M. Arlidge - The Doll's House

And there it was. A trap-door. It had two bolts on its upper surface to secure it from above, but they had been left unsecured. It was like an open invitation. For the first time, Helen paused. Smoke was billowing out of it and who knew what lay within – was Ruby even there? Was it an ambush – one last stand against those who would deny Ben Fraser his fantasy?

Then a cry. Faint, but urgent. And unquestionably female. Now Helen didn’t hesitate, opening the trapdoor and plunging down into the abyss. The metal rungs of the ladder were already heating up, but Helen’s leather gloves gave her some protection and she made it to the bottom swiftly.

She lifted the tinted visor of her helmet and looked around. It was an amazing sight – a warren of little corridors leading God knows where. At intervals, bare bulbs covered in plastic casings were attached to the wall, illuminating the path. It was so well manufactured it was almost like being in a mine, a shocking testimony to the concerted, precise nature of Ben Fraser’s madness. The thought made Helen shiver and she gripped her baton a little harder.

Another cry, closer this time. Helen plunged forward, hopelessly waving her arm in front of her to clear the smoke that surrounded her. It was filling her nostrils, creeping into her eyes, it was completely intolerable. A fire in these damp conditions would create great swathes of smoke. Helen slammed her visor down again – it would make her vision darker, but with it up she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

She navigated by sound now, using Ruby’s plaintive cries to guide her. Instinctively she wanted to call out to her, to reassure her that help was on its way, but he was down here somewhere. And she dare not announce her presence.

Helen cannoned off a rough dirt wall, her forward momentum suddenly and brutally checked. Using her free hand she felt her way round the corner, moving carefully but purposefully forward. She had the sense that there was someone with her in the smoke, right behind her, and turning, she swung her baton in wild self-defence. But it connected with nothing, and in the deep gloom Helen could just about make out that she was still alone.

Helen moved forward again. She just wanted to find Ruby and get out of this place. It was getting hotter all the time and harder and harder to breathe. Helen suddenly found herself plunging to the floor, her foot having caught on something solid. In the clear air near the ground, Helen could see she had tripped over the lip of a doorway.

Turning she could make out another open doorway a few yards ahead of her. The heat was less intense lower down, her vision slightly better, so in spite of the obvious dangers, Helen crawled forward, through the threshold and into the room beyond.

The sight that greeted Helen took her breath away. The room was ablaze. A wooden table and chair had already been consumed by the flames and the other fixtures – an old cooker, an iron bedstead – were next in line. Secured to the heavy bedframe and writhing in agony was the thin frame of Ruby Sprackling. A precise ring of fire encircled her, the killer’s sadistic and deliberate method of execution, but Helen was damned if this poor girl was going to die in this hole, so hurdling the flames she sprinted over to her. As she did so, another wave of heat hit her. The fire was freshly made, but fierce and they had only seconds before they would be overcome.

Ruby’s hands were tied tight with nylon cord, secured to the bedframe with a constrictor knot. Ruby’s wrists were already red-raw. There was no way she could wriggle out of the cord’s grip and the bedframe was too strong and too thick to cut through.

Searching desperately for some means of liberation, Helen spotted a small patch of crumbling brickwork in the far wall. Without hesitating, she plunged towards it. Within seconds she was back by Ruby’s side, clutching the loose brick in her hand, hammering at the metal bedframe. The strut that Ruby was tethered to protested, then bent before finally snapping in two. Pulling Ruby to her feet, Helen tugged the securing knot up, up, and eventually off the severed end of the strut. Immediately Ruby collapsed into Helen’s arms, but Helen propped her up, slapping her gently but firmly in the face.

‘Stay with me, Ruby.’

She half dragged, half walked her through the flames and to the doorway.

‘Keep going.’

Ruby’s eyes rolled in their sockets, the smoke filling her lungs, clouding her brain. Helen could tell she wanted to blank out, to sleep, but they had to keep moving. She pinched her hard – eliciting a small reaction – and they moved on once more.

‘Not far to go n-’

Helen froze, the words stillborn in her mouth. The lights had suddenly flicked off, plunging them into darkness.

He was down here after all.

‘Get out of my way.’

‘You’re not going in there.’

‘For the last time, stand aside or I will arrest you.’

DC Sanderson was bellowing now, eyeball to eyeball with the fire sergeant who blocked her path. Behind them, black smoke belched from the interior of Ben Fraser’s house.

‘This is my scene now,’ he replied, shouting to be heard above the sirens and activity. ‘This is my fire. And until it is under control, you have no authority here. So I would encourage you to step back -’

But Sanderson had already rounded him and was sprinting towards the burning house. There was no way she was leaving Helen alone in there. Her boss had been gone over ten minutes already. The smoke fumes were bad enough out here, what must they be like inside, near the seat of the fire? Helen wouldn’t have stayed down there all this time unless something had gone badly wrong.

Sanderson crested the threshold of the house, but even as she did so she felt herself flying backwards again, away from the house. A pair of rough hands had her by the shoulders. She lashed out, trying to force her way back into the house, but the heavy, gloved hands of a firefighter dragged her back, pinning her arms by her sides, forcing her to the ground. She continued to thrash but his knee was now pressed into the small of her back, rendering further resistance futile.

As she lay there pinioned and breathless, the enraged face of the fire sergeant lowered itself to her level.

‘If you so much as move a muscle, I will order your colleagues to arrest you, do I make myself clear?’

Sanderson stared at him, refusing to acknowledge his ultimatum. He was only doing his job, but in her eyes he was condemning Helen to a gruesome death. So when she did finally speak, her response was terse and bitter.

‘Go to Hell.’

The darkness clung to them. Smoke filled their lungs. The searing heat was becoming unbearable. Any movement risked announcing their location to the man who was now hunting them. But they had no choice – they had to get out of here.

Switching Ruby to her left side, Helen readied her baton once more. She moved forward, stumbling slightly on the lip of the second doorway. But she didn’t hesitate. On and on they went, expecting Ben Fraser to come charging at them at any moment. A change in the heat level made Helen pause. She reached out her hand. She felt a solid dirt wall with space on either side. They were obviously at a junction of some kind. She hadn’t spotted one on the way down. Had she taken a wrong turn somehow?

Ruby was now a dead weight, lolling in Helen’s aching arm. Reaching down to grasp her ankles, Helen hauled her up and over her shoulder into a fireman’s lift. She stumbled slightly with the extra weight, pain ripping through her already damaged shoulder, then making a split-second decision, she plunged to the left, stumbling forward.