Gone (46 page)

‘It’s
not
empty.’

The operator shrugged. He toggled the camera a bit more. Zoomed it to the end of the canal, where the picture grew shadowy.

‘Like that,’ said Caffery. ‘I mean, what’s
that
?’

‘Dunno.’ The operator put his hand over the screen to shade it and peered at the spectral images. ‘OK,’ he said grudgingly. ‘That looks like something.’

‘What is it?’

‘A . . . I’m not sure. A hull? Of a barge maybe? Christ – look
at the way that’s peeled apart. That’ll be where your explosion was.’

‘Can you get inside it?’

He stood. Eyes on the monitor, he dragged the cable spools a few yards along the edge of the shaft. He sat for a moment, his hand on the reel, his eyes locked on the LCD screen. Eventually he spoke. ‘I think . . . Yes. I’ve got something.’

He turned the screen to the men. Caffery and the Bronze commander leaned in to look, hardly breathing. The screen was unintelligible to Caffery: all he could make out was the torn metal of the barge’s hull.

The operator zoomed in. ‘There.’ He pointed at something in the muck and the grime at the bottom of the picture that was moving slightly. ‘That’s something. See it?’

Caffery strained his eyes. It looked like tarry bubbles wallowing in the canal. There was a flash, the spotlight reflecting off the canal water as whatever it was moved again. Then something in the shape became white for a moment. Darkened. Went white again. It took Caffery a moment to realize what he was looking at. A pair of eyes. Blinking. Those eyes blew straight through him like a hurricane. ‘
Shit
.’

‘
It’s her
.’ Wellard clipped the karabiner at his waist to the Petzl descender unit, shuffled backwards to the hole and leaned backwards over the lip, testing the rope, his face hard and concentrated. ‘It’s fucking her and I am going to fucking
kill
her for this.’

‘Hey. What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ The Bronze commander stepped forward. ‘You’re not going down there yet.’

‘The gas test is clean. Whatever exploded it’s not there now. And I’m going down.’

‘But our target is down there.’

‘That’s OK.’ He patted the pockets of his body armour. ‘We’ve got tasers.’

‘And this is my operation and I’m telling you you’re not going down. We’ve got to find out what’s making that noise. That’s an order.’

Wellard locked his jaw, gave the commander a solid eye. But he took a few steps forward away from the lip of the hole, and stood in silence, unconsciously clenching and unclenching the descender handle.

‘Find the noise,’ the commander told the camera operator. ‘Find what’s making that godforsaken noise. It’s not her.’

‘Yup.’ The operator’s face was clenched. ‘I’m doing my best. I’m just having a . . . Christ!’ He leaned into the screen. ‘Christ, yes, I think this is it – this is what you wanted.’

Everyone gathered round. They were looking at something inhuman. Something tarred and burned and bloodied. Now they understood why they hadn’t seen anything in the water of the canal. Prody wasn’t anywhere on the ground. He’d been lifted by the explosion and skewered by a shard of metal high on the canal wall. Like a crucifixion. As the camera came towards him he didn’t move. All he could do was stare into the lens and gulp air, his eyes bulging.

‘Holy shit,’ the Bronze commander whispered, awestruck. ‘Holy shit. He is fucked, so fucked.’

Caffery stared at the screen, his heart pounding. He couldn’t imagine how Prody could have been so clever. He’d tricked them over and over. He’d tricked them into focusing all their efforts on this tunnel, when the girls, with hours or minutes left, were somewhere else entirely. And the ultimate trick, the ultimate finger in the force’s face, would be if he died now. Without telling the police anything.

He straightened. Turned to Wellard. ‘Get that team down now,’ he muttered. ‘And I mean
now
.’

The sun had gone and the valley sat still and shocked. The aftermath of the thunder rolled away across the hillsides. Clouds of ash hung low. Birds, made of black oil, gathered on the edges of the horizon.

Dad looked wonderingly at the sky. ‘Now that,’ he murmured, ‘is what I call a
storm
.’

Flea was a few yards away from him. She was bitterly cold. She felt sicker than she ever had in her life. The storm had a stink to it that turned her stomach. It smelt of water and of electricity and of cooked meat. The worms in her intestines that had fed and bloated until they blocked her insides pressed on her lungs, making her chest tight.

In the new silence of the valley she began to hear other noises. A hoarse, gulping breathing. Like something struggling to stay alive. And a more muffled sound. A whimpering? She got to her feet and walked down the slope. The whimpering was coming from a bush at the bottom of the garden. As Flea got nearer she realized it was a child whimpering. Whimpering and crying.

‘
Martha?
’

She got nearer to the bush and saw something pale against the scorched earth, sticking out from under it.

‘Martha?’ she said cautiously. ‘Martha? Is that you?’

The crying stopped for a moment. Flea took a step closer. She saw that the white shape against the earth was a child’s foot. Wearing Martha’s shoe.

‘Please?’ The voice was sweet. Quiet. ‘Please help me.’

Flea slowly parted the bush. A face smiled up at her. She dropped the branch and took a step backwards. It wasn’t Martha but Thom, Flea’s brother. Adult Thom dressed in a little girl’s gingham dress, smiling gnomishly at her. A bow in his hair, a rag doll tucked under his arm. Flea tripped, landed on her back. Tried to kick herself away from the bush, scraping along the grass on her backside.

‘Don’t go away, Flea.’

Thom pulled his shoe off. His foot came with it. He raised it, readying it to throw.

‘
No!
’ She scrambled in the earth. ‘No!’

‘Ever seen a dead body? You ever seen a dead body, Flea? Ever seen one cut up?’

‘
Flea?
’ She turned. Someone was standing behind her. A shadowy figure that might have been Dad but might have been almost anyone. She reached out for him but as she did she realized she wasn’t in the hillside any more. She was in a crowded bar, people jostling for space around her. ‘Police,’ someone next to her was saying urgently. ‘We are the police.’ She could feel hands on her, trying to move her. Hanging low above her was a huge pendant lamp on a thick chain, with a blasted glass bowl. Someone wearing climber’s crampons and a harness had climbed up on it and was swinging it to and fro. With each oscillation it went a little faster and came a little lower, until it was so close to her face, so blinding, she had to hold out her hand to push it away.

‘
Noooooo
,’ she heard herself moan. ‘
Noooo
. Don’t.’

‘Pupils normal,’ someone said, quite close. ‘Flea?’ Someone was digging something into the lobe of her ear. Nails. Thumb and forefinger. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Unnhhh.’ She batted at the hand on her ear. The noise of the bar had gone. She was somewhere dark. People breathing fast and echoey. ‘Sssshtop it.’

‘You’re going to be OK. I’ve got to get a line in you. Here.’ She felt someone tap her arm. Lights were flashing in her eyes. And
shapes. She dragged in a lungful of air. ‘You’ll feel it but only for a moment. That’s it, just hold still for me. Good girl. You’re going to be OK.’

She felt a hand on her head. ‘That’s good, Boss. You’re doing great.’ Wellard’s voice. Raised as if he was talking to a child. What was Wellard doing here in this bar? She tried to turn to him, but he pressed her back down. ‘Stay still now.’

‘
No
.’ She flinched as the needle went in. Tried to pull her arm away. ‘No! It hurshts.’

‘Just hold still. Nearly there.’

‘Fugging hurts. Don’t. Hurting me.’

‘There. All over. You’ll start to feel better soon.’

She tried groggily to reach for the arm, but a hand stopped her, held her arm down.

‘Where’s the aluminium blanket?’ someone else was saying. ‘She’s a block of ice.’

Someone clipped something on to her finger. A hand worked its way down her back. Touching her neck. The blanket rustled around her. She felt hands under her neck, moving her. Something hard and warm behind her. She knew what they were doing – putting her on a spine board in case she’d got a back injury. She wanted to comment on it – to crack a joke, but her mouth was soft and slack and wouldn’t get the words out.

‘Oh, no,’ she managed. ‘Please don’t. Don’t pull. It hurts.’

‘Just trying to get her through this bit,’ a disembodied voice said. ‘How the hell did she get herself in here? It’s like
Das
bloody
Boot
.’

Someone laughed. Made a jokey
ping-ping
sound. Like a submarine sonar.

‘It’s not fucking funny. This place could go any time. Look at those cracks.’

‘OK, OK. Just give me a bit more room on this side.’ A jolt. A shudder. A splash of water. ‘There. Good, that’s it.’

Then Wellard’s voice again: ‘You’re doing well, Boss. Not long now. Relax. Close your eyes.’

She obeyed. Gratefully letting something sly come up in front
of her vision like a third eyelid and slip her away head first into a silver screen of images. Thom, Wellard, Misty Kitson. A little cat she’d had as a child. Then Dad was next to her – holding out his hand and smiling.

‘It worked, Flea.’

‘What worked?’

‘The sweetie. It worked. Went bang, didn’t it?’

‘Yes. It worked.’

‘Last little bit now, Flea. You’ve done so well.’

She opened her eyes. About a foot away a wall was moving past her. Limestone, with ferns and green slime growing out of it. The light coming from overhead was tremendous, blinding. Her feet were pointing down, her head was up. She tried to put out her hands to steady herself, but they were strapped to her sides. Next to her she could see the face of a man in a caving helmet, lit as if a spotlight was on him, the colours vivid, each pore and line clear and dizzying, the dirt and soot smeared about his mouth. He wasn’t looking at her. He was focused down, concentrating on controlling their ascent.

‘Basket stretcher,’ she slurred. ‘I’m in a basket stretcher.’

The man looked up at her in mild surprise. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Martha,’ she said. ‘I know where he buried her. In a pit. Under the ground.’

‘What was that?’ came a voice from above. ‘What’s she on about now?’

‘Dunno. Feels sick?’ The man peered into her face. ‘You OK?’ He smiled. ‘You’re doing great. It’s OK if you’re sick. We’ve got you.’

She closed her eyes. Gave a weak laugh. ‘She’s in a
pit
,’ she repeated. ‘He put her body in a
pit
. But you can’t understand what I’m saying. Can you?’

‘I know you do,’ came the answer. ‘Don’t you worry about that. We’ve given you something for it. You’ll feel better soon.’

‘What did she say? What’s she talking about?’ Caffery had to yell to be heard above the noise of the second HEMS helicopter that was landing a hundred yards away in the clearing at the end of the track. ‘Did she say “spit”?’

The paramedic scrambled out of the hole as Wellard and two officers from the top team manhandled the stretcher out of the shaft. ‘She says she feels
sick
,’ he yelled. ‘Sick.’

‘Sick? Not
spit
?’

‘She’s been saying it since they pulled her up. Worried she’s going to be sick.’ He and Wellard got the stretcher on to an ambulance cot. The HEMS A and E consultant – a small, hardgrained man with dark hair and walnut skin – came forward to examine her. He lifted the portable monitor and checked it, pressed her fingernail between his thumb and forefinger, timing how long it took for the blood to flood back into the tissues. Flea groaned as he did it. Tried to shift on the spine board, reach her hand out. She looked like something that had been hauled out of a Cornwall surf accident, with her ripped blue immersion suit. Her face was clean except for the two blackened smudges under her nostrils where she’d breathed in the aftermath of the explosion. Her hair was thick with muck and leaves, her hands and fingernails caked with blood. Caffery didn’t try to get near her. Or put his hand near hers. He let the doctor do his thing.

‘You OK?’

Caffery glanced up. The doctor was busy helping the
paramedic lock the stretcher to the cot. But his eyes were on Caffery as he worked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said you OK?’

‘Of course I am. Why?’

‘She’s going to be fine,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

‘I’m not worried.’

‘Yeah.’ The doctor kicked up the brake on the cot. ‘Sure you’re not.’

Caffery watched them numbly as they trundled her away, down the slope, getting the stretcher on to the track that led back to the clearing where the first helicopter sat, its engines running, the rotors waiting to be engaged. The slow, solid heft of the knowledge came home – that she was going to be OK. ‘Thank you,’ he said, under his breath, to the backs of the paramedics and the consultant. ‘Thank you.’

He’d have liked to sit down now. To sit down and hold that feeling and do nothing more for the rest of the day. But he couldn’t stop. A squawk box in the grass near the hole was broadcasting the efforts of the rescue teams still in the tunnel. The helicopter air paramedic – who’d been given a caving helmet and a crash course in rope-access technique – had got into the tunnel, taken one look at the way Prody was skewered to the wall and ordered cutting equipment dropped down the shaft. No way could Prody be simply lifted off the wall – he’d bleed to death in seconds. He had to be cut down with the section of barge hull still embedded in his torso. For the last ten minutes the squawk box had been live with Prody’s agonized breathing and the rasp of the hydraulic shear going through the iron. Now the machinery had stopped and a disembodied voice said clearly above the noise Prody was making, ‘
Prepare to haul
.’

Caffery turned. The Rollgliss pulley system ground to life, the officer at the lip of the air shaft monitoring the spool-up of line. Wellard had already come out of the tunnel and was standing a few feet away, unhooking himself from the harness. Like a demon from hell with his grimy face. There was a line of blood on his
face that might be from a scratch on his temple, or might have been someone else’s blood.