Gone (30 page)

Painfully she uncurled herself. She shifted, opened her feet wider, and slid down the last few inches of the landslide. The splosh of her boots echoed around the chamber as she landed in the water. She couldn’t see anything, but she knew rubbish was floating in it. Rubbish that must have been dropped down the shaft before the rock fall that had sealed off the chamber, then been driven by the wind to where she stood now. She took her gloves off, bent over, scooped a little of the water into her freezing, chapped hands and sniffed it. It didn’t smell of oil. It smelt of earth. Of roots and leaves and sunlit glades. She tested it with her tongue. It was slightly metallic.

Something opaque rested in the corner of her eye. She let the water slip from her hands and turned stiffly to her left.

About ten feet away there was a faint, cone-shaped glow. The dimmest, most spectral of lights. She twisted and fell against the rockfall, scrabbling for her rucksack, and dragged out her cave light. She put her hands over her eyes and fired it up. The cavern whoomped into light. Everything was outlined in a fizzing blue-white: too big, the edges too defined. She dropped her hand and trained her eyes on where the light had been. The hull of the abandoned barge.

She clicked off the light and kept looking at the hull. Slowly the
shapes and burn marks in her retinas faded. Her pupils dilated. And this time there was no mistake. Daylight was coming through the barge from the other side of the rockfall.

She turned the cave light back on and jammed it into the clay, illuminating the edge of the fall while she repacked her kit. She pulled her gloves on, slung the rucksack on to her back and waded to the barge, crouched and pushed the light inside, shining it around. The barge extended under the rockfall, its bows protruding into the section of tunnel where the shaft was. It would have been made more than a hundred years ago – the hull and deck were sheets of iron riveted together. Good engineers, the Victorians, she thought, peering up at the underside of the deck: in spite of the weight of the rockfall it hadn’t bowed. Instead the entire barge had been driven down into the soft mud, tilted backwards a little, so that, in the next cavern along, its bows were higher. Here in the stern the water level was less than a foot from the underside of the deck – but the tilt made the deck slope upwards so that head space increased further forward into the hull.

About eight feet in, the big beam picked out a bulkhead blocking her way to the bows. She shone the light around the rest of the hull, looking for an exit. It threw the rivets and the drooping cobwebs of the ceiling into sharp relief, picked out odds and ends of floating rubbish: carrier bags, Coke cans. Something that looked furred. A bloated rat probably. But no hatches or exit points in here. She clicked off the lamp and this time her eyes didn’t need time to get used to the change. Immediately she saw where the daylight was coming from: there was the outline of a rectangle in the bulkhead. She let out all her breath. ‘You fucking lovely bastard thing.’

A hatch in the bulkhead, half submerged in the water. Probably for moving the coal between compartments. There was absolutely no reason for it to be locked. The carjacker hadn’t been in the next section of tunnel earlier, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t come back in the last few hours. Still, her choice was clear – get through the barge and face him, or die, trapped down here.

From the rucksack she rummaged out her old Swiss Army
knife, and the mooring spike she’d found the other night, and shoved them both into the little waterproof tackle bag with the drawstring she carried on her wrist.

She strapped on the elasticated head torch and knelt down in the muck, letting herself sink slowly until the water was up to her chest. She went into the hull on her knees, hands stretched out under the water, sweeping for any obstacles, head brushing the rust-crusted cobwebs, chin up, keeping her mouth out the water. If he was in the next section of tunnel, she wasn’t concerned about him seeing the beam of her torch bouncing around, it would be too bright on the other side for it to be visible, but he might be able to hear her. She let her fingers graze across the mooring spike, making sure it was at the ready.

She moved carefully, breathing through her mouth, the bitter whiff of her breath coming back to her in the tiny space. The smell of a night of fear and no food, mingled with the faint tarry scent of coal from inside the hull.

She got to the bulkhead and found that at least two feet of the hatch were under water. She could feel most of it through her gloves. The rest she had to guess at with the numb clumpy toes of her boots. She found a latch halfway down the seam: open. The only thing holding the hatch closed as far as she could tell was decades of rust. There’d be no pressure in the water on either side. As long as she cleared this side, it shouldn’t be impossible to open. The trick was to open it as low down as possible.

Tongue between her teeth she slid the blade of the Swiss Army knife into where the door met the bulkhead, and quietly levered away the rust. The silt at the bottom of the hull she cleared with her feet. She didn’t dare take her gloves off – her fingers were clumpy and painful as she wedged them behind the lip of the hatch. She lifted one heavy foot so she had purchase against the bulkhead and pushed all her energy into her fingers, gritting her teeth and pulling. The pop was sudden and loud. A little spray of rust confettied down on her and a rush of warmer water snaked through the hatch around her stomach.

The noise of the hatch popping felt like a hand punching inside
her ear. Too loud, and for the first time in ages she lost her nerve. She found she couldn’t move. She just stayed exactly where she was, crouched, half-submerged, eyes wide, waiting for an answering noise from the other side of the hatch.

Blue lights flashed across the walls of the houses in the narrow street, sirens wailed mournfully in the distance: ambulances with Janice and her mother nosing their way out into the morning traffic. About fifty people from the neighbourhood were standing in the street at the outer cordon, trying to see what was happening at the nondescript building where the police were gathered.

Everyone on the front lawn was white-faced – silent and serious. No one could quite believe it had happened: that Emily had been snatched from under their noses. The force had been put on its hind legs. Rumour had it that the chief constable himself was on his way down to witness at first hand the staggering cockup they’d made. Press calls were coming thick and fast and the person at the centre of the storm was DC Paul Prody.

He sat on a small picnic bench placed incongruously on the diseased patch of grass at the front of the house. He had accepted someone’s offer of a T-shirt so he no longer smelt of puke – his own shirt was in a knotted carrier bag at his feet – but he’d refused to let the paramedics touch him. He couldn’t keep his balance. He had to sit with his arm on the table, concentrating on a point on the floor. Every now and then his body would weave a little and someone would have to prop him up.

‘They think it was a kind of chloroform, made from bleach and acetone, maybe.’ Caffery had given in again to the call of tobacco. He sat on the other side of the bench, smoking a tightly rolled cigarette and watching Prody through narrowed eyes. ‘Knock-out
gas. Old-fashioned. If you were hit hard enough it’ll get your liver. That’s why you should be in hospital. Even if you think you’re OK.’

Prody shook his head jerkily and even that small movement looked as if it might unbalance him. ‘Fuck off.’ He spoke as if he had a bad cold. ‘You think Janice’ll want me in the same hospital?’

‘A different one, then.’

‘No fucking way. I’m just going to sit here. And breathe.’

He made a show of pulling air into his lungs. In, out, in, out. Painful. Caffery watched in silence. Prody had spent the night with Janice Costello, a vulnerable person, which had pissed Caffery off almost as much as the stuff about the Kitson case. If the circumstances had been any different he might have enjoyed seeing Prody fuck up like this, but he couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him at the balls-up he’d made. He understood why the guy wouldn’t want to be in the same hospital as Janice and her mother. Not after he’d failed to stop Emily being taken.

‘I’m going to be OK. Give me ten and I’ll be ready to go.’ He looked up with bloodshot eyes. ‘They said you know where he is.’

‘We’re not sure. We’ve got a lock-up in Tarlton, near the canal. They’ve searched it.’

‘Any sign?’

‘Not yet. They’ve pulled back. Maybe he’s going to head up there now with Emily. But . . .’ He narrowed his eyes and looked down the street to where the houses dwindled into the distance. ‘No. He won’t do that, of course. That would be too easy.’

‘You know he took my phone?’

‘Yep. It’s switched off but we’ve already got a ping site analysis started. If he switches it on we can get a triangulation on it. But, like I said, he’s too clever. If he switches it on there’ll be a reason.’

Prody shivered. Head still lowered, he glanced darkly up the road, then the other way. It was a cold but sunny day. The people who were going to work had already left. The mothers who’d dropped their kids at school were now at home, cars parked neatly on driveways. Instead of going inside they’d wandered over
to the cordon to stand, arms crossed, staring at the police vans and the ambulances. Their eyes were like nails, pinning Caffery and Prody where they sat. Wanting answers.

‘I never even saw it coming. Don’t remember a thing. I cocked up.’

‘Tell me about it. You cocked up big-time. But not because you didn’t stop this arsehole. Not for that.’ Caffery pinched the end of the cigarette so the ash fell into a paper handkerchief Nick had given him. He folded it, pressing hard to kill the heat and put it, with the butt, into his inside pocket. No one was in the flat. They’d searched it thoroughly for Emily – even the loft – and the moment they were sure she wasn’t there they’d cordoned it, leaving the scene as pristine as it could be for the crime-scene boys who still hadn’t arrived. When they did come he wasn’t going to ruffle their feathers by dropping butts all over the place. ‘No. Your headline balls-up was being there in the first place. You’re a DC on this case. You shouldn’t have been there in the evening after hours. How the hell did that happen?’

‘I came over in the afternoon, like you asked me. She was . . .’ He waved a weak hand. ‘She was – you know. So I stayed on.’

‘She was what? Attractive? Available?’

‘On her own. He’d fucked off to work.’

‘Nice language.’

Prody stared at him as if there was something he’d like to say but couldn’t. ‘He’d
gone
to work when his wife and daughter were in the middle of this whole thing – left them on their own. Scared. What would you’ve done?’

‘In the Met I had this drummed into me in training. You take advantage of a woman like that – someone who’s already a victim – and it’s hunting wounded animals. Hunting wounded animals.’

‘I didn’t take advantage, I took
pity
. I didn’t sleep with her. I stayed because I
thought
it’d save you some staffing budget, and because
she
said she’d feel safer with me there.’ He shook his head ironically. ‘Lucky I never let her down, isn’t it?’

Caffery sighed. Everything about this case had the dank, fetid
smell of defeat about it. ‘Take me through it again. Costello goes out in the afternoon? To work?’

‘One of the squad cars took him. Nick organized it.’

‘And he never comes home?’

‘Yeah – he did. For about ten minutes. It was about nine at night. Boozed up, I think. And the moment he’s through the door he lays into her.’

‘Why?’

‘Because—’ Prody broke off.

‘Because what?’

His face tightened a fraction. He seemed to be about to say something – something bitter. But he didn’t. After a moment or two he got his face flattened down again. ‘Dunno. Some domestic stuff, none of my business. They’re both upstairs and the next thing I know she’s screaming at him and he comes running down the stairs swearing and he’s off. Slams the door. She comes leaping after him and runs all the chains on the door. I’m, like, “Mrs Costello, I really wouldn’t, you’ll antagonize him,” and she’s just, “I couldn’t give a toss.” Sure enough he comes back half an hour later, finds the chains on and starts yelling abuse up the stairs and rattling the door.’

‘What did you do?’

‘She asked me to ignore it so I did.’

‘But eventually he goes? Leaves you be?’

‘Eventually. I think he . . . Let’s put it this way, I think he has somewhere else he can spend the night.’

Caffery pulled out the wrapped-up napkin from his pocket. Inspected the remains of the cigarette. He folded it again and put it back into his pocket. ‘We found you in the kitchen.’

‘Yeah.’ He looked up at the open window. ‘I remember going in. I’d made some cocoa for us all and I took the cups in to wash them up. I remember that far.’

‘What time?’

‘Christ knows. Maybe ten o’clock? Emily had woken up with all the noise.’

‘The window was forced. There’re marks in the grass. A ladder.’
He nodded to where the entry team had rigged up some police tape tied to three temporary barriers that cordoned off an area. ‘Less visible round the side. He would have taken you first. In the kitchen. No one would have heard in the rest of the—’ He broke off. A police Beemer slowed in the street and stopped at the kerb. Cory Costello got out. His overcoat was unbuttoned to reveal an expensive suit. He was neat and tidy – shaved and showered. So wherever he’d spent the night it hadn’t been a bench. Nick, who had been sitting in Caffery’s Mondeo making phone calls, instantly jumped out and stopped Cory in his tracks. They spoke for a moment, then Cory glanced around the assembled police officers and onlookers. His eye fell on Caffery and Prody. Neither man moved. They simply sat there and let him look at them. For a while a hush seemed to fall on the entire street. The father who’d lost a daughter. And the two cops who should have done something about it. Cory began to walk towards them.