Mo Hayder: Gone

Slowly the image became clear. The spot on the camera cast a circle of jerky light illuminating whatever it came near. The first image was of a dripping wall, ancient and moss-covered. Then the camera turned slightly so the spot glinted off dark water in the canal, picking out a few submerged shapes. Everyone was silent. They all expected any of the humps to be Martha or Emily. Minutes passed as the camera trawled the canal. Five. Ten. The sun went behind clouds. A flock of crows left the branches overhead, stretching their black wings like hands across the sky. Eventually the camera operator shook his head.

‘Nothing. The place looks empty.’

‘ Empty? Then, where’s that fucking noise coming from?’

‘Not the canal itself. Nothing on the floor or in the canal. It’s empty.’

‘It’s not empty.’

The operator shrugged. He toggled the camera a bit more. Zoomed it to the end of the canal, where the picture grew shadowy.

‘Like that,’ said Caffery. ‘I mean, what’s that ?’

‘Dunno.’ The operator put his hand over the screen to shade it and peered at the spectral images. ‘OK,’ he said grudgingly. ‘That looks like something.’

‘What is it?’

‘A . . . I’m not sure. A hull? Of a barge maybe? Christ – look at the way that’s peeled apart. That’ll be where your explosion was.’

‘Can you get inside it?’

He stood. Eyes on the monitor, he dragged the cable spools a few yards along the edge of the shaft. He sat for a moment, his hand on the reel, his eyes locked on the LCD screen. Eventually he spoke. ‘I think . . . Yes. I’ve got something.’

He turned the screen to the men. Caffery and the Bronze commander leaned in to look, hardly breathing. The screen was unintelligible to Caffery: all he could make out was the torn metal of the barge’s hull.

The operator zoomed in. ‘There.’ He pointed at something in the muck and the grime at the bottom of the picture that was moving slightly. ‘That’s something. See it?’

Caffery strained his eyes. It looked like tarry bubbles wallowing in the canal. There was a flash, the spotlight reflecting off the canal water as whatever it was moved again. Then something in the shape became white for a moment. Darkened. Went white again. It took Caffery a moment to realize what he was looking at. A pair of eyes. Blinking. Those eyes blew straight through him like a hurricane. ‘ Shit .’

‘ It’s her .’ Wellard clipped the karabiner at his waist to the Petzl descender unit, shuffled backwards to the hole and leaned backwards over the lip, testing the rope, his face hard and concentrated. ‘It’s fucking her and I am going to fucking kill her for this.’

‘Hey. What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ The Bronze commander stepped forward. ‘You’re not going down there yet.’

‘The gas test is clean. Whatever exploded it’s not there now. And I’m going down.’

‘But our target is down there.’

‘That’s OK.’ He patted the pockets of his body armour. ‘We’ve got tasers.’

‘And this is my operation and I’m telling you you’re not going down. We’ve got to find out what’s making that noise. That’s an order.’

Wellard locked his jaw, gave the commander a solid eye. But he took a few steps forward away from the lip of the hole, and stood in silence, unconsciously clenching and unclenching the descender handle.

‘Find the noise,’ the commander told the camera operator. ‘Find what’s making that godforsaken noise. It’s not her.’

‘Yup.’ The operator’s face was clenched. ‘I’m doing my best. I’m just having a . . . Christ!’ He leaned into the screen. ‘Christ, yes, I think this is it – this is what you wanted.’

Everyone gathered round. They were looking at something inhuman. Something tarred and burned and bloodied. Now they understood why they hadn’t seen anything in the water of the canal. Prody wasn’t anywhere on the ground. He’d been lifted by the explosion and skewered by a shard of metal high on the canal wall. Like a crucifixion. As the camera came towards him he didn’t move. All he could do was stare into the lens and gulp air, his eyes bulging.

‘Holy shit,’ the Bronze commander whispered, awestruck. ‘Holy shit. He is fucked, so fucked.’

Caffery stared at the screen, his heart pounding. He couldn’t imagine how Prody could have been so clever. He’d tricked them over and over. He’d tricked them into focusing all their efforts on this tunnel, when the girls, with hours or minutes left, were somewhere else entirely. And the ultimate trick, the ultimate finger in the force’s face, would be if he died now. Without telling the police anything.

He straightened. Turned to Wellard. ‘Get that team down now,’ he muttered. ‘And I mean now .’

The sun had gone and the valley sat still and shocked. The aftermath of the thunder rolled away across the hillsides. Clouds of ash hung low. Birds, made of black oil, gathered on the edges of the horizon.

Dad looked wonderingly at the sky. ‘Now that,’ he murmured, ‘is what I call a storm .’

Flea was a few yards away from him. She was bitterly cold. She felt sicker than she ever had in her life. The storm had a stink to it that turned her stomach. It smelt of water and of electricity and of cooked meat. The worms in her intestines that had fed and bloated until they blocked her insides pressed on her lungs, making her chest tight.

In the new silence of the valley she began to hear other noises. A hoarse, gulping breathing. Like something struggling to stay alive. And a more muffled sound. A whimpering? She got to her feet and walked down the slope. The whimpering was coming from a bush at the bottom of the garden. As Flea got nearer she realized it was a child whimpering. Whimpering and crying.

‘ Martha? ’

She got nearer to the bush and saw something pale against the scorched earth, sticking out from under it.

‘Martha?’ she said cautiously. ‘Martha? Is that you?’

The crying stopped for a moment. Flea took a step closer. She saw that the white shape against the earth was a child’s foot. Wearing Martha’s shoe.

‘Please?’ The voice was sweet. Quiet. ‘Please help me.’

Flea slowly parted the bush. A face smiled up at her. She dropped the branch and took a step backwards. It wasn’t Martha but Thom, Flea’s brother. Adult Thom dressed in a little girl’s gingham dress, smiling gnomishly at her. A bow in his hair, a rag doll tucked under his arm. Flea tripped, landed on her back. Tried to kick herself away from the bush, scraping along the grass on her backside.

‘Don’t go away, Flea.’

Thom pulled his shoe off. His foot came with it. He raised it, readying it to throw.

‘ No! ’ She scrambled in the earth. ‘No!’

‘Ever seen a dead body? You ever seen a dead body, Flea? Ever seen one cut up?’

‘ Flea? ’ She turned. Someone was standing behind her. A shadowy figure that might have been Dad but might have been almost anyone. She reached out for him but as she did she realized she wasn’t in the hillside any more. She was in a crowded bar, people jostling for space around her. ‘Police,’ someone next to her was saying urgently. ‘We are the police.’ She could feel hands on her, trying to move her. Hanging low above her was a huge pendant lamp on a thick chain, with a blasted glass bowl. Someone wearing climber’s crampons and a harness had climbed up on it and was swinging it to and fro. With each oscillation it went a little faster and came a little lower, until it was so close to her face, so blinding, she had to hold out her hand to push it away.