Mo Hayder - Gone

‘Hey, Ted,’ he tested. ‘We know you’re here.’

His voice came back to him. We know you’re here . Dulled by the soil walls, it sounded flat. Unconvincing. He continued on, torch pushed out in front of him, arm stiff. The hairs were standing up on the back of his neck. The Walking Man’s face came to him in the gloom: He is cleverer than any of the others . Within about eight yards he found himself up against a wall. He’d come to the end of the tunnel. He turned and looked back towards the entrance. He shone the torch all around, up at the girders and the wooden supports. A dead end?

No. About two yards back the way he’d come he saw a hole in the side of the wall at about waist height. He’d walked straight past it.

He went back a few paces, bent at the waist, and shone the torch into the hole. It was an opening to another tunnel. It shot off at an angle of about forty-five degrees, but it went too far for the torch beam to pick out the end. He sniffed. There was a smell of something like stale, unwashed clothes. ‘Are you here, you shithole? Because if you are I’ve got you.’

He went into the opening, bent over, hands up in front of him. His back and shoulders brushed the ceiling – so much for the suit. The tunnel sloped slightly downhill for about ten feet, then opened into a small room that had been hollowed out, wider here than the rest. He stopped at the entrance, body braced in the defensive stance, ready to back straight up if anything came flying at him. The torchlight played through the small cavern. His heart was still bouncing in his chest.

He’d been right in thinking he wasn’t on his own down here. But it wasn’t Ted Moon he was with.

He scrambled back into the tunnel, pushed the radio out so he had line of sight with the entrance. ‘Uh – those units backing up? You getting me?’

‘Yup – loud and clear.’

‘Don’t come into the tunnel. Repeat: don’t come into the tunnel. I need the CSI down here and . . .’ He dropped his face. Put his fingers to his eyes. ‘And, look, better get someone from the coroner’s office too.’

The CSI team had been on a job just two miles away and were the first to arrive, even before the doctor. They sealed off the entrance and set up fluorescent tubes on tripods to flood the cave with light. They wandered in and out wearing their Andy Pandy suits. Caffery didn’t say much to anyone. He went out and met them at the inspection pit, put on boots and gloves, then went back down the tunnel with them and stood in the room, his back against the wall, arms folded.

The cave was littered with newspapers and old food containers. Beer cans and batteries. At the far wall two industrial pallets were stacked one on top of the other. A form wrapped in a dirty sheet, stained and brittle, covered with dead insects, lay on them. The shape was unmistakable. A human lying on its back, arms folded across its chest. From top to bottom it probably measured about five feet.

‘You haven’t touched anything?’ The crime-scene manager came in, dropping tread-plates in a line from the entrance to the body. It was the distinguished-looking, aloof one. The one who’d done the Costellos’ car. ‘You’re too clever to have done that, of course.’

‘Put my face close to it. Didn’t touch the wrapping – I didn’t need to. You can tell when something’s dead. It doesn’t take much, does it, even for a thick-as-shit cop?’

‘You’re the only one who’s been in here?’

Caffery rubbed his eyes. He lifted a hand vaguely in the direction of the body. ‘That’s not an adult, is it?’

The CSM shook his head. He stopped next to the piled pallets and scanned the body. ‘That’s not an adult. Definitely not an adult.’

‘You can’t tell how old, can you? Could she be ten? Or could she be younger?’

‘She? How do you know it’s a she?’

‘Do you think it’s a he?’

The CSM turned and gave him a long look. ‘They told me this is the jacker case still? They told me you’ve got Ted Moon in the frame for it.’

‘They told you right.’

‘That murder – the girl, Sharon Macy – it was the first job I did on the force, eleven, nearly twelve, years ago. I spent a day cutting her blood out of floorboards with a scalpel. Remember it like it was yesterday – I still get nightmares about him.’

The doctor arrived, coming through the entrance bent double, A woman with nicely cut hair and a belted raincoat. She’d put bootees on over her smart shoes and gloves. In the room she straightened, throwing her head back, one hand raised against the glare of the lights. Caffery nodded at her, gave her a tight smile. She had natural straw-coloured hair tied back and she looked too young and nice to be doing this. She looked as if she should be selling patisserie or helping people with dental hygiene.

‘Is this anything to do with those car jackings?’ she asked.

‘You tell me.’

The doctor raised her eyebrows at the CSM for more information. But he just shrugged and went back to his boxes and tread-plates. ‘OK.’ Her voice had a low, nervous shake to it. ‘Fair enough.’ She crossed the room cautiously, keeping to the treadplates. At the head of the corpse she stopped. ‘Uh – can I cut this? Just to get a look at the face?’

‘Here.’ The CSM gave her a pair of Toughcut scissors from his kit. He pulled one of the fluorescents down to light what she was doing and got out a camera. ‘Just let me get a couple of shots as you’re doing it.’

Caffery pushed himself away from the wall and came across the tread-plates, stopping next to the doctor. Her face was pale in the greenish light. There were faint pink circles on her cheeks.

‘Right.’ She gave him a sickly smile and he saw that she was completely out of her depth. Too young. Trying to act grown-up. Maybe it was her first time. ‘So, let’s see what we’ve got.’

When the CSM had his photos, she gripped the sheet in her gloved fingers and tried to insert the scissors. A slight tearing sound came from the cloth. Caffery exchanged glances with the CSM. Something was stuck to the underside of the sheet.

It’s not you, Emily. It’s not you . . .

The doctor wrestled the scissors, struggling to make a hole in the sheet, her hands shaking. It seemed to take for ever before the blade pushed through the fabric. She paused for a moment. Put the back of her wrist to her forehead. Smiled. ‘Sorry about that. It’s tough.’ Then, almost to herself, ‘Right . . . what next?’ She snipped a line into the sheet, about ten inches long. Very carefully opened it. There was a pause. Then she looked at Caffery, her eyebrows raised as if to say, There. That’s not what you were expecting, is it? He took a step forward and shone the little light into the shroud. Where he’d pictured a face, he saw instead a skull, stuck to the sheet and coated with powdery brown matter. It wasn’t Martha either. But maybe he’d already known that from the condition of the shroud. This body had been dead for longer than a few days. This body had been dead for years.

He looked up at the CSM. ‘Sharon Macy?’

‘That’s where my money would be.’ He fired off a few more shots. ‘If I was a betting man. Sharon Macy. As I live and breathe. Swear I never thought I’d see her body. Ever.’ Caffery took a step back. He scanned the roughly hewn walls, the primitive buttresses. Moon must have been building it since before he was banged up. It took intelligence and strength to do something like this, to construct something so complex and efficient. The entrance to this chamber had been well hidden – Caffery’d nearly missed it. There could be other tunnels, other places. There could be a whole ants’ nest system right under their feet. Maybe Emily and Martha’s bodies were down here too somewhere. There, he thought, you used the word bodies . So you do think they’re dead.