by Steve Mosby
Shrugs, for the most part. One man started singing at him: a booming operatic sound, devoid of words, that echoed after Groves as he walked away. A couple seemed to know who he was talking about, jutting scabbed chins to tell him to keep going. He moved on. The dark passageways were disorientating. Mentally he unfurled a ball of wool behind him.
Out on to a metal walkway. The river was to the side of him now: thundering away beyond a stone wall studded with spitting pipes. As another rumble passed overhead, he thought how strange it was that the homeless lived here. Above, the tracks spread out from the railway station like a frayed grey bow on the land, while all around down here was the sound of the river constantly tumbling past. Everything around them was moving elsewhere, while they were trapped underground at the nexus of it all, squatting and stagnant.
What are you doing here, David?
‘I’m looking for Carl Thompson. The boy with the burns.’
Why, though? It was becoming increasingly clear to him that both Thompson and Leland were connected to the abduction of his son – or at least that he was meant to think they were. That meant he should turn this over to Sean, just as he had the Leland case, but something kept him moving. He kept remembering the phone call from last night. Memories of Jamie flickered in his head, the little boy running away, forcing him to chase after him. It was his job to do so. His responsibility.
‘I’m looking for Carl Thompson. The boy with the burns.’
‘Down there.’
The woman’s eyes were bleary and sad. She might have been any age, but he guessed she was about fifty, with lank black hair plastered to her skull and wrinkles everywhere.
‘You know him?’
‘Down there.’ She indicated another service door in the wall, rusted and hanging off its hinges. ‘That’s his. He’ll be there.’
‘Thanks.’
Groves felt her gaze following him as he moved away from her towards the old door. There was just enough space to squeeze around the fractured metal, and then he was in another corridor, this one tighter and shorter than the others, with two-metre-deep arches along the right-hand side. The lights here had been placed above the arches, so that the interiors were dark and shadowy. The first two were empty, but it was obvious that someone was lying in the furthest.
As Groves approached, he smelled the remains of Carl Thompson’s fire – old ash and burned wood – and then something altogether worse. A cold draught through a vent in the wall was wafting the stench out into the small corridor. He stopped at the edge of the last arch, staring down, then flicked on his torch.
The charred wood and snatches of old paper reminded him of the mess on Angela Morris’ barbecue. The ash glittered slightly. And there was Carl Thompson. He was lying dead, with the side of his face in the debris of his fire. I’ve been through hell, sir. If that were true, there was something peaceful about him now. It was as though those long-gone flames had been the most natural place in the world for him to be pressed, finally, to sleep.
Groves stared down at the dead boy for a handful of seconds in which he could hardly breathe. Two people potentially linked to his son’s abduction. Two people dead. A phone in his pocket that connected him to Carl Thompson, on which he had received a message about Jamie. Someone making contact. Involving him.
What is happening here?
He needed to know. The right thing to do – the sensible thing – was to call this in immediately: turn it over; explain everything. But the weight of the phone in his pocket distracted him. He wanted to take it out now and check for another message, but there would be no signal down here. There would be a message, though. God will be with you. There was no rational reason for thinking it, but Groves was sure that whoever was behind all this knew he was here and had seen what had been done.
Jamie.
The memory of his little boy had stopped running from him now, and the image burned brightly in his mind: Jamie, standing in the trousers and T-shirt he’d worn on that last morning, squinting in the sun, waving tentatively at his father. Groves wanted so badly to reach into his own thoughts and embrace the boy, and the fact that he couldn’t caused an ache deep inside him. While he couldn’t leave Thompson lying here dead like this, he also knew he couldn’t bring himself to give the phone up.
Not yet.
Back out of the arches, keeping away from any CCTV, Groves checked the mobile. No messages. No voicemail.
There would be soon, though. He was sure of that.
Forgive me, he thought.
He called the Thompson scene in anonymously.
Merritt
The Devil’s house
It stood on top of a hill, jutting up from the land like a broken tooth. Merritt had no idea how old it was, but doubted it was Christian in origin. It had been since, of course, but even those days were long past. The interior was a rough cross shape, with just enough space to seat the few isolated people who must have lived nearby in previous centuries. At one side, a staircase led down to an old crypt. It was there that the renovations had been made.
The tunnels had been widened and extended over the years, presumably by similarly recruited independent contractors. Additional rooms and staircases and corridors had been added, some of them reaching all the way to the open air on the far side of the hill. The whole structure had electricity and running water, along with an elaborate system of security cameras and speakers. Merritt parked at the base. Looking at the hill in front of him, it was impossible not to imagine it as a hornets’ nest. Sometimes he even imagined he could hear it buzzing.
He walked up the winding path to the arched oak door, which had been left slightly ajar. It creaked as he pushed it further open and stepped inside.
The Devil’s house.
As always, it felt far colder in here than it did outside. The stone floor and walls were dusty, and there was an odd rush to the air, as though a breeze was being generated within the walls, an strange kind of spirit.
The door to the cellar was open. Merritt went down the stone staircase, then through another door at the far end of the crypt into the warren of tunnels beyond. The stone gradually gave way to something more organic: a compressed mass of earth and timber and rock. It began to feel to Merritt as though he was moving through the veins of something living. Struts held a makeshift ceiling in place, and the tunnels were illuminated by old lights on the walls, encased in plastic. He’d never been claustrophobic, but the nerves jangled slightly here. While he had been assured it was safe and stable, the tunnel system always felt ramshackle and dangerous.
It wasn’t long before he reached the cells. It was difficult to think of them as rooms, as they seemed to grow off the sides of the tunnels like bulbs in the earth, none of their inner edges entirely straight or flat. Some were larger than others, with jagged edges where the earth must have given way, but most were barely large enough to lie comfortably in. The entrances were secured with metal doors, the earth around them reinforced – not that any of the prisoners here were inclined to attempt escape. Within a week of entering this place, most were already too weak and broken to consider it.
Hell wasn’t full right now. But even so, several of the cells Merritt passed were occupied. Peering through the open slots in the doors, he recognised most of the occupants. After all, it was him and his shifting team that had brought them here. Most of them were insane by now. He paid them little attention.
There was one, though, who intrigued him more, and he stopped outside the man’s cell now. It was the smallest room of all, and the man inside sat cross-legged against one wall while a television played his sins back at him barely a metre and a half away. The light flickered over his face, which – uniquely down here – was uninjured. Unlike his fellow prisoners, this man hadn’t been hurt by the Devil. Not yet. But after all this time alone down here, he was probably as mad as any of them.
Merritt knew what the man had done in real life: why he was here, and what was in store for him. Looking through the h
atch at him now, he felt an unfamiliar emotion, one he’d rarely had time for in the past.
He felt genuine pity for the man in the cell.
But that evaporated as he felt a presence a little way down the corridor from him. He turned his head to make sure, registered the dark shape standing metres away, then looked away quickly, down at the ground. He was a loyal employee, and there were rules to follow. The Devil didn’t like to be looked at.
Merritt waited as the old man slowly approached. He had never been predisposed to fear, but these encounters in the tight little corridors always gave him a taste of it.
‘It’s finished,’ the old man said.
He was holding something out. Without looking up, Merritt took the piece of paper that was being offered to him.
‘Yes, sir.’
But the Devil was already retreating into the darkness. Merritt looked down at the paper, and the designs that had been drawn on it. A map of sins. A severing of ways.
He nodded to himself. He always carried a gun, concealed beneath his suit jacket. It was second nature to him now. Tonight, he was going to need a knife as well.
Mark
The truth of it
Sasha was waiting for me in the hospital reception, and was clearly extremely pissed off with everything that had happened. She almost walked straight past me when I arrived, eager to find the car and get what was to her clearly an embarrassing experience over with as quickly as possible. If she’d had her own car with her, I was sure she’d have driven herself. As it was, I was half surprised she’d contacted me at all, and not just set off stubbornly on foot.
‘Absolute bullshit,’ she told me as I drove.
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
I glanced to one side. She was resting her head on her hand, leaning against the passenger window, staring straight ahead. Whatever had happened, she was furious with herself.
For my part, I was just glad that, anger aside, she seemed okay. The text message I’d received outside the Lawrences’ house had sent my heart racing. Panic had set in immediately. Why was she at the hospital? What the fuck had happened? I knew how dangerous her job could be, and I’d always been afraid that she’d get hurt somehow. Even though she’d been able to text me, I’d automatically assumed the worst. While I still didn’t know what had happened, there was at least some relief in the fact that she appeared unharmed. But the adrenalin remained in my system. I pictured having to drive home with an empty passenger seat beside me, and my heart sank.
Thank God you’re okay.
Because for a moment there ...
I fought down the panic and tried to sound casual.
‘What was the absolute bullshit, then?’
‘Sending me there.’ Sasha turned around and glared behind us, even though the hospital was out of sight by now. ‘I told my boss I was fine, but blah blah. Possible concussion.’ She stared ahead again, still fuming. ‘He made me look like an idiot in front of everyone. Know how many other members of the team got sent to the hospital today with possible concussion?’
‘No.’
‘None. It’s hard enough being a woman on that team. There’s this constant feeling that you’re second best.’ She pulled a face, then shook her head. ‘It’s bad enough without this kind of shit.’
‘You’re not second best.’
She didn’t reply.
I did understand, because I knew how much Sasha’s career mattered to her. She prided herself on being good at her job, and she was, but the door teams were macho environments at the best of times, and perhaps even more insular and contained than teams like ours. You needed the respect of your colleagues; they needed to know they could rely on you. I could imagine how much a mistake would bother her.
I turned the steering wheel slightly, trying to keep calm.
‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’
‘It was nothing.’
‘It shouldn’t take long, then.’
That got me a glare, one I pretended not to see, but after a few more seconds of silence, she sighed and started talking.
As she’d said, it was nothing really – or at least it should have been: a routine operation targeting premises above a licensed sex shop to the west of the city centre, which it was believed were being used as an illegal brothel by traffickers. Sasha had been one of the first three officers in, clearing rooms as they went. The place was actually on two levels, with a reception room for the clientele on the first floor, and bedrooms on the second. No problems in reception, but Sasha had been the first officer into one of the upstairs bedrooms, where she’d found a girl cowering on the bed. She was barely into her teens, and clearly terrified, and without thinking, Sasha had taken a protective step towards her, wanting her to at least see a woman before the other officers barrelled in. She hadn’t been thinking.
‘Didn’t clear the corner,’ she said. ‘Stupid mistake. Rookie mistake. I didn’t realise there was a client in the room.’
A big guy, too, by the sound of things. He’d been waiting against the wall, and after Sasha had stepped into the room, he’d barged her out of the way and tried to head downstairs. The shove had sent her sprawling on to the floor, and she’d banged her head on the wooden edge of the bed.
‘I saw stars,’ she said. ‘For about three seconds. That’s it. But I hadn’t had the chance to get up again before Killingbeck rugby-tackled the guy straight back into the room and saw me sprawled out there.’
She shook her head again. From what she’d said, I wasn’t convinced her boss insisting on a hospital check-up had been entirely unreasonable. At the same time, I didn’t think the decision to send her to hospital was the real source of her annoyance so much as the embarrassment of making a mistake in the first place. A rookie mistake at that. Maybe it hadn’t been serious this time, but in the line of work she did, a rookie mistake could get people killed.
We drove home in silence. I kept replaying the scenario in my mind, each time imagining it slightly worse than before. Sasha turning her head at the last moment so it was her temple that struck the bed frame, fracturing her skull; the client coming at her with a knife rather than his shoulder; someone more seriously involved in the operation, perhaps, who was prepared to defend it with a gun. I saw each situation vividly in my head, and in each case desperately wanted to be there to help, but was reduced to observing it passively.
Anything could have happened to her.
Anything still could.
The panic remained, and as we pulled into our drive, it was sharper than ever. She was fine, but she might not have been. That text message had been the most frightening thing I could remember in a long time, and while things hadn’t turned out badly, they could have done.
‘Well,’ I forced myself to say, hoping the anxiety didn’t come out in my voice. ‘As bad as it was, it could have been worse, couldn’t it?’
‘Yes. And that’s the problem.’
‘I know.’
‘I got distracted.’ She looked at me. ‘I got sloppy. And it could have been a lot worse.’
I couldn’t read the expression on her face.
‘So you have to learn from it,’ I said.
Sasha continued to stare at me, thinking about something. Finally she looked away again, nodding to herself. Even though we were sitting as close together as before, it felt like she’d somehow taken a step away from me. I wanted to say something to pull her back, but I couldn’t think of the words. You’ll never be second best to me, I almost said. But given my behaviour recently. I was suddenly scared that she wouldn’t believe me.
‘You’re right,’ she said finally. Her tone was flat, empty. ‘I can’t afford to get distracted again.’
That night, for the first time in months, I had the dream again. But tonight it was different.
In the past, despite being a nightmare, there had been nothing overtly horrific about it. I was always just standing on the shoreline, staring out
at a calm sea, the sky above speckled with gulls. The sea was empty. Lise never featured at all, always conspicuous by her absence. The dream was about how she was no longer there.
Tonight, though, it truly was a nightmare. I was still standing on the beach, but the sea in front of me was dark and churning. The rolling waves formed angled lines of froth like the haphazard slices of a razor, and the sky above was heavy with blackening clouds. I was shivering with cold and screaming at the water.
Swim. Swim.
Because I could see her out there, even though the waves were too violent for a clear view. They kept tossing her up, then pushing her down: playing at killing her. But she was there, and somehow I could hear her too. She was screaming for help, but the words were torn apart by the wind, so that all I caught was the fractured sound of someone who knew they were dying.
And so I had to save her, the woman I loved.
I had to go back into the sea.
I stepped forward, up to my shins, but even this close to the shore the current threatened to pull me off my feet, and I froze. Come on. Except I couldn’t. Only a minute ago, I had been out there, being thrown this way and that by the waves. I had gone under and swallowed water and come up coughing and choking. I had been convinced I was going to die. But I had got to shore, and my body refused to allow me to go back in. I was literally held in place, shaking with fear, reduced to screaming impotently at the sea as it killed my girlfriend.
Breathe, I thought. Breathe.
You’ll be okay ...
And then – just for a moment before she disappeared – I caught sight of her face amongst the black waves, and realised that it wasn’t Lise out there at all, but Sasha.
I woke with a start, my heart beating hard in my chest, and lay very still for a time, trying to calm myself down. After a few minutes, I rolled carefully on to my side.
Tonight, as much as it had been a dream, it had also been a memory. That was what had happened, after all. I wouldn’t have been able to save Lise anyway, as I wasn’t a strong swimmer and had made it to the beach more by luck than anything else. Nevertheless, I had still stood there, helpless, and watched Lise drown. I had been too afraid – too weak – even to try. I had failed her.