Authors: Mike Nicholson
Flicking on his DataBoy’s tiny light, Fergus saw that it was now two minutes since he had made the snap decision to use the white box as a hiding place. As soon as he had pulled the lid over himself he had been overpowered by the stench of fish and by the realization that he now had no way of knowing what was happening beyond the four white plastic walls of the box. His eyes soon adjusted to the gloom but there was absolutely nothing to see in the smooth-sided container. There weren’t even any remnants of whatever had left the strong smell behind but there was no doubt that it had been some sort of fish. Fergus didn’t know how long the box had been used to store fish or how many would have been in there, but he reckoned the answer to those questions would be “ages” and “lots.” There was a small pool of cold liquid on the floor of the container and he could feel his trousers beginning to get damp, and guessed that he was probably almost as smelly as the container itself.
Still, it had at least proved to be the right place to hide. He had remained undiscovered since the door at the back of the loading bay had opened. Fergus had held his breath as it did so and concentrated on trying not to move a muscle, although this had seemed to be harder to do the more he had thought about it. He had become suddenly aware of an itch above his left ankle, a muscle had started to twitch in his right shoulder and a piece of walnut from one of Jessie’s muffins that had lodged between his teeth had begun to annoy him. Fergus had tried to put any idea of scratching, rubbing or poking out of his mind and channelled his thoughts into listening as hard as he could.
The footsteps and rustling were worryingly close to where
he was hiding and Fergus had tried to picture what might be going on outside the box. He imagined that it was Beanface looking around for the clipboard that he had been puzzling over seconds before the door opened.
Soon the rustling had stopped and the footsteps began again but seemed to be heading away from where Fergus lay still, and he imagined Beanface heading towards the van. Having seen inside the van earlier that day Fergus knew that there would be no place for Murdo to hide, so unless he had got out of the van as quickly as Fergus had dived into the box, he would surely be caught. Knowing Murdo’s lack of speed, this seemed likely and Fergus began to worry seriously for Murdo’s safety.
As if to answer his fears, Fergus heard distant voices; sharp and raised from Beanface, high and protesting from Murdo. He couldn’t make out the words initially but he could guess the kind of exchange that was taking place as Beanface discovered an intruder in his van. Confusingly at the same time, he heard a shuffling noise nearby in the loading bay as if something else was nearby. He strained to make sense of the noise but failed. Gradually however, he began to pick up voices coming closer from the direction of the van and soon made out some words.
“Where are you taking me?” he heard Murdo shout. He seemed to be putting a bit of extra volume into his normally loud voice, and Fergus guessed that this was his way of communicating that he had been caught and was now being taken on to the premises.
“Shut up. You’ll find out soon enough,” said Beanface cutting him off abruptly.
“Where’s my dog?” Murdo’s shrill voice rang out.
“Safe and sound,” said Beanface menacingly, as a metallic rattle signalled that the shutter of the loading bay was being lowered, closing both boys inside the premises, one in a box and one in Beanface’s bony clutches.
“If you’ve harmed him …” began Murdo.
“You’ll do what?” snapped Beanface, as the voices headed away through the door at the back of the loading bay towards the inside of the building. Once again Fergus strained to hear any noise that would give him a clue as to what was happening. The last sound that he could make out as the footsteps disappeared was a single solid “clang,” which dissolved into the air like a fading church bell, leaving him in silence.
Fergus sat in the box, beginning to breathe more easily now that he knew he was on his own, although his mind was spinning about what he should do next. One thing became clear to him. It was now up to him to rescue not just Jock the dog, but his owner as well.
Allowing another three minutes to pass on his DataBoy, Fergus reckoned that it was as safe outside the box as it was likely to get. He lifted the lid a fraction and peered out. It was now much darker in the loading bay since Beanface had lowered the metal shutter. Fergus heaved himself stiffly out of the box. All of his mystery itches disappeared as soon as he stood up and began to stretch, but the one thing that didn’t change was that he now had a pair of damp and extremely smelly trousers as a souvenir of spending five minutes in the fish container.
Although he could see that he was alone in the loading bay, Fergus kept as still as he could as though the slightest movement might set off some hidden alarm system. Willing his eyes to adjust as quickly as possible to the dim light, he tiptoed over to look at the controls which operated the loading bay shutter.
Fergus’s natural instinct was to try to get help from outside as soon as possible but his hopes of a sharp exit were dashed almost immediately. Instead of the shutter door having a simple up and down button, there was a much more complicated keypad that needed a combination number to activate it. With a sinking feeling Fergus realized that there was going to be no quick escape, and that if he was to take any action it would have
to be in the other direction, further into the building.
The loading bay had little to offer other than more smelly white containers, so with his heart starting to beat faster Fergus took a deep breath and approached the door that Beanface had taken Murdo through a few minutes before. Praying that there would be no squeaky hinges, Fergus eased the door open as carefully as he could, managing to do so without a sound. He listened for a few moments as he held the door ajar, making sure that there was no one in the corridor beyond.
As he was about to go further, Fergus once again had the momentary feeling that there was something else nearby, just as he had when he looked out into the yard a few minutes before. This time he thought he heard the rub of a plastic box on the concrete floor, but having opened the door he couldn’t waste time looking back. Steeling himself for whatever was to come, he headed through the door and let it close again quietly behind him.
Fergus found himself in a brightly-lit corridor and was immediately faced with a choice of turning left or right. He had no way of knowing which way Beanface and Murdo had gone, but from Jessie’s description of the shop, his sense of direction told him that the left-hand option led towards the back of the fishshop and to Raeburn Place, with Stein’s office nearby. Fergus didn’t need long to realize that if he suddenly appeared by Beetroot’s side behind the fish counter then his investigations would be over very quickly. Turning right instead, he crept as silently as he could along the straight corridor, which ended in the distance at another door with a large “Caution” sign on it. Feeling increasingly nervous but convinced that this was the right direction to go in, Fergus carefully opened that door, leaning around it to peer into the gloom. As he took a step through it, he suddenly found that there was nothing for him to stand on. The door swung fully open and the ground seemed to
disappear beneath his feet. Fergus was suddenly hanging onto the door handle with his feet flailing beneath him in the air.
As he swung on the door, his mind flashing, the rucksack seeming even more in the way and his legs flapping uselessly below him, he caught a glimpse of a steep metal ladder which dropped away immediately below the door frame. The door swung closed, Fergus waggled his feet, just managing to make contact with the ladder. Then grabbing one of the rungs with one hand, he let go of the door handle, letting the door close with a heavy metallic ring. As Fergus clung shaking to the ladder, his pulse thumping and breathing fast, he realized that the sound of the door closing was the noise that he had heard in the distance as Murdo and Beanface had disappeared moments before. At least he now knew that he was going in the right direction to track them down, even if he had nearly broken his neck in the process. He finally got his racing heart back under control. “Now I see what they mean by ‘Caution,’” he thought wryly.
With a deep breath and firmly blanking out any thought of Jessie telling him to go no further on any account, he began to descend the metal ladder as quietly as he could, a dull tapping ring sounding as he placed each foot.
He felt a surge of relief as his feet found a hard floor once again and he took the chance to look around. Rather than the brightly lit carpeted corridor, which led him to the “Caution” door, Fergus now found himself in a dark passageway with an old flagstone floor and walls of rough stone. Every few metres there were basic lamps that gave off a dingy glow and provided just enough light to get from one to the next without disappearing into darkness between them.
As Fergus began to creep his way along the passageway, all of his senses alert to the possibility of both hearing or making any noise, he began to pick out a pattern of high archways in the
ancient stone walls. The gap underneath each one was like a dark cave, the limit of which couldn’t be seen. It slowly dawned on Fergus where he was. “The vaults,” he said quietly to himself taking in the fact that he was now looking at a hundred years of engineering history propping up a busy Raeburn Place a few metres above his head. Fergus ran his hands along the rough stone. Parts of the corridor not only looked like they were a century old but had a musty smell that seemed to date back just as far. Fergus shivered. The temperature had dropped since he had come below ground and as he glanced at the temperature readout on his DataBoy he saw it reduce by two degrees.
Fergus might have imagined that the further he went into the vaults, the more he would go back in time. But although the start of the corridor had seemed like stepping into the past, he soon began to realize that he was actually looking at a mixture of the past and the future. He had only gone the distance of about a dozen lamps along the passageway when he came upon the first of a number of polished steel doors fitting neatly into the vaulted arches. Each had a numbered keypad on the wall beside it.
The first two doors were unmarked. Fergus listened at them but could hear nothing. The third door had a small square glass window in it and Fergus stood on tiptoe to peer through, dimly making out some straight shapes through the glass in the darkened room.
“Bunk beds?” he whispered to himself in a puzzled voice. The memory of Cogs not going home during one of the days of the stakeout came back to him and Fergus wondered if this room provided an answer to that mystery.
His mind began to race as he suddenly realized that they might well have misjudged the scale of whatever operation was going on. They had only really seen Cogs, Beetroot, Beanface, Stein and MM but what if they were only the visible side of the team? This room contained three sets of bunkbeds and at a
glance, a few of them were being used. This was definitely a bigger operation and again Fergus heard Jessie’s voice saying, “Get out now and get some help!”
Fergus finally admitted to himself that she was right and fumbled for her mobile phone, but even before he tried to switch it on he guessed with a sinking heart that there would be a problem. At ten metres underground there was not even the hint of a signal. The old phone lay useless in his hand. Fergus was unable to make contact with anyone outside and was equally untraceable. The only person who knew he was here was Murdo and he was equally far below ground and probably under lock and key into the bargain. With a feeling of impending doom, Fergus reached the conclusion that going further into the vaults was not a good option, but it was the only one that he had.
He took a few more tentative steps along the passageway. The signs on the doors were beginning to give some idea of what the rooms were used for. “Laboratory 1” was empty and dimly lit and Fergus could just make out metal workbenches, kitchen equipment and a giant oven in one corner.
Tiptoeing further Fergus came upon Storeroom A, but peering through the glass panel in the door, he struggled to make anything out in the gloom. Remembering that he was carrying Murdo’s rucksack stuffed with equipment, he rummaged for a torch. Through the glass the beam of light picked out large silver drums stamped on the side with “Nine Lives.”
Next up was Storeroom B where the torch revealed boxes filling the room from floor to ceiling. One lying open showed it packed with tins of Nine Lives catfood. Fergus presumed that the production and storage facility that seemed to be housed in the vaults had been a busy place in the lead-up to the launch of the new product. He could hear Gill Hall’s voice in his head, though, saying “People are allowed to have businesses that
make and sell cat food, Fergus. There’s nothing wrong in that.”
Fergus knew that he had to find out more and it was only by going further into the vaults that he would do so. He continued along the passageway until it turned sharply left and eased himself around the corner, fearful that he might bump into someone at any moment. The cold air of the vaults was beginning to make him shiver and he now had to go some distance before he reached the next door. He began to wonder if there was a much bigger room behind the rough stone wall than those he had seen so far.
When he eventually reached a door, excitement and disappointment surged through him in equal measure. “The Chamber!” Fergus said to himself, reading the nameplate and remembering this name from a file that Jessie had seen in Stein’s desk. However this time there was no glass panel and no way of seeing what was behind the door. Whatever took place in the Chamber remained tantalizingly out of reach. Fergus was convinced that this was a room with more answers than storerooms, laboratories and bunk-bedrooms had to offer and he loitered outside as he tried to work out what to do next. He also wasn’t in a hurry to go much further as he didn’t like the way that the corridor headed off into even murkier darkness beyond this point.