by Ellis, Tim
‘How far do the tunnels go?’
‘Quite some distance apparently.’
‘You’ve got a map?’
‘No. The owners simply decided that the mine didn’t exist. If they’d acknowledged its existence they would have been required to declare it to the authorities. That would have resulted in a significant delay, increased costs and so forth. It was better all round just to ignore it.’
‘And break the law?’
Jenkins shrugged. ‘A minor infraction that might warrant a fine, which the owners can now afford to pay thanks to the success of the park.’
‘Is there any gold in the mine?’
‘Not enough to justify the extraction costs.’
Quigg walked up and down the corridor rubbing his stubble. He really needed to get home, get a change of clothes, and do something about Lucy threatening him with builders.
‘How is the space between the two walls accessed normally?’
‘There’s a hidden door in the manager’s office.’
‘We’ve wasted days over this, Mr Jenkins. This is a murder investigation for God’s sake. I’ve a good mind to charge you with obstructing a police investigation and anything else that seems relevant.’
‘I was only following orders.’
‘That defence wasn’t accepted at the Nuremberg trials, and neither is it accepted in a British court of law.’
Jenkins shrugged again. ‘I’ll go and get the blueprints, shall I?’
‘That would be a good idea.’
Once Jenkins had left Quigg went back into the room and said to Perkins, ‘I suppose we’d better find out what’s behind that wall.’
Chapter Fourteen
Avery Malpass sat back against the damp stone wall and massaged his aching hand. He’d been using his knife to try and move the pin in the hinge of the manacle on Willow’s ankle. If he’d had a hammer, or a pair of pliers, maybe some WD-40, they’d all be free by now. With just a sheath knife, it was hard going and blisters were beginning to form. The pin was thick, and although he’d been forcing it left and then right with the knife to dislodge it from its housing, it had hardly moved.
‘It’s not working, is it, dad?’
‘Should we give up then, just sit back and wait for the clown to kill us?’
‘I didn’t . . .’
He squeezed her leg above the manacle. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated.’
She gave a smile. ‘I know.’
He renewed his efforts. He’d travelled through hell and back for that smile and no one was going to take it away from him again.
By wedging the thin part of the knife between the head of the pin and the edge of the manacle, and pushing first up, then down, a small gap appeared.
‘It’s shifting,’ he said, breathing hard.
They heard a noise from outside. He slipped the knife under his thigh.
The metal door scraped open. The clown stood and looked at each one of them in turn. Then he slid a plastic five-litre bottle of water along the floor with his foot, and threw in a bag of food scraps, which split open and the contents splattered on the floor.
The door crunched shut and the key turned in the lock.
‘We’re never going to get out of here, are we, dad?’
‘The next time the clown opens that door we’ll be free,’ he reassured her. Some of the finer details of the escape plan still had to be ironed out, but he was confident that they could succeed. The biggest threat to the plan, of course, was him. Or, more specifically – his ankle. Even if he could get the manacle off, he was going to be of no use to anyone.
He looked around. Besides himself and Willow, there was a skeletal man and four women. The man was in a bad way – weak and delirious – shifting between life and death.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ he’d asked sometime earlier.
‘Joe’s got a fever,’ one of the women said. Her name was Suzie Lambie. She had long dark brown hair and a thin pointed nose that matched her long pointed chin. She could have easily got a part as a witch. He thought that she might have had a lovely smile, but there was nothing to smile about in the cell, so he couldn’t tell.
‘I can see that,’ he snapped at her. ‘I was thinking more of the how or the why?’
‘Sorry. We think he’s got pneumonia now. Before, he had a chest infection. We were treating him with a mixture of herbs: coltsfoot, raw onions, fenugreek, ginseng, lobelia, sanguinaria, juniper and St John’s wort. It was working, but now . . .’ She shrugged.
He thought Joe would probably die in the next twenty-four hours unless an ambulance came to take him to the hospital for some proper treatment, which was unlikely to happen considering no one had called for an ambulance.
The other three women were Emma Hoyle, Hayley Tart and Julie Ellis. Each strange in her own way. Emma had a nervous tick and kept looking back over her left shoulder even though there was only the wall behind her; Hayley was having an ongoing conversation with something in the pocket of her cardigan; and Julie had matted dreadlocks, which she scratched furiously like a demented dog with fleas..
Why did so many women flock to these cults? He’d read something about them being more likely to be victims than men, and cult members were seen as victims. Was Willow a victim? He guessed she must be. How did people become victims? Was there a victim profile? A typical victim psyche of low self-image and self-esteem? It made him both sad and angry to think about what had happened. It was as if fate had decreed that Willow was going to be a victim regardless of what he did. Looking back, he was just a butterfly trying to stop an express train from crashing into a brick wall.
Maybe, if the two of them escaped from this prison in one piece, he could do things differently – make a difference to his daughter’s life. Tears ran down his cheeks at the thought of what might have been.
‘Don’t cry, dad,’ Willow said. ‘You’ll start me off.’
‘I was thinking about what had gone wrong.’
‘It was all my fault. Nothing you or mum could have done would have changed how things have turned out. Do you remember the massive see-through water slide at Seaworld?’
He smiled. A family holiday in Florida a lifetime ago. ‘It was awesome, wasn’t it?’
‘That was my life, dad. Once I started going down that slide nothing and no one was ever going stop me. I knew it was wrong. I hated myself, but I did it anyway.’
He turned his attention back to the manacle pin. ‘It’s all in the past now, love. Let’s concentrate on the future.’ Did they still have a future?
***
‘We?’ Perkins said, looking over his shoulder and backing towards the door.
‘You can see I’m short of a partner at the moment. I need some back-up.’
‘I’m a scientist not a detective. I have no training, I’m not qualified to provide back-up, my team needs leadership, I . . .’
‘Are you a man or a mouse?’
‘Squeak squeak.’
‘I’ll go first. You bring up the rear.’
‘You know what will happen if I get injured, don’t you?’
‘You’ll squeal like a pot-bellied pig?’
‘You’ll be in serious trouble. On the accident report form I’ll write your name in the box which asks who I think was directly responsible for my accident. I’ll write it in big capital letters with dashes all around it like a flashing neon sign.’
‘I always wanted to see my name in lights.’
‘This is your big chance, Inspector.’
Behind the wall of Room 13 was a six-foot gap as Jenkins had said. All along the inner wall were metal staircases that zigzagged upwards to the top floor. At the mechanical entrance behind the rear wall of each room was a metal walkway. As he shone the torch upwards, he thought about what Tolliver had told him at breakfast, about being strapped to an altar, and people with Easter Island masks dancing around naked and chanting. There was something in his subconscious memory but he couldn’t reclaim it. Was the
memory real? He’d certainly had an injection in the crook of his arm, or had he? Was it merely a coincidence that Tolliver had the same bloody spot? He didn’t believe in coincidences. Was Magdalena involved in their abduction? Where had they been taken? And who were the other people dancing round naked with masks on? And what were they chanting for?
There was a large excavated hole in the right-hand corner of the building. The concrete foundations had been reduced to rubble and the outer concrete blocks had jagged edges. They edged through the gap.
‘It looks like the mine is no longer filled in,’ Perkins said.
‘See, that’s why I brought you with me. I would never have noticed that without your help.’
The opening led to a tunnel shored-up with old wooden stanchions and beams. This was part of the old mine.
‘I think I’ll go back now.’
‘Then you’d miss all of this,’ he said, bouncing the light around an enormous cavern that they’d stumbled into.
‘My God,’ Perkins said. ‘It’s the graveyard.’
‘If we’re being accurate, I would suggest that we’re beneath the graveyard.’
‘You’re one of those people who always wants the last word, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
Scattered around the floor of the cavern were a legion of rotting corpses. Coffins had fallen through the bottom of the graveyard, smashed and spilled their contents. The roof of the cavern was about fifteen feet above them and in a similar state of dilapidation. Coffins were poking through at precarious angles. From some, the bodies were dangling half-in and half-out and the whole chaotic scene resembled a surrealist oil painting by Salvador Dali.
‘This is the stuff nightmares are made of, Perkins.’
‘I’m going to have to get my team in here.’
‘Why?’
‘We can’t leave them like this.’
‘I don’t see why not. Crazy in life, crazy in death.’
‘In death, they deserve to be at rest. If any of these people were your relatives . . .’
He held up a hand. ‘I suppose you’re right about them being at rest, but this . . .’ He waved his arm to take in the whole cavern. ‘. . . is not our responsibility. I’ll speak to Jenkins. It’s his responsibility. We have other priorities at the moment. ’
Perkins began to wander through the cavern shining the torchlight at the bodies and disintegrated coffins.
‘Be careful,’ Quigg said. ‘You never know what’s going to fall on top of you.’
While Perkins was examining the corpses, he decided to explore the beginning of a tunnel that he’d seen to the right. As soon as he entered he realised he was in the mine, not least because there was a railway track but no car that he could see. At intervals there were sections of old wooden shoring keeping the roof from collapsing, but whether the tunnel was safe or not he had no idea.
Without support he’d be a fool to venture too far into the tunnel. Perkins was right, he wasn’t trained to provide back-up. He needed Kline. Where the hell was she? He checked his watch. It was four-thirty. He’d missed lunch, and now his stomach was making gurgling noises. He’d have to go back to the command centre and organise back-up. It would be no good taking Coveney and the others into the mine. Firstly, the changeover was at eight o’clock and he had no idea how long they might be in the tunnels. Secondly, they were unprepared in terms of equipment, clothing, supplies and so forth. He needed a specialist team. God knows what they might come across in the mine. Thirdly, if the killer was down there, then a search team should be armed, and he had no weapons with him. The Chief would have to listen to him now.
He heard Perkins calling his name.
‘What?’ he asked as he re-entered the cavern.
‘You’re never going to believe this, Sir.’
‘Then why are you telling me?’
‘It’s Cora Jiggins.’
Warily, he shuffled over to where Perkins was standing. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I don’t do kidding.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’
He squatted and shone the light over the remains. There was a tarnished brass plaque on a piece of wood from the shattered coffin. It read:
Cora Jiggins
July 3 1953 – July 3 1973
RIP
He stood up.
‘I suppose you’d better get your team in here after all. I wouldn’t be surprised if you find the body of Cora Jiggins from 1903 as well.’
‘Do you think we’ll ever get home again, Sir?’
Quigg shook his head slowly. ‘No, I don’t think so, Perkins. I think this is where we’ll end our days.’
***
‘You two men need to cover your eyes,’ Kline warned them. ‘If I see you peeking I’ll put your testicles in a vice when we get out of here and crush them ever so slowly. Are we clear?’
Both men nodded as if they were testing out new neck springs.
‘Pass me the wire pieces sewn into the cups of your bras, ladies,’ she said to the women as she wriggled out of her own bra. She was glad now that Quigg had asked her to put it back on. What was he doing now? Did he even care about her? It was probably the proudest day of her life when he’d said she could be his partner, and now look. If he couldn’t trust her to take care of herself, how could she ever be trusted to protect his back? She had to get out of here, and she had to do it on her own. Nobody was coming for her, because nobody knew where she was. She had to prove to him that she could be trusted. She refused to be a victim ever again.
‘I don’t wear a bra,’ Laura Cole said.
Kline stared at her. ‘A free spirit, eh?’
‘You could say that.’
‘The other three women squirmed out of their bras and began working the cup underwires out of the fabric.
Soon, she held eight curved pieces of thin metal in her hands, and the women had put their bras back on.. ‘Okay you two,’ she said to the men. ‘You can open your eyes again now.’
Once their eyes had adjusted Chris Tams said, ‘Now what?’
Kline passed the metal strips round. ‘Now we get to work. From what I can see, the only weak part of that manacle is the pin. I think we can get those pins out, but I don’t think it’s going to be easy. So I don’t want to hear people whining and moaning that it’s too hard, or your fingers have blisters, or anything else for that matter. If you want to get out of here alive this is probably the only chance you’ve got.
They attacked the pins, but it soon became obvious that the thin aluminium strips were no match for the thick metal pins. They snapped and crumpled out of shape after only a short time and had made no difference to the pins.
‘Good idea, but it’s not going to work,’ Charlie Myers said and began sobbing.
‘So, you’re all going to give up?’ Kline challenged them.
Alan Hewitt pushed himself up so that he stood over them and stretched. He was painfully thin with shoulder-length wiry hair and shoulders that sloped down directly from his neck at an impossible angle. He could have been used as a “Human Arrow” and shot out of a cannon at the circus. ‘I have a piece of metal,’ he said in a voice that was like sludge in a U-bend.
They all looked up at him.
‘In my shoulder.’
‘None of us have any idea what you’re talking about, Alan,’ Tams said to him.
‘About three years ago I was riding my bike to work when I was hit by a car. My shoulder was smashed up, and I had to have a pin inserted . . .’
Joy Chart pulled a face. ‘You’re not talking about . . . ? That’s disgusting.’
‘Not as disgusting as dying in here without putting up any kind of fight, Joy,’ Alan said. ‘The pin is close to the surface. You can actually feel the end of it, and I don’t think it would take much to get it out. I feel like fainting at the idea of it and I still might. But the police lady is right, we need to do something if we’re going to get out of here alive. This pin is made of titanium, so I thin
k it’ll work just fine.’
Kline was surprised that they still had any fight left in them. If they were here waiting for the end of the world, why were they so concerned about staying alive? If it was her, she’d just lie down and wait for the end to arrive, but she didn’t say anything to dampen their enthusiasm. If she was being honest, she was relieved he’d come up with idea because she had nothing left.
‘Don’t ask me to get it out,’ Joy said.
‘Nor me,’ Charlie added.
‘I’ll do it,’ Kline said.
Hewitt took off his top and pointed to the small lump protruding from the skin on his sloping shoulder. ‘There,’ he said.
‘It’s going to hurt like hell,’ Kline said.
He nodded. ‘I know.’
Kline glanced at Tams. ‘He’ll need holding down.’
Tams nodded.
‘I’ll help,’ Olivia said.
Joy slipped out of her cardigan and passed it to Tams. ‘For putting in his mouth,’ she explained. ‘If he screams, the clown will come.’
Kline used one of the bra underwires, that had been worked to a fine edge by trying to slide it under the head of the pin, to make an incision in the skin.
Hewitt passed out.
A low pain threshold, Kline thought. But at least she could work without worrying about him crying out or moving.
The square silver head of the pin popped into view. There was a bit of blood from the cut she’d made, which Tams soaked up with the bottom of Hewitt’s own shirt.
Tams leaned towards her. ‘I didn’t want to say anything before, but you need a small spanner to get the pin out. The other end has a thread like a screw.’
Kline tried to twist the pin with her fingers, but it refused to move. ‘Great! Now what?’