Gilchrist felt his strength leave him. The thought of what Purvis might do to Mhairi shocked him to the core. ‘We’ve cuffed Magner,’ he said. ‘It’s over. Don’t make it any worse for yourself.’
Purvis let out a demonic cackle. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do with her? With the lovely Mhairi?’ he said. ‘I’m going to set up a new studio, and Mhairi’s going to be my very first model.’
‘Listen to me, Jason,’ Gilchrist said, hoping that using the first name might help him get through to the man. ‘You can’t—’
‘She’ll make a fine model, too. She’s got lovely bone structure. And such a lovely face. I think she’ll look good on my—’
‘Listen to me. It’s over. You can’t escape.’ But words or reason were meaningless to a man like Purvis, so he changed tack. ‘Put Mhairi on. Let me speak to her.’
A pause. Then, ‘Say please.’
Gilchrist struggled for control, toying with the idea of just hanging up. But Mhairi’s life was at stake. ‘Please put Mhairi on,’ he said. ‘I won’t believe you haven’t harmed her until I speak to her.’
‘Well, believe this. The lovely Mhairi will make a perfect model, yeah?’
Purvis killed the call.
Gilchrist had no time to waste. He dialled Glenrothes HQ, requested ARVs – Armed Response Vehicles – and gave the address of the cottage. ‘It’s an emergency,’ he said. ‘We have one officer dead’ – his throat choked as he gave Stan’s full name – ‘and WPC Mhairi McBride is being held captive. The target is armed and will kill if cornered.’ He provided more details, requested an ambulance, then ended the call.
‘How long until they get here?’ Jessie asked.
‘They’ll send officers from Anstruther and North Street to close off the roads, but we’re looking at an hour – at the earliest – for the ARVs. So, until then, it’s just the two of us.’ Gilchrist shouldered open the barn door.
Together, they stepped outside.
The night air felt bitter cold, and smelled clean and fresh. In the distance, the lights from the cottage could have him believing all was well. Nothing stirred. Even the wind had died. Passing headlights momentarily lit up the Ford Focus parked to the side of the cottage.
It could be any normal Sunday night.
‘Do you think Mhairi’s tied up inside the cottage?’ Jessie asked.
Gilchrist stared into the night. It seemed a logical suggestion.
Where had Purvis been when he answered Mhairi’s mobile? Gilchrist thought back to the call, tried to remember what he had heard in the background. Nothing. Just Purvis’s voice, laughing like a lunatic, that demented cackle, and the echo on the line.
He searched for any movement in the cottage. The warm glow from the windows beckoned him inside.
But it was too calm, too natural, too still.
The echo on the line . . .
‘What’s up?’ Jessie asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ Gilchrist said as he dialled Mhairi’s number. He continued to stare at the cottage while the connection was made, only for the automatic recording to kick in: ‘The person you are calling is unable to take your call.’
He tried again. Same result.
He slipped the mobile into his pocket and walked back inside the barn. The sight of the dead Rottweiler startled him. It lay on its side in a pool of blood, eyes open, tongue lolling. He stepped around it and headed for the internal door.
‘Want to tell me what’s going on?’ Jessie asked.
‘Mhairi’s phone’s not receiving.’
‘Purvis must have switched it off.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘So the sick fuck doesn’t have to talk to us?’
‘Then he wouldn’t be able to tell us all about his new studio. He’s an egotistical psycho. He wants us to know what he’s going to do.’
‘Flat battery?’
‘Mhairi’s reliable,’ he said.
‘Not like some of us?’
Through the first room, the air thickened with the stench from the basement warren. In the second room, Gilchrist slid both legs into the shaft, found the rungs, and gripped the handrail.
‘I don’t think he’s in the cottage,’ he said.
‘Well, the car’s not moved. So where is he?’
‘That’s what we’re about to find out.’
The foul smell of the basement had Gilchrist covering his nose. He worked his way through the chambers to the lit main room. Magner was still cuffed to the workbench, but now conscious, with blistered eyes and a face that could have gone the full card with all contenders. He swung his free leg as Gilchrist entered the room, a weak attempt at a kick, and spat blood at Jessie as she followed.
‘Not so suave now, are we?’ she said.
‘Fuck you.’
She showed Magner her torch, and said, ‘Believe me, it won’t take much pissing me off to make me give you another one with this. So why don’t you shut it.’
Magner glared at her, but got the message.
Gilchrist reached the monitor, still set on the four views of the exterior of the cottage. Two quick clicks had him looking at the interior from four different angles. Then he brought up another quartet of interior images, only to confirm that the cottage was deserted.
He turned to Magner. ‘Where is he?’
Magner did his best to look confused.
Gilchrist was not up for beating the truth from the man. Instead, he clicked through the webcam images until he found what he was looking for – the screen that showed four doors within the basement warren.
The Ford Focus – still parked in the driveway – had sealed it for Gilchrist. Mhairi would not have parked her car anywhere near the cottage – Stan would have warned her about that – and Purvis could not risk being seen dragging a captive woman across the Scottish countryside.
So they still had to be on the property.
But not necessarily at ground level.
‘Where do these doors lead to?’ he asked Magner.
Silence.
Jessie stepped towards Magner, clenching the torch.
‘You can hit me all you like,’ Magner said to her, his words slurred through a broken jaw. ‘But I can’t answer something I don’t know.’ He spat another mouthful of blood at her.
‘Forget him, Jessie. I think I see which one.’
Jessie turned to the monitor and frowned. ‘They all look the same.’
‘But they’re not.’
Gilchrist stepped back and stared at the opening to the main room. Dim light from the entrance shaft gave him his bearings. The basement warren mirrored the rectangular barn above it – meaning that one axis pointed in the direction of the cottage, with the other at right-angles to it. He reasoned that as there were four doors, each had to exit in one of four directions, the four sides of the basement. His rationale also told him it was difficult enough to build an underground warren, without having to construct a maze leading from it. And what would be the point?
So, logically, only one of those doors led to the cottage.
He clicked on his torch, said, ‘This way,’ and stepped into the shadows.
Soon, they were stepping over blockwork rubble and rusted reinforcing bars, as if the contractor had left the structure unfinished. The steady drip of water seemed to surround them, and the walls glistened wet as they splashed through puddles. Gilchrist flashed the torch left and right, penetrating deeper into the maze, as they stepped from chamber to chamber.
‘What is this place?’ Jessie said. ‘Maybe it was constructed during the war. Some sort of bomb shelter?’
‘Bit big for a bomb shelter,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Are we anywhere near the Secret Bunker?’
Now opened to the public, the Secret Bunker had been constructed after World War Two to house the regional government in the event of a nuclear or biological attack. A guardhouse, constructed to resemble a farmhouse, was the main entrance to the reinforced-concrete subterranean control centre. It was not too much of a stretch to imagine this warren formed part of some similar government scheme.
‘We’re miles away from it,’ he said. ‘But who knows what the government got up to.’
Something scrabbled over stones in the dark to his left, and he swung his torch to reveal a wall crawling with rats big enough to take on cats. A crack in the concrete near the ceiling, caused by years of settlement, seemed to be the point of ingress. The exposure to an unexpected torch beam caused not even a ruffle of fur as the rats sniffed the air and brushed around and over each other, oblivious to Gilchrist’s presence.
‘I hate these things,’ Jessie said.
‘They eat them in the Far East.’
‘Remind me never to dine out there.’
‘But it makes sense now,’ Gilchrist said.
‘What does?’
‘The wire mesh in the sculptures. So the rats can’t eat the meat.’
‘Like squirrel-proof bird-feeders?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Fuck sake,’ Jessie said. ‘We anywhere near that door yet?’
Gilchrist directed his torch ahead, and thought he saw an end to the warren. ‘Getting close,’ he said.
They stepped through another opening, which seemed to be the last of the chambers, and shone their torches to the left, then the right. A narrow corridor peeled off to either side, each echoing with the sound of dripping water and the whispering scuffle of rodents.
‘The corridor probably runs around the entire perimeter of the basement,’ Gilchrist said.
‘You see a door?’
His beam picked up a darker shadow on the wall about ten yards to their right, and he strode towards it.
The door was inset about six inches or so into the wall. Gilchrist felt his heart sink as he shone the torch over it. Layers of rust curled from its metal panels like sheets of burned paper, and swelled around the hinges like peeling blisters. A black slit for a keyhole suggested it was locked. But the corroded handle tempted him to try it anyway. He pressed down hard and heard the lock click. Then he gritted his teeth and pulled. The hinges creaked in resistance, but the door eased back half an inch.
‘We’re in,’ he said.