No Other Darkness (27 page)

Ian Merrick had put up a new sign at the Isle of Dogs:
Danger UXB
.

His way of keeping trespassers away, Marnie guessed. Hardly subtle, but his on-site security detail wasn’t in evidence, and he hadn’t fitted the new locks he’d talked about.

She walked across the gravel, towards where Ed had heard Clancy and Terry running. The site sprawled away in all directions. In the dark, it looked bigger, badly lit and full of potholes and scaffolding; any number of hiding places.

Where had they gone? Underground?

The local police unit were shivering on the sidelines, like supporters at a football match, waiting for the kick-off. Marnie had told them to wait for Noah and the others.

‘We’re looking for a man in his mid-forties who goes by the name of Terry or Matt. And a fourteen-year-old boy, Clancy.’ She shared the photos around the team. ‘Either or both might be dangerous, but the man especially. He lost his family.’

‘Missing, or wanted?’ the unit leader asked.

‘Missing,’ she said. Hedging her bets. ‘At risk of harm. Both of them.’

Esther, at least, was out of harm’s way. At St Thomas’s Hospital, with Connie and a female DC. One less thing to think about.

Her phone rang: Colin Pitcher.

‘There’s a condemned tunnel system,’ Colin said, ‘under the Isle of Dogs. It connected to the Greenwich foot tunnel at Island Gardens, but they closed a section off just after the main tunnel was opened because it kept flooding. They blamed it on tidal corrosion. The rest of the tunnel’s been repaired just recently, but the section they closed hasn’t been touched in years. DS Jake’s bringing the plans.’ He paused. ‘We were glad to hear about Mr Belloc.’

‘Thanks, me too. How’s Merrick?’

‘Hanging in there, by all accounts. DS Carling’s with him.’

‘How long until DS Jake and the team gets here?’

‘Half an hour, in the current traffic.’

‘We’ll need a hostage negotiator, and a dive team. MPU will have the skills and equipment to track bodies down there. Can you make a start on the calls?’ The Marine Policing Unit could get here quickly, by water. No trouble with traffic for them.

Colin said, ‘Will do.’

‘You’d better get on to Bomb Disposal too.’ She kept walking, glancing back at Merrick’s home-made UXB sign. ‘On the off-chance there really is a bomb here, although I suspect I’m looking at a piece of cut-price security to keep trespassers off-site . . . And there’s CCTV. Let’s find out what secrets that’s keeping. Private security footage, I bet, but see if you can’t persuade them to be helpful for once.’

‘Got it.’ Colin rang off.

Marnie reached the mobile office with its dead straggle of fairy lights.

Hard to see inside, because the windows were caked with
dust and dirt. She remembered filing cabinets, a girlie calendar, red sleeping bag . . .

Merrick had lied, well enough to convince Noah that he was a decent man. ‘On the level,’ he’d said, after their first visit to the site.

Marnie wondered whether Merrick would live. From what Noah had told her, it hadn’t looked hopeful. Wrists tied with a wire coat hanger, hit once but with enough force to fracture his skull, and left in an abandoned cave where no one was likely to find him.

Esther was certain that was Matt’s work, because of the coat hanger. Marnie had read the medical reports from the woman’s trial. She understood the significance of the hanger. Esther had attempted to abort a child she wasn’t carrying. The foetus was a hallucination, like so much else from that time, at the height of Esther’s illness. Matt had found her in the bathroom, haemorrhaging from self-inflicted internal injuries. He’d stuffed towels between her legs, kept her alive until the ambulance came. If he hadn’t done that . . .

His children might still be alive. Fred and Archie, and Louisa.

By saving their mother’s life, he’d signed their death warrant.

Was that how he saw it? Hard not to see it that way.

Grief and guilt was a toxic mix, as bad as it got . . .

Marnie licked a finger and cleared a spot on the grimy window of the office, to see inside.

What she saw was her reflection, and someone else’s.

Standing right behind her.

Buzzing woke her. And the cold creep of something at her wrist.

A bluebottle.

She shook it away with a shudder, coming awake to rough stone under her cheek and against her back.

Underground . . .

She was underground.

She pushed herself into a sitting position, her head throbbing from lack of air.

Dark, it was too dark. She couldn’t see anything. Not the stone floor, not the fly droning at her feet. No other sound, just the fly. The floor raw under her hands. The smell . . .

Red, and black. Everything was red and black.

An echo from the dizziness, from not being able to breathe because of a hand over her nose and mouth. She’d passed out. Up there, by the mobile office.

Pockets, check your pockets.

Wallet, badge, phone. All here.

No signal on the phone and no display, as if the battery was dead, or faulty.

‘Hello?’

No answer, not even an echo. Nothing. There was nothing down here. Just the bluebottle buzzing in time to the red and black throbbing in her head.

Time to get out.

She felt for the wall at her back and pushed herself warily upright, a hand above her head in case the ceiling was low.

It wasn’t. She couldn’t reach it, even when she stretched.

She waited for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light, but it was taking too long so she started to feel her way around, arms out in front of her like a drunk, expecting to hit something at every step. A wall, or a ladder.

She was looking for a ladder. A way out.

It took her under a minute to work her way around the small square space.

Empty floor, blank walls.

No ladder.

Just four walls, stone like the floor, and a ceiling she couldn’t reach.

She was shut in on all sides.

This was a big stone-lined, breath-stealing box of stale air.

Panic ate its way up her spine, a brute pressure that had her lungs labouring and her hands curling into fists. Her throat burned with wanting to scream.

She made herself sit down on the stone floor, and breathe. Slowly.

Okay. All right. Think
.

Her phone was here, her hands were free. She wasn’t in the boot of a car. She didn’t have a skull fracture or a wire coat hanger wrapped around her wrists. She was in a bunker, under Merrick’s site on the Isle of Dogs. She hadn’t been unconscious long enough to be anywhere else, not unless he’d drugged her, and if he’d done that, she’d be able to taste it.

Matt Reid . . .

It must have been Matt who put her down here. She hadn’t had time to recognise the face in the dirty glass of the mobile office. Too fast, the face and the hand in the same second, closing over her mouth, cutting off her air. But it must have been Matt Reid.

How had he got her down here, without a ladder? He hadn’t dropped her. She didn’t ache enough for that. Her pride was bruised, but she wasn’t hurt.

So there had to be a way in, and out.

Worst-case scenario . . .

Noah and the others would find her. No signal on the phone, but it was switched on, even if the display was faulty. That would be enough for them to get a location.

Colin Pitcher had the plans for the tunnel system; he’d given them to Noah, who was on his way. Ed would be able to tell them where she’d headed, across the site.

She should have stayed with Ed, in the ambulance. Waited for the rest of the team. It wasn’t like her to be reckless, but she’d thought . . .

She’d been scared for Clancy, and Terry.

For Matt.

How had he got her down here?

She must have missed something.

There had to be a way in and out.

Setting her teeth, she pushed upright again, ignoring the sucking panic, the dead air.

Searching again, with her hands out in front of her.

One step at a time, every square inch of the box she’d been put in.

The unit leader nodded at the sign Ian Merrick had nailed to the gate.

‘Unexploded bomb. Your boss a bit gung-ho, is she?’

‘Not remotely,’ Noah said. ‘She just knows a piece of improvised artwork when she sees it. We checked with Bomb Disposal, and nothing’s been reported in this area.’

‘So who put the sign up?’

‘Most likely the man who owns the site. Ian Merrick.’

‘And you’ve got his permission to search here?’ The man was a pedant, or possibly just lazy; easier to stand here arguing with Noah than to put in the work required to sweep the site for signs of unlawful entry to the tunnel system under their feet.

‘Clancy Brand is fourteen and at risk of harm. Any more questions, or can we get on?’

The light was going and everyone was tired. It was the end of a long day. Noah had hoped to check on his mum on the way home to Dan and Sol, but . . .

They had to find Clancy, and Terry.

At least Ed Belloc was safe.

He walked to where Ed was sitting in the back of the ambulance. ‘How’s it going?’

‘I’m good.’ Ed gave a lopsided smile. ‘Feeling like a first-class idiot, but good.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up.’ Ed looked like the car boot had done that job for him. ‘You didn’t know what we were dealing with. None of us did.’

‘How’s Beth?’ Ed asked. ‘And the children?’

‘They’re safe. I think they’ll be okay.’

Noah looked across the site to where the team was rigging extra lights. ‘I’d better find the boss and show her these plans . . . Catch you later, Ed.’

The box was thirty square feet of stone. The same size as the bunker where Esther had buried the boys, but no ladder, no manhole. A box, shut in on all sides.

Marnie crouched in the darkness, picking grit from the stinging palms of her hands. She’d searched every inch of the floor. No bucket, no bed, no tinned food. Just raw stone that took the skin from her fingers as she searched.

No ladder. How could there be no ladder?

The bluebottle didn’t like it any better than she did. She could hear it knocking about in the dark, hitting the walls, searching for a way out. It had got in, so it had to be able to get out. The same went for her.

Air was getting in too, no matter how quickly she fried it by breathing too fast and moving too much. Air was getting in.

Logically, she knew there was a way out. But logic wasn’t getting much of a look-in just at the moment. She remembered Noah’s panic in the bunker under Blackthorn Road, and thanked God he wasn’t here to witness this new dimension of hell.

Try it without the manhole or the ladder
.

This wasn’t a pit. It was a tomb.

She’d tried shouting. Tried it until her throat felt flayed. Shouting for Matt, and for Terry, even for Clancy. It didn’t do any good. The box just absorbed her noise. When she finally shut up, the bluebottle was there, droning, knocking about in the dark.

Why had Matt put her here? It made no sense. He was after Clancy. Wasn’t he?

All the reasons she’d dreamed up for his actions – worrying about the children, wanting to teach Clancy to be more responsible, hiding from the police – none of those reasons led here. He could have asked her if the children were safe, and she’d have told him. He could have stayed hidden from her, up on the site. She hadn’t spotted him until he appeared behind her.

What did he want? Why was she here? Why put her in an airless box (not airless, not quite; slow down; breathe) and leave her? The way Esther left his boys . . .

Out of harm’s way. Except they weren’t. The harm was right there with them, in that hole in the ground. Was this revenge?

Slow down. Breathe.

Noah was coming. He’d be on-site by now, with the team and the plans to the tunnel system, except this wasn’t a tunnel it was a tomb, and what if she wasn’t under the site at all? What if he’d taken her somewhere else? How far . . .

How far could he have taken her? How long since he shut off her air with his hand, up there by Merrick’s mobile office? An hour? Less, surely. She couldn’t see her watch face, no illuminated dial.

He hadn’t drugged her; she’d be able to tell if he’d drugged her. Wouldn’t she?

Her head ached, black and red, and there was a metallic taste in her mouth, but it was thirst. She was very thirsty.

That wasn’t good.

The bluebottle bumped off the walls, an angry buzzing.

Marnie sat with her back to the wall, counting her blessings, such as they were. If she was under the river, at least it was dry down here, no danger of flooding. She wasn’t too cold, or hungry, yet. She was thirsty, but she could stand it, for a while at least.

Ed was safe. Carmen and Tommy were safe. Noah was coming.

Clancy and Terry . . .

Her mind blanked. She didn’t even know for sure that it was Terry who’d put her down here. It’d happened too fast. She pressed her lips together, trying to taste the hand that had covered her mouth. A large hand, but Clancy had big hands. Strong wrists . . .

Her lips tasted of metal, dry.

Terry had put Ed into the boot of his car before Ed knew what was happening. He was fast. The gardening had given him strong arms, all that digging . . .

She saw his spade, silver-edged, lying on the lawn at number 14.

He’d found his sons buried alive.

What had that done to his mind?

Clancy knew, she was sure of it.

Clancy had looked at Terry Doyle and seen Matt Reid. On a mission to make him more responsible, less like Matt at that age. Talking to him all hours, up in the room at Blackthorn Road where Noah said the windows and skylight were nailed shut and there was nothing to show that a teenage boy lived there, no trace of Clancy in sight.

Like Stephen’s bedroom, at her parents’ house.

They’d moved him into Marnie’s old room, waiting for Stephen to show an interest in redecorating. He’d not shown an interest in anything, other than her skin, and their deaths.

Clancy wasn’t like Stephen. Was he?

Both boys had a go-bag, their lives packed, ready to run. Prepared for anything, because that was what their parents had taught them. To be afraid of the world and everything in it, prepared for the worst possible scenario. Paranoia, taken to its outside extreme.

She would have been able to fight off a fourteen-year-old boy. If it was Clancy who’d grabbed her outside the mobile office, she’d have been able to fight.

Wouldn’t she?