again!’ Gene bellowed, and at once there was a second volley, him and Chris and Ray all firing in perfect unison.

Blood splashed across the door. Gould span round, tottered drunkenly, and then went down onto the flooded floor. He lay motionless, face down, tendrils of red drifting from his body and spreading into the water.

‘Suck on that, you Brylcreemed twat!’ Ray spat.

‘Yeah!’ put in Chris, twin plumes of smoke rising lazily from the barrels of his shotgun. ‘And the next shot goes …’ he thought about it ‘… right up your bum-hole.’

‘Spoken like gentlemen,’ opined Gene, turning to his boys and acknowledging them. ‘You’ve paid attention to your Westerns. And just look what you’ve learnt.’ Then he shot a stern look over at Annie, ‘You all in one piece, Bristols?’

‘I’m all in one piece, Guv.’

‘Glad to hear it. You’re a soppy, stroppy, dopey mare with a voice like Woody Woodpecker – but somehow or other, you fit in the team. From time to time. More or less.’

‘I do my best, Guv,’ Annie said. ‘I do my best.’

Gene glanced from Annie to Sam, cleared his throat noisily, and said: ‘Well get on with it, you two, start snogging, it’s what we’re all waiting for. And Chris, keeps your hands out your pockets.’

But Sam found that all he could do was stand and stare at Annie. She was drenched from the deluge of melting ice, her hair in disarray, her clothes clinging to her body, her eyes bloodshot, her bruised throat livid – and he thought that he had never loved her quite so much as at this moment.

Annie stared back. She seemed to be thinking much the same thing about him.

They moved towards each other, slowly, like a pair of shell-shocked survivors of a shipwreck. But quite suddenly, Sam turned from Annie and slopped through the flood towards Gould.

‘I want to make sure he’s dead,’ he said. ‘
Really
dead.’

‘Cover him,’ Gene ordered, and at once Chris and Ray cocked their shotguns and braced themselves, ready to open fire.

Sam looked down at the body in the blood-stained Nehru suit. It lay motionless, leaking red, its face in the water. Sam nudged it with the toe of his boot. No reaction. It was nothing more than a piece of expensively dressed, and very dead, meat.

‘That’s all it took,’ he said under his breath, addressing the corpse. ‘A few bullets. And a few good men.’

He laughed, and was about to add, ‘
And one good woman
,
of course
,’
when suddenly there was a confusion of noise and movement. Water sprouted wildly upwards as if from a geyser, sending bloodied foam exploding across the ceiling. Sam was thrown back, crashing against the door to Gould’s office; the wood, weakened already by shotgun blasts, gave way, and Sam smashed through it, tumbling into the office beyond.

But it wasn’t an office. It was an abyss. It was
the
Abyss. Where the floor should be was a vertiginous, plunging, sickly green pit, out of which flowed a devastating blast of icy, fetid air, thick with the stench of disease and putrefaction, and with that blast came a deafening bellow, like a thousand fog horns mingled with the screams of a thousand blood-crazed coyotes.

Sam screwed his eyes tight, clamping his mouth shut so as not to breath in the fetid reek that rolled over him.

The rush of air coming out of the pit suddenly ceased, and there was a moment – not more than a second or do – when everything became still and silent.

And then, the hellish air was drawing back into the Abyss, dragging with it debris and water from the casino. Sam felt it pulling him, too, hauling him with an irresistible force. He clawed wildly at the broken remains of the door, grabbing hold of shattered wood and hanging on so tightly he felt that his fingers would burst. And yet still it seemed that his body was being drawn down into that yawning expanse beneath him, down, down into that ice-cold cavern that plunged away into unimaginable depths.

Through the broken doorway, he could see flashes of light as Gene, Chris and Ray blazed away with their shotguns, blasting at a shadowy figure that burst up out of the water. Even as they fired, they struggled back towards the exit, fighting the powerful rush of air. Sam glimpsed Annie just behind Gene, hanging on to him tightly, like she was enduring a hurricane. And Sam knew come what may, even in that moment of confusion and terror on the brink of the Abyss, that Gene would never let Annie go.

The shotguns roared, and like a black cloud tortured by crosswinds, the shapeless form that was Clive Gould whipped and writhed. It fought against the air being sucked down into the pit, and used what strength it had to resist the relentless pull. It came screaming towards Sam and struck him like an arctic gale, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Sam felt Gould’s shadowy form all over him, clutching at him, slithering icily around his throat, hooking onto him and trying to drag him down with it into that bottomless chasm.

Sam tried to cry out, but his lungs felt as if they had collapsed and turned to ice.

I’m slipping
…
I can’t hold on
…
Gould’s going to take me down with him!

Annie appeared suddenly in the wrecked doorway, reaching out to him, grasping him by the wrists. She pulled with all her strength – but Sam felt himself sliding down, felt Gould’s icy claws digging into him and dragging him away.

Annie fought to pull him back. She threw her head back and screamed, putting every ounce of strength she had into the effort, and for what seemed like a thousand years Sam was poised agonizingly between worlds, Life pulling him one way, Hell dragging him the other.

Green light blazed from deep within the abyss, and Gould seemed to be wrenched forcibly into it, no longer able to resist its pull on him. His shadowy soul let out a sound like gas bursting from a split pipe, and down he went, tumbling away. Sam found himself at once being pulled in through the broken door by Annie – but instead of being hauled back into the flooded casino, he was being pulled across muddy grass. He choked and heaved, fighting for air, filling lungs that were no longer frozen but instead were full of ashes and reeking, poisonous fumes. Through streaming eyes, Sam glimpsed fire and billowing smoke and the moon gazing down uncaringly from the night sky.

He was outside, on damp grass under the stars, being pulled away from the blazing remains of Trencher’s Farm by Annie.

Wracked with coughing, Sam doubled up. Annie flung her arms around him. Painfully, Sam hugged her back. At last, they had their embrace.

They looked at each other, speaking not with their mouths but with their eyes.

It was Sam who descended to using mere words first.

‘The others …’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ she said shakily. ‘You were the only one I saw in there. By the time I got you out, the place was … it was completely …’

They both looked across at the inferno that used to be Trencher’s Farm.

‘Oh God, Sam.’

‘There’s hope!’ Sam said, still fighting for breath. ‘We saw them. All three of them. They were there, they were with us?’

‘I don’t understand you, Sam.’

‘Just now, in the casino! Annie, we were a team! We won!’

Annie put her arms around him and squeezed. ‘You’ve had a nasty dose of fumes in there, Sam. But I think you’ll be okay.’

Sam struggled free from her embrace. ‘No, no,
you’re
the one whose brain’s gone to pot if you don’t remember! Annie, you were there! We all were! We were a
team
!’

‘We’re going to go now and try and get help,’ Annie said, speaking to him very slowly and deliberately.. ‘We’re going to take Clive’s car, okay? I think Clive’s dead. I think
everyone’s
dead, but we've still got to get help. Look – the engine’s still running in the Sceptre, the keys must still be in the –’

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ Sam barked. ‘You go. You go, and you get what help you can.’

‘I’m not leaving you Sam, you’re halfway delirious!’

Sam forced himself to speak slowly and calmly. ‘I’m not delirious. I’m fine. I’m telling you, Annie, that you must get help. You must go, right now, and get help.’

His look told her he was totally sane, and that there was no time to argue. Annie nodded grimly. She quickly kissed Sam on the mouth, then raced off past the flames, ducking round the ruined Avenger in the drive and leapt into Clive Gould’s Humber Sceptre. The engine roared, the car reversed wildly up the track, and then hared off along the road, making for the faraway lights of the town.