Mo Hayder - Gone

‘ Noooooo ,’ she heard herself moan. ‘ Noooo . Don’t.’

‘Pupils normal,’ someone said, quite close. ‘Flea?’ Someone was digging something into the lobe of her ear. Nails. Thumb and forefinger. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Unnhhh.’ She batted at the hand on her ear. The noise of the bar had gone. She was somewhere dark. People breathing fast and echoey. ‘Sssshtop it.’

‘You’re going to be OK. I’ve got to get a line in you. Here.’ She felt someone tap her arm. Lights were flashing in her eyes. And shapes. She dragged in a lungful of air. ‘You’ll feel it but only for a moment. That’s it, just hold still for me. Good girl. You’re going to be OK.’

She felt a hand on her head. ‘That’s good, Boss. You’re doing great.’ Wellard’s voice. Raised as if he was talking to a child. What was Wellard doing here in this bar? She tried to turn to him, but he pressed her back down. ‘Stay still now.’

‘ No .’ She flinched as the needle went in. Tried to pull her arm away. ‘No! It hurshts.’

‘Just hold still. Nearly there.’

‘Fugging hurts. Don’t. Hurting me.’

‘There. All over. You’ll start to feel better soon.’

She tried groggily to reach for the arm, but a hand stopped her, held her arm down.

‘Where’s the aluminium blanket?’ someone else was saying. ‘She’s a block of ice.’

Someone clipped something on to her finger. A hand worked its way down her back. Touching her neck. The blanket rustled around her. She felt hands under her neck, moving her. Something hard and warm behind her. She knew what they were doing – putting her on a spine board in case she’d got a back injury. She wanted to comment on it – to crack a joke, but her mouth was soft and slack and wouldn’t get the words out.

‘Oh, no,’ she managed. ‘Please don’t. Don’t pull. It hurts.’

‘Just trying to get her through this bit,’ a disembodied voice said. ‘How the hell did she get herself in here? It’s like Das bloody Boot .’

Someone laughed. Made a jokey ping-ping sound. Like a submarine sonar.

‘It’s not fucking funny. This place could go any time. Look at those cracks.’

‘OK, OK. Just give me a bit more room on this side.’ A jolt. A shudder. A splash of water. ‘There. Good, that’s it.’

Then Wellard’s voice again: ‘You’re doing well, Boss. Not long now. Relax. Close your eyes.’

She obeyed. Gratefully letting something sly come up in front of her vision like a third eyelid and slip her away head first into a silver screen of images. Thom, Wellard, Misty Kitson. A little cat she’d had as a child. Then Dad was next to her – holding out his hand and smiling.

‘It worked, Flea.’

‘What worked?’

‘The sweetie. It worked. Went bang, didn’t it?’

‘Yes. It worked.’

‘Last little bit now, Flea. You’ve done so well.’

She opened her eyes. About a foot away a wall was moving past her. Limestone, with ferns and green slime growing out of it. The light coming from overhead was tremendous, blinding. Her feet were pointing down, her head was up. She tried to put out her hands to steady herself, but they were strapped to her sides. Next to her she could see the face of a man in a caving helmet, lit as if a spotlight was on him, the colours vivid, each pore and line clear and dizzying, the dirt and soot smeared about his mouth. He wasn’t looking at her. He was focused down, concentrating on controlling their ascent.

‘Basket stretcher,’ she slurred. ‘I’m in a basket stretcher.’

The man looked up at her in mild surprise. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Martha,’ she said. ‘I know where he buried her. In a pit. Under the ground.’

‘What was that?’ came a voice from above. ‘What’s she on about now?’

‘Dunno. Feels sick?’ The man peered into her face. ‘You OK?’ He smiled. ‘You’re doing great. It’s OK if you’re sick. We’ve got you.’

She closed her eyes. Gave a weak laugh. ‘She’s in a pit ,’ she repeated. ‘He put her body in a pit . But you can’t understand what I’m saying. Can you?’

‘I know you do,’ came the answer. ‘Don’t you worry about that. We’ve given you something for it. You’ll feel better soon.’

‘What did she say? What’s she talking about?’ Caffery had to yell to be heard above the noise of the second HEMS helicopter that was landing a hundred yards away in the clearing at the end of the track. ‘Did she say “spit”?’

The paramedic scrambled out of the hole as Wellard and two officers from the top team manhandled the stretcher out of the shaft. ‘She says she feels sick ,’ he yelled. ‘Sick.’

‘Sick? Not spit ?’

‘She’s been saying it since they pulled her up. Worried she’s going to be sick.’ He and Wellard got the stretcher on to an ambulance cot. The HEMS A and E consultant – a small, hardgrained man with dark hair and walnut skin – came forward to examine her. He lifted the portable monitor and checked it, pressed her fingernail between his thumb and forefinger, timing how long it took for the blood to flood back into the tissues. Flea groaned as he did it. Tried to shift on the spine board, reach her hand out. She looked like something that had been hauled out of a Cornwall surf accident, with her ripped blue immersion suit. Her face was clean except for the two blackened smudges under her nostrils where she’d breathed in the aftermath of the explosion. Her hair was thick with muck and leaves, her hands and fingernails caked with blood. Caffery didn’t try to get near her. Or put his hand near hers. He let the doctor do his thing.

‘You OK?’

Caffery glanced up. The doctor was busy helping the paramedic lock the stretcher to the cot. But his eyes were on Caffery as he worked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said you OK?’

‘Of course I am. Why?’

‘She’s going to be fine,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

‘I’m not worried.’

‘Yeah.’ The doctor kicked up the brake on the cot. ‘Sure you’re not.’

Caffery watched them numbly as they trundled her away, down the slope, getting the stretcher on to the track that led back to the clearing where the first helicopter sat, its engines running, the rotors waiting to be engaged. The slow, solid heft of the knowledge came home – that she was going to be OK. ‘Thank you,’ he said, under his breath, to the backs of the paramedics and the consultant. ‘Thank you.’

He’d have liked to sit down now. To sit down and hold that feeling and do nothing more for the rest of the day. But he couldn’t stop. A squawk box in the grass near the hole was broadcasting the efforts of the rescue teams still in the tunnel. The helicopter air paramedic – who’d been given a caving helmet and a crash course in rope-access technique – had got into the tunnel, taken one look at the way Prody was skewered to the wall and ordered cutting equipment dropped down the shaft. No way could Prody be simply lifted off the wall – he’d bleed to death in seconds. He had to be cut down with the section of barge hull still embedded in his torso. For the last ten minutes the squawk box had been live with Prody’s agonized breathing and the rasp of the hydraulic shear going through the iron. Now the machinery had stopped and a disembodied voice said clearly above the noise Prody was making, ‘ Prepare to haul .’

Caffery turned. The Rollgliss pulley system ground to life, the officer at the lip of the air shaft monitoring the spool-up of line. Wellard had already come out of the tunnel and was standing a few feet away, unhooking himself from the harness. Like a demon from hell with his grimy face. There was a line of blood on his face that might be from a scratch on his temple, or might have been someone else’s blood.