Gilchrist kept his eyes on the nearer of the two dogs.
The instant he touched the padlock, both dogs growled, and one of them – the first to collapse – rose to its paws. But it managed no more than a couple of steps before its front legs buckled and it fell muzzle-first into the grass. It struggled to pull itself upright again, but managed only to roll on to its side, where it lay whimpering, back legs kicking, as if somewhere in the darkest folds of its subconscious it was galloping over grassy terrain and tearing police detectives to shreds.
‘Bloody hell,’ Stan said.
‘Precisely.’ Gilchrist peered into the shadows for any movement from the other dog, but saw none. ‘Okay, Stan. Open sesame.’
Stan gripped the padlock, inserted a pick, removed it, and chose another.
With a click, the padlock sprung open.
‘Like riding a bike,’ Stan said.
‘Slowly.’ Gilchrist was conscious of the rattling of the padlock and the creaking of the gate as he eased it open. They stepped into the compound and Gilchrist sensed movement to his side. The closer of the two dogs was still jerking on the grass, its movements becoming more sluggish with each kick, until its nervous system could no longer fight the drug, and it stilled.
Gilchrist let out a breath, and glanced at the cottage. He half-expected to see Purvis running towards them with a loaded shotgun. But the cottage stood undisturbed, a picture-perfect silhouette under a black sky. ‘You’re good to go for the other padlock,’ he said.
Together they strode to the barn door.
While Stan worked at the padlock, Gilchrist searched for the tiniest flicker of light at the cottage windows. Behind him, the sound of metal scraping on metal seemed as loud as hammer blows, and he jumped when his mobile vibrated. He turned his back to the cottage, expecting it to be a call from Jessie, but felt a flutter of hope when he saw it was a text from Cooper’s new mobile number: ‘I need time to myself because I’m pregnant. Will let you know what I decide. xx’
Something tight clamped Gilchrist’s chest. I think you have the right to know. Well, now he did. He read the message again—
‘That’s us in, boss?’
‘Right, let’s go.’ Gilchrist pocketed his mobile, took hold of the handle, and pulled the door open for Stan to enter. Then he followed, closed the door behind him, and clicked on his torch.
Stan did likewise, and the barn filled with shafts of light that stuttered around the shadows until both beams settled on the gleaming body of a black BMW. ‘We’ve got a result,’ Stan said.
As he watched Stan make his way to the front of the car, Gilchrist shone his torch over the walls and corners searching for motion sensors, but found none. But it seemed to him that the barn was smaller inside, as if it should be twenty feet longer. A flick of the torch towards the far end provided an explanation as the beam fell on a door in the left corner, which presumably led through an internal wall to some sort of office or storage area.
‘We’ve got him, boss. Look at this.’
Gilchrist joined Stan at the nearside wing. The headlight was shattered, and the front and side panels badly deformed. He shone his torch along the bonnet to a cracked windscreen and dented pillar. Road Policing had estimated the car that hit Janice was travelling in excess of sixty miles an hour, maybe as fast as eighty. A human body hitting the BMW at that speed would cause exactly this sort of damage.
Gilchrist studied the crumpled metal, searching for evidence of human contact – fragments of cloth, skin, blood – but the bodywork looked as if it had already been cleaned. Another flick of the torch to the wall by the barn entrance lit up a coiled hose, beside which stood a Karcher electric pump, which told Gilchrist that Purvis had power-washed the damaged panels. If the car had been cleaned outside the barn, but within the enclosed compound, any human remains – slivers of skin and blood – would surely have been sniffed out and consumed by the Rottweilers.
‘Stand back, boss.’
Gilchrist walked away from the car and shone his torch around the barn while Stan took a number of shots using his digital camera. The barn appeared to be a workshop of sorts, with a concrete floor and strengthened beams overhead for lifting out car engines. All kinds of tools hung from hooks on its walls or stood beside workbenches – drills, chainsaws, power hammers, sump pumps, oxyacetylene torches, welding gear. And other bits and pieces of equipment, too – gloves, camouflage combat jackets, safety helmets, and what looked like a matching pair of binoculars.
Gilchrist dragged his torch beam along an electrical cable and into a corner, where it danced over a mechanical unit. It took him several seconds to realise it was a generator – power for lighting and for the tools, of course. Which had him wondering why all the equipment was sitting out in the open if there was a storage room at the rear of the barn.
Instinctive curiosity had him edging towards the internal door. He tried the handle, but it was locked. In addition, a padlock was clamped over a metal hasp, causing Gilchrist to wonder why a simple office or storage room would demand such security.
‘Finished?’ he asked Stan.
‘A couple more, boss.’
Gilchrist shone his torch along the top of the door, then ran his hand over the wooden surface. Nothing. He illuminated the wall to the side, and spotted a shelf from which hung a set of keys. From their shape and size, they were all too large to fit the padlock, but the third one he tried in the door’s own lock turned it over with a heavy click. The padlocked hasp kept it firmly closed, though.
Then Stan was standing beside him. ‘Want me to open this one too, boss?’
While Stan worked away with his picks, Gilchrist phoned Jessie.
She picked up on the second ring. ‘Nothing happening here,’ she said, ‘except my tits are freezing off.’ She made a rushing sound, as if blowing into her hands, then said, ‘Any luck?’
‘We’ve found the Beemer,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Brilliant,’ she gasped. ‘Can I go home, then?’
‘We’re going to be another few minutes,’ he said. ‘Any movement from Purvis?’
‘Nada.’
‘Well, you might as well head back to the car, then.’ His main concern had been that the dogs would alert Purvis. Now they were out of the picture, there seemed no chance of Purvis making the long trek from the cottage to the barn on such an arctic night.
‘And not a moment too soon.’
‘Be with you shortly,’ Gilchrist said, but Jessie had already cut the connection.
‘Got it,’ Stan said, and slid the padlock free. ‘Thought I was losing my touch there for a moment.’
Gilchrist pushed the door open, and entered a windowless room. His torch beam danced over bare wooden walls and a dusty floor. The room was as long as the barn was wide, but no more than six feet deep, leaving Gilchrist with the feeling that some internal space was still missing. He rapped a knuckle against the end wall and it echoed back at him. Not the rear wall of the barn, then, but there appeared to be no door.
‘What’s this room for?’ Stan asked.
Gilchrist shone his torch over the four barren walls again – no light switches, no power points – then up to a spider-webbed ceiling.
‘The SOCOs can look into it, boss. After we get a warrant for Purvis’s arrest.’
Gilchrist nodded. He didn’t want to spend any more time than was necessary in the barn. If the dogs came to, where would they be? He was about to move away when something caught his eye. ‘What’s that?’ The beam illuminated a semi-circular scrape mark on the ceiling. He lowered the torch to the floor, and could just make out an identical mark. ‘It’s a door,’ he said, running the beam up the wooden wall panels.
‘Here, boss.’
Gilchrist kept his torch trained on the edge of the panel as Stan ran his fingers down its length.
‘Got it,’ Stan said as he slid a flat metal lock to the side and pulled.
A section of the wall peeled back towards them.
Gilchrist was first inside. The room was almost identical to the previous one, except that it was fitted with ceiling fans that whirred in a stuttering motion, as if operated by the wind. Even with the limited ventilation, the air carried a thick and musty smell that left an aftertaste of stale meat on the tongue. Something else, too – a hint of soot or smoke.
Stan already had his hand to his nose. ‘Bloody hell, what is this?’
Their torch beams danced in wild disarray across the walls, then settled in unison on a wooden pallet on the floor.
Gilchrist leaned down and shoved the pallet to one side to reveal a trapdoor. Maybe he was imagining it, but the smell of meat seemed stronger here. An inner voice once again told him they didn’t have much time before the dogs came to, but he knew he could not leave now. He slid a metal latch across, pulled up the O-ring handle, and lifted the trapdoor. Then he rocked back on his heels as a stench as thick and ripe as a putrid carcass rose to greet him.
‘Ah fuck, boss,’ said Stan, stepping back.
But Gilchrist was on his knees, his torch lighting a metal ladder that sank into the dark confines below. He shifted on to his backside, his legs dangling into the open space. Then he placed his feet on the rungs and descended into the black hole, his torch beam shivering from side to side. The shaft was short, and he was soon in a cold and fetid basement. He shone his torch at the concrete floor, one hand to his nose to fend off the stench. He coughed once, twice, and fought off the urge to retch.
‘Anything, boss?’ Stan shouted from the shaft’s opening.
Gilchrist’s beam danced over concrete walls and columns, and into open doorways that seemed to lead from one empty space to another. The metallic rattle of Stan’s torch on the ladder’s rungs echoed around the basement as he worked his way down.
‘It’s some kind of bunker,’ Gilchrist said. ‘The barn’s been built over it.’
Then Stan was beside him, their beams lighting the immediate darkness but sinking into a distant blackness. ‘It’s bigger than the barn,’ Stan said. ‘And it doesn’t smell as bad down here.’
Gilchrist knew that the human olfactory system could stand only so much, and that their sense of smell had been obliterated by the strength of the stench. He remembered old Bert Mackie – Head of Forensic Medicine before Cooper took over – telling him that once you got past the initial hit, and your sense of smell was cooked, you just stayed with it until you completed the postmortems. Hell mend you if you took a break and a breath of fresh air, for when you returned to the job you had to go through the whole hellish process of becoming accustomed to the rotten guff again from scratch.
‘This way,’ he said, heading through one of the open doorways.
Dripping water echoed in the dank stillness. The sound of their shoes scratching the concrete floor and the feverish rush of their breath were amplified in the blackness, too.
‘What the hell is this?’ Stan said.
‘Could be an old bomb shelter from World War Two.’
Their torch beams sliced into walls of darkness, and Gilchrist could only guess at the size of the place. They stepped deeper into the labyrinth, scanning a series of small empty rooms either side. He could visualise families with sleeping bags and Primus stoves, wide-eyed children fearful of the night ahead, huddling together in the cold concrete units.
‘I think we should head back, boss.’
Gilchrist wanted to agree, but something kept pulling him on. He shone his torch into another room, and the light disappeared down a long corridor with even more doorways. It seemed as if they had discovered a concrete warren. For all he knew, it could run all the way to the cottage.
‘This reminds me of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur,’ Gilchrist said.
‘The one with the maze and the thread?’
‘Didn’t know you read Greek mythology, Stan.’
‘I read a lot of stuff,’ Stan said, ‘But I don’t like the thought that we won’t find our way back.’
Gilchrist turned, and shone his torch back to the ladder. But its beam settled into blackness. For one unsettling moment, it hit him that they really could lose their bearings down here, that if their torches failed they could stumble about in total darkness, completely disoriented. But his mind cast that aside as his gut told him they were going in the wrong direction, that they had walked too far into the underground maze. And it struck him, too, that despite the earlier assault on his sense of smell, the air seemed cleaner here, no longer thick on the tongue.
‘It’s not here,’ he said.
‘What’s not here?’
‘How does it smell to you?’
Stan turned his head to the left, then the right. ‘I can’t say, boss.’
They headed back in the general direction of the shaft. The room above was in total darkness, so the shaft offered not even a glimmer of light to assist them. But Gilchrist breathed a sigh of relief when their torch beams picked out the distant rungs of the metal ladder.
Stan strode towards it, but Gilchrist said, ‘The smell’s stronger over here.’
Stan responded by shining his torch in the same direction of Gilchrist’s beam, and together they entered another section of the warren. Gilchrist ducked his head as he passed through an open doorway into yet one more chamber. His instincts were telling him he was on the right path this time. The air seemed thicker, and not quite as cold.
‘Ah fuck,’ said Stan as his torch clattered to the floor, its beam spinning across the concrete. He bent down to pick it up, but even then the beam continued to quiver.
‘You all right, Stan?’
‘Boss . . .’
Gilchrist followed the line of Stan’s shivering beam as it settled on the metal legs of some kind of workbench, then rose from the floor to rest for a moment before shifting to the side.
Ice flashed through Gilchrist’s blood.
The shock forced him back a step, then another.
He stopped, struggled to stay upright.
His legs could be rubber, his lungs dried paper for all the good they were doing.
Then the moment passed, and he gasped, sucked in air, gripped his torch.
And shone it at the hellish scene before them.