Missing Dad

by J Ryan

  ‘It’s like the Bentley fusebox.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I see a memory stick lying on the desk, and plug it in. ‘There’s got to be something here that can put Big Head away.’

  ‘We haven’t time to look at each one.’ Trails of smoke are wandering lazily in through the open door. Becks rushes over and bangs it shut.

  ‘We’ll just have to copy the whole lot.’

  ‘Here, let me. I do the fastest mouse in the West, pardner!’ She starts clicking and saving so quickly, her hand’s a blur. Now, we can hear the rumbling turning into a roaring. There’s a groaning above us, like steel beams bending and buckling in molten heat. A sound like a gun shot, then another.

  I glance around, half-expecting to see Big Head’s bulky, dark-suited figure suddenly loom up behind us. ‘I guess it’s Bertolini who’s behind the Big Bangs.’

  Double-click, right click. Becks opens another directory. ‘Shooters must’ve got boring. Not loud enough.’

  ‘I reckon it’s the only way he can destroy the evidence – there’s masses of cocaine in the lower car park.’

  I can’t see what’s left of the pictures of Provence that clearly. There’s a haze between them and us. Becks wrinkles her nose as she clicks. ‘Passive smoking – yuk!’

  Now, we can hear unearthly shrieks of tearing metal. Thundering crashes of falling masonry shake the rock ceiling. One of the lights flickers again, and goes out. The roaring is all around us.

  ‘How many to go?’

  ‘Don’t! It’s like ‘Are we nearly there, yet?’’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Double-click, right click. BANG! My mind can see blue-glass fireworks soaring into the sky, and hissing as they shower into the docks, sending up geysers of steam.

  ‘I don’t think it was just the white stuff that Big Head wanted to send up in smoke… do you?’

  I have to raise my voice above the roaring. ‘But Monsieur seemed to know what was…’

  ‘I can’t copy this one – it’s protected.’

  ‘Leave it.’ The haze is becoming a fog. My throat is dry and itching. Click, double-click.

  Becks pushes a strand of red hair behind her ear, mouse hand slowing a bit. ‘I think that when you dodged that last bullet and bumped into his fancy Jag, you messed up Bertolini big time.’

  ‘You think he had another bullet… lined up for Monsieur… ?’

  Smoke’s billowing in now. The room’s filling up with it. The roaring is deafening. ‘We’ve got to go, Becks!’

  ‘Just a few more…’

  Another wall lamp flickers and dies. While I can still see, I look around quickly. Go through the drawers of the desk. Stumble into the kitchen and rip open cupboards, more drawers. There it is! I push the switch. A bright beam lights my way back to the shadow that’s Becks. ‘We’ve GOT to go, Becks!’

  She does a final click, yanks the memory stick out of the computer and hands it to me. I stuff it into my back pocket. The torch blazes through a fog of smoke, as we grope our way towards the wooden door. I talk to the lift. It doesn’t want to know.

  Becks tries. ‘Ouvrez, you pig!’

  ‘Don’t annoy it.’

  ‘It’s annoying ME!’

  ‘The fire must’ve messed it up. We’ll have to try and get out the way Monsieur did.’

  ‘Like where?’

  ‘That door at the back of the cave… ?’

  As we run through the choking air back into Monsieur’s apartment, all the lights go out. The screaming of melting, twisting metal is ear-piercingly loud. More walls and girders crash down above us. Smoke swirls all around, trying to fill our lungs. We’re both coughing now. ‘Get down! Below the smoke!’

  We drop onto hands and knees, and find some air. The torch picks out the arched shape of the door at the back of the cave, and I reach up for the iron latch. We crawl through, and push the door shut behind us.

  The roaring is further away now, and we can breathe. We clamber to our feet. ‘Ouch!’ The roof’s really low. Becks can stand, but I’m stooping. We watch the beam of the torch as I move it across the rock walls. Suddenly it’s trying to shine into a blackness ahead of us. ‘Looks like a tunnel!’ I keep on moving the torch round the walls. It finds another blackness, six or seven yards to the left of the first one. ‘Pick a tunnel, Becks.’

  ‘Your turn.’ Her voice doesn’t sound as though we’re in a cave. No echoes. Maybe it’s because the roof is so low here.

  ‘Monsieur used to talk about the slaves – how they marched them underground up to Blackboy Hill to be sold…’

  ‘Great History lesson, Joe, but we’re doing Survival GCSE now!’

  ‘No, listen! We have to take the tunnel that goes upwards. From the docks to Blackboy Hill, it’s a steady climb on the road. The slave trail must go upwards too.’

  ‘That’s miles! And upwards to what? Can we get out up there?’

  ‘I don’t know. But we have to take the one that goes up. I reckon it’s the one on the right.’

  ‘Suppose Monsieur knew a way that comes out near the docks? They had to bring the slaves in secretly, didn’t they? I’ve just got this feeling that the shortest get-out could be the tunnel on the left.’

  ‘I thought it was my turn… ?’

  The torch lights the rock walls as we grope our way into Becks’ tunnel. It’s so narrow that I have to go in front, scrambling over stones and boulders. The roaring above is distant now. There’s just darkness, and the beam of the torch ahead of us, as we stumble along. Then, the path goes down steeply. I trip, and drop the torch. Becks grabs it. A huge pile of fallen boulders is completely blocking our way.

  ‘Oh, poo!’

  Now we hear the rumbling, getting louder. The tunnel’s shaking. Small rocks are starting to fall, followed by larger ones, in front and behind. Stones bounce off our heads, as we race back towards the tunnel entrance. I can hear a creaking up ahead that I don’t understand. Like something trying to tear itself away.

  ‘Becks, STOP!’

  ‘Why… ?’

  I grab her arm and drag her backwards, as a huge shape crashes down just in front of us. ‘Give me the torch!’ More stones and rubble rain down, as I shine the beam on the monster in our path. ‘I think we can just about get round it. Go on!’

  She pushes herself between the giant boulder and the tunnel wall. ‘Damn, I’ve ripped my best top…’

  I follow her into the gap, feeling my chest being squeezed so tight I can hardly breathe. The tunnel floor shakes with another massive crash behind me, and dust pours onto my head and down my neck. Then I can’t go any further.

  ‘I’m through, Joe! Come on!’

  ‘Can’t…’

  ‘Give me your hand!’ Her hand reaches into the torchlight and grabs my wrist.

  ‘You’re pulling my arm off!’ The tunnel wall scrapes my face, as I almost pop out on the other side of the boulder, and Becks topples over backwards. I drag her up, and we scramble wildly for the entrance, with more rocks thundering at our heels. Then we’re out, gasping for breath.

  The crashing of falling rocks goes on for at least another twenty seconds. The air is full of choking dust. Becks shines the torch on a wall of boulders where her tunnel used to be. We can hear the roaring above us again, and more gun shots, as blue-glass rockets into the sky. Smoke is mixing with the dust, as I croak, ‘My tunnel, now?’

  She brushes cave dust out of her hair. The coloured beads fly off into the dark. ‘Only if it’s got a power shower somewhere on the way.’

  My tunnel isn’t quite as low as Becks’, but I have to stoop to walk. The ground is still so rough with stones that we keep stumbling. The air feels old, like no one’s been in here for hundreds of years. Not much oxygen, but at least we can breathe again. The
smoke hasn’t got this far, yet.

  She whispers, ‘It’s quite warm… I thought it would be all cold and damp.’

  ‘Not as warm as it is in those posh offices now…’

  As we scramble on, the roaring turns into a silence. There’s just the sound of our feet, feeling their way over the rocky path. The clatter of a stone, as one of us trips up. It’s then that I start to hear them. Tiny voices, echoing somewhere in the tunnel. I can’t work out if it’s in front or behind us. Or is it in my head? ‘Joe… ! Joe… !’ I stop dead.

  Becks bumps into me. ‘You alright?’

  ‘I can hear…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can’t you hear them?’

  ‘Who? What can you hear?’

  ‘Little kids’ voices. They’re like, calling my name?’

  ‘I can’t hear anything, Joe.’ She grabs my hand. ‘This place is doing your head in. Mine too.’

  We stumble on through the blackness, with just the beam of the torch ahead. But I can still hear ‘Joe… Joe!’ Then I notice that my legs are working harder than they were just a few minutes ago. I turn to Becks’ shadow behind me. ‘The ground’s starting to go upwards. Can you feel it?’

  ‘Not sure. Could just be our legs getting tired.’

  We trudge on, and I’m sure the ground’s still going gradually upwards. It seems like hours, and endless miles, in the dark. And still these far-off little cave voices call me. ‘Joe…’

  I trip again, and fall flat on my face this time. Becks shines the torch down towards me, and I can hear her quick breathing. The light picks out a tiny human skull and tiny bones, curled up, beneath a ledge. My face feels the cool stones of the slave tunnel, as I just lie there and look at what’s left of this little kid, who died so long ago in here.

  Becks kneels beside me. In the torchlight, her fingers reach out and gently touch what was once a small hand. Her voice is quiet, trembling with anger. ‘They took children… !’

  As I clamber slowly to my feet, Monsieur’s voice is in my head now. ‘This place has a shameful past…’

  We’ve been crouching, falling and staggering forever in this tunnel, when the torch picks out something that brings us to an abrupt halt. It looks like an immense, oily surface ahead, going on so far we can’t see where it ends. We go a few more steps, and now I can stand upright. I take the torch from Becks and shine it upwards. It gleams on a high roof hung with hundreds of pale stalactites, some of them maybe sixty feet long, gleaming over this still and silent underground lake.

  ‘Silly me, I forgot to bring the boat.’

  ‘We’ll have to lose the trainers. That’s a pain.’ We kick off our shoes.

  ‘Give me the memory stick. I’ve got more layers on than you.’ She jams it into her top. I stuff the torch into my back pocket, no idea if it’s waterproof. Then I wade in for a few feet, and suddenly there’s nothing beneath me.

  I call to her through the darkness. ‘I think it’s very deep – but it’s quite warm.’

  There’s a splash as she follows me. ‘Eeugh! Smells mouldy!’

  I have the feeling that we could be floating above an underground cavern that’s as tall as a church. But Becks can handle herself in the water at least as well as I can. Our parents used to take it in turns to do the swim club run, although it must be a couple of years now since either of us has done any serious stuff. ‘We need to have a plan, so we don’t get separated.’

  She spits out a mouthful of water. ‘This is so disgusting!’

  ‘Listen up, Becks! We do front crawl. I’ll swim ahead. You grab my foot every four strokes so I know you’re there?’

  ‘You’ll kick me in the teeth. Your feet are like propellers when you’re doing front crawl!’

  ‘Alright, you swim ahead and kick me in the teeth instead.’

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘But remember how to swim in a straight line, Becks. Otherwise…’ I can feel her pitying look as she powers away from me into the dark. I follow, locking on to the wake of her kicking feet. One, two, three, FOUR, GRAB, telling her I’m there behind her.

  We’ve been going for maybe twenty minutes when there’s a colossal splash almost next to us. Something huge plummets past us into the depths. Becks stops. ‘Don’t tell me – Big Head’s doing ballistic missiles now!’

  ‘I… think it was one of those stalactites?’

  ‘Must’ve been a one in a million chance for it to fall so close.’

  ‘Or else it’s the sounds we’re making. You know, the way avalanches start?’

  She whispers, ‘Oh…’

  I whisper back, ‘Let’s try not to kick above the surface.’

  We used to swim up to three thousand metres in one go on a training night, but not with all our clothes on, like lead weights. I’ve no idea how long we’ve been going now. Feels like way more than the training run. It’s a slower one, two, three, FOUR, when Becks’ feet stop kicking and I come up alongside her. I can hear her hands splashing as she feels around, panting to get her breath back.

  ‘It’s solid rock. Just goes straight up.’

  ‘And straight down? I’m going to take a look.’ I take a deep breath and dive. The underwater rock face feels slimy beneath my searching hands. It just goes on and on, until my lungs are about to explode. My head bursts back up through the surface. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘My go.’

  Becks’ thrashing feet propel her beneath the water. And now, I feel like she must have done, waiting for me to come back up. After an age, she breaks surface, taking great gasps of breath. ‘There’s a hole, about ten feet below, maybe four feet diameter?’

  We both tread water in the dark, thinking the same thing. Neither of us likes Underwater that much. And we have no way of knowing how much Underwater we’ve got to do. I breathe out slowly through my teeth. ‘I can see why they closed these caves off. They’re not exactly a tourist attraction.’

  ‘Unless you really don’t like tourists.’

  We take a few minutes to fill our lungs with air.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Steady, go!’ She dives. I’m close behind. I can feel her going straight down, close to the rock wall, then pushing herself into the hole. I grasp the rock at the entrance and shove my way after her, groping with hands and feet and all my brain, swimming blindly forwards like I’m on fire. Hitting my head on ledges I can’t see. Hating everything I find that isn’t the surface. I can feel Becks’ kicking feet just ahead. Then I bash my head on another ledge and lose track of her completely.

  My head’s pounding, and my lungs are screaming for air now. And I think, ‘We definitely could drown in here.’ I read ‘The Perfect Storm’ once. Two ways of drowning. One: you lock up your windpipe so tight to keep the water out, you get no more oxygen. Two: you breathe in water, so you get no more oxygen. I can’t quite make up my mind, when I crash into a ledge so hard it makes my head spin, and rocket up through the surface.

  Taking huge breaths of cave air, I struggle to my feet, feeling sharp stones digging into them. I wade out of the water, pulling the torch out of my pocket. ‘Becks?’

  The beam cuts through the blackness – amazing, it’s still working. It flashes around on a small, pebbly beach. Where there’s no one but me.

  ‘Becks!’ I turn the torch back towards the dark water. Nothing, just small waves lapping at the stones. Then the beam picks out something floating near the shore.

  ‘BECKS!’ I run back in, water showering up either side of me. I’m definitely hearing things now. Someone’s humming this Christmas carol, ‘Silent night… mmm mmm…’

  She’s lying on her back in the water, looking like she’s woken up in heaven. Humming to herself. She says in a dreamy voice, ‘It’s amazing isn’t it, this breathing thing?’

  I splash up to her. She stan
ds up, shaking strands of soaking hair off her face.

  ‘God, Becks, I thought…’

  ‘So did I! Where WERE you?’

  ‘I had to do a single-handed fight with this giant squid. Where were YOU?’

  She shoves a wave at me with both hands, and I splash her back. No worries about noise now, the stalactite bombs are a long way behind us. We wade out of the lake and onto the stony shore. The torch shines on layers of rock, and on a wooden door, with a trail leading up to it made by many weary, bare feet, some of them so small.

  Becks gazes down at the footprints. She says softly, ‘How come they’re still here after all this time?’

  ‘No wind or tides to take them away… ?’ I walk round those footprints without touching them; I don’t want my feet to smudge out even a part of their awful story. The door feels like concrete as I give it a shove. ‘It must be nailed across from the other side.’

  ‘Can you hear anything? Like cars, buses?’

  ‘Nothing. Maybe there’s just more tunnel…’

  ‘Give me the torch.’ Becks goes looking round, and comes back with a rock. She smashes it into the door, time after time. It doesn’t budge. Breathing hard, she hands the rock to me.

  I throw myself and the rock at the door like it’s Big Head and I want to see him in small pieces. BASH! BASH! Splinters of wood fly into my face, but there’s just more wood beyond. ‘It’s no good…’

  ‘I don’t suppose it speaks French?’

  ‘Scream and shout, Becks!’

  We both yell at max volume, ‘HELP! HELP! SOMEONE!’

  No one hears. I sit down with a bump, feeling like I did when the cops caught me driving underage, trying to find my dad. Becks sits down beside me. ‘I’m so tired… can’t stop my eyes closing.’

  ‘DON’T!’ I get up, every bone in my body creaking, sodden jeans clinging to my legs, and stumble over to the rock wall, shining the torch up, down, anywhere. Then… ‘Becks – over here!’

  No answer. I go back to her. She’s sound asleep, curled up on the pebbles. I shake her shoulders. ‘Becks! You’ve GOT to wake up!’