Gone

  ‘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.’

  78

  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.’

  79

  ‘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.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Caffery yelled.

  ‘They’re bringing him out now,’ he shouted back. ‘They’ve worked like bastards.’

  ‘The girls?’

  He shook his head. Grim. ‘Nothing. We’ve searched every inch of the place. The barge and through into the next section of tunnel. It’s unstable as hell in there – can’t keep the team down there a minute longer than we have to.’

  ‘What about Prody? Is he speaking?’

  ‘No. Says he’s going to tell you when he comes out. Wants to tell you to your face.’

  ‘Well?’ Caffery yelled. ‘Do we believe him or is he stalling?’

  ‘I don’t know. How long’s a piece of string?’

  Caffery sucked air through his teeth. Put his hands flat on his stomach to keep the rolling fear still. He looked at the lip of the shaft. At the complex pulley system laboriously cranking away. The lines from the tripod buffeted the shrubs that clung to the side of the shaft, cut gouges into the soft soil at the lip.

  ‘And haul,’ came the voice from the squawk box. ‘Haul.’

  Fifty yards away through the trees Flea was being loaded on to the helicopter. The rotors were engaged, picking up speed and the forest was drowned with noise again. The team from the second helicopter was arriving at the edge of the shaft. Two male air paramedics and a woman who, if it hadn’t been for the word ‘doctor’ emblazoned across the back of her green flying suit, could have passed for a gone-to-seed pole-dancer. A short ugly pug of a woman with broken veins on her nose, a scowl and bleached-blonde hair. She carried herself like a centre forward, her solid shoulders set broad and square, her steps slightly wide, as if the muscles on her inner thighs stopped her bringing her feet together.

  He came and stood next to her. Quite close. ‘Detective Inspector Caffery,’ he murmured, holding out his hand.

  ‘Really?’ She didn’t shake it or look at him. She put her hands on her hips and peered into the shaft, where the first of the access teams’ yellow helmets was visible, ascending from the gloom in fits and starts.

  ‘I want to talk to the casualty.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky. The moment he comes out of this hole we’re getting him into the paraffin parrot over there. His injuries aren’t going to let us give him any treatment in the field.’

  ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter who he is.’

  ‘Yes, it does matter. He knows where those two little girls are. He’s going to tell me before you get into the HEMS.’

  ‘If we waste any time we’re going to lose him. I’ll make you that guarantee.’

  ‘He’s still breathing.’

  She nodded. ‘I can hear. He’s breathing fast. Tells me he’s lost so much blood we’re going to be lucky to get him to the hospital at all. The moment he breaks surface he’s in that ’copter.’

  ‘Then, I’m coming with you.’

  She gave him a long look. Then a smile. Almost pitying. ‘Let’s see what sort of state he’s in when he comes to the surface, shall we?’ She lifted her face to the officers. ‘When he comes out it’s going to be everything on full alert, so this is the protocol. You,’ she pointed to two of the men, ‘at the top two corners of the stretcher, and the rest of you at the bottom. I’ll give you a warning, “prepare to lift”, then the order “lift”. We go straight to the ’copter. Get it?’

  Everyone nodded and peered dubiously into the shaft. The squealing noise of the pulley system reached across the clearing. Caffery yelled at the CSI officer who’d videoed the last twenty minutes next to the air shaft. ‘Is that thing recording sound?’

&nbs
p; The officer didn’t take his eyes off the monitor. He held up a thumb. Nodded.

  ‘You’re going to run with me to the helicopter. Get as close as you can – I want to hear every squeak he makes, every fart. Tread on these bastards’ toes if you have to.’

  ‘Treat us like professionals,’ yelled the doctor, ‘and you’ll get a lot further.’

  Caffery ignored her. He took up position on the edge of the shaft. The ropes were creaking against the tripod. The sound of the heart monitor beeping, and Prody’s breathing, were getting louder. The first of the team appeared. Helped by a surface attendant, he scrambled on to the lip of the hole and the two of them turned to help haul the stretcher up. Caffery’s palms broke into a sweat. He wiped them on the front of the body armour.

  ‘And haul.’

  The stretcher came halfway out, pausing at an angle on the lip. ‘He’s tachycardic.’ The accompanying paramedic scrambled out, covered with blood and dirt, holding aloft a drip bag. He was streaming out information to the doctor as he got to his feet. ‘Hundred and twenty a minute, respiratory rate is twenty-eight to thirty and the pulse oximeter readings dropped straight out during the ascent – about four minutes ago. No pain relief – not in the state he’s in – but I’ve put up five hundred mils of crystalloids.’

  The top team took up the last of the slack and, with one more jerk, the rest of the stretcher was delivered to the hard, cold ground, dislodging a few rocks that bounced and rattled into the echoey dark below. Prody’s eyes were closed. His bluish, cyanosed face, sandwiched between the tongues of a neck splint, like a boxer’s face guard bulging the flesh on either side of his nose, was expressionless. He was smothered with filth and dried blood. The nylon jogging jacket he’d been wearing had caught fire in the explosion and melted, curling long sections of crisped skin away from his neck and hands. Under the aluminium blanket the stretcher was soaked a dark wet red.

  The team got into position at each corner, squatting, ready to lift. As they did Prody began to tremble.