Mo Hayder - Gone

‘What does it look like?’ he said.

‘You’re not coming with me.’

‘No. But I can dig. You don’t have to do that part on your own.’

She let him take the spade and sat back, watching him work for a few minutes. She thought of what he’d said: I’ve got a wife and kids. You’ve got no right, no right . . . She felt tired. So tired.

‘OK.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘You can stop now. Stop.’

They sat back and looked at the hole he’d made.

‘It’s not very big,’ Wellard said.

‘It’s big enough.’

She snapped the little Maglite out of the holster in her dry suit, crawled a short way into the hole on her belly and pushed the torch out in front.

‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered, as she made sense of what she was seeing. ‘That’s good. Very good indeed.’

‘What?’

She let out a low whistle. ‘I was right.’ She pulled back out of the hole. ‘There’s another chamber in there.’ She reholstered the torch and unstrapped her hard hat, her head lamp, the gas meter.

Wellard watched her. ‘You taught us we never take these things off.’

‘Well, I’m unteaching you now. I can’t get through with them on.’ She grappled with the Dräger rebreather.

‘Not that too. I can’t let you do this.’

She put the emergency set into his hands. ‘Can’t you? I haven’t got a wife and kids. If something happens to me no one’s going to cry.’

‘That’s not true. It’s just not—’

‘Sssh, Wellard. Zip it and take this.’

He rested the rebreather on a flat part of the scree without a word.

‘Here. Hook me up.’ She handed him the semi-static climbing rope and waited for him to attach it into the back of her harness. He put his knee on the small of her back and gave the harness an experimental tug.

‘OK.’ His voice was dull. ‘You’re secure.’

She hoisted herself forward, pushed her head and shoulders into the dark gap. Tree roots trailed out of the ceiling, tickling her neck and back like fingers. She elbowed her way a few feet in.

‘Give me a push.’

There was a pause. Then she felt him grip her feet and shove her as hard as he could. For a moment nothing happened. He tried again and this time, with a loud sucking noise, she plopped out on the other side, like a cork, covered with mud. She half commando-crawled, half rolled down the slope, tumbling the last few feet to land in the canal on the far side.

‘Jesus.’ She sat up, spitting and coughing. Around her the thick, stagnant water rocked lazily with the shock of her landing. Something fell down behind her from the top of the mound. She heard it bounce, leap and land at the bottom. A clink, not a splash, so it was shy of the water. She leaned over and felt in the muck. Her head lamp. ‘Top man,’ she shouted to Wellard. ‘Top man.’

‘I can only just hear you, Sarge.’

‘ You deaf bastard .’

‘That’s more like it.’

She clicked on the lamp and pulled herself to her feet, the stagnant water running off her. She shone the light around. It picked out the brick walls, the great scars in the ceiling where the strata had collapsed, the lines of other faults that looked precarious enough to come down at any time, the water, still moving – and up ahead, only about thirty feet away, another rockfall.

‘See anything?’

She didn’t answer. The place was empty, except for an old coal barge at the far end, just its stern visible, half covered by the next pile of earth. The water was so shallow that a child – or a child’s body – would be visible even if it was lying in the canal. Flea waded to the barge and bent over, shining the light into it. It was full of sludge, with bits of timber floating on the surface. Nothing there.

She straightened and propped her elbows on the deck, her face in her hands. She’d come as far down the tunnel as it was possible to come. The place was empty. She’d been wrong. A total waste of time and energy. She wanted, frankly, to sit down and cry.

‘Sarge? You OK in there?’

‘No, Wellard,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I’m not. I’m coming out. There’s nothing here.’

Caffery had borrowed some waders from the Underwater Search van. They were several sizes too big and the tops cut into his groin as he waded out into the daylight. In the short time he’d been in the tunnel the area outside had become even more crowded. Not just with the media and the hangers-on, but half of MCIU too: they were standing together about forty yards away, staring into the tunnel. Everyone had heard about the search he’d ordered and they’d all piled out to watch.

He ignored them, ignored the reporters craning over the ornate parapet, some resting cameras in the decorative alcoves. He got to the towpath, sat down on the freezing earth and tugged off the waders. He kept his face down – didn’t want anyone getting a photo of how pissed off he was.

He pulled on his shoes, did up the laces. At the tunnel entrance Flea Marley and her officer appeared streaked with black mud and blinking in the daylight. Caffery got up and went along the towpath until he was directly above her. ‘I am so, so fucking pissed off with you at this point,’ he hissed.

She looked up at him coldly. She had faint blue bulges under her eyes as if she was very tired. ‘I’d never have guessed.’

‘Why didn’t you come out when I told you to?’

She didn’t answer. Without taking her eyes off him she began to pull off the great chunks of wet clay that clung to her body harnesses. She handed her gas meter and the emergency rebreather to a team member to hose down. Caffery leaned closer so that the reporters wouldn’t hear what he said. ‘You’ve wasted four hours of everyone’s day for what?’

‘I thought I heard something. There was a gap in the rockfalls. I was right about that, at least, wasn’t I? She could have been there.’

‘What you’ve done is illegal, Sergeant Marley. Breaching the parameters of an assessment that complies with the HSE’s rules is technically illegal . You want the chief constable in the dock, do you?’

‘My unit is statistically one of the most dangerous units to work on. But in three years I’ve never once had one of my boys hurt. No one in the decompression pot, no one in A and E. Not even for a broken nail.’

‘You see, that –’ he dug a finger at her ‘– that , what you’ve just said, is exactly what I think this morning has all been about. Your unit. You’ve done this just to grandstand your poxy unit—’

‘It’s not a poxy unit.’

‘It is . Look at you – it’s in pieces .’

The bullet was out before he knew he’d even chambered the round. It hit its target head on. He saw it clearly. Saw it find its spot, bore through bone and skin, saw the pain blossom behind her eyes. She dropped her harness, handed her helmet and gloves to a unit member, clambered up on to the towpath and walked steadily back to the unit’s Sprinter van.

‘Christ.’ Caffery put his hands in his pockets and bit down hard, hating himself. When she’d got into the vehicle and closed the door he turned away. Prody was gaping down at him from the parapet.

‘ What? ’ Another, cold flare of anger went through him. It still rankled that Prody was sniffing around the Kitson case. Maybe rankled even more that the guy was acting exactly as he, Caffery, would act. Asking questions where he shouldn’t. Stepping outside the box. ‘What, Prody? What is it?’

Prody closed his mouth.

‘I thought you were supposed to be magicking CCTV footage out of thin air, not on some coach outing to the Cotswolds.’