The Choice: An absolutely gripping crime thriller you won’t be able to put down

by Jake Cross

  Angry, he ran through the smoke towards where Seabury and Liz had been, but stopped after only a few seconds because he had no idea of what he might run into – or he did:

  DANGER HOLE BELOW

  Behind him, Król was shouting again, but laughing also. In the smoke he made out the mouthy Polish bastard’s shape, so stepped forward and launched a punch at its head. There was a hard connection, bone on bone, and a raspy grunt as Król crumpled to the ground.

  The smoke cleared ninety seconds later, shredded and dispersed by the soft wind. But the grenade had done its job. Mick looked all round, but saw only Król who was clutching his face, moaning about being struck.

  Seabury and the bitch had vanished.

  Twenty-Three

  Karl

  ‘Stop, Karl. I can’t see.’

  ‘It’s fine, just keep going straight.’

  ‘I don’t know where straight is. Where are we? Just stop, will you, please?’

  ‘We can’t stop. They might come down after us. Come on.’

  ‘No! Stop. Where does this go?’

  ‘Away from those bastards, and that’s good.’

  ‘STOP!’

  He was far ahead. He stopped in his tracks and turned. In the dark, he could barely make her out. His urge to leave her behind was centre stage, but he knew he couldn’t. He had a daft vision of getting out of there and running into her husband, and having to tell him he’d left the man’s wife in the dark underground, torn, bloody feet and all.

  But they couldn’t afford to dawdle. She was moving slowly and carefully because she was unaware of what lay before them.

  ‘We have to get out, and that means moving forward. So, hurry up or I’ll leave you here.’

  She gasped in shock. He regretted what he’d said and apologised. ‘But we have to go. Move faster. You want them to catch us down here?’ He turned away. Arms out before him, like a kid playing zombie, he continued to move.

  ‘We’re trapped. It’s madness to move further – ow!’

  Karl stopped as he heard Liz hit the ground with a thump. In the blackness, he moved back, feeling. Found her breast and quickly shifted his hands to her arm, cheeks flushing in the dark. Felt along until he had her hand and lifted her to her feet. He moved away, but kept hold of her hand. Still she wouldn’t move.

  ‘It’s okay. Come on.’

  ‘My feet,’ she moaned.

  He remembered: she’d lost her shoes while climbing onto the roof.

  He took his off, and felt for her toes. She said nothing as he slipped his shoes onto her feet, tying the laces as tight as he possibly could.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘What about your feet?’ she asked.

  ‘Come on.’ Like coaxing a kid. He was getting in some practice. But he wouldn’t need it if they never got out of here. He wanted to shout to get her moving. He wanted to damn well drag her. He needed to get back to his family. The men after Liz hadn’t had a change of will with the new dawn. If they had decided to visit the shop then there was no reason they wouldn’t go back to his house. The thought terrified him.

  But he didn’t shout at Liz. Instead he mustered all his restraint and said: ‘Come on.’

  He gave her a gentle tug, and she moved. They walked with careful steps. They got four or five, and something brushed the top of his shoulder. Two seconds later, he heard her cry out again and jerk back, and she almost took his entire arm with her.

  ‘What?’ he hissed as he stumbled.

  Her grey form dropped to its knees. ‘Something hit me.’

  He took a step, and the thing that had brushed his shoulder hit him in the cheek and chest. He felt for it: a length of wood poking down from the ceiling.

  ‘We’re going back,’ she moaned. She got up, arms feeling out before her. Her fingers slipped over his face like giant spiders, then she turned, took a step back the way they came, and fell again, this time forwards. A thud, a grunt of pain. And tears. He saw her throw something from the ground, heard it slap a wall. The brick that had tripped her.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’

  ‘The builders posted a letter to all the shops, warning us about possible subsidence. They were digging up the buildings on this land and found a tunnel.’

  With his eyes now fully adjusted to the dark, he saw her face turn to him. He held out a hand. She didn’t take it. Just sat there defeated.

  ‘It used to be connected to Victoria Park Station, up north about a mile. Vic Park closed in the forties. The overground lines and station were demolished in the 1960s when they built the East Cross Route.’

  Comforted some, she took his outstretched hand.

  He bent down, and pressed her hand towards the ground, and closed her fingers around the very thing she had tripped over. A steel rail.

  ‘It’s… it’s an underground train track?’

  ‘Not the London Underground, either, but a real railway. Something to do with an extension to some line or other. Long disused. I guess they were going to just forget about this underground section, let people in the future find it and wonder what life was like back when humans couldn’t teleport everywhere, but the post-Olympics regeneration of this area unearthed it.’

  ‘And we can follow this and… get out?’

  ‘The nearest station was Old Ford, only 500 feet from here, behind us. There’s a housing estate there now, though, and the route was filled in years ago. The good news is that this underground section exists all the way to Springfield Station. So, we can go forward. Springfield is also disused, but still there, and there should be a way up. I read that it’s close to West Ham Station, which is about two miles. But that will be two miles in the dark.’

  ‘Are you sure there will be a station?’

  ‘I saw plans of the tunnel and stuff. I looked them up once those builders told me about it. It was enough to postpone their building work while they checked it out. I wanted to make sure my shop wasn’t going to fall into the ground.’

  ‘So, we just walk straight on? What’s ahead of us? What if it’s a dead end and we have to go back and they’re waiting for us?’

  He didn’t know how to answer that. The two men hadn’t tried to follow them, so maybe that meant they assumed Karl and Liz had fled above ground in the smoke. Surely they wouldn’t be lurking up there, waiting. It didn’t matter, anyway, because they were not going back. They would find a way out ahead of them somehow.

  ‘This is weird,’ Liz said. ‘Underground station. Like something from Tomb Raider. But what if the station is all bricked up and there’s no way out?’

  He bit back a sarcastic joke. ‘There will be.’ He pulled her to her feet, and she came willingly.

  ‘Walk straight and you won’t trip.’

  ‘What if a train comes?’

  She was making a joke now. To his surprise, he laughed. ‘You know trains. Always late. We’re fine. Come on. Keep hold of my hand.’

  She gripped his hand tightly. Over-tight, which he took to mean she didn’t fully trust this plan. Nothing he could do about that because he didn’t fully believe in it himself. He took a step, expecting resistance from her. But she came.

  ‘Did you know that second man?’ he asked. ‘The one in the car? Was he the guy who chased you last night?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think he was a different man. The way he moved, and he was bigger. But he was hiding his face, so maybe he thinks we might have recognised him. Did you?’

  He shook his head, then realised his error and vocalised his answer. ‘But he looked like he was in control. Like, if there’s a team, he might be the boss.’

  They fell silent for a while. Karl tried not to think about that word he had used: team. The idea of many men after him was terrifying.

  They walked between the tracks, taking smaller steps to keep their feet on the sleepers; it made Karl remember doing this as a kid with his friends. Long strolls along the train tracks, where it was peaceful. In Sunday sunshine, not crushing blackness. Something he
hoped to do with his own son – or daughter – one day. They walked slowly, for a minute, in silence. By then, his eyes had adjusted to the gloom and he could see arcs and lines of lighter black in the dark. He could see the curve of the roof and the walls. And thin, long lines of grey-black that were the tracks they walked between.

  And a fork. The tunnel split like a lizard’s tongue. One black hole on the left, and one black hole on the right, and nothing to distinguish between them except the track vanished down the right-hand route. Life and death choices had been made on less, so he chose the track.

  But all his mind’s eye saw was Katie. He wished he’d gone home. She would be awaiting his call, but his phone was in the shop, a billion miles away, and she would begin to worry soon. He hoped his lack of contact would make her understand the threat they faced and force her out of the house, to her father’s place, which surely the men after them didn’t know the location of. She would call the police first, hopefully. But there was always a chance that she would remain in the house, waiting for the phone to ring – where the bad guys could be headed right now.

  His pace quickened. Her grip tightened again, as if she feared he’d slip away. But then she said something.

  ‘Are you going to tell your wife you touched another woman’s breast today?’

  He realised she wasn’t scared of losing him at all. Maybe she had sensed his growing unease due to his increased pace, and she was trying to shift his attention, to lighten the mood. Even amid her own fear and worry, she was trying to ease his anguish. It didn’t, of course, but he stopped and turned to her. Their faces were just inches apart. He wanted to try to ease her pain in return, but no words came.

  That was when they heard a noise. Faint. It rolled towards them, and past, and was gone. Karl looked up and over her head, and Liz turned away from him, and they both stared back the way they’d come. The world was black, but way in the distance was a pinprick of light. Like a solitary star in the night sky. Someone had found their entrance.

  Someone had entered their world in pursuit.

  Twenty-Four

  Mick

  The collapsed foundations had created a rough and ready ramp into the abyss, with portions of broken concrete forming a handy set of stairs. Mick tried to make his way down slowly, silently, but a wedge-shaped slab of concrete shifted under his weight and took away his legs. Dirt and concrete crumbled down the slope, with Mick sliding behind it on his arse.

  Król started laughing from above.

  ‘Shut your trap,’ Mick hissed. He looked up. Król was at the edge, on his hands and knees and staring down. Wearing a goofy grin that Mick wanted to widen with his knife. ‘Wait in the fucking car.’

  Król vanished. Mick got to his feet. The way ahead was pitch-black, but he started jogging anyway. He knew he could trip and smash his nose, might even step out over some great shaft leading a mile down, but he could not dawdle. He had learned about the underground tracks following a quick Google search of this area, but it had taken time, too much time. Seabury and the woman, if they weren’t crushed or impaled down here, were far ahead and getting further.

  His eyes soon started to adjust to the gloom. He saw walls, and the roof, and under his feet the twin lines of the ancient tracks. He stopped to listen, but heard nothing. No footsteps or voices. Then he jogged onwards, arms extended before him so they would hit any obstacle ahead before his face did.

  His anger started to slip away. This place would make the perfect tomb for the bitch and her saviour. Down here, no chance of a good Samaritan trying to save the day, no matter how loudly she screamed, and he could take his time. Tie them with the string in his pocket, slot his phone on a protrusion in the wall, flashlight illuminating everything, and work at them slowly with his knife. The dark and the cold would heighten their fear. Their cries of pain and his own laughter would probably echo, enhancing the fun. This time, he would record the event, which might go some way to alleviating the irritation that he’d overlooked capturing Grafton’s final moments on camera.

  Even better: since this place was abandoned, her body would lie undiscovered. There was no further chance to smash up Grafton, but he could repeat and repeat with the bitch. No need for dreams. Every time the urge resurfaced, all he would have to do is drive out here, and there she would be, waiting for him like a lover. He could slice and smash until he was satisfied. Over and over. Again and again.

  Soon, he came to a fork in the tunnel.

  The tracks went ahead, but to the left was another tunnel shooting off at ten o’clock. Logic told him they’d gone ahead, following the tracks. Most people would. But they could have taken the left fork to trick their pursuer.

  ‘Shit,’ he hissed. So far, so close. What to do? He could pick the correct path and be home in an hour, washing their blood off his hands.

  But if he chose the wrong route, his prey would escape, and he’d never get another chance to end this.

  Twenty-Five

  Karl

  The shout bounced past them, echoing, as if their assailant had repeated it.

  ‘They’ll never find your bodies down here, you know?’

  They lay on their fronts, facing back the way they’d come. They lay between the tracks, covered in dirt, feeling the cold seeping into their bones. Karl, at least.

  ‘So your wife is pregnant?’ Liz whispered.

  ‘What?’ he whispered back. What kind of question was that right now?

  ‘I’m gonna gut you both, right down here, and leave you for the rats.’

  The shout sounded no closer than the first, thankfully. Which meant their prayers had been answered: the fork in the tunnel had halted their pursuer out of fear of choosing the wrong route.

  ‘I think you were about to say it before that man came in the shop. How far gone?’

  He didn’t understand what she was talking about – at first. And then he understood. He had tried—

  ‘Last chance, Seabury. I’ll ruin your world or save it. You don’t even have to give up. Just knock that bitch out and shout me and you can run and I’ll do the rest, and you can live your life.’

  —to distract himself to the mood once or twice with a joke, and he figured she was doing something similar now: acting as if everything were normal, pretending that there wasn’t a madman down here in the dark with them. So, he went along with it.

  ‘Six months,’ he said, voice low, head close to hers.

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘I want a boy. She wants a girl.’

  ‘You don’t know yet? Why not?’

  ‘Seabury, this is your absolute last chance.’

  ‘There’s two ways to find out. One is when you hold a new baby in your arms and see him or her in the flesh. The other is to see what basically looks like a chalk rubbing on a screen. You got kids?’

  He knew she didn’t even before she said so.

  ‘Ron didn’t want them. I’m not sure. I like children, but as for my own…’

  ‘He didn’t want them entering his lifestyle, eh?’

  A slice of verbal Tourette’s there. But she didn’t seem to take offence.

  ‘No, nothing like that. I don’t think he thought he was the settling type. But you have to think of the old people’s home, that’s what I said to him once.’

  ‘I’m going to make you suffer like you wouldn’t believe, Seabury, unless you bring her out right now. No fucking silly gadget’s gonna save you down here.’

  ‘The what?’ He was finding it hard not to be distracted by the man chasing them. Liz was looking at Karl, but Karl could not ignore the lethal threat just 160 feet from them.

  ‘You have to think about the old people’s home. That’s where we’ll be one day. You don’t want to be one of those old ones that gets no visitors. I’ve seen them before, when I was visiting my father when he was—’

  ‘I see you, bitches. Here I fucking come!’

  ‘Still alive, and I felt sorry for them. They look sad.’

 
; ‘Like they were thinking, shit, I should have had kids?’

  Despite his claim, their pursuer hadn’t moved towards them. An idle threat, then. A trick designed to make them break cover.

  ‘Exactly.’ Liz spoke too loud, and Karl watched the tunnel carefully, fearing that the man was going to come running at them.

  What happened instead was worse.

  A flash of light ahead, and in the next instant a cracking sound. It raced past them like a train, impossible to ignore. Liz let out a moan, covered her ears and planted her face in the dirt. Karl put his hands out ahead of him, as if foolishly believing he could stop a bullet that way. If the gunman had been seeking a sliver of movement to latch onto, he’d now got it.

  Another gunshot. Another flash, which framed the gunman like a horror-film villain during a burst of lightning. He was aiming right at them.

  Then a third gunshot, but this time the gunman was lit in profile, and Karl felt his choking terror abate. The man had fired down the other tunnel this time. He didn’t know where they were. He was firing blind, hoping for a lucky hit.

  There was silence. Karl reached out and put his hand over Liz’s mouth. The gunman was obviously listening, hoping to hear them running, fleeing from the bullets. So, they stayed silent and they stayed put.

  A few seconds later, he started shouting again. Loud, fast, a million threats, a billion imaginative scenarios involving suffering and death. But his voice came no closer. This was a chance to put more distance between them.

  Karl got up slowly and helped Liz climb to her feet. Their faces close, he stared into her eyes and whispered to her they were going to walk slowly, carefully. But one misstep, one noise, and they would be caught. She nodded her understanding. They turned, giving him their backs. And started walking.