‘What took you so long, Joe?’ demanded the Monk. ‘This is not oranges and pears you’ve got here. The tide is turning. Lives are at stake.’
‘You try looking after cargo like this,’ came the grumpy response. ‘It’s like herding cats. We had an overboard situation that had to be contained. Some of the little rascals are dripping, but we got them on the boat in the end. Twenty units safely delivered.’
He waved to a figure up on the deck. ‘Dino, lad, unload them quick as you can. Time is against us.’
The lights went off and Laura made out a series of small shapes moving towards the boat ladder. The first one splashed down into the water with a muffled shriek. Another followed and then another.
Laura’s heart began to race. ‘Children! That’s the delivery - twenty kids?’
As the Monk and Rumblefish herded their cargo up the beach a shaft of moonlight fell on them. The shapes materialised into skinny, coal-haired, brown-limbed boys and girls, some petrified and sobbing, others smiling broadly, all dressed in identical sweatshirts, jeans and trainers.
‘To disguise them and make them look like ordinary kids from regular families,’ Tariq said, his voice shaking with horror. ‘Only they’re slaves, I’m sure of it. Why else would the Mukhtars and the Straight A gang be shipping them here in the dead of night? They’re slaves like me. The smiling ones just don’t know it yet.’
Laura felt numb. She wanted to be shaken awake and told it was only a nightmare. She wanted to believe that there was a wholly innocent reason why twenty children barely in their teens had been deposited on a Cornish beach at 3am, but she already knew that the truth - wherever it lay - was a thousand times worse than she dared imagine.
‘Tariq,’ she whispered, ‘what does this have to do with us? Why have they brought us here?’
Before he could answer, a robed figure loomed out of the darkness like an obese, cartoon monster.
‘Mr Mukhtar!’ cried Laura. She hadn’t noticed him clamber off the boat.
‘Indeed,’ the shopkeeper said grandly. ‘Didn’t I tell you we always got those pesky Marlin in the end? You’re a troublesome girl, Laura Marlin, but you may in the end prove worth it. You’re going to be teaching English to these newly arrived boys and girls.’
Tariq said something to him in Hindi. Mr Mukhtar’s jowls wobbled disapprovingly.
‘Tariq, my dear boy, you didn’t know when you were lucky. We treated you like our own son. We dressed you, fed you and did our best to give you an education. But you were greedy and ungrateful. You wanted more. I think you’ll find that you’ll be kept very busy at our new tapestry factory. You’ll be coaching these children - I call them my silkworms - how to create silk tapestries as brilliant as your own. My wife and Mrs Webb will be managing operations and I suspect you’ll be kept quite busy, particularly as our factory expands with the next batch of silkworms. You’ll pay a high price for your arrogance in the past. Now you will learn the meaning of hard work.’
He beamed. ‘And so will you, Laura Marlin. So will you.’
24
THE FIRST SIGN that the situation, already desperate, might be about to escalate into catastrophe, came when a wave sent a foaming stream of icy water into the tunnel as they entered it. They were in single file - Rumblefish and the Monk at the front, holding torches with powerful beams, followed by a crocodile of petrified children, including Laura and Tariq, their wrists still bound. The boatman, Dino, brought up the rear. Mr Mukhtar had elected to travel with Joe to an agreed meeting point by boat and car on the grounds that he had ‘never been much of a walker’.
The tunnel smelled of wet granite, rotting seaweed and fish bones. ‘Human bones, too,’ thought Laura, remembering the story her uncle had told her about drowned smugglers being the reason for Dead Man’s Cove’s macabre name. She kept a sharp eye out for skeletons. But compared to being frog-marched along a smelly, crumbling tunnel in pitch-darkness, the prospect of an old skull or two didn’t seem that scary.
At least she could swim, although how she was going to do that when her wrists were tied she couldn’t think. Tariq couldn’t swim at all. Judging by their reaction to the incoming water, neither could most of the other children, a painfully thin bunch who stared at her and Tariq with big, dark, curious eyes.
The wave barely wet the ground by the time it reached the gangsters further up the tunnel, but the Monk boomed, ‘This is insane. What we should have done, what we could still do in fact, is admit that due to circumstances beyond our control we have missed our appointment with the Lowest Astronomical Tide. We should turn back now, before we are soaked to the skin, before we are shark bait, and wait for another opportunity.’
His voice echoed along the passage and reached Laura’s ears as ‘insane, insane, insane . . . shark bait, shark bait, shark bait . . .’
‘Has anyone ever told you that you can really depress a person with your negativity?’ Rumblefish said. ‘So you might ruin a pair of shoes if the sea comes swilling around your ankles? I’ll buy you new ones.’
A minute later he let out a little screech. ‘Get a move on, everyone. That last wave was the temperature of a melted iceberg. I agree, Monk, it’s disappointing that things have not gone according to plan, but we can hardly reschedule. These extra low LATs don’t come along very often, and what are we going to do with twenty kids in the meanwhile? No, Monk, we must press on. In half a mile, we’ll be rich. Think of that. We’re hardly likely to drown in an inch or two of water.’
At the back of the line, Laura and Tariq, already up to their ankles, were not so confident. The waves were getting more frequent. Dino, who bore the brunt of them, was shaking his head and muttering to himself. Tariq murmured a few reassuring words in Hindi and Bengali to the children closest him. Those who could understand regarded him gratefully. Whatever they’d been promised, it was not this - a stinking tomb flooded with freezing seawater.
A quarter of a mile into the tunnel, a wave slammed into the back of Laura’s knees and nearly sent her flying. Three other kids were knocked off their feet and swept along bruisingly. When they picked themselves up, they were soaked and crying.
‘Shut up! Shut up!’ shouted Rumblefish. ‘You are not toddlers. How are you going to cope with your new life in Britain if you can’t cope with wet trousers?’
Few, if any of the children, could understand him. They stared at him in bewilderment. He scowled and turned away to consult a hand-drawn map. Even as he did so, a fresh wave roared into the tunnel. This time, the kids went down like dominos. Laura and Tariq remained upright only because Dino grabbed at them. Those at the front of the line collapsed onto Rumblefish, who in turn collided with the Monk. They all splashed down in a tangled heap. Their torch went out and an inky blackness enveloped their patch of tunnel.
Dino strode forward and shone his own torch on the chaos, stepping over the spluttering children without offering a hand. He helped his friends to their feet.
‘I’m out of here,’ he announced to Rumblefish and the Monk, who were dripping and panting. ‘If Mr A thinks I’m willing to drown myself to deliver his precious cargo, he’s got another thing coming. Which way is the exit?’
‘I’m with you,’ declared the Monk. ‘No way am I dying in the bowels of the earth. The money won’t be much use to me then, will it? Rumblefish, give me that map.’
‘Monk, Dino, where is your loyalty?’ demanded Rumblefish, stuffing the map in his pocket. ‘If we hurry, we’ll make it.’
However, his face in the torchlight was yellow with fear.
‘We can’t hurry with twenty-two crying kids in tow,’ the Monk told him. ‘They’re not going to get quicker when the water gets deep, they’ll get slower. According to the map, there’s only one exit, right? Why don’t we go on ahead and wait for the kids who make it.’
‘Good thinking, Monkster,’ said Dino.
Rumblefish flashed him an evil grin. ‘Monk, I do believe you’re a genius. That makes perfect sense. Let’s go.’
br /> ‘Hey!’ yelled Laura. ‘You can’t leave us. We’ll drown without a torch or the map.’
Rumblefish barely gave her a backward glance. ‘We can and we will.’ He strode a few yards and hesitated. ‘Oh, all right, never let it be said I don’t have a heart.’
Tossing one of the boys a box of waterproof matches, he disappeared around a bend in the tunnel. Blackness descended.
Laura tried to imagine what Matt Walker would do in her situation, but all she could recall was Matron’s grim warning: ‘Be careful what you wish for, Laura Marlin.’
A tall, sinewy boy with a determined face had caught the matches. The first one flared just long enough for Laura to see that the smaller children were in water almost up to their waists. They were battling to stand. Tariq was doing his best to be brave, but the current was strengthening with each new surge of the sea.
The matches gave Laura an idea. She and Tariq had no chance of saving themselves or anyone else if their wrists were bound. ‘Tariq,’ she said, ‘please ask the boy with the matches to come over here. We need his help.’
Minutes later, the tunnel was filled with the smell of burning nylon, but she and Tariq were free from their bonds. Laura rubbed her hands. Pins and needles prickled as the blood chugged back into them.
Tariq lit another match and addressed the children in Hindi and Bengali, raising his voice above the roar of the water. He asked them to join hands and look out for each other. He told the strong ones to take care of the weak. The kids who didn’t understand those languages were helped by the ones who did. Obediently, they held hands. Tariq and Laura moved to the front of the line, taking the matches.
It was exhausting pushing against the swirling waters and their progress was agonisingly slow. Afraid to use up the few remaining matches, they walked mostly in the dark, shivering violently with cold. Every minute felt like a life sentence.
In her head, Laura talked to her uncle and Skye. She thanked Calvin Redfern for opening his home and his heart to her when he could so easily have left her at Sylvan Meadows. She told him how much his unwavering kindness and trust, which he was doubtless regretting, had meant to her. She told him that if she saw him again, when she saw him again, she was going to be a better niece.
To Skye, she said that even though they’d been together such a short time, she loved him with all her heart, and she promised him that if by some miracle they survived, they’d have lots of adventures and beach walks together. At intervals, she implored him to come and save them. Animals were said to have telepathy. Perhaps he would hear her.
‘Ouch!’ Tariq had smacked straight into a wall in the blinding darkness. Laura lit a match. Only two remained. To the left, a pile of rocks and rubble blocked what might have once been an opening or exit. To the right, the tunnel split into three.
An agitated chattering broke out. Tariq looked at Laura. ‘Which way?’
She strained her eyes. Was it her imagination or was the middle tunnel lighter than the rest? She wasn’t sure. She only knew she was exhausted beyond words and frozen to the marrow. Her muscles screamed with weariness. She had an overwhelming urge to put her head down and go to sleep. How could she make a decision about anything, especially one that could affect the lives of twenty-one other children?
When Tariq, not getting a response, suggested they try the middle passage first, she just stumbled blindly after him. The pain in her muscles increased and soon she became dizzy. ‘I can’t go on any more, Tariq,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so cold, so incredibly cold.’
He put an arm around her and took as much of her weight as he could manage. ‘Yes, you can. Your uncle needs you and so does Skye. So do I, by the way.’
The next hundred metres felt like ten miles to Laura. Every step was agony. She did it by fantasising about drinking a giant mug of hot chocolate with heaps of whipped cream on the top and marshmallows on the side. Once, she stumbled and fell, gasping when the icy water soaked her sweatshirt.
Tariq helped her up. ‘Breathe, Laura, just breathe.’
Eyes stinging from the salty water, Laura sucked in air. It was sweet and clean, not stale and smelling of old fish bones. Her vision cleared. Tariq was smiling at her and pointing upwards.
Laura tilted her head. They were at the bottom of a mineshaft so ancient that grass grew in the cracks of the old bricks. Overhead was a circle of night sky tinged with the pink of the coming dawn. That was wonderful, but not as exciting as the second thing she spotted: a rusty ladder.
Some of the children began whooping with joy. Laura and Tariq hushed them. If this was the only way out, the gangsters would be lying in wait. Maybe, just maybe, they could sneak up the shaft and catch them off guard. The fitter children might be able to run for their lives or raise the alarm.
The smallest girl went first. She was eight rungs up when the ladder broke and she fell back into the water with a cry, a shower of rust flakes coming with her. A ripple of fear went through Laura. If a child that light could cause the rusty steps to disintegrate, what hope did the rest of them have? The lowest rung of the ladder was more than twice the height of the tallest boy.
She pulled herself together. The water was still rising and they had minutes to get everyone out.
‘I could lift them onto my shoulders,’ Tariq suggested.
Laura shook her head. ‘We’re running out of time. Our only chance is if we work together.’ She and Tariq made a stirrup of their hands and boosted the dripping girl up onto the ladder for another attempt. This time the rungs held. She scampered to the top of the shaft with the agility of a koala bear and gave them a wide smile as she clambered out.
Neither Laura nor Tariq said anything, but each knew what the other was thinking. What happens to the last person? How do they get out?
The children went in order of size, the littlest first. Despite their ordeal, they shinned up the ladder like gymnasts. Laura admired their energy. It took every ounce of strength she had to lift child after child out of the freezing water. On several occasions, she thought she might just fall asleep standing.
Tariq’s jaw was set in grim determination, but it was obvious he felt as weary as she did or worse. He hadn’t eaten for nearly twenty-four hours. His stomach grumbled and great shudders of cold wracked his body.
When the last boy reached the top, Tariq said, ‘Come, Laura, I’ll lift you up.’
Laura licked her salt-dried lips. Either the current was getting stronger or she was getting weaker. The faces of the rescued children peered down at them. There was no sign of the Monk or Rumblefish. ‘If I go, what happens to you, Tariq? How do you get out?’
He scrabbled at the wall for a handhold as the current shoved him. ‘You can go for help and come back and rescue me. I’ll wait right here. I’ll be fine.’
‘But I can swim,’ protested Laura. ‘It makes more sense if you go for help.’ She cupped her hands. ‘Go on. I’ll lift you up.’
‘No way.’ His teeth were chattering. ‘This is all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be here.’
‘Firstly, I wouldn’t be here if I’d hadn’t opened the door to Rumblefish,’ Laura pointed out. ‘Secondly, you’re only here because the Mukhtars are planning to turn you into a tapestry factory slave. I’m not leaving you and that’s final. One of the older kids can go for help.’
Tariq’s eyes were suddenly shiny. ‘You’re the best friend I ever had, Laura Marlin.’
‘I’m the best friend you still do have, Tariq Miah,’ Laura told him, struggling to resist the force of the water. ‘Present tense. We are going to get out of here, and when we do we’re going to eat ice-creams on the beach and have a brilliant St Ives summer.’
There was a shouted warning from the children above. Tariq’s eyes bulged. ‘Laura, look out!’
There was a crack like a pistol shot and then a portion of the shaft collapsed under the weight of the incoming waves. A wall of water cascaded from the tunnel mouth, building as it came. To Laura, it seemed to ap
proach in slow motion, like a scene from a tsunami disaster movie. She had time to remember Matron’s words and to realise, with a mixture of regret and relief, that she was never going to have to do homework again. Then she and Tariq were ripped apart and swept into the catacomb.
The last thing Laura heard was a wolf-like howl and her own voice screaming over and over, ‘Skye. Skye. Skye.’
25
‘THE BEST NEIGHBOURS anyone could have, Laura Marlin and Calvin Redfern. Wouldn’t hear a word against them. Devoted to each other, they are, which is hardly surprising what with her being an orphan and him having lost his wife in tragic circumstances. A lot of people around here had their suspicions about him, especially when he arrived in St Ives all wild-eyed and dishevelled, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that he’s was Scotland’s most decorated detective. He has that rugged, focused look about him.