They were trapped. It made no sense, but it was true. One minute they had been in the van, relieved and happy; the next they had woken up here. Groggy, bruised and covered in thick, clinging dust. Ben had stumbled to his feet in disbelief, screwing up his eyes to penetrate the gloom and make sense of their surroundings. They were in some sort of giant silo or storage facility, the floor of which was covered with coal. This was what covered them, coal dust creeping into their ears and eyes, making their tongues thick and dirty. Instinctively Ben scrambled toward the sides. The going was tough, the surface constantly shifting beneath his feet, but eventually he made it. Cold, smooth steel. Using the wall as a guide, he stumbled round, hoping against hope for a door, a hatch, some means of escape. But the sides were smooth and, having done a couple of laps, he gave up. Casting his eyes upward, he noticed light spilling through the joint of a massive hatch. This was how they had fallen into this strange hell.
It was then that Ben became aware of the cuts and bruises that covered his face and torso. It was a good twenty-foot drop down from the hatch and the compacted coal wouldn’t have made for a soft landing. Suddenly everything hurt. The shock was wearing off and his battered body was protesting. A noise made him turn. Peter was stumbling toward him—his face a picture of dull, stupid astonishment. He was looking for explanations, but he would get none from Ben. And it was as they were standing there, exhausted and hopeless, that the phone rang. They both froze for a moment, then simultaneously scrambled for it, Ben just getting there first.
After they’d been given their deadly ultimatum, they both laughed maniacally, as if the whole thing were some preposterous joke. Slowly, however, the laughter evaporated.
“Let’s call the office.” Suddenly Ben needed to be out of this pit.
“Good idea. Call Carol—she’ll know what to do,” said Peter, feeding off Ben’s energy.
Ben punched in the familiar numbers. But the phone was PIN-locked. Four small digits separating them from freedom.
“What shall we try?”
Already Ben’s eye was drawn to the battery sign at the top right of the screen, flashing low.
“We’ve only got a few goes at this. What shall we try?” Ben’s voice was tight, the impossibility of their task starting to register.
“I don’t know. One two three four?”
Ben’s look was withering.
“Well, I don’t fucking know,” Peter responded angrily. “What year were you born?”
It was desperate, but as good as anything else. Ben tried Peter’s birth year, then his own. He was attempting a third combination when the phone died in their hands.
“Shit.”
The word echoed around the vault.
“What now?”
The pair stood quiet, staring forlornly at the locked hatch above them. Light seeped in through the cracks, illuminating the gun nestling quietly on the floor between them.
“Nothing. There’s nothing...”
Ben’s words petered out as he turned and retreated into the dark. Slumping down in the coal, he was suddenly overwhelmed with despair. Why was this happening to them? What had theydone?
He shot a glance across at Peter, who was pacing up and down, muttering to himself. Ben had never liked Peter, but he didn’t want to kill the guy, for God’s sake. Perhaps the gun wasn’t real? He got up to check, but the look Peter shot him made him sit straight back down.
Ben sat there in his own private hell. He had never been very good with enclosed spaces. He always liked to know where his escape route was in any given situation. But now he was trapped—and, worse than that, trapped underground. Buried alive. Already his hands were beginning to shake. He felt light-headed and sweaty; lights danced in front of his eyes. He hadn’t had a panic attack for years, but he could feel one coming on now. The world was closing in on him.
“I’ve got to get out.” Ben was stumbling to his feet. Peter turned, surprised and unnerved. “Please, Peter, I’ve got to get out.Help! Somebody please help!”
He shouted and screamed to try to ward off the attack, but felt faint and stopped. Surely someone would find them and rescue them? Theyhadto. The alternative was unthinkable.
14
Mark Fuller left the nick shortly after Charlie had dropped her bombshell. A whole new line of inquiry had opened up, but for now it was the data compilers and uniformed officers who would carry the load. A massive double- and triple-checking of facts was taking place and it would only be once the two men’s disappearance was confirmed as suspicious that Criminal Investigation Department officers would be deployed. Tomorrow looked like it would be a long day for Mark, Charlie and the rest of the team, so Helen had sent them home to rest up. But Mark had no intention of sleeping.
Instead, he drove across town to suburban Shirley, parking up in a quiet residential street. He never used his own car, so as not to give himself away. The beaten-up Golf with the tinted windows was designed to deflect attention from its true purpose, and it worked—passersby wrote it off as another teenager’s attempt to soup up an old wreck. It was the perfect vantage point from which to watch undetected.
A seven-year-old girl appeared in the window and Mark sat up, his eyes glued to her. She surveyed the street outside, then pulled the curtains to, shutting out the world. Mark cursed his luck—some days Elsie stood at that spot for twenty minutes or more. Her gaze would flit now here, now there, and over time Mark had convinced himself that she was looking for him. It was a fantasy, but it fed his soul.
The sound of high heels on the pavement made him slide down in his seat. Stupid, really—no one could see in. But shame makes you do strange things. He couldn’t let her discover him like this. He watched as the trim thirty-two-year-old marched up to the house. Before she could get her key in the lock, the door opened and she was gathered into the arms of a tall, muscular man. They kissed each other long and hard.
And there it was in a nutshell. His ex-wife swept off her feet by another man—with Mark left out in the cold. A wave of fierce anger ripped through him. He had given that womaneverythingand she had stamped on his heart. What had she said when she called time on their short marriage? That she didn’t love himenough. It was the most debilitating of character assassinations. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He just wasn’tenough.
They had married too young. Had a baby too quickly. But for a while the chaos and emotion of first-time parenthood had glued them together. The shared fear that their baby would stop breathing if left unattended, the sleep-deprived paranoia that you were doing a bad job, but also the immense joy of seeing their little girl grow and thrive. But slowly Christina had grown tired of the rigors of parenthood—the deadening routine, the privations—and had thrown herself back into her career. Which made her arguments during their bitter custody hearings all the more obscene. She played the mother card to the hilt, contrasting her loving nature, ordered existence and well-paying job with Mark’s unpredictable and dangerous life as a Southampton copper—not forgetting to throw in some choice anecdotes about his drinking. And what had she done when she’d got sole custody of Elsie? She’d gone straight back to work full-time and handed over care of their child to her live-in lover. The woman who had once claimed to love Mark with all her heart had turned out to be a deceitful and vindictive little shit.
