SCOUT

by Sanjiv Lingard

  “Moyheddin!” barked Mike. “Don’t let her do it.”

  “Leave him out of it,” I said.

  Moyheddin shrugged.

  “This is what Scout is good at,” he said to Mike. “Don’t try and stop her.”

  I rested on the saddle. Mike’s jaw worked, as if he wanted to say something more but couldn’t quite find the words.

  “It’s my talent, Mike,” I explained. “My choice.”

  And with that, I cycled off into the darkness.

  Chapter 36

  A cube of white light floated in the distance, like a spaceship hovering in the dark.

  The snow had stopped falling and the wind had died, so that nothing stirred in the night except the sibilance of our wheels on the icy road. With the silence came the cold. The temperature dropped, and then dropped further.

  I had lost all bearings. In the daytime, I would have known that we had passed the marshalling yards and the treacherous Pits. But I could as well have been pedalling on the surface of an alien moon as through the industrial suburbs of our town.

  The white landscape picked up the merest starlight and reflected it back tenfold. And in the midst of this unearthly beauty floated the cube.

  The trail led straight to it.

  Daniel’s terror had grown with every jolt of the truck. He had not found solace in sleep. For that I thanked him. Once unconscious, his trail would have been impossible to follow.

  The cube of light resolved itself as I approached. It was a maintenance depot for the Highways Department. Their ploughs and grit allowed me to cycle with such speed on the road that night. Here was a metal shed, illuminated by floodlights in the middle of an empty lot. Under cover was a mountain of salt. A Caterpillar worked at the base of the stockpile, its revolving orange light bouncing around the corrugated walls.

  The trail led into the lot.

  It made sense. There could be no better cover for a marauding killer than a truck from the Transportation and Highways Department.

  He could have been driving the snow plough that passed us a while back.

  Mike followed me as I pedalled across the wide expanse. The tractor was loading the back of a snowplough. A supervisor stood to one side, smoking a cigarette. The reflective strips on his safety jacket caught the high beam of the Prius. The man watched us skirt the shed. He didn’t seem curious, and made no move to stop us.

  The trail led behind the shed, where department vehicles were parked. I slowed the bike to a halt on the wet asphalt.

  “He came here?” asked Mike, joining me at the chain-link fence. “He works on the highways?”

  I jumped off the bike and walked amongst the parked vehicles. I rested my head against the side of a Ford van.

  “It was this one.”

  “Jesus Christ – get away from it,” said Mike, pulling me to safety. Moyheddin had found a socket wrench in the back of Mike’s car, and held it as a weapon, scouring the area, whilst Mike started to tap into his phone.

  I put my hand over his.

  “Don’t call yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not here, not anymore.”

  “Where is he?” asked Moyheddin. “I’m gonna smack that bastard on the head.”

  The asphalt had been seeded with salt, and in the wet mush I could just make out the scuffs of a man carrying a load. There would be no footprints for forensic study, but I could see where Daniel had been carried from the van.

  “He picked him up,” I told them, “and carried him to the fence. The boy was scared, but he didn’t fight. He was too afraid to fight.”

  They followed me as I walked to the fence. The links were old and had fallen loose from the concrete post. Through the gap it was possible to slip into the wilderness beyond.

  “He carried him through,” I said.

  We looked out onto the petrified landscape.

  Standing like sentries in the field of white were the three towers of the Doughy Doughy Mill.

  *

  We tracked through the snow without speaking, but not in silence. It wasn’t the wind that I heard, but a ghostlier refrain. Snatches of harmony, trapped in the icy cold.

  With each step the towers grew closer. They sang to me like sirens. Three monoliths, solid black against the snow, pitiless in size. I dreaded what I would find within.

  “Turn off your flashlights,” I whispered.

  “You think it’s him?” asked Moyheddin, the fear climbing in his voice.

  “Yes. I can hear him.”

  Mike sucked in a breath as the boys snapped off their lights.

  “Is he still here?” he whispered in the dark.

  “Maybe,” I replied. “That is, he hasn’t come out. This is a one-way track.”

  We stared up at the faceless blocks of the Doughy Mill. I could just make out the giant cut-out of the Doughy Doughy Boy.

  “Should I make the call?” asked Mike.

  “If he’s with Daniel, and you call the cops,” I said, “he’ll kill him.”

  “How d’you know that?”

  “He doesn’t feel anything, Mike. There’s no emotion there. If he heard the cops coming, he’d just get rid of the evidence, and flee. He’s like a ghost.”

  “So, we go in alone? That’s your solution?” asked Mike. “What if he has a gun? Then he’ll kill us and the boy.”

  “Shit,” cursed Moyheddin. “I could’ve got a gun! Riley has a sporting rifle.”

  “No guns,” I said. “We’re not the SWAT squad, and – really – Moyheddin, you don’t want to be a Saudi holding a gun in the middle of a police operation.”

  We stared up at the mill. The Doughy Boy’s smile glinted in the darkness.

  “Make the call,” I said.

  “Yes!” said Mike, clenching his fist in triumph. He blew on his fingers and then speed-dialled Molly.

  “We’re gonna wait?” asked Moyheddin.

  “No,” I said. “I want to get close, so I can lead the cavalry right to him.”

  I wasn’t going to allow a child to die.

  *

  “Why are you making that strange noise?”

  “What noise?”

  “Like a ‘huff’ and a ‘puff’,” whispered Mike. “You’re breathing through your nose.”

  I hadn’t realised that my mouth was clamped shut and that my nostrils flared with each breath.

  “It’s because his mouth was shut,” I replied. “Daniel’s mouth – it was taped to stop him making a noise. He could only breathe through his nose.”

  What I was mimicking was his laboured struggle for breath. The boy only wanted to suck air, and he wasn’t getting enough. It overrode the cold, the fear and the discomfort of being held by arms that had muscles like steel cable.

  My head felt light. It could have been the exhaustion of cycling in the cold, but I think I was experiencing what Daniel felt as he looked up and saw the starlight eclipsed by the towering mass of the central building.

  No light fell in the heart of the old mill. Our eyes adjusted to the darkness. We picked our way carefully through a forest of pipes.

  The man had chosen the most difficult route.

  On either side were voids where machines had been stripped out. Rusted incisors slashed upwards, ready to cut flesh. Even in the daylight no one in their right mind would have braved this treacherous path.

  At last we came to the pool.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” muttered Mike.

  A sheen of ice lay on top of a rectangular pool of water. Bound by metal walls, it was like one of those temporary swimming pools that spring up in backyards in July.

  “Is he in there?” asked Mike.

  Daniel’s trail led right up to the lip, and then down. I knelt by the edge of the pool and touched the ice. It was as thin
as picture glass.

  The boy was breathing as he went down. Still sucking air through his nose.

  “What is this pool?” asked Moyheddin.

  I looked up to the ceiling. A gaping hole was cut into the concrete above - an empty space for something that once sat above the pool.

  “It’s a hopper,” said Mike. “The grain, or whatever, came down a chute and was processed below. Now it’s flooded.”

  I circled the frozen mirror of the pool; the boys’ faces were dark ovals reflected in the glassy surface. I found what I was looking for on the other side.

  A tune.

  “He climbed out,” I said. My whisper hung in the frozen air.

  “Daniel?” asked Mike.

  “The man who took him.”

  The boys raced to my side, protecting me.

  “Is he watching us?” asked Moyheddin, searching in the shadows. There were a thousand places for a man to hide.

  “Son of a bitch!” shouted Mike, snapping on his flashlight, playing it amongst the spars and girders of the derelict mill.

  “Turn the light off!” shouted Moyheddin.

  Mike whirled on him.

  “Why? I’m not scared of this guy. He’s a coward!” He turned back to the darkness. “You want a fight? Come out and get me!”

  “Save your breath,” I said. “This man doesn’t fight. If he wants us dead, we’ll be dead. Just like Daniel.”

  “You can’t give up hope!” said Mike, thumping the icy surface of the pool. It shattered in clean lines, and Mike shone his light down into the dark water.

  “It’s over, Mike,” I said, collapsing onto the rim of the pool. “If Daniel’s under all that, he’s gone.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Mike. “D’you know when he went in?”

  I shook my head. Getting a fix on the time wasn’t one of my skills.

  “Listen – at Mercy, just last year, they had a boy come in who had fallen through the ice at Fairview. You know the lake? He’d been under for an hour before they pulled him out. He was small, lost heat quickly and had fallen unconscious – it’s called the mammalian diving reflex. Get this – he was still alive! They warmed him up slowly, got him breathing.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Not if you’re young. Not if you’re small. My guess is that Daniel is both of these things.”

  He hung his coat on the spar of a broken railing.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Moyheddin?” he asked. “You’re a smoker, yeah?”

  “You can tell?” replied Moyheddin, cupping his hand to his mouth and smelling his breath.

  “Well, yeah – anyway, you got your lighter?”

  Moy nodded.

  “Think you can light me a fire?”

  Moy blew out his cheeks and looked around. He spotted some scraps of wood where the decking had been smashed.

  “I can try, I suppose,” shrugged Moyheddin.

  “Good.”

  And with that, Mike started to strip off.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked, it now being my turn to play cautious. “You’re not getting into the water?”

  “I swim the lakes every New Year’s Day, Scout. It’s a tradition. I know I can do it. I’ve been trained in CPR, so if there’s a chance the boy’s alive I’m taking it. Your job is to warm me up when I get out. I’m gonna need the extra parka and a fire. I’ll take my clothes off to keep them dry.”

  He turned to Moyheddin, who had edged cautiously into the darkness.

  “Moyheddin?” he called. ”How’s it going?”

  There was a splinter of breaking wood, and Moyheddin came back with a crate.

  “This is the driest,” he said. “I’ll try to get it lit.”

  “That’s great,” said Mike, slipping off his pants and then his shorts.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Ladies present!” I cried, turning my back.

  Mike didn’t waste any time. There was a crack of ice splintering, and a sharp intake of breath as the water tightened around him.

  “I’m going clockwise,” he gasped. “Focus both flashlights through the ice. Try to keep up with me.”

  And with that, Mike ducked under the translucent crust.

  I ran to the edge of the pool and played the flashlights down at the green water. A pale figure plunged to the depths, his naked body refracted by ice as clear as glass. Mike kicked his way to the bottom, and I ran alongside, trying to keep both beams trained on a spot in front of him.

  All the while, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, as if I was being watched. I felt eyes on me from the shadows, sure that the man who had taken Daniel wouldn’t miss this part of the evening’s entertainment.

  I hated him more than I feared him.

  The water was just above freezing and must have seared Mike to the bone. His powerful legs kicked, and the water became cloudy in his wake. His feet were disturbing the sediment in the grain hopper. Mike swam along the base of one wall, turned a corner, and began searching the next. A billow of red sludge followed him, threatening to overwhelm the tank.

  Mike’s head smashed through the ice, and he gasped for breath. Even though he was looking at me, I don’t think he saw me. Filling his lungs was too painful.

  “Nothing!” he gasped.

  “Mike!” I shouted. “You’re kicking up the sediment!”

  I don’t know whether he heard me, because Mike took a final gulp of air and plunged back into the frozen pool.

  I ran ahead. The beams from the flashlights scattered in the ochre soup. Mike disappeared from view underneath the cloud.

  “Mike!” I shouted.

  I craned over the lip of the pool and cleared the ice from under me, all the better to shine light into the water. The bones in my hand stiffened like cold steel.

  “Moy?” I called, not daring to look up.

  “Any minute!” shouted back Moyheddin. The fire would make the difference between life and death.

  The ice shattered not far from me, great sheets of glass sliding out of the way as Mike broke the surface once more.

  “Mike! Jesus!” I cried. “Get out of there!”

  His eyes were as wide as saucers, his breath drawn through clenched teeth.

  “Still nothing!” he wheezed. “I can’t see with all the shit. I’m gonna drain it!”

  “What?”

  “There’s a plughole. I’m going back down!”

  “No! Mike!” I reached across to stop him, and one of the flashlights slipped from my grasp and tumbled into the pool. It must have been waterproof, as the beam still shone as it sank, picking out Mike’s white body. He grabbed the flashlight and took it with him into the depths.

  “No!” I screamed again.

  I looked over at Moyheddin. He emptied the fuel from his lighter onto a pyramid of broken wood. Over this he crumbled his pack of tobacco and draped the plastic pouch. As I watched, he sparked the flint, and the liquid flared. A whiff of Virginia blend caught in the back of my throat.

  I looked back at the pool. No sign of Mike. On the surface rode a floe of jagged ice, and beneath it the water was as red as blood.

  Flame shot up from Moyheddin’s bonfire, and I felt the heat of it on the side of my face.

  Then I heard the concussion of water dropping from a great height. Mike had done it! Water was draining from the hopper into the vault below.

  But where was Mike?

  I ran around the pool, shining the light into every corner. In the darkness he could have forgotten the way to the surface. The thought of him panicking in the choking cloud made me wail with despair.

  “Mike!”

  The water was no longer level with the lip of the hopper. It was dropping – fast. On the far side, a ladder was revealed. Footholds for workmen. I would have to clim
b down, I thought, and save Mike.

  And still the water plummeted. Ice cracked as it was drawn into a whirlpool. And born from the receding water was a pale figure, clinging to the rungs of the ladder. Mike’s arm was locked around a crossbar. Too tired to climb, with his last strength Mike had grabbed for the ladder. As the water cleared his shoulders, he threw back his head and drew in a lungful of air.

  Moyheddin ran to lift the wet soccer star to safety. Mike’s skin was as cold as a side of beef from the freezer, and a similar shade of blue. Moyheddin hauled him over the ledge, whilst I ran for the parka. It had been warmed by the fire, and I wrapped it like a cloak around the pale wraith that had emerged from the depths.

  “Give the man some dignity,” said Moyheddin.

  “What?” I asked.

  Mike was grinning at me, though his face was wracked with such pain that it looked more like a grimace.

  “It’s the effect of the cold,” explained Moyheddin. “That’s what it does to a man’s parts.”

  I hadn’t realised that I had spent a little too long taking in Mike’s naked body as I wrapped it with the parka.

  They didn’t see me blush in the darkness.

  We shuffled Mike towards the fire. A great tremor seized his body, and he shook in my arms. His teeth chattered so hard that I thought the enamel would break.

  Flames licked at the wood. Years of drought had leached it of moisture, and it crackled eagerly in the fire. Heat washed against us, and Mike groaned with relief.

  “We’re going to have to turn this inside out,” I said, rubbing the parka over Mike’s icy body. “The lining’s wet.”

  Mike nodded agreement, and on the count of ‘three’ I whipped the coat off and pulled the sleeves through. Wrong way around, I fitted the dry side back onto Mike.

  “You should get in with him,” said Moyheddin.

  “Sorry?” I asked.

  “That’s what they do on mountain rescue. They get in the sleeping bag if someone has hypothermia – I’ve seen it on the Discovery Channel.”

  “Shouldn’t you do it?” I suggested. “You’re a boy.”

  “And what would his mother think when she arrived? You don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”