It seemed he was going down for an eternity.
And he felt very scared.
He stopped, wondering whether to abort. The cold was getting worse and he wasn’t even halfway to the bottom.
Probably just a damned bit of rubbish down there.
The sound of his breathing was getting louder, echoing. More weed growing off the wall brushed his face like a cobweb. His feet found the next rung. And the next. That was the final rung. Twenty feet down from the top now. He released his grip and sank, steadily and rapidly.
It felt like he was gaining speed.
Thirty feet. Forty. Fifty.
He’d dived inside sunken wrecks off Barbados, in caves in the Red Sea, down deep shelves off the Maldives, and he’d never been scared before. But now he was terrified. Sinking deeper and deeper down this narrow, inky shaft.
Sixty feet.
He thought about their unborn baby. Then Imogen. Diving solo, anywhere, was a no-no. Diving solo into a confined space – an unknown one at that – was insane. If he got into trouble of any kind, no one was going to be coming to rescue him. He’d never see his child born.
Seventy feet.
In his nervous and fearful state, he made the cardinal mistake of not checking his buoyancy and, like a rank novice, squelched down heavily on the soft, muddy floor at the bottom of the well shaft.
Furious at his own incompetence, there was nothing he could do as the mud rose like fog around him, and he could only wait for it to settle. Checking the pressure gauge on his regulator, he saw that his air supply would only allow him another fifteen minutes or so. His panic had caused him to use far more air than he would do normally.
Stupid to panic, he knew. That was what killed divers. He had to calm down. Somehow. But his thoughts were ragged with anxiety.
It had taken him seven minutes to descend and he needed to allow all of that and more to ascend. But the water was still too cloudy to see anything.
Slowly it began to clear.
Eleven minutes left.
Ten.
He could see a few coins, what looked like a KitKat wrapper, a partially disintegrated takeaway carton, then a large, old-fashioned Nokia mobile phone. Can’t have been the object that the camera saw? It was bigger. Much bigger.
He turned, and more mud rose, obscuring everything. He knelt and groped around in the deep mud and slime with his gloved hands, stirring it up even more, and feeling repulsed. What was down here? What disgusting things? What dead animals – or live bottom feeders? He touched something that felt like a dead frog and shuddered. Then a solid object. Covered in slime.
The shape he had viewed on his GoPro?
He lifted it up, bringing it close to his face, and could just see, in the faint glow of his head torch, strands of slime and weed hanging from it.
He wiped them away, and finally saw, to his disappointment, that it was a child’s red wellington boot, filled with silt.
After making sure there was nothing else he was missing down here, he at last began his ascent.
Eight minutes left.
He rose as fast as his bleeper would allow, pausing briefly at the rung, some way below the surface, where he had attached the holdall on his way down. He unzipped the bag a little, to let water in, and zipped it again. He carried on up and broke the surface, pulled out his mouthpiece and with relief gulped down the fresh night air. He slung the bag over the top of the wellhead onto the ground.
And froze.
A shadowy figure was standing in front of him.
Something hard slammed into his face, knocking him off the ladder. He began plunging feet-first back down the well, dazed, scrabbling feebly with his hands for the ladder and swallowing water.
Finally getting a purchase on the ladder, and holding his breath, he scrambled as fast as he could back up. As his head broke the surface he coughed, spitting out water and looking up, and pulled his diving knife out of its sheath, gripping it tightly with his right hand. He continued climbing. In the darkness, it was hard to see how far he was from the top, so he slowed now, ascending one rung at a time, stopping after each and waiting.
Suddenly, he heard the roar of an engine firing up, the squeal of tyres, then the sound of a car heading away, fast.
Bastard.
He scrambled up the remaining rungs to the top, then stopped, in shock.
The metal grid had been put back into place above him.
His nose hurt, but he barely noticed as he peered, tentatively, through the grille. His plan had worked.
The two large holdalls were still visible, but whoever his assailant was had taken with him the smaller bag and its contents that he had put up there moments earlier. The contents which he had bought yesterday in the flea market. A rusty 1930s biscuit tin and a silver-plated christening mug which he had wrapped in cloth and placed inside it.
He waited, listening carefully for any sound of movement, but could hear nothing.
Finally, he pushed hard against the grille, but it would not budge.
He was entombed.
By Peter James
The Detective Superintendent Roy Grace Series
DEAD SIMPLE LOOKING GOOD DEAD
NOT DEAD ENOUGH DEAD MAN’S FOOTSTEPS
DEAD TOMORROW DEAD LIKE YOU DEAD MAN’S GRIP
NOT DEAD YET DEAD MAN’S TIME WANT YOU DEAD
YOU ARE DEAD LOVE YOU DEAD
NEED YOU DEAD DEAD IF YOU DON’T
Other Novels
DEAD LETTER DROP ATOM BOMB ANGEL
BILLIONAIRE POSSESSION DREAMER
SWEET HEART TWILIGHT PROPHECY ALCHEMIST
HOST THE TRUTH DENIAL FAITH
PERFECT PEOPLE THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL
ABSOLUTE PROOF
Short Story Collection
A TWIST OF THE KNIFE
Children’s Novel
GETTING WIRED!
Novella
THE PERFECT MURDER
Non-Fiction
DEATH COMES KNOCKING: POLICING ROY GRACE’S BRIGHTON
(with Graham Bartlett)
First published 2018 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2018 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-1638-5
Copyright © Really Scary Books / Peter James 2018
Cover image © Shutterstock
Design by Neil Lang, Pan Macmillan Art Department
Roy Grace®, Grace®, DS Grace® and DI Grace® are registered trademarks of Really Scary Books Limited.
The right of Peter James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Map artwork by ML Design
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Peter James, Dead if You Don't
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