by P. R. Black
‘I don’t give a shit what it’s attached to,’ Jay said, in more of a gurgle than a statement. ‘Get it down here and open it up.’
His fingers stung by the frozen metal, Seth dislodged the box from its bracket. He tried to tuck it under his arm, but struggled to keep his balance. ‘It’s too big to carry.’
‘Then throw it down, genius,’ Vinnicombe snapped. ‘I don’t care what happens to your birdie box.’
Seth let the box go. It landed hard and rolled over, but kept its shape and stayed shut.
‘Go get it,’ Vinnicombe said, and for once Jay didn’t argue or prevaricate. Jay found the seam and opened the box.
‘Absolutely fuck all in there,’ Jay said, horrified, revealing the box.
Seth came down, and faced both of them.
No one said anything. The two intruders didn’t consult each other. They didn’t even share a glance. They started in on him. Punches snapped Seth’s head back and forth; he was buffeted across the ground, tumbling end over end, and taking blows at all points. It seemed to go on beyond the snapping point of rage; it became measured, considered violence. At one stage, they fought each other to be first in the queue. One nasty kick hit Seth in the ribs – pointed toes; the smaller, older man, surely – and he cried out. A knee exploded against the side of his head, and he went down, curling up into a ball.
‘Where is it? Where?’ Seth wasn’t sure which one had said it. He caught a glimpse of Jay, or a creature wearing a mask that looked like Jay, literally drooling. ‘Find that fucking stuff or we’ll rip you apart!’
A noise broke in on the dull eruptions on every exposed part of Seth. A phone.
Jay was out of breath. ‘Thought this was a no-phones job?’
‘Quiet,’ Vinnicombe said – also breathing hard but horribly self-assured, after the storm had passed. ‘Adults talking.’
Seth slowly uncurled; his right arm was shaking beyond control. He wasn’t sure if his fingers were broken; he could barely extend them. He uncovered his face. He could taste blood; he was not sure where he was bleeding from.
A kick in the balls from Jay returned him to the ground, flat out. Seth had been knocked sick by such a blow before, but he hadn’t realised you could be knocked out by one. Lights scored lines across his vision like fingernails down a blackboard. He lay silent for a moment, listening to Vinnicombe’s conversation.
‘Yeah, I hear you… Is there another way out of the house?’
A clear Scottish accent, compressed and highly strung, could be heard in the response.
Vinnicombe responded: ‘Best you get checking. Make sure. And don’t worry. It’s only a problem. I can sort it out. I’ve brought tools. That’s why you hired me, kiddo.’ After hanging up, he said to Jay, ‘Keep that bastard right here. Watch him closely. Ask him questions, but don’t hurt him any more. You awake over there, big fella?’ A prod with pointed toes in his side; Seth struggled to a sitting position. ‘That’s good. Still compos mentis. Great. You up for telling us what happened to the stuff?’
‘I don’t know,’ Seth managed to say.
‘I believe you!’ the little man said. ‘I truly do. You might want to start speculating. You can speculate wildly, in fact. Because you’re not just a dead man if that stuff has gone missing. You’re going to die in agony. But not before your beanpole Good Housekeeping cover girl wife dies, in a horrible, horrible way. I’ll leave it to your imagination. I’ll leave it for you to ponder. Same question, said a different way. Where – is – our stuff? Seek the truth. Find an answer.’
Vinnicombe didn’t wait for a reply. Nor did he acknowledge Jay as he strode off back down the path.
Seth listened to the blood roaring in his ears. He curled and uncurled his fingers. Still working. Not broken. That was something.
‘I hope it’s permanent,’ Jay said, balefully. He tossed a stick of gum into his mouth, and stared down at Seth, unblinkingly, as his jaws worked. ‘Your hands. Your face. Everything. That’s if you get out of here alive. Which I am starting to doubt.’
‘Why don’t you shut your mouth?’ Seth said, after he was sure the little white-haired gargoyle had scuttled off far enough out of hearing range.
‘That’s a big statement considering I just kicked you all over the place on your own manor,’ Jay said, chewing the gum hard. ‘Quite bold, in fact.’
‘Yeah? There’s only one of you now,’ Seth said. ‘Not to mention you’re holding a gun. Not fucking yellow, are you, son?’
Jay laughed, but only after a pause. ‘You just do what the man said, and tell us where you think the stuff’s gone.’
‘The truth is, I don’t know. I’m the only one who knows where the stuff was. I was alone when I planted it.’
But this was not true. Someone had been with him when he had planted the stuff.
It was the same person who he could see now, positioned over Jay’s shoulder, both eyes peering out of a tangle of branches at the top of a tree.
47
The door was locked from the inside, tight, secure. Cramond had no way of getting through it, but Vonny still clung to it, even as he pounded and kicked it from the other side. They only made a faint impression on the door’s integrity – the faintest vibrations, such as you might discern in the air if you stood next to a powerful speaker system. His words carried through the intercom, triggered when Vonny had put on the lights.
The video screen had been cut, here, too; Vonny could imagine how his face might have looked, distorted through the fish-eye effect of the video screen, bulging in and out of good order as he peered in at the lens fixed in the wall.
‘Open this fucking door, or I swear to God, I’ll…’ He seemed to think his response through, though he didn’t stop his hammering. ‘Your husband. I’ll bring him back here. You can sit in there and listen to the sound he makes when I slit his throat.’
Inside the panic room, Vonny had been like a plane passenger clinging to the armrests of their seat and deluding themselves that doing so kept the aircraft steady. She made herself let go of the door, and took a step back.
The hammering continued, but the door was firm.
She’d designed this room especially. It hadn’t been in her mind until she’d come to submit the final plans to the architect. If I’m going to live in a palace, she’d said to her, then I might as well have the kind of protection a queen might have.
You do hear about it all the time, the architect had replied. In a lot of ways it’s easier to break into a remote place as opposed to a semi-detached two-bedroom house in a suburb, surrounded by nosy old buggers.
She’d even had fun planning it out. It reminded her of plans she’d drawn up in felt tip for a secret base as a girl, after she’d read an Enid Blyton novel about spies and junior detectives. Zip line. Tunnel. Launchpad. Gun tower.
The room was roughly the size of a box room that most people would use for books and old CDs, and a single camp bed for the friend most likely to vomit after a night’s drinking. It was perfectly square, with a single bulb burning overhead, a fridge with bottled water and snacks inside, an office chair in the other corner, and, of course, vertical against the whitewashed wall in bright red and more reminiscent of a defibrillator, was a landline telephone.
Vonny tried it, stabbed at the receiver, then slammed it back down. Dead, of course.
‘Shit! Dinosaur technology, anyway. Dodo Enterprises Inc.’ She slapped herself, for no good reason, then she began to laugh. If she could have seen herself right then, she wouldn’t have recognised herself; utterly on edge, face demoniacal, eyes glassy. She was on the verge of collapse; she did collapse, into the seat, as her giggling became sobs.
‘Open the door and don’t be silly,’ said the voice in the speaker. More conciliatory, edging towards importunate, now. This sounded more sinister than the roaring and shouting, after he’d collided with the door what seemed like milliseconds after the automatic lock had engaged. She could not have cut it any finer. She could picture him, f
orehead pressed against the door, eyes blank, even as he modulated the tone of his voice into something less threatening. ‘Come on, now. There’s no need to be silly about any of this. We’ll get the stuff, and be on our way. That’s all we’ve ever wanted. I’m sorry about the rough stuff. But we had to let you know we were serious. We weren’t really going to kill you. So, let’s have no more of these games. Just come on out. I promise I won’t hurt you. I’ll even stay in another room, if you like. You can just sit quietly until it’s all sorted out. You won’t even know we’ve been in.’
Vonny had had a boyfriend like that. He’d sounded just like this, one time after she’d locked him out, when he’d grown angry and paranoid after she’d spoken to someone male who wasn’t him, on a night out. Come on, now, he’d said. Let’s not be silly. Just let me back in.
This memory provided Vonny with an impetus she might not have had otherwise. She got up and stabbed the button that activated her mic. ‘The police are on their way. I’d say you have ten minutes for you and the other two to get out of here before they arrive. If you’re very lucky.’
‘The police? How have you managed that?’
‘There’s an alarm,’ Vonny said. ‘A panic button. Connects to 999.’
In a hint of his former tone, Cramond said: ‘An alarm? Or a panic button?’
‘Call it what you want. You’re not getting in here. It’s best you leave. Soon as you can.’
‘Thing is, there’s not a panic button in there. If there is, it would have been disabled, along with your phone line and your internet connection. Is there a phone in there? You tried it yet?’ He began to laugh.
‘You’ll never get in here,’ Vonny said, keeping her voice steady. ‘You’ll need a tank. Or a missile. Steel bars across the doors. You’ll never get through.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart,’ came a separate, cockney voice. ‘I don’t have a tank or a missile. But I’ve got the next best thing. The appliance of science, you might say.’
Vonny’s sense of security emptied out into dread. She took her hand off the intercom and sprang back, collapsing into the chair. The momentum pushed it on its coasters into the wall, and she leaned back against it, after the impact. The paintwork was cool against her forehead. Tiredness struck, implausibly – something beyond exhaustion, not unlike jet lag. She wanted to shut down. There was an option, but the builders had warned her about it… And then…
And then of course, they’d left the site early without completing it. Screws loose all over the house. Thanks to these fuckers.
Another voice carried over the intercom: Vinnicombe’s. Their conversation was indistinct for a moment or two. Then they both broke up laughing, a ridiculous sound, a mockery.
The appliance of science… that had been one phrase Vonny had picked up. She pictured someone connecting a computer terminal to the console outside… A simple balancing act of zeroes and ones, the code cracked… The door sliding open to reveal the faces of slavering jackals.
Instead, there was the sound of industry – clanking, something being clamped, screws being turned. A moment of complete silence.
‘Thing is, I’ve gotten into bank vaults, dear,’ Vinnicombe said, in his breezy taxi-driver manner. ‘It was my speciality. Some took a long time. Some didn’t take long at all. They all had one thing in common, though. They were all much harder to crack than this. And I’ve brought everything I need with me. Just in case. That’s why they pay me the big bucks, don’t you know?’
The drill might have begun to turn in Vonny’s forehead, never mind the wall outside. Its electric bark sat her bolt upright, her fatigue gone at the flick of a switch. She covered her ears and cowered for a moment. Then she made a decision. No decision at all, really.
Vonny turned to the wall she had previously rested against. At the bottom right-hand side was a panel. Just big enough for a person her size to crouch in.
She took a bottle of water out of the fridge, but her hands shook so badly that she dropped it, then abandoned the idea. Water could wait.
Vonny punched in a code in the console next to the panel. It slid open.
A draught chilled the sweat at her forehead, and her breath steamed up immediately as she crouched before the pitch-dark tunnel. There was no light anywhere, nothing that promised salvation other than that frozen air.
The tone of the drill changed, as if it had broached something. Close, now. Perhaps close enough to splinter the plasterwork and poke its silvery nose right through.
All or nothing.
Vonny clambered inside the tunnel.
48
The crawlspace was in near-total darkness, and the concrete sides were clammy to the touch. She gasped as a spider’s web caressed her cheek, and something seemed to pop underneath her thumb as she inched forward. It was only a matter of a few feet, but Vonny could see nothing. A design flaw, she told herself.
Behind her, the drilling had stopped. A door slammed against a wall, and heavy footsteps vibrated the building, frighteningly close. She imagined a hand clamping on her shoulder, even though it was impossible.
‘Where did she go?’ Cramond cried, the strain in his voice clear despite the new doorway.
‘Look closely, Aladdin,’ said Vinnicombe. ‘Down there, bottom left. Open sesame.’
‘Hell is that? An escape tunnel?’
‘Yep, that exactly. I’ll bring the stuff.’ A matter of inches behind her, the door rattled. ‘Yeah, this one shouldn’t take me twenty seconds. Stand by.’
Vonny hurried forward, and almost pitched forward into empty space. This was the slope. The one the architect had tried to talk her out of. It isn’t a playpark. A slide, taking her into a channel, which would reach the outside, at the back, near the swimming pool. But she hadn’t reckoned on actually having to use it. She had included the entire panic room and escape tunnel as a joke, almost.
Some joke.
Behind her, the voices, way too close now. The Scottish accent, reverberating off the tight angled surfaces like a pebble in a pipe. ‘She launched an escape pod or something?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Vinnicombe said. He grunted; he was crouching, slithering into the crawlspace. He was right behind her. Then light flooded the space, bluish and cold, from a powerful torch. It cast a Vonny-shaped shadow into the dip, where the chute angled down into darkness, her hair coiled like Medusa’s. ‘Wherever you’re going, you can’t be far away… Ah! I think I can see her. Almost there…’
There was no time to think about it now. Vonny twisted her legs around, so that she was sat forward, and launched herself down the slide.
‘Here!’ Vinnicombe was astonished. ‘Where’d she go?’
The surface was slightly abrasive, so she didn’t quite fly down the chute. This was fortunate, because when she reached the short distance at the bottom, she was soon in freezing water up to her shoulders.
Her whole body convulsed, and she twisted and clawed some way back up the chute, like a house cat taking an unexpected dip in a birdbath. Vonny emitted a grating whine and her insides seemed to contract to a dense, thudding core. The water was freezing, and it was almost up to the top of the tunnel she had to crawl down. It seemed incredible this could happen. Again, she remembered the conversation with the builder: There are pieces of snagging you’ll have to look at. Your special room… it’s not secure at the outside. That’ll flood. It had flooded. During the snowfall, water had seeped in.
Vinnicombe’s torch bobbled two or three feet above her head, as he inched forward.
Hands clutched tight against her chest, Vonny looked at the tunnel. There was an inch or two’s clearance at the top of the pipe; as she moved, the displaced dark water slapped at the top. Eight to ten feet in length; that was all.
They’re going to kill me. No choice.
Vinnicombe’s head appeared at the top of the chute. He had a head torch; its blue light blazed directly into Vonny’s eyes. He chuckled. ‘Did you actually build a water slide in
your own house, love? What’s going on here? If you’d come to me first, I could’ve sorted the house out for you. What a mess!’
Vonny crouched into the water, shivering. The cold was beyond imagining, her shoulders convulsing with the effort.
Vinnicombe’s beam moved past her head and lit up the waterlogged tunnel. ‘Now… Where’s that going? And more to the point, where are you going?’
Vonny moved forward. The tunnel floor was treacherous, and she slipped forward. Swim. She would have to swim. Ten feet, tops, then out. Couple of kicks, really. That’s all. Nothing to it.
Vinnicombe’s voice was gentler, now. ‘Think about it, sweetheart. Think about the water. Whatever’s at the end of that tunnel, isn’t worth the effort. Imagine it’s blocked? Imagine you can’t open the hatch? You go down there, you’re not going to come out. You’ll be stuck. In the dark. Under the water. Now see some sense, please. I’ll help you back up.’
Adrenaline kicked in, at long last. Vonny glared at him over her shoulder. ‘Come on down, Popeye, and let’s find out what’s at the end of the tunnel?’
‘No kidding, now,’ Vinnicombe said. ‘You’ll drown. There’s no space to get a breath. You won’t come out of there alive. You aren’t gambling, you’re losing. Think about it. Come on up here, and at least you’re taking a chance.’
‘Take a running jump!’ she screamed, and dived forwards.
49
All around was darkness and terrible, awesome cold with the sudden immersion. Vonny felt bubbles tickle her cheeks and nose. The soft explosion was all around her head and her ears. She knew the roaring of her blood, her pulse wild. She stretched full out, kicking towards the end of the tunnel.
Ten feet. No more.
As she moved through the water, she envisaged a rapidly reducing distance. At the end, she knew, was a hatch she had to turn, which let out into a small box that resembled a cover for an electricity meter. Once she was in there, she was free, in the sprawling garden space.