Bolton, J. - Now You See Me

He left me where I was, face-down on concrete. For a second I couldn’t move. Then I struggled up on to my knees. The handcuffs behind my back held tight. Joesbury was on his feet, crossing the dark space to where Joanna lay whimpering behind the duct-tape mask. His torch was in one hand, his radio in the other. I watched him try to contact Control, praying he’d do it. Help was what we needed right now. It didn’t matter what happened to me any more. Shit, I was probably the only one of the three of us not seconds from death.

Joesbury cursed into the radio and replaced it in his pocket. We were too far underground. He crouched down over Joanna and spoke softly to her.

‘You’re all right now, love,’ he said. ‘Take it easy, let me get this off.’

More whimpering from Joanna. And a harsh cry of pain as the duct tape was pulled off her mouth. Using a small knife not dissimilar to my own, Joesbury cut the tape binding her wrists and ankles. ‘We need to get you out of here,’ he said. ‘Can you walk?’

Standing up himself, he pulled her to her feet. She leaned against him for a second, then grabbed his arm and directed the torch back at me, completely dazzling me.

‘It’s not her,’ I heard her say. ‘She’s not the one who brought me here.’

The torch beam fell away. I blinked hard and could see them again. Joanna was holding on to Joesbury with both hands, her eyes shooting from him to me.

‘There’s someone else,’ she went on. ‘She’ll be back any second. She never goes far.’

She couldn’t bring herself to step away from Joesbury. She was like a child clinging to an adult. A child terrified of monsters. Mark looked as though he hadn’t understood her. He certainly wasn’t reacting fast enough.

‘Get these off me,’ I told him, half turning and holding up my handcuffed wrists. The torch was back on my face again.

‘What the …?’ he said, sounding lost, miserable and not nearly as scared as he needed to be. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

I couldn’t answer him. I hardly knew myself. All I knew was that one of us had to get a grip. ‘You need to get these off me and we need to get out of here,’ I said. ‘Please tell me you’re armed.’

‘She is,’ said Joanna. ‘The other one. She has a gun. That’s how she got me here.’

Mark stepped forward and clinging Joanna came with him. When they reached me, he pushed her gently away and gave her the torch. Then he found the key for the cuffs in his pocket. ‘Try anything and I will kill you,’ he muttered, before the handcuffs sprang free.

‘She’s waiting by the main steps,’ I said, spotting my own torch and grabbing it. ‘If she hasn’t heard anything, we can get out the way we came in.’

‘Who?’ he said. ‘Who’s she?’

I grabbed his arm, made him look at me. ‘If she appears,’ I said, ‘you’re the one she’ll go for. She’ll want me and Joanna alive. You, she’ll have to get out of the way as quickly as she can.’

‘Noted. Now get moving.’

We crossed the boiler room, I leading, Joanna following me, Mark at the rear. At the entrance to the gallery, I shone the torch around the dark space. There was something almost cathedral-like about the vast area, now that I could see it. Massive brick archways ran the length of the building, their detail reflected in the water that covered the lower part completely. I turned back to Mark.

‘If we can get across here, we have a good chance,’ I said. ‘You should be in the middle.’

He shook his head. ‘Go,’ he told me.

I went. Not much more than a hundred feet to travel and we would be back in the horse tunnel. In there, we might get reception on the radio. We’d gone barely twenty feet when music started to play. ‘My Favourite Things’.

First Joanna, then Mark, walked into me.

‘Where’s it coming from?’ someone asked. I think it must have been me. Neither of the others would know the significance of that particular tune. The music was menacingly soft, but nevertheless bouncing off walls and pillars. It was impossible to tell its origin. I could almost have believed it to be in my own terrified head. Mark was directing his light around the structure, but the space was vast. ‘Behind us, I think,’ he muttered, just as the music stopped and a woman’s voice took its place.

‘Hello, Lacey,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long time.’

The world seemed to stand still for a second. It was over then. I watched the beam of Mark’s torch flashing around the cavern. Then it fixed on a point on the opposite gallery, maybe eighty feet from where we were standing.

‘I thought you’d never get here,’ said the voice again, cutting through the darkness, a second before Mark’s torch found her. In its beam we saw a slender woman in her mid twenties, with the sweetest face I think I’ve ever seen. Her hair was chin length and bright blonde; the black crop we’d heard so much about had clearly been a wig. Those eyes would be blue once I got close enough to look at them properly, with tiny flecks of hazel brown. I knew that face almost as well as I knew my own.

At my side, I heard Mark make a soft hissing sound, as he sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Is that her?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, without taking my eyes off her. ‘That’s Llewellyn.’

‘I’ve met her before,’ he breathed. ‘She’s Geraldine Jones’s au pair. Stenning actually took her out for a drink.’

She was looking at me now, just me. ‘Raindrops and roses,’ she sang. ‘Do you remember, Lacey? That game we used to play?’ Then that sweet face broke into a smile. She looked completely relaxed, maybe a little surprised, as though we were two old friends who’d met by chance at a party. Her arms hung loosely by her sides. In her left hand she held something I couldn’t quite make out, except it seemed to have a black headband. In her right hand was a small handgun.

‘Let these two go,’ I called across the vaults to her. ‘We don’t need them any more. It’s about us now.’

Her eyes went from me to the man at my side. She seemed to be thinking about what to say next. I risked taking my eyes away from her.

‘Mark, take Joanna and get out of here,’ I said to him. ‘She’ll let you go.’ I looked back at Llewellyn. ‘You will, won’t you?’ I asked her. ‘Please, just let them go.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Joesbury.

‘I need you both to step to the front of the gallery and drop your torches down into the water,’ said Llewellyn.

When neither Joesbury nor I moved, Llewellyn’s face screwed up like that of a thwarted child. ‘You have three seconds to lose those torches before I shoot your boyfriend,’ she said to me.

‘Do it,’ I said, stepping forward and raising my arm.

Joesbury caught hold of my shoulder. ‘Oh, I think you’ve played enough games with those replica weapons of yours,’ he called across to her. ‘And don’t imagine I came here alone. There are armed police at every exit, just waiting for my signal to come in.’

Joesbury was so full of shit.

‘Mark,’ I said, ‘I really don’t think that’s a—’

‘Then we’re running out of time,’ said Llewellyn. ‘Drop the torches now.’

‘Mark, please just do—’

‘Without light, we’ll be sitting ducks,’ he whispered into my ear.

‘I know this place better than she does,’ I replied quietly. ‘I can get us out in the dark. The minute she switches on a light, we’ll know where she is. Now drop your torch, take hold of me and then back up to the wall.’

He muttered something that I took as agreement, then first my torch, then his, went over the edge of the gallery. A second later we heard them splashing into water and then all light disappeared from the world. Joesbury’s hand was on my shoulder. We backed away from the gallery’s edge and I heard him speak softly to Joanna. A few more steps and we were up against the wall. I reached out and found Joanna’s hand.