by Peter James
‘Didn’t look like it,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll go first, you two stay up here.’
Reluctantly, Martis agreed and asked, ‘Do you have any gloves, sir?’
‘Only forensic ones.’
Martis handed him his own pair of leather gloves. ‘Put these on, you don’t want to burn your hands sliding down the ladder.’
‘Won’t you need them?’
‘My hands are like leather.’
Gratefully, Grace donned them. Then looked at each of his colleagues in turn, taking a couple of deep breaths. ‘Rock and roll?’
They both nodded.
He hesitated, took another deep breath and flung back the hatch.
Then as his feet touched the first rung Crisp’s voice rang out.
‘Detective Superintendent Grace, what a very pleasant surprise. Pleasant for me, indeed!’
‘Sir!’ Martis yelled in warning.
Roy Grace looked down and saw both barrels of an under-and-over shotgun aimed straight at him. A chill ripped through him. Shit, shit, shit – where the hell had—?
Suddenly, he felt himself being jerked sharply and painfully upwards, by his armpits. He heard two deafening explosions in quick succession that made his ears pop, and felt an instant, searing pain in his right leg.
As he fell face down on the floor, earth thudded down on top of him.
‘Fucking bastard!’ he heard Martis shout out.
‘Roy, you OK, man? Roy?’ Glenn Branson was kneeling beside him.
He nodded, his leg in agony, then heard a splintering crack. He saw the LST officer pulling one of the railways sleepers supporting a beam over the hatch. He realized what the man was doing, he was trying to stop Crisp coming up through the hatch with his gun.
Almost in slow motion the dislodged beam fell down the shaft, accompanied by a shower of earth and, an instant later, by the massive railway sleeper.
Grace heard a cry of disbelief below, followed by a scream of pain.
There was a shower of earth on his face and he had to close his eyes against it. Then he heard another shout – that was more a scream of terror – from Crisp.
‘Get me out of here! Please! Get me out of here! Help me! I can’t move!’
Grace crawled to the opening and very cautiously looked down. He felt more earth thudding against the back of his head. His right leg felt like it had been stung by a thousand wasps, but he ignored the pain. Below him he saw Crisp flat on his back, pinned to the bed of cushions by the falling debris.
‘Help me! I can’t move! Help me!’
A solid chunk of earth struck the back of Grace’s head, painfully.
‘Sir!’ Martis’s voice sounded anxious. ‘Can you hear that rumbling? We need to get out of here.’
Earth was raining down on them now.
‘Help me!’ Crisp screamed, his face a mask of abject terror as more earth tumbled down onto him.
Someone was tugging at Grace’s arm. Martis. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘We have to get out of here.’
‘We can’t leave him,’ Grace said.
‘We don’t have a choice, sir. We need to leave NOW!’
He shone the torch up and could see that the entire roof was moving, the remaining timbers vibrating, perilously, more earth falling down.
‘Everybody out, back down the tunnel!’ Grace ordered.
‘Go ahead, sir,’ Martis said.
‘I’m going last. Go!’
‘Please help me, I can’t move!’ screamed Crisp. ‘Don’t leave me – please help me, HELP ME, HELP ME!’
Grace peered one last time into the opening. As he looked, a huge object plummeted past him, another railway sleeper, missing Crisp’s head by inches then thudding on the floor below.
Suddenly he felt himself being jerked away. He turned to see Glenn Branson pulling him by his good leg.
‘Hey!’ he shouted.
More earth fell on him.
‘He’s not worth it, mate. Leave him or we’re all going to die!’
Branson pulled him further and further away.
There was a sharp crack above them, followed by a shower of earth. ‘Go!’ he yelled at Branson. ‘Go! Go! Go!’
He heard Crisp scream for help again.
Should he go back for him?
More earth fell on him. He inhaled some of the dust and coughed violently. He thought of Cleo and Noah. Thought of never seeing them again. To try to save a monster? He made his decision and, following his colleagues, he scrambled on his hands and knees, the pain in his leg worsening with every movement and continued, on, on, on. Then his face smacked into the heels of Glenn Branson’s shoes. ‘Keep going, Glenn, for Chrissake, go!’ he shouted.
He shone the torch behind him and saw a wall of dust racing down the tunnel towards them. Gripped with panic, he yelled, ‘Go! Go! Go!’
There was a deep rumbling sound behind him.
The message seemed to have got through. Glenn was pulling away from him now. Grace crawled after him as fast as he could, but his right leg was becoming useless. Dank, earthy dust was swirling around him, choking him, filling his lungs. Within moments all he could see was a dark brown fog.
Panic gripped him. He was going to die down here. He would never see Cleo or Noah again. Never live in the new house with them. Never—
Have to think clearly, he told himself. Panic was what killed people. Disaster survivors were the ones who stayed calm, kept their nerve. The shaft was ahead. If he could reach it he would be safe.
He scrambled on. He dropped the torch, but did not stop to look for it, he just carried on. On. On.
Then his face smashed, painfully, into something hard, metallic.
The bottom rung of the shaft.
Relief surged through him.
A torch beam suddenly dazzled him. He blinked, and heard Glenn Branson’s voice. ‘I’m here, mate, I’m not going up without you, so sodding get on with it! Follow me up.’
He raised his hands, felt the rung above, and hauled himself up. He was spluttering, his mouth arid. Someone was coughing above him, then he coughed again hard himself, a searing pain in his lungs, and almost lost his grip.
Three limbs, he remembered.
But his right leg would barely move.
The rung he was holding was shaking. As if it was about to pull free of the shaft. He moved his right arm up to the next one, hurriedly.
The rumble behind him had turned into a roar, like a volcano. Everything beneath him was collapsing. He had to keep clambering up. Had to. Had to.
Three limbs at all times.
The rung both his feet were standing on suddenly fell away, and he swung out, hanging from one hand, grimly holding on, but feeling his fingers slipping.
Noah. Cleo. God, I love you so much.
Somehow in the choking darkness he managed to get his other hand onto the rung, then felt it giving way as well. He hauled himself up, just as the rung beneath his feet detached from the side of the shaft and clattered into the swirling brown hell below him, and grabbed the next one. He gripped the rung with both hands, but he could barely hold on.
The roar deepened, deafening now like an earthquake, as both his wrists were seized in a grip like a vice. Feeling like his arms were about to rip out of his body, he was hauled slowly upwards. He looked up to see Branson and Martis’s faces.
‘It’s all right, mate, we’ve got you, you heavy bastard!’
An instant later he slammed down hard, over the lip of the freezer, his face striking the concrete floor of the garage, panting with exertion.
‘All right, Roy? Sorry if I hurt you.’
He turned, looking at Branson. ‘I’ll get over it,’ he gasped. ‘Thanks, mate.’
‘Bloke like you, at your age, you need one of them Stannah Stairlifts.’
‘Up yours!’
Somewhere in the distance he heard the wail of an emergency siren. Then the burning pain in his right leg worsened. ‘Shit!’ he cried out.
‘Can’t take the pace any
more?’ Glenn Branson chided.
Grace shook his head. ‘Nah, it’s not that. It’s your humour. Nothing personal, but every time I hear one of your tired old gags, I lose the will to live.’ He grinned, then he turned towards him and hugged him. ‘I don’t know why, but I do sodding love you.’
‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ Branson replied. ‘For an old git.’ Then he knelt, looking anxiously at Grace’s right leg, and saw the colour draining from his face. ‘Shit, Roy, this looks serious.’ He turned to Martis. ‘We need an ambulance, fast.’
103
Tuesday 23 December
‘Well, it’s not quite home, darling, is it?’
Roy Grace opened his eyes, feeling totally disoriented. The light was too bright, the bed felt unfamiliar, the ceiling looked strange. Fear engulfed him for an instant. Where was he?
What had happened?
Then he saw Cleo’s face above him, looking at him strangely, with a quizzical grin.
What was going on? Where—?
She leaned down and kissed him tenderly on his forehead.
Where – where was he?
‘You are crazy, my love,’ she said.
‘Crazy?’
His right leg was throbbing painfully. He saw a woman standing beside Cleo in a pale blue shirt. A name tag was pinned to it, which he couldn’t read. She looked like a nurse. Next to her stood a man of about fifty, in dark blue surgical scrubs, and blue and white gauze, like a J-cloth, tied with tapes around his head.
‘Welcome back, Detective Superintendent Grace,’ the nurse said.
‘Back?’ Grace said. He was trying to piece together things in his mind. The tunnel. Dr Crisp. The shotgun.
The man in scrubs stepped forward. ‘How are you feeling, old chap?’
‘My right leg’s hurting like hell!’
‘I’m not surprised. I’ve removed eleven shotgun pellets from it. You’re lucky, another few inches and you might have lost your leg. We’ll keep the pain under control and you’ll be back on your pins in a couple of weeks. Although it’ll be a bit tender for a few weeks, I’m afraid.’ He gave him a lopsided smile. ‘Sorry, should have introduced myself. I’m Rupert Verrell, a consultant surgeon here.’
It was all coming back to him now. ‘I didn’t realize it was that bad. Thank you.’
‘Double-barrel shotguns at close range are not good news – thought you as a detective would be the first person to know that.’
‘Yep, well I do now,’ he said.
‘You had a lucky escape – he was clearly a lousy shot.’
‘Glenn told me what you did, darling,’ Cleo said. ‘You are bloody nuts! A few inches in another direction and I might have been a grieving widow.’
‘How long have I been here?’ Roy Grace asked, feeling sudden panic.
‘Two days, darling,’ Cleo said.
‘What’s the date today?’ he asked.
Cleo gave him a chiding look. ‘December 23rd.’
‘What’s the time?’
She glanced at her watch. ‘Five past ten.’
‘Morning?’
‘Yes, morning!’
‘Shit!’ He tried to sit up – and instantly felt as if a red-hot poker was being pressed against his leg. ‘Yoowwwww!’ He closed his eyes, wincing. ‘I’ve got to go shopping!’ he said. ‘I’ve got tons of stuff to get – I have to get your card, your presents!’ And, he suddenly remembered, he’d got nothing yet for his godchild, Jaye, either.
‘There’s no way you’re going shopping today, old chap,’ the surgeon said. ‘Unless you’re planning on doing it online.’
‘You’re not seriously keeping me in here over Christmas? We’ve just moved into our new house – I – I’ve got to be at home with my family. I’ve got to get out and buy presents!’
‘I’ve got my present,’ Cleo said. ‘It’s you. You being OK, being alive, that’s the only present I need this Christmas.’
Grace stared up at her, despondently. ‘God, darling, I am so sorry.’
‘Remember what you told me when I was pregnant with Noah?’
He winced in pain again, then shook his head. ‘No, what?’
‘That your job was to catch and lock up the bad guys, to make the world a safer place for your unborn child and me. Well, that’s what you did. I may be mad as hell at you for putting your life at risk, but I’m proud of you. I don’t know many people who are married to real heroes. Noah and I will celebrate Christmas with you here in the hospital. It’ll be different from the one we planned. But hey, we’ll make it a good one. Right?’ She squeezed his hand.
He smiled up at her, blinking away tears, and squeezed her hand back. Then he heard the voice of the nurse, detached and bossy.
‘Your husband needs to sleep now.’
‘Darling, before you go, what’s happened to Crisp?’
‘I just know they’re still digging.’
104
Wednesday 24 December
Grace had had visitors all day, including his sister, and had nodded off watching the television. He was woken what seemed like only moments later by the gruff voice of Glenn Branson.
‘Happy Christmas, mate!’
He opened his eyes to see the tall hulk of the detective, in a sharp suit and even more dazzling tie than usual, reeking of alcohol and looking unsteady. He was holding a card in one hand and a massive bottle of champagne, with a blue ribbon around the neck, in the other. Next to him stood an attractive, fair-haired woman in a short black dress, leggings and high-heeled boots. She was holding a basket of fruit wrapped in cellophane with a sprig of holly on the top.
The Argus reporter, Siobhan Sheldrake, Grace realized. He looked up at them, wondering what the hell was going on. ‘Wassertime?’ he asked, still not fully with it.
‘One minute to midnight, Christmas Eve. Just call me Santa! Do you know how much rank I had to pull to be let in here?’ Branson said.
‘How are you feeling, Roy?’ the Argus reporter said.
‘No comment,’ he replied.
Was Glenn insane? What the hell was he doing here with this reporter?
‘Siobhan’s cool,’ Branson replied, reading his mate’s expression. ‘This is a social visit – she’s not writing it up. She’s already done her piece on you!’ He held up the front page of today’s Argus.
Grace stared at the headline.
HERO COP RISKS LIFE TO CATCH KILLER
Branson staggered sideways, got a grip on himself and put the bottle down on the table beside him. Then he touched Roy Grace’s face with his hand. ‘You OK?’
‘I haven’t thanked you properly yet, for getting me out of there,’ Grace said.
‘Yeah, and you managed to grab the headline!’ Branson retorted, sitting down on the side of the bed. ‘Hero bloody cop! Huh!’
‘You sodding yanked my arms out of their sockets!’
The tall detective grinned. ‘Yeah, bummer.’
Grace looked at him, moved his eyes over to the Argus reporter, then back to Glenn Branson. ‘Want to tell me what’s going on?’
‘Yeah. Siobhan and I – I know we’re a bit pissed. But I thought you ought to be the first to hear the news. We just got engaged.’
105
Thursday 25 December
In the years following Sandy’s disappearance, Christmas had been a meaningless time of year for Roy Grace, in which he’d preferred to work rather than try to be jolly with family.
Last year, for the first time, with Cleo, he had actually enjoyed it again. He had been looking forward to it so much this year in their new home in the country. He thought about a roaring open fire, walks in the country with little Noah in a carrier on his back. Instead, he was confined to this small single room, at the Royal Sussex County Hospital.
Every inch of shelf space, and the table beside his bed, was covered in cards – mostly from his work colleagues, along with a mass of flowers and baskets of fruit.
Reluctantly Cleo had left to take Noah home to bed. The
television was on, a Christmas special of Downton Abbey. He watched Hugh Bonneville raising a toast. Then suddenly the door opened and Cassian Pewe walked in carrying a festive bottle-bag and a card. Yet again he was dressed in one of his loud-checked sports jackets, roll-neck sweater, cavalry twills and distinctly vulgar two-tone brogues.
‘Roy! Happy Christmas!’ he said in his nasally whine. ‘I had planned to come sooner, but you know what Christmas Day is like!’
‘Very nice to see you, sir.’ Grace did his best to muster a smile, and in truth was pleasantly surprised to see his boss.
‘Brought you a little something to cheer you up!’ He handed Grace the heavy bag and card.
‘Thank you!’
Pewe sat down on the chair beside the bed and Grace smelled the reek of an obnoxiously sweet cologne, perhaps a Christmas gift.
‘Nice work, Roy.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No, thank you. What you’ve done is over and above anything expected. You’ve shown the city of Brighton and Hove, the county of Sussex and the entire damned country what good policing really is. We are all proud of you, and indebted to you. You’re a hero!’
Grace waited for the negative punchline, but it didn’t come.
‘Last year you saved my life, Roy. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but it’s funny how life works out. I don’t want to go into the New Year feeling any tension between us – that’s why I’ve come to see you tonight. You’re a damned fine copper. You’re the best. I’m proud to be working with you, and I’m sorry if I doubted you in the past. OK?’ He held out his hand.
Grace shook it. Pewe’s handshake was limp and slimy. ‘OK!’
‘I’m sure you want to know the latest on the recovery of Crisp’s body. We’ve had some problems; the tunnel’s flooded from fractured pipes and it’s full of water and sewage that we’re pumping out but it’ll take a few days.
‘Now, as I understand it you’ve just moved home, but Operation Haywain has prevented you from helping out in any way – is that correct?’
‘Well, I suppose so. Luckily, I have an understanding wife.’
Pewe tapped his chest. ‘And an understanding ACC. I’m told you will be allowed home before the New Year. I understand you’ll be on a month’s sick leave, Roy. Spend some quality time at home, getting straight, and with your lovely wife and your baby son. And forget all about Major Crime. Come back on Feb 1st fully charged up – we’re going to be needing you in the New Year firing on all cylinders. Right?’