I nodded, pulled the key out of my pocket and leaned forward, inserting it into the old lock. The tumblers clicked, and Michael lifted the lid.
“This is everything Gemma and I kept—Sarah’s records, Gemma’s records, my records, the whole family history. I never really had time to go through it, but when I heard Gemma was missing I knew I needed them. I needed to find out as much as I could about Sarah, her blood type, medical history, anything that might come in handy when trying to find her or find out who would do this to her. I couldn’t find Gemma. She’d gone missing, couldn’t tell me those things. That’s why I sent Pavel to find out.”
I flicked through the paperwork. He was right. There were all sorts of records: Gemma’s birth certificate, Sarah’s birth certificate, Michael’s financial details, some information relating to Dan Branson—née Connelly—and there, in the bottom of the box, was a slightly tattered birth certificate that predated Sarah’s birth by quite a few years, and the name at the top read Sylvia Emerald Rodrigo.
“Do you think you can help me find her?” asked Michael, the concern evident in his voice. “Is there anything in there that can help?”
I continued to flip through it.
“Let me get you another drink.” He pointed at the pocket where my now-empty flask forlornly dozed, waiting for the chance to once again fulfil its purpose in life. “Then, we can work out how we’re gonna do this, how we’re gonna bring her back before . . . ”
He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Instead, he got shakily to his feet and turned back into the house. I called out to him.
“Can you bring a pen and paper?”
A shout sounded from deep within the house. “Sure. I’m sure I have some somewhere here.”
I looked down at the valley, at the ants surging around my old car—well, my editor’s old hire car—and then looked back down at the paperwork in front of me. Did Sylvia know who her mother was? Or her father, for that matter? I could scarcely believe it myself. I looked at her birth certificate again just to check: Born to Gemma Rodrigo and . . . Michael. Connelly. Nineteen years ago.
I let my eyes stray back down to the kerfuffle in the valley below, and then a rough hand was slapped over my mouth. I kicked out, struggled, but every breath sucked in more of some kind of thick chemical; the fumes burned in my throat. I swung wildly, reaching back to grasp at my assailant, but the acrid stink was too powerful. I lost my strength and my will to fight, and then my consciousness.
Chapter 24
Knife’s Edge
The throbbing in my head was worse than any hangover I’d ever experienced—and of those, I’d had many. I couldn’t see shit. Over my face was some sort of pillow case or sack, black. I could see shapes through it, but not much. All I could hear was a soft sobbing in front of me, pained, aching almost, the sobbing of a child.
I flexed my fingers. They still worked. That was good news. And my hands weren’t tied, which was surprising, considering. I reached up and pulled the sack off my head, looked around. Blank walls, concrete; no windows, just streaks of mold and peeling wallpaper in spots; and there across from me sat the young girl I’d seen at the zoo, the same girl who’d been blown up in pictures all over the news for the last week, except in this context, blood had dried in her blonde hair and stuck to her brow. A stump at one end of her arm was bandaged heavily, tight, but still it seemed to seep, and one foot was also bandaged. She sobbed and jerked with pain with each sob.
Her eyes were fixed on me; they held an unbidden terror, as if she thought I was the person who’d been doing this to her the whole time, as if I was the one who had scalped her, cut off her hand and toe and ear, as if I was the one who’d caused all of this to happen. I couldn’t help but agree with her. Her mother had tasked me with protecting her, with looking out for her, with making sure that Gemma got custody of her daughter from the potential threat that Adrian posed. But, having met Adrian, I knew he was no threat. Adrian hadn’t done this, and I was starting to think Gemma wasn’t as involved as she might seem.
A door opened behind me and I turned too late to see beyond it. It closed again and a woman walked in, dressed in something as shapeless as a burlap sack, her body dirty, her feet bare. Her arms were bruised and battered, her eyes swollen from crying and from being punched. She looked like a train wreck, unrecognizable almost, except for the way she held her back, erect, perfect posture.
In front of her, she carried a royal red pillow with a wooden box sitting on it. The pillow was lined, trimmed with gold, and seemed to clash with the dingy sack draped over her body, her dirt and her bruises. The girl, Sarah, stretched away from her, scampered backwards, pressing her feet, her stump, anything, into the floor to get away from this woman. I realized my legs worked and I stood up, looked the woman in the eye, and recognized her.
“Gemma?” I asked.
There was no recognition there. She didn’t say anything, just lowered her head and her eyes to the case on the pillow. I reached my shaking hands up to the box, unclasped it, opened it. On top, there lay a sheaf of paper folded over once. I lifted it up. Below it was a scalpel, a small bone saw and a Sharpie marker. The scrawled writing started with a poem:
Little Ray Hammer sat in the slammer
doing his time for days . . .
Below the poem, in no uncertain terms, was a list of directions, what I must do if Sarah was to stand any chance of survival. The writing flowed on:
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
You have 10 minutes before she goes poof.
I turned my eyes back to the girl huddled in the corner, bandaged, bleeding, dying slowly. If those wounds weren’t already infected, they soon would be in this damp dark place, and I couldn’t imagine inflicting any more pain on her, not when I was bound to protect her, when I’d already failed at my job to do that.
The door clicked and I turned, swiveled on my heel. Gemma was gone. The pillow sat on the floor, the container open, in it the scalpel glinted in the light. A small kidney dish sat on the pillow beside it, and I realized that time was already ticking.
The girl in the corner sobbed uncontrollably. She knew what was going to happen, knew what had to happen, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Could I? The bile rose in my throat.
If she went poof, that would mean I would go poof, too, and I couldn’t help her then. Nobody could. But, maybe if she was alive . . .
I picked up the scalpel.
Chapter 25
Trapped
I couldn’t do it. Sarah kicked and screamed and flung her arms around, fighting me off. I laid the scalpel back down on the pillow, thought things over as best I could. There didn’t seem to be any way out. It was either take out her eye or we’d both be killed, and I didn’t see any sense in that. But then, maybe that was the kindest thing to do. I considered it briefly. Maybe it was just the price I had to pay for the life that I’d led. I was killing myself anyway, with the drink. If it happened faster, then it was only going to be a matter of time.
A voice disguised by a modulator came on over a loudspeaker in the corner of the room. I looked up. I hadn’t noticed any speakers there. I looked around the other corners of the room and realized there was a camera. They’d definitely know if I had or hadn’t done it. They knew where in the room I was and when to open the door and when to close it. It’s why I hadn’t got out, why I hadn’t seen Gemma when she’d left.
The voice said, “It’s been five minutes. Five minutes left. I wonder, what will he do for a story?”
The voice sounded deep, male most likely, but a modulator could do that to any voice, especially if it was run through enough passes. For the first time I wondered where we were. Maybe in a bunker somewhere under the Rock, maybe beneath a house or a mansion. It was hard to tell. There were no windows, and the damp was the only clue I had. The camera meant there was electricity, and the speaker, too. Some sort of research facility? A prison? I couldn’t be sure.
Sarah was sobbing again. She wa
s just a little girl, and the pain and trauma she had experienced would last her a lifetime—if she had much of that left. I wanted to extend it as long as I could, considered my options. I knew the time was ticking down. I picked up the scalpel, lay down on the floor, looked up at the camera, held the scalpel just above my eyelid, ready to plunge it in. An eye for an eye, the message had said. It hadn’t said whose eye.
My hand shook and the scalpel dug in. I flinched. I dug in further, piercing the skin just above my eyelid—but just barely. I pulled it away, breathed in deep, out, in deep again.
You have to calm down, I told myself. This will only work if you’re calm. I didn’t want to accidentally slip and go straight through to my brain. That wouldn’t help either of us.
I put the scalpel down on my thigh and sat up, patted my pockets. No whiskey, no flask. I couldn’t steady my nerves. My hands were shaking even more now. This was going to be harder than I thought, and it was already harder than anything I’d ever encountered; here, Afghanistan, anywhere. When choice is taken away, you feel like you don’t exist anymore. There are no options, only bad ones, and even if you do them for the right reasons someone’s still going to get hurt.
I lay down again and closed my eyes. Sarah had stopped sobbing now. She was silent. I couldn’t look at the blade, couldn’t look at her—sitting in the corner, clumsily bandaged, blood seeping through.
The voice came over the loudspeaker. “You can’t do that. That doesn’t count. I’ll still take her eye and make you disappear. Someone else will come. Someone will do it. If it’s not you, it will be someone else, and if it’s not someone else, she will be dead.”
Sarah didn’t make a sound. She’d heard this all before, no doubt when her own mother had been in here. The death in her eyes: she’d seen things, possibly even done them. I knew how she felt right now. Not quite, but close enough.
Sarah wasn’t my daughter. So, I wondered how a mother could do this to anyone, even in a situation such as this? And it hit me like a car skidding out of control. I understood how Gemma could do it. I understood what would drive someone to hurt their daughter. It was simple. One motivating factor. The desire to keep the girl alive, to hurt herself in order to keep Sarah alive.
That’s why I despised Adrian Jones. He hadn’t had the guts to do that. He’d run away at the first sign of trouble, and then rationalized that he was doing the right thing, that it was his way of being able to help her, even though he knew he had no ability to, and wouldn’t even try.
I sat up again. Three minutes passed, my internal clock tracked them. There couldn’t be long left now. The voice came over the speaker again.
“You have one minute.” It sounded insistent now, almost panicked. “Do it or else . . . or else she gets it in the neck and you suffer, too.”
I stepped over to the girl, scalpel in hand, and leaned down and close. She started to writhe again. I put my arms around her, held her for a moment. She relaxed into them. I whispered into her ear. “Trust me.”
I didn’t know if she could do that, if she could trust anyone ever again, but she whimpered quietly and stopped fighting. At the same time, I blocked the camera with my shoulder, made sure I was out if its line of sight, and rubbed my other hand into the wound on her ear, on her head, covering my fingers with blood. I covered both sides of her head. She understood, pretended to writhe in pain; not much of a pretense, actually, as I was opening up half-healed wounds.
“You need to keep writhing. You need to keep kicking your arms out and flailing. Make it look like this is hurting, okay?”
I said it quietly, whispered, so whoever was there couldn’t hear if they had the ability. I didn’t know. Her nod was almost imperceptible and her hands started kicking out. Her legs went out, too. I made some exaggerated motions as if I was cutting, holding the scalpel behind the camera, behind my body, blocked from the camera, and with my bloodied hand I rubbed the blood all over her eyelid. I told her to keep her eye shut. She kicked out and screamed. She screamed howls of agony. They were good, well faked. Smart kid.
And then, I stepped back. I closed my hand into a fist as if I was holding an eyeball in it. Blood dripped straight down from my hand. I had smeared streaks on her face down under her eye. I was relying on the fact that the camera shouldn’t be able to pick up too much detail. I crossed my toes in my shoes, hoping I was right. I turned my back to the camera.
“Good work.” the voice said, “Now, place it carefully in the kidney shaped dish.”
“Is this not enough?” I said, my back still turned.
“I can’t see it,” the voice said, “Into the dish.
I changed tack. I needed something that looked vaguely like an eyeball and that was bloody enough. I used the scalpel on the tip of my finger. I felt the pain sear through me as the scalpel rounded the tip of my finger. I held my breath and cut it off, then I scored the flesh so it didn’t look like anything in particular, certainly not a finger. I rubbed the extra blood around on top of it, and deposited it into the kidney dish.
“Easy,” said the voice.
I sat down. The pain in my finger was awful, it throbbed hard with my pulse but I reminded myself it was nowhere near as bad as what Sarah had gone through.
“Turn your back,” said the voice again.
I knew the door was about to open. I waited a few seconds, listened, and as soon as it did, I sprang to my feet and ran backwards at the door. Gemma was halfway through it and she was knocked back into the hallway behind. I was expecting a fight, someone else there with her, but there wasn’t, just Gemma and myself lying on the floor. I helped her up. She looked at me with those blank eyes.
“You shouldn’t. You’ll . . . they’ll . . .” She couldn’t say anymore. Her eyes just glazed over even further. Her mouth slammed shut, teeth grinding compulsively. “You shouldn’t.”
It was the last thing she could have said because at that moment her daughter shot out from behind us and wrapped herself around her mother’s leg. I felt tears running down my face. That a kid who’d been through so much, at the hands of her mother no less, could forgive. I felt a warmth in my heart I hadn’t felt before. There was something to this private-eye gig and it wasn’t the 200 pounds a day Gemma had promised me.
The fact that Gemma had the key didn’t fill me with confidence. It meant that we were still trapped, locked in somewhere, and out here there were also no windows, and just along the hallway, more doors. I tried the key in one of them. It opened.
“Thank God,” said Michael Connelly, looking up from the bare floor where he sat. “How long have we been here?”
I didn’t know, but the last ten minutes had gone incredibly slowly.
The voice came over the speaker. “You can run, but you can’t hide. Three, two, one. Here I come, ready or not.”
I grabbed Michael by the scuff of his neck, hauled his bulky frame to his feet, threw him out into the hallway. “You take the girl,” I said. “Pick her up. You told me you wanted to rescue her. Now’s your chance.”
I grabbed Gemma by the hand. She was still glazed over, but something started to stir behind those eyes, something between love and self-reproach, regret and fear. There were three more doors in the hallway and I opened each one with the key as I went down. One had clearly been occupied, but wasn’t anymore. Maybe that was where Gemma had been kept. The other two were empty. That only left the door at the end of the hall, a big, dark, metal monstrosity. There was no place for a key on this side, no hinges, no handholds.
“What the hell is this place?’ I said.
Michael huffed as he carried Sarah Jones. “I think it’s one of the World War Two installations. I’m not sure. Somewhere under the Rock, probably.”
There was no way through that door, and whoever owned that voice was probably going to be coming in that way, and most likely with guns.
The wall at the other end of the hall was rock, hard stone. Water ran down the face of it, dripping slowly, softly. There had to be a way
out, a way that we could get out of this alive. Even if there wasn’t a way out, that girl and her mother had been through hell and I wanted to get them out. But hell was a red door and there was no way through it.
“The cameras!” I shouted with stunned realization.
“What?” asked Michael.
“The cameras! There must be some conduit up there. There’s electricity down here, which means they’ve got to get it in somehow.” I looked around. There were no cameras out here in the hallway, no sign of any scores in the rock either, or the concrete walls that lined the cells. I pushed Gemma through into a cell with its door open. Michael followed us through the steal door, put Sarah down on the ground.
I said, “Give me a boost.”
He cupped his hands and lifted me up to the camera. I yanked the camera out, severed the cords, and reached my hand up into a narrow conduit. Metal crashed down the hall and outside.
“Shut the door!” I shouted.
Sarah was already onto it. She pushed it closed. Luckily, these doors had a keyhole on the inside and we had the key. That didn’t mean that whoever was coming through didn’t have another key, though.
A cool breeze came down on my hand. I moved my hand around. There was space, not much, about two square feet. Sarah and Gemma would fit, but I wasn’t so sure about myself or Michael. I was in good shape, but Michael had a paunch. There was no way he’d fit.
I scooped the camera and some rubble out of the way, widened the entry into the conduit. “You’re gonna have to go first, Sarah,” I said, and I gave her a boost up.
She crawled into the space, and I hoped like shit that wherever it came out would be empty or at least without a gun pointing in her direction. It felt bad to send the kid first, but we didn’t have a choice. Gemma was up next. She didn’t want to go, screamed, carried on.
The Spill: The Beach Never Looked So Deadly (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 1) Page 12