Mo Hayder - Gone

On the inside the place looked more like a bomb bunker. The little light there was came through cracked, cloudy windows and fell in dusty squares on the floor. A single electric bulb had been strung up from a hook in the ceiling and cobwebs traced graceful rainbows from it. The cars – a range of sizes and colours – were parked in three rows facing the door. All polished and gleaming as if they were in a showroom. Moon had gathered the rest of the stolen goods into one corner, huddled them together as if that might make them less conspicuous. The agricultural equipment lay at the far end. Beyond the cars, in the very centre of the unit, sat an old Cortina, like a prairie corpse half dismantled by vultures, its innards on show.

Caffery crossed the echoey building to the rusting ploughs. He crouched to peer into the mangled mess, making sure nothing was there. Then he made his way across to the other side of the shed and checked through the collection of stolen goods. Everywhere he went his feet crunched through pigeon droppings that formed little stalagmites. Miniature cities crumbling with every step. The Cortina must have been one of the last made. It had a vinyl roof and slatted tail-lights and had obviously been parked there for years. Cobwebs linked the opened bonnet to the chassis. Why, with all the other cars polished and gleaming, this one had been left so was anyone’s guess. Caffery went back to the other corner and, using his penknife, slit away a piece of cardboard from the box of the Sony TV. The exhibits officer would get the hump, but rather that than another suit buggered. He carried the cardboard back to the Cortina, threw it on to the floor and lay on it. He used his toes to push himself a few inches further under the car.

So that was why the Cortina hadn’t been moved.

‘Uh—’ He pulled the radio closer to his mouth. Hit the transmit button. ‘Did anyone notice the inspection pit under the car?’

There was a pause, then a rattle of static, and the sergeant’s voice: ‘Yeah, we noticed that – had one of our lads down in it.’

Caffery grunted. Patted his trouser pockets. On his key-ring he had a tiny LED torch. Meant to help find the lock on a car door at night, it didn’t throw out much of a light. Holding it down into the hole he could just make out the sides, lined with MDF panels that looked like parts of a cannibalized kitchen cabinet. He let the torch play over them for a few seconds and then, because he was the sort who never had been able to walk past an open door without looking inside, he shuffled out from under the car, turned the cardboard so it lay lengthways along the edge of the hole, lay down on it again and rolled himself into the pit, landing with a bone-jarring thud on both feet.

It was instantly darker. The rusting Cortina above him blocked out what little light there was in the lock-up. He switched the torch on again and shone it around himself, examining the panels, the cheap oil-stained cabinet mouldings, the marks where the handles must have been. He checked the concrete floor. Stamped on it. Nothing in there. He slung the bunch of keys on to the cardboard and was just about to haul himself up when something made him stop. Carefully he pulled the keys back, crouched in the pit and held up the torch.

All the panels had been nailed to batons drilled into the concrete. But there wasn’t any good reason to line a pit like this. Unless it was to hide something. He ran his fingers along the bottom of the panel at the rear of the pit. Tugged at it. It held solid. He wriggled his knife between the panel and the baton, pulled it back and saw the gap behind it.

Caffery’s heart was thudding. Someone had said there were holes and caves under this area. It had been the guy from the Sapperton tunnel trust, briefing Flea Marley’s team. He’d said there were interconnecting tunnels and hidey-holes all over the place. A man as strong as Ted Moon could carry a four-year-old girl like Emily a long way through those tunnels. Maybe to somewhere he’d prepared. A place where he could do what he wanted undisturbed.

Caffery pulled himself out of the pit and went back to the window, turning the volume down on his radio as he did. ‘Hey.’ He leaned out of the window and hissed into the unit: ‘When your someone went into the inspection pit did they notice the boarded-up entrance?’

There was a long silence. Then: ‘Say again, sir. Think I missed something there.’

‘There’s a bloody escape hole down here. A way out of the inspection pit. Didn’t anyone notice?’

Silence.

‘Oh, Christ. Don’t answer. There is something down here. I’m going to have a look. Get someone in here, will you? Don’t have them breathing down my neck – I don’t want a hundred kilos of armed police clanking its way after me but it’d be nice to know someone’s sitting in the pit so my backside is covered.’

Another pause. Then: ‘Yeah – that’s not a problem. They’re on their way.’

‘But keep the outside as clean-looking as it has been. If Moon does turn up I don’t want him seeing the place crawling with men in black.’

‘Will do.’

Caffery crunched back through the pigeon shit and rolled himself into the hole. With the top of the panel half prised off the baton the remainder came away easily. He put the wood to one side and bent over, peering at what it had revealed.

It was a tunnel big enough for a man to get into. Even a tall man would only have to stoop a little to walk straight through. Filthy newspapers lay on the ground for as far as Caffery could see. He shone the tiny torch in: it showed a ceiling of soil buttressed with two-by-four like something out of the world’s best war movies, The Great Escape , maybe. The walls were about two foot wide. The construction was crude, but effective. Someone had worked very hard to build themselves a secret underground passage.

He took a few steps in, following the beam of the torch. It was warmer down here than up on the surface, the air thick with the peaty smells of plant roots. Silent and muffled too. He took a few more cautious paces, pausing every now and then to listen. When the light of the inspection pit behind him had dwindled to a small grey hole he switched off the torch and stood quite still for a while, eyes screwed tight. He concentrated on opening his ears, listening to the darkness around him.

When he was a kid, sharing a room with Ewan, they had played a game at lights out: when their mother had closed the door and gone down the creaking stairs Ewan would tiptoe across the bare floorboards and creep into bed with Jack. They’d lie together on their backs trying not to giggle. They were too young for it to be girls they were talking about – it was dinosaurs and bogey men, and what it’d be like to be a soldier and kill someone. They tried to scare the living crap out of each other. The game was for each to tell the scariest story he could. Then he got to put his hand over his brother’s chest and feel if it had made his heart beat faster. The one whose heart beat fastest lost the round. Ewan was the oldest so usually he won. Jack had a heart like a steamhammer, a great meaty organ that would keep him alive into his nineties, the doctor said, if he didn’t pickle it in Glenmorangie. He’d never learned to keep it quiet. Now it was bounding out of his chest, racing the blood through his veins because he had the feeling, a completely unwarranted sensation, like cold water on his skin, that he wasn’t alone down there.

He looked back at the tiny point of light at the entrance. The back-up teams were on their way. He had to trust that. He clicked on the torch and shone it further into the hole. The weak beam fragmented to shadows. There was nothing here. Couldn’t be. That panel had been nailed closed. Still, he could imagine someone breathing in the darkness around him.