Gone (39 page)

‘A bit
more
?’

‘Yeah. Maybe just give them the shirt you were wearing if you haven’t washed it. They’ll test your stomach contents. Just give them a call, mate. Make the men in the white coats happy?’

Prody let all the air out of his lungs. Still his eyes hadn’t moved. ‘Jesus. Yes. Of course. If I have to.’ He wound up his window. Started the car again and drove out into the street. Caffery followed a few steps behind, then stopped with one arm looped wearily over the gate, watching until the little Peugeot lion logo, lit red by the brakelights, disappeared from view.

He turned to Myrtle. Her head was down. She wasn’t looking at him. Caffery wondered if she felt as empty as he did. As empty and as scared. There wasn’t much time. He didn’t need a profiler
to tell him what was next. Somewhere there was a family with cameras in their kitchen. In the parents’ bedroom too. He could sense it. Could smell it coming. In fact, if he had to put a stopwatch on it, he’d say there was less than twelve hours left before it happened again.

Jill and David Marley were sitting in the tops of the plane trees that bordered the garden. ‘London planes. The lungs of London.’ David Marley was smiling as he spoke. He was drawing tea from an elaborate samovar into a delicate bone-china cup. ‘Breathe in, Flea. Have to keep breathing in. No wonder you feel so sick.’

Flea began to climb the tree to her parents. But it was hard going – the leaves were in the way. Too thick, too choking. Each had a different colour and a different texture that she sensed as a taste in her mouth, either thin and acid or smooth and suffocating. Fighting her way through just a foot of them took for ever.

‘Keep breathing,’ came her father’s voice. ‘And don’t look down at yourself.’

Flea knew what he meant. She knew her stomach was swelling. She didn’t need to look down to know. She could feel it. Multicoloured worms as thick as fingers weaving their way through her intestines. Breeding and rolling and growing.

‘Shouldn’t have eaten it, Flea.’ Somewhere overhead in the trees her mother was calling. ‘Oh, Flea, you shouldn’t have touched that sandwich. You should have said no. Should never trust a man with clean trousers.’

‘Clean trousers?’

‘That’s what I said. I saw what you were doing with that man in the clean trousers.’

Tears ran down Flea’s face, a sobbing noise was coming out of her mouth. She’d climbed all the way up the tree. Except now it
wasn’t a tree. It was a staircase – like an Escher painting, a staircase that started in a rickety Barcelona building, then twisted and stretched into the air above the roofs, sticking out naked and unsupported in the blue where clouds raced by. Mum and Dad were at the top. Dad had walked down a few steps and was holding his hand out to her. At first she’d reached for it gladly, knowing that taking Dad’s hand was salvation, but now she was crying because, no matter how hard she tried to grasp it, he was subtly avoiding letting her do it. He wanted her to listen.

‘I told you it’s not a sweetie. It’s not a sweetie.’

‘What?’

‘
It’s not a sweetie, Flea. How many times do I have to tell you
. . .’

Her eyes flew open. She was back in the barge. The last of the dream battered itself futilely against her eyes, Dad’s voice ringing around the echoey barge –
it’s not a sweetie
. She lay there in the darkness, her heart thudding crazily. Moonlight was coming through the two portholes in the hull. She checked the Citizen. Three hours since she’d crawled up here, aching and light-headed from exhaustion and blood loss. The T-shirt was wrapped tightly around the wound: it seemed to be holding back the blood for the time being, but what she’d already lost had done the damage. Her skin was clammy, her heart was having moments of jittery palpitations, as if she’d mainlined pure adrenalin. She’d dismantled the acrow prop from under the hatch and laid it across the shelf. Then she’d crawled between the acrow and the hull and, just as she could feel the blood loss pulling her under, had lain on her side, one arm stretched out, pinioned against the hull.

The acrow prop may have stopped her falling into the water in her unconscious state, but it was useless as a tool for getting her out of here. She’d struggled with it for hours though she knew, in her heart, it was never going to hoist the hatch open with the weight of the windlass on it. There had to be another way.

It’s not a sweetie, Flea
. . .

She twisted her head to look at the hatch she’d come through. Behind her the barge slanted downwards, the water in the stern
compartment nearly touching the roof.
Not a sweetie
. Acetylene – the gas the chunk of calcium carbide would produce if it was thrown into water – was slightly lighter than air. She pushed herself up on her elbows and considered how the water lay, then the underside of the deck with its cobwebs and rust. She turned her chin upwards and eyed the rope locker. There was a small hole rusted through it. She’d be wasting her time punching that open because the egress to the surface that the rope would have been fed through was tiny – she’d already had her light up there and studied it and it was the size of a fist. Even so the rope locker was making things stir in her head. Acetylene would rise to the top of a box like that. There’d be leakage into the hull but it might –
might
– not get under the lip above the hatch into the stern. If she was back there, behind the bulkhead. And if the gas was in here…

It was dangerous, it was insane, and it was the sort of thing Dad would have done without a second’s hesitation. With a grunt she levered the acrow off the ledge, let it fall into the water. She swung her legs down. Felt the exhausting, killing drain of blood away from her head into her torso, the stammer of her heart and blinding waves of static circling her skull. She had to sit, her eyes closed, breathing in a slow, concentrated rhythm until the barge stopped swaying around her.

When her heart had settled back to where it belonged she reached up and found the lump of calcium carbide in the rucksack. She’d almost peeled it from the carrier bag when a noise came from out in the tunnel. The familiar clink-clink-clink of a pebble falling down the air shaft. A splash in the water. She sat, head turned, mouth slightly open, her heart hammering again. Cautiously she returned the chemical ball to the rucksack. And then, almost as if whoever it was had crept up stealthily, she heard the grunt of the grille giving way to human weight and the splash of water. Two splashes. Three.

In absolute silence she tipped herself off the ledge into the water. Put her hand against the hull for support and inched her way slowly to the other side of the barge. Every now and then the
faintness came buzzing back and she’d stand still, breathing hard and silently through her mouth, fighting to lock down the nauseating swaying sensation. Six inches from the hole she stopped, her back to the hull so she could see out. The tunnel looked empty. Moonlight streamed in. But on the far wall the rope was swaying. She held her breath. Listened.

A hand came through the hole, holding a torch. She shot back.

‘Flea?’

She got her balance. Breathing hard.

Prody?
She fumbled the head torch from around her neck, put her hand around his in a fist and shoved it back through the hole, stepped forward and powered the beam into his face. He stood there, knee deep in the water, blinking at her. She let all the air out of her lungs at once.

‘I thought you were dead.’ Tears came to her eyes. She put a finger to her forehead. ‘Shit, Paul. I really thought he’d got you. I thought you were dead.’

‘Not dead. I’m here.’

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ A tear ran down her face. ‘Fuck, this is horrible.’ She pushed the tear away. ‘Paul – are they coming? I mean, seriously, I need to get out soon. I’ve lost a shitload of blood and it’s getting to the point . . .’ She paused. ‘What’s that?’

Prody was holding a large object, wrapped in a plastic sheet.

‘What? This?’

‘Yeah.’ She wiped her nose shakily. Swept the torch down to study it. It was a weird shape. ‘What’ve you got there?’

‘Nothing, really.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Really. Nothing much. I went to my garage.’ He unwrapped the plastic sheeting and laid it carefully on the bottom of the scree under the chain. Inside was an angle grinder. ‘I thought it might help get you out. Battery-operated.’

She stared at it. ‘Is that what they said to . . . ?’ She raised her eyes to his face. He was sweating. And the sweat didn’t look right. Long snail trails of it, like fingers, stained his shirt. The poisonous worms in her intestines moved and flicked again. He’d called the
police, then gone all the way to his house to collect the angle grinder And the rescue services weren’t here yet? She shone the torch into his face. He looked back at her steadily, his teeth just visible through his slightly opened lips.

‘Where are the others?’ she murmured distantly.

‘The others? Oh – on their way.’

‘They let you come back on your own?’

‘Why not?’

She sniffed. ‘Paul?’

‘What?’

‘How did you know which air shaft to come down? There are twenty-three.’

‘Eh?’ He put his leg forward and rested the angle grinder on his thigh. Began to fit a disc to it. ‘I started at the west end and went down them all till I found you.’

‘No. I don’t think that’s right.’

‘Hm?’ He looked up mildly. ‘Beg pardon?’

‘No. There are nineteen shafts coming from that end. Your trousers were clean. When you came down they were clean.’

Prody lowered the angle grinder and gave her a quizzical smile. There was a long, still moment while they held each other’s gaze. Then, without a word, he went back to fitting the disc as if there had been no communication between them at all. He screwed down the disc and, after a few seconds, satisfied it was secure, he stood. Smiled at her again.

‘
What?
’ she whispered. ‘
What?
’

He turned and walked away, his body going forward, his head turning eerily back on his neck, so he could keep his eyes fixed on hers. Before she knew what was happening he had stepped out of her eyeline round the side of the barge. Instantly the tunnel dropped into silence.

She clicked off the torch, plunging herself into darkness. Heart racing, she took a couple of steps backwards, floundering around, wondering desperately what to do. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Prody?
Her head balled up like a knot. Her legs turned into columns of sand, making her want to sit down and pant.
Prody?
Seriously –
Prody
?

From about ten feet to her left came the sound of a motor. A whine that put talons into her head. The angle grinder. She took a confused step sideways, flailing for something to hold on to, banging into the rucksack, making it swing crazily. The grinder disc bit the metal with a high-pitched scream. Through the hole the cascading sparks lit the tunnel like Guy Fawkes night.

‘
Stop!
’ she yelled. ‘Stop!’

He didn’t answer. The hemisphere of the grinder disc showed through into the hull, a slice of moonlight coming with it. It was at a point halfway between her and the hatch. It moved slowly down, gnawing at the iron hull. Moved about ten inches. Then hit something immovable. The grinder jumped, rattled madly, shooting sparks into the air. A particle ricocheted around the hull, pinging into the water somewhere in the dark. The disc recovered, bit into the metal again, but something was wrong with it. The motor stuttered. Ground noisily at the iron. Whined and decelerated to silence.

On the other side of the hull Prody swore softly. He pulled the disc out and spent a moment or two tinkering with the machine, she listening to him, hardly breathing. He started the grinder again. Again it stuttered. Coughed. Whined and juddered to a halt. The acrid, burning-fish smell of failing machinery wafted into the hull.

A stray sentence went through her from nowhere.
I saw a little girl thrown out of a windscreen once: did the last twenty feet on her face
. That had been Prody speaking on the night he’d breathalysed her. In retrospect there had been something creepy about the way he’d said it. A note of pleasure in there. Prody? Prody?
Prody?
An MCIU detective? The guy she used to see coming from the gym with his kit over his shoulder? She thought about the moment in the pub – how she’d looked at him, thought about something happening between them.

Sudden silence outside. She raised her head. Looked with watering eyes at the hole. Nothing. Then a splash about twenty yards away. She tensed, ready for the whine of the angle grinder. Instead his footsteps faded – as if he was going to the very end of the chamber near the furthest rockfall.

Clumsily she wiped her mouth, swallowed the sour taste and, taking care not to move too fast and set her head spinning, carefully knelt up on the ledge. Clutching the lip of the porthole on the starboard side she steadied herself and peered out.

The section of the tunnel that reached to the rockfall was visible from this side of the barge. The water in the canal shone dully: the moon had moved and was now shining directly down the shaft. The walls narrowed at sickening angles, making her head lurch, but she could see Prody clearly. About twenty feet away from her. Almost in the darkness. Focus, her exhausted mind said, watch – he’s doing something important.

He was a long way down the chamber, at the edge of the tunnel where the water level had lowered over the years to reveal a strip of ground about a yard wide – the same path that ran the length of the canal, and that she had walked with Wellard on Tuesday. Prody had his side to her. His shirt was filthy with black canal water, his face not visible in the bad light, and he was studying something in his hand. Martha’s shoe. He put it into the pocket of his fleece and closed the popper to keep it secure. Then he dropped to an ugly crouch and began to study the ground. Flea gripped the edges of the hole tighter and pressed her face into it, breathing open-mouthed, straining to see.

He was pushing away the leaves and the muck, scooping it in great handfuls and letting it pile behind him the way a dog would, digging a hole. After a few minutes the scooping stopped. He shuffled a little nearer on his haunches and began to scrape carefully. The ground there was soft – like the rockfalls, it was mostly fuller’s earth, with one or two boulders lodged in it – but she didn’t think it was a rock he was cleaning around. It was too regular. Too clearly a shape. If anything it was corrugated iron. A wave of weakness passed through her. It choked her and sent pins and needles sparkling through her head. It was a pit. She hadn’t noticed it before – would never have noticed it – because he’d covered it so well with earth, but she knew instinctively what it was. A grave. Somehow Prody had sunk a pit into the floor of the canal. It would be where Martha was buried.