Doubling back and cutting onto an adjacent road, I slung the car illegally near Suffolk Court and grabbed the bag. As soon as I stepped out, I heard the sound of fire engines and frantic human activity. Across towards Montpellier, dozens of blue lights flashed into the night sky. Bomb or natural disaster, or, more likely, an accident of some kind? Perplexed, I killed the idea of a connection to McCallen, and veered towards a long, narrow service street with cars parked nose to tail. On one side was a sprawl of broken-down student flats and serviced apartments. On the other, a scramble of houses, some more dilapidated than others. Further down, at the more salubrious end, were family homes and a popular pub, The Beehive. Beyond, classy Montpellier Terrace.
Under sporadic illumination from Victorian lamp posts I slipped from one pool of darkness to another and past a house subject to a recent brothel bust, a garage with folding doors, and a pair of wooden gates with steps beyond that led down to a basement. This was not my destination.
Following China’s precise directions, I clocked an iron gate with no spikes on top; three metres of brick wall and a parking area; and a couple of painted and locked doors. Here, I was to cross over to the right-hand ‘student’ side and a row of tatty buildings that looked as bad by night as they did by day. Flashing the torch around, I picked up a grey four-storey edifice with an entire wall of sash windows with frames that were chipped and broken down and in imminent danger of collapse. Next to this was an open space of rough ground piled high with bricks and rubble, old tyres and an ancient washing line. Plastic garden chairs lay upended, legs pointing aimlessly at the stars. Journey’s end.
Slipping out the Glock, I negotiated an obstacle course of detritus, my boots squelching on rotting garden cuttings and general crap until I came to a set of stone steps, the metal railings broken and twisted out of shape. At the bottom was a heavy wooden door, which was padlocked.
I took out the bolt cutters and cut through without making a sound. Swinging open the door, I slid inside and ran my fingers along the damp brick walls for a light switch and came up empty. Stepping further in, pitch darkness enveloped me, closing off my escape route. I stood for a moment, blood drumming through my temples, ears pricked, eyes adjusting, trying to get my bearings.
My gun hand stretched ahead, I inched forward and plotted a slow route through what I believed was the centre of the room, from one wall to another. As I hit brick, I felt around again, my fingers connecting with metal. It was another door. To my surprise, this cranked open. Immediately there was an odour of stale, damp air laced with mould and a more pungent smell of urine and excrement. Again, I felt around for a light switch and, this time, struck lucky.
A brick wall faced me. To my right, a staircase descended. Instinct has served me well and I followed it and entered another dark, all-consuming space. Here, the heady atmosphere was charged with silence, the type you encounter when someone is there but doesn’t want you to know it. Instantly, I was transported to another time, another place, with tunnels and caverns and bad men desperate to kill me. I thought of Billy Squeeze and his evil plans and how everything had gone rotten since then.
I put down the bag and clung to the shadows. If China’s men struck, I knew I’d cross the line and fire back.
Noise, faint at first, no more than a breath. If I opened my mouth, I’d give my position away and it would be their cue to turn their guns on me first and then her. Unless …
‘McCallen, is that you?’
A sound of rattling chains, then: ‘Go away. Leave me alone. Fuck off.’
I hardly recognised the voice. It sounded scratchy and old, but the bite in it confirmed it was my girl. ‘Are you alone?’
Silence.
I tried to work it out. Was she sending me a coded message? Was she telling me to get lost because she had company? Had someone rigged her so that, as soon I drew near, we’d both be blown to hell?
Suddenly, screams shattered the silence.
I jumped into the unknown and in six long strides collided with a body. She paused for breath, whispered urgently in my ear. ‘Light switch at the bottom of the stairs on the far wall, audio device on the underside of the table.’
‘Video capability?’
‘No.’
She screamed again, providing cover, and I backtracked to the staircase, found and hit the switch. Light careered through the basement and, momentarily, I stood blinking like a newborn, the sight before me scored into my brain. In chains, held fast to the wall, her head sunk low on her chest, McCallen looked like an ancient victim of medieval torture. She had two black eyes, one so badly swollen the green shone out of a slit. There were cuts and grazes to her face, some fresh, some healing. Her hair was dirty and matted. The rest of her was in poor shape too. Shivering and barefoot, blood oozed from her wrists and ankles where she’d tried to wrench herself free of the restraints. She wore a sweater, but the bottom half of her was naked apart from a pair of torn knickers. Her legs were covered in cigarette burns. When she raised her head and smiled, I believed my heart would shatter. The emotion was fleeting, swept away in a torrent of rage.
I advanced towards a table littered with cigarette butts, empty plastic bottles, sandwich cartons, and uneaten and rotting food. Just as McCallen said, a cheap transmitter, held in place by magnet, clung to the underside. It explained how her screams had been relayed to me. I ripped it off and crushed it into the concrete.
‘I knew you’d come,’ she blurted out, her voice stronger now that she could speak freely.
I touched her face, smoothed the hair from out of her eyes. ‘Are you hurt?’ Of course she was. I wondered how she would fare mentally later, wondered if her spirit would fall apart and shatter.
She looked at me with soulful eyes. ‘Nothing broken.’
I kissed the top of her head and grabbed the bag.
She eyed the bolt cutters. ‘You came prepared.’
‘Always.’ I took out an energy drink, peeled back the ring-pull from the can and pressed the opening to her cracked lips. ‘Not too fast,’ I warned as she gulped it down. ‘Here, take this, it’s a painkiller.’ I broke one in half and pressed it into her mouth, letting her wash it down with another swallow. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that you now owe me dinner?’
She pulled away. Drink dribbled down her chin and she forced a smile. ‘Let’s hope I brush up okay.’ Her voice shook and a tear ran down her cheek. I wanted to put my arms around her, tell her that nobody would hurt her ever, that I’d got her back and I’d never lose her again. Instead I got to work with the bolt cutters. Throughout, and ever the spook, she kept up a running commentary.
‘I was stupid,’ she said with feeling. ‘I made the classic mistake of working a lead alone. I thought I was following him when all the time he was following me.’
‘Him?’
‘Dieter Benz.’ The heavy way she said it confused me.
‘He did this?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, meeting my eye.
Zara’s words tumbled through my head. Fucked like a bull.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I let out a grunt, strained hard against the steel and wished it were Benz’s balls in the vice. Breaking off for a second, I reattached the short blades to the same stress point and, a few seconds later the chain attached to her right wrist snapped. McCallen’s arm dropped like a game bird shot in flight. It had taken me around twenty-five seconds all told.
‘One down, three to go,’ I told her. ‘I can do something about the cuffs once we’re out of here.’ I had absolutely no idea how I’d go about this. It looked like an oxyacetylene job to me and I wasn’t confident I could do it without further injuring her. Maybe Flynn and his pals would prove useful, but I didn’t know how long it would take for them to come to the rescue. Benz could return at any moment. ‘Did Benz mention a guy called China Hayes?’
‘Never.’
Then how the hell did China connect to Benz? Jat had said Benz was on China’s list of contacts and Simone’s des
cription fitted China Hayes. Had she made a mistake? Or had I made too many assumptions? Then I got it. Benz wouldn’t be the first political agitator to involve himself in drugs operations. I put this to McCallen. The chain attached to her left wrist snapped.
‘He did a neat line in smuggling cocaine,’ she confirmed.
So Hayes and Benz were working a number together. It didn’t altogether compute with the man I knew, but neither was this an impossible alliance. It certainly explained their desire to get rid of Simone, who they perceived to be a threat to trade. I looked around, anxiously wondering what was taking them so long to strike. They hadn’t lured me here to see if I could rescue their captive. There would be a price to pay.
‘How many men are working with Benz?’
‘You mean here?’
‘Yes.’
‘None.’
‘What? He’s working alone?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘He doesn’t have a gang on standby to take us out?’ I was mystified.
‘Benz is my captor. His only desire is to punish me.’
Confusion descended for a second time. The more I found out, the less I knew. It seemed that Benz, not China, had made the calls to me. ‘What exactly happened?’ I crouched down and manoeuvred the blades around the lower restraints.
‘The morning I was meant to meet you I spotted Benz in a café in town and followed him.’
‘There’s reckless and then there’s plain dumb.’
‘I don’t need a lecture.’ Still sparky, traces of the old McCallen shone through – thank God. ‘I’ve had a considerable amount of time to contemplate my own stupidity.’
I glanced up and grinned. The third chain snapped and she almost keeled over. I reached up to steady her. ‘Fuck, my leg hurts.’
‘Pins and needles. Work your leg up and down, get the blood flowing properly.’
She did as I said. ‘Christ, I stink.’
I couldn’t contradict her. Changing position, taking a deep breath, I strained to reopen the blades again and clamped the cutters for the final time.
‘How did Benz nab you?’
‘Led me down an alley and Tasered me. 50,000 volts is no joke. I might have been all right, but he followed up with a heavy-duty tranquilliser injected straight into my neck. I blacked out after that.’
‘Audacious,’ I said.
‘Like I said, he wasn’t exactly working alone. He had a woman in tow.’
Crack – the last chain separated. She all but collapsed. I reached out, put both arms around to support her. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. I heard him talking on his phone once.
‘Once? He called me several times.’
‘Not in front of me. Not from here.’
‘Okay, sorry, go on,’ I said.
‘He spoke in German and I could only pick up the odd word.’
‘Then how the hell do you know it was a woman?’
‘Body language. Clear as these.’ She looked down at the cuffs on her wrists.
I had a reasonably good idea who it was. Now I thought about it, lots of other pieces slotted into place. Mathilde Brommer had, most likely, shopped me to Flynn. She had tipped me off about Benz and his demonstration so that someone could eliminate me. Plus she had links to Simone through the sex parties. Maybe Brommer’s man was Benz. Perhaps she had set Pallenberg up to be shot. I ran my theory past McCallen.
‘Exactly my take,’ she smiled through crusted lips. ‘Mathilde Brommer, the scheming evil bitch.’
I took off my jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was freezing cold and her skin had a bluish tinge so that it was impossible to tell where the bruising stopped. I wanted to ask so many questions but our main priority was to get out fast. ‘Can you walk?’
Fire flared in her eyes. ‘Oh, yes.’
We shuffled across the floor together, my arm around her waist, the Glock in my free hand. My tools would only slow us down and could stay where they were, a memento of our escape.
As we were about to ascend the steps, a loud bang thundered through the cellar. For a second, I feared it was a gas leak or, worse, an explosion, confirmation that McCallen was bait and I’d walked into a carefully laid trap.
‘What the hell was that?’ she said.
Next came the sound of rushing water. A burst water main, a river in flood, something engineered? My God, I remembered the fire engines. The Chelt had broken its banks twice in the last ten years, flooding basements over large areas of town, trapping drivers in vehicles and cutting people off. With the River Severn being tidal, water often backed up into the Chelt, the real problem that there was nowhere for fire crews to pump it to. When I looked back it was pouring through the walls and bubbling up through the foundations.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
‘Hurry!’
I held McCallen tight, pushed her up to the top of the stairs, squeezed past, and, grabbing the handle, shouldered hard against the door. Nothing happened. I glanced up and lunged again, putting all my weight behind it.
‘It’s jammed.’
‘Or locked.’ We both looked at each other. Another glance over McCallen’s head revealed we were in serious trouble. The water wasn’t draining. This meant that, unlike most tanked basements and cellars, there was no pump in operation.
‘Think the room on the other side is flooded?’ she said.
In which case, pressure against the door would make it impossible to open. At the rate it was pouring in, it was possible. I took out my phone with the intention of diverting the fire service, but couldn’t get a signal. Back to plan B.
‘Most dead-bolt locks have a five-pin cylinder. If I had a drill, I could probably shift it.’
‘Have you got a knife?’ McCallen said.
‘A knife against a reinforced metal door is like a peashooter against a charging elephant.’
‘Fuck’s sake, if you’ve got one, give it to me.’
I reached inside my jacket and pulled out a Swiss Army tool and handed it to her. I hoped she was thinking smart while I was thinking hard, a combined effort of brawn and brain our best chance of survival. Meantime, I went to retrieve the bolt cutters.
With no sign of abating, water had already poured over the three lowest steps and was dangerously close to skimming the bottom of the fourth. I jumped down with a splash and plunged through the icy stagnant filth, the smell of raw sewage strong and overpowering. This presented us with another problem: hydrogen sulphide, or sewage gas. I was already feeling queasy. At high exposure, it can kill. I wanted to take action, to do something, anything, to make things right. Instead, I stopped and focused.
Water is like electricity – it takes the path of least resistance. We’d had a lot of rain, which could have a dramatic effect on water tables. Somehow, I didn’t think the jammed door was a natural disaster. But there might be a natural solution to the flood.
‘There has to be a floor drain,’ I said. Beneath it a P-trap, I remembered, thinking of the times I’d unblocked the lavatory at the student house. If I could find it, I might be able to buy us time. I reached into the murk, felt around for the cutters and found them about a metre from where I’d left them. Closing my eyes, I navigated the filth a step at a time, sloshing across the cellar floor, trying to locate the natural slope, digging around for the round plate that covered the drain. Sure I was in the right spot, I plunged the blades into the floor again and again and each time hit solid concrete.
‘It’s been cemented over,’ I yelled to her. ‘How are you doing?’
‘It’s useless. I need you to smash the metal to loosen it.’
Without warning, the little light we had extinguished. The water had blown all power.
Plunged into darkness, thigh-high water lapped around me. Numb and cold, I could feel the energy draining out of my body. Blindly, I waded through and, hitting the staircase with the toe of my boot, climbed back up and past the fourth step, now submerged. We changed places and McCallen retreated a little
so that I could get a good swing, hopelessly tricky in the narrow space.
‘Aim for where the lock sits,’ she said, wheezing painfully.
I gave it four shots of my best. Pain shot through my arms. McCallen crept closer to escape the rising scum and the noxious smell. Hefting the cutters, I gave the lock another two strikes.
‘Okay, let’s hope this pays off,’ she said, shuffling in front.
I watched as she inserted a blade between the lock and the wall. She jiggled it right and left and pushed down. Desperation made her stronger than was possible. It might have been my imagination and yet it appeared as if our island of dry land as represented by the staircase had rapidly diminished.
‘Can you grab the handle and pull the door tight against the frame so that the lock tongue doesn’t spring back?’ Calm under pressure, she failed to disguise the urgent note in her voice.
I did as she said. She wiggled it again. The locks shifted. The door stayed shut.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
I was certain we’d hit the end of the road. Water was now no more than a foot from the ceiling. At the rate it was gushing in, I reckoned we had fifteen minutes before it completely flooded the cellar. Every brick and piece of wall seemed to shake and roil with the force of the torrent.
‘What was that?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘You didn’t feel anything?’
‘Tricky when you’re numb.’
It was difficult to describe, but it felt like a sonic boom travelling through water. I had one last idea and I should have thought of it before.
‘Is there a window?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve been here weeks, I’d have noticed.’
‘The top part of some cellars is often above ground.’
Her eyes widened with excitement. ‘Could the wall be boarded, like a stud wall, and painted over?’
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