Peter James - You Are Dead

‘Help me! I can’t move! Help me!’

A solid chunk of earth struck the back of Grace’s head, painfully.

‘Sir!’ Martis’s voice sounded anxious. ‘Can you hear that rumbling? We need to get out of here.’

Earth was raining down on them now.

‘Help me!’ Crisp screamed, his face a mask of abject terror as more earth tumbled down onto him.

Someone was tugging at Grace’s arm. Martis. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘We have to get out of here.’

‘We can’t leave him,’ Grace said.

‘We don’t have a choice, sir. We need to leave NOW!’

He shone the torch up and could see that the entire roof was moving, the remaining timbers vibrating, perilously, more earth falling down.

‘Everybody out, back down the tunnel!’ Grace ordered.

‘Go ahead, sir,’ Martis said.

‘I’m going last. Go!’

‘Please help me, I can’t move!’ screamed Crisp. ‘Don’t leave me — please help me, HELP ME, HELP ME!’

Grace peered one last time into the opening. As he looked, a huge object plummeted past him, another railway sleeper, missing Crisp’s head by inches then thudding on the floor below.

Suddenly he felt himself being jerked away. He turned to see Glenn Branson pulling him by his good leg.

‘Hey!’ he shouted.

More earth fell on him.

‘He’s not worth it, mate. Leave him or we’re all going to die!’

Branson pulled him further and further away.

There was a sharp crack above them, followed by a shower of earth. ‘Go!’ he yelled at Branson. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

He heard Crisp scream for help again.

Should he go back for him?

More earth fell on him. He inhaled some of the dust and coughed violently. He thought of Cleo and Noah. Thought of never seeing them again. To try to save a monster? He made his decision and, following his colleagues, he scrambled on his hands and knees, the pain in his leg worsening with every movement and continued, on, on, on. Then his face smacked into the heels of Glenn Branson’s shoes. ‘Keep going, Glenn, for Chrissake, go!’ he shouted.

He shone the torch behind him and saw a wall of dust racing down the tunnel towards them. Gripped with panic, he yelled, ‘Go! Go! Go!’

There was a deep rumbling sound behind him.

The message seemed to have got through. Glenn was pulling away from him now. Grace crawled after him as fast as he could, but his right leg was becoming useless. Dank, earthy dust was swirling around him, choking him, filling his lungs. Within moments all he could see was a dark brown fog.

Panic gripped him. He was going to die down here. He would never see Cleo or Noah again. Never live in the new house with them. Never—

Have to think clearly , he told himself. Panic was what killed people. Disaster survivors were the ones who stayed calm, kept their nerve. The shaft was ahead. If he could reach it he would be safe.

He scrambled on. He dropped the torch, but did not stop to look for it, he just carried on. On. On.

Then his face smashed, painfully, into something hard, metallic.

The bottom rung of the shaft.

Relief surged through him.

A torch beam suddenly dazzled him. He blinked, and heard Glenn Branson’s voice. ‘I’m here, mate, I’m not going up without you, so sodding get on with it! Follow me up.’

He raised his hands, felt the rung above, and hauled himself up. He was spluttering, his mouth arid. Someone was coughing above him, then he coughed again hard himself, a searing pain in his lungs, and almost lost his grip.

Three limbs , he remembered.

But his right leg would barely move.

The rung he was holding was shaking. As if it was about to pull free of the shaft. He moved his right arm up to the next one, hurriedly.

The rumble behind him had turned into a roar, like a volcano. Everything beneath him was collapsing. He had to keep clambering up. Had to. Had to.

Three limbs at all times.

The rung both his feet were standing on suddenly fell away, and he swung out, hanging from one hand, grimly holding on, but feeling his fingers slipping.

Noah. Cleo. God, I love you so much.

Somehow in the choking darkness he managed to get his other hand onto the rung, then felt it giving way as well. He hauled himself up, just as the rung beneath his feet detached from the side of the shaft and clattered into the swirling brown hell below him, and grabbed the next one. He gripped the rung with both hands, but he could barely hold on.

The roar deepened, deafening now like an earthquake, as both his wrists were seized in a grip like a vice. Feeling like his arms were about to rip out of his body, he was hauled slowly upwards. He looked up to see Branson and Martis’s faces.

‘It’s all right, mate, we’ve got you, you heavy bastard!’

An instant later he slammed down hard, over the lip of the freezer, his face striking the concrete floor of the garage, panting with exertion.

‘All right, Roy? Sorry if I hurt you.’

He turned, looking at Branson. ‘I’ll get over it,’ he gasped. ‘Thanks, mate.’

‘Bloke like you, at your age, you need one of them Stannah Stairlifts.’

‘Up yours!’

Somewhere in the distance he heard the wail of an emergency siren. Then the burning pain in his right leg worsened. ‘Shit!’ he cried out.

‘Can’t take the pace any more?’ Glenn Branson chided.

Grace shook his head. ‘Nah, it’s not that. It’s your humour. Nothing personal, but every time I hear one of your tired old gags, I lose the will to live.’ He grinned, then he turned towards him and hugged him. ‘I don’t know why, but I do sodding love you.’

‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ Branson replied. ‘For an old git.’ Then he knelt, looking anxiously at Grace’s right leg, and saw the colour draining from his face. ‘Shit, Roy, this looks serious.’ He turned to Martis. ‘We need an ambulance, fast.’

Tuesday 23 December

‘Well, it’s not quite home, darling, is it?’

Roy Grace opened his eyes, feeling totally disoriented. The light was too bright, the bed felt unfamiliar, the ceiling looked strange. Fear engulfed him for an instant. Where was he?

What had happened?

Then he saw Cleo’s face above him, looking at him strangely, with a quizzical grin.

What was going on? Where—?

She leaned down and kissed him tenderly on his forehead.

Where — where was he?

‘You are crazy, my love,’ she said.

‘Crazy?’

His right leg was throbbing painfully. He saw a woman standing beside Cleo in a pale blue shirt. A name tag was pinned to it, which he couldn’t read. She looked like a nurse. Next to her stood a man of about fifty, in dark blue surgical scrubs, and blue and white gauze, like a J-cloth, tied with tapes around his head.

‘Welcome back, Detective Superintendent Grace,’ the nurse said.

‘Back?’ Grace said. He was trying to piece together things in his mind. The tunnel. Dr Crisp. The shotgun.

The man in scrubs stepped forward. ‘How are you feeling, old chap?’

‘My right leg’s hurting like hell!’

‘I’m not surprised. I’ve removed eleven shotgun pellets from it. You’re lucky, another few inches and you might have lost your leg. We’ll keep the pain under control and you’ll be back on your pins in a couple of weeks. Although it’ll be a bit tender for a few weeks, I’m afraid.’ He gave him a lopsided smile. ‘Sorry, should have introduced myself. I’m Rupert Verrell, a consultant surgeon here.’

It was all coming back to him now. ‘I didn’t realize it was that bad. Thank you.’

‘Double-barrel shotguns at close range are not good news — thought you as a detective would be the first person to know that.’