Cracking the door open was one thing. Forcing it wide enough to let a body through was another. And Gilchrist’s injury was not helping. When he gripped the handle with both hands, and flexed his muscles to pull the door open farther, his left arm burned with a fire that had him gasping in pain.
‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘I can’t open it.’
Jessie shone her torch at the door to reveal a gap of no more than three inches. ‘Let me try,’ she said, but gave a squeal of disgust when she took hold of the handle. She shone her torch at her hand. ‘You’re still bleeding,’ she said.
‘Trying to open rusty doors will do that.’
‘Want me to take another look at it?’
‘Let’s open this first.’
‘That’s what we’ll inscribe on your headstone,’ she said. ‘ “I should have kept the door shut.” ’ She turned back to the door, gripped the handle, and closed it with a grunt. Then she jerked it open, closed it, jerked it open again.
‘I think it’s working,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Keep going.’
‘Where’s a man when you need him?’
After thirty seconds of heaving the door open and shut, Jessie released the handle and gasped, ‘Got to stop. I’m knackered.’ Her breath clouded like ectoplasm in the gloom.
Gilchrist’s beam showed the gap was now some ten inches. If he could just squeeze his shoulder into it, he might be able to use his body to prise it open a touch more, maybe even slip through. He pushed his right arm in, then managed to get his shoulder in, too. He pressed and pushed and flexed his shoulder, but could not open it any wider.
‘Ah, shit,’ Jessie said. ‘My torch has just died on me.’
‘I’m not going to say a word.’
He shone his torch at her face, and saw fear in her eyes. He had partnered her long enough to understand that her bravado and cocky talk were no more than a shield she put up to protect herself. Being underground in a psycho-cum-artist’s studio was enough to scare anyone witless. And witnessing Stan’s cold-blooded murder had rocked Jessie to the core – himself too.
‘Take mine.’ He flinched from the pain as he slipped off his leather jacket.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘Squeezing through.’
‘Christ, Andy, you’re on your own. One of my tits is bigger than that gap.’
‘I thought you were taking karate lessons and losing weight.’
‘I’d need to get down to four stone before I could squeeze this lot through.’
Gilchrist pressed his face hard against the wall, and pushed his right arm and leg into the opening. Squeezing his head through the gap almost cost him an ear, and his backside kept him locked in place for a good two minutes, until he wriggled and turned and managed to break through. He twisted his body then pulled his left leg into the darkness of the tunnel, and took great care doing the same with his left arm.
‘I know you’re slim,’ she said, ‘but that must have hurt.’
‘A bit tight.’
‘How are your balls?’
‘Fine.’
‘You counted them?’
‘Jacket,’ he said.
She passed it through.
He removed his mobile from the pocket and powered up the screen. Not the best torch in the world, but at least it let him see where he was going. He stretched out his arm and did a one-eighty sweep, but could see no more than a few feet, the light from the screen casting a glow rather than a directional beam.
‘Anything?’ Jessie asked.
Her torch beam was blinding through the gap in the door. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘But I’ll press on.’ He turned round, shielded his eyes. ‘Make your way back. You can’t go wrong. It’s only one of three directions. Left, right, or straight on.’
‘As long as I don’t have to read a map.’
‘I need you to take charge, Jessie,’ he said, serious now. ‘Read Magner his rights, then organise a team to take him to the surface. Start the ball rolling for search warrants for Purvis’s property, the works. And call Chief Super Whyte, too. Let him know what we’ve got.’
‘Meanwhile, you’re going for a stroll?’
‘And arrange for someone in Family Liaison to notify Stan’s parents,’ he said.
A pause, then, ‘Will do, Andy.’ She shone her torch through the gap, and he had to turn away. ‘How’s that arm doing?’
‘Sore,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a spare one.’
She chuckled at the lame attempt at a joke. ‘You don’t have to do this. We can get cutting equipment down here and send in a team.’
They could also try searching Purvis’s cottage for a trapdoor. There had to be one, if his theory was correct. Instead, he said, ‘We don’t have time. Not if we want to save Mhairi.’ With that, he turned from the door and stepped into the darkness of the tunnel.
The going was not easy.
The tunnel floor was not concrete, but hard angular stones over which Gilchrist’s feet slipped and twisted. Moss glistened on the walls and floor. Water dribbled between the stones, reflecting the light from the phone like a mirror. The constant echo of drips and splashes accompanied the crunching of his boots as he worked his way forward.
His progress was much slower than he’d hoped. About two minutes in, he stumbled, lost his balance, and only just managed to keep hold of the phone as his knees crashed onto sharp stones, causing him to cry out in pain. The fire in his left arm flared, and he wondered if he should just do as Jessie had suggested – return to the surface and let the experts take over. But the echo of Purvis’s laugh, and the thought of what he might do to Mhairi, forced him to ignore the pain and struggle to his feet.
Upright again, he took some time to recover.
The ceiling seemed lower here, the walls closer, too, as if the tunnel were narrowing on all sides. He looked over his shoulder, but saw only pitch blackness beyond the weak glow of the phone. He could be a bubble of light in a black tunnel in space. In his mind’s eye, he pulled up an image of the barn and where it stood in relation to the cottage. Then he shifted that image underground, and tried to figure out how far he had come.
Moving on with that mental map, he reckoned he must be only about fifty yards from the cottage. But however near he was, he knew it would be slow going from here.
He held his mobile in front of him, and pressed on.
Jessie surprised herself by finding her way back to Magner without any wrong turns. Once she stumbled her way through a series of empty rooms, the distant glow of light from the main chamber drew her forward like a moth to a flame. She intended to leave Magner lying in his own blood and snot for another thirty minutes – the more extreme his discomfort, the better, as far as she was concerned.
Her first task would be to organise a team to search the cottage for the trapdoor to the tunnel. And she needed a team down here, too – to cut through the metal door and follow Andy. Just the thought of creeping through the dark like that caused a shiver to run the length of her spine.
As she entered the last of the chambers before the main room, she shielded her eyes from the macabre anterooms that housed Purvis’s sculptures. She could hear the heavy throb of the generator in the barn above, and the light was now bright enough to permit her to switch off her torch. She braced herself for the imminent sight of Stan’s body on the floor.
She entered the main room.
Her breath locked. Her heart stopped . . .
Then restarted with a kick that pulled a gasp from her.
Magner was gone.
Survival instinct and raw fear dropped her to the ground like a rock.
Beyond Stan’s body, by the leg of the workbench to which Magner had been cuffed, a hacksaw lay discarded on the floor. Even from where she crouched, Jessie saw that Magner had somehow managed to haul the heavy bench across the floor, pull a shelf from the wall – pliers, saw blades, screwdrivers, hammers, lay scattered – and cut his way through the FlexiCuffs.
She tried to still her pounding heart, stop her lungs from panting, as she placed the torch to one side, undid the ankle holster, and removed her gun. She shuffled across the floor, her back to the wall. If Magner made an appearance, she would shoot him stone dead. She tried to remember what Andy had done with Magner’s pistol and her mind drew a blank.
As her eyes probed into the darkness beyond the light of the main room, she realised that the entrance shaft was no longer illuminated. And as she worked out that Magner had escaped from the basement and closed the hatch, she heard the stuttering sound of the generator powering down.
The lights flickered, then died.
Jessie let out an involuntary whimper as darkness landed on her like a heavy weight. All of a sudden, her sense of direction evaporated. Was she staring blindly at the workbench, or was she looking off at an angle? And where had she left the torch?
She patted the concrete behind her. If she retraced her steps along the base of the wall, she would surely stumble across it. But she cursed herself for leaving it behind in the first place. Inch by careful inch, she edged her way back to the main room’s entrance. She caught the faintest shuffle of tiny claws on stones, the distant rustling of rats, the soft thud of fur on concrete as they tumbled from the wall and made their way into the blackness.
‘Dear God, help me,’ she whimpered.
* * *
Gilchrist reached the end of the tunnel – another metal door.
If it was locked, he could do nothing but retreat. He reached for the handle – identical to the one at the other end – and pressed it down.
The lock clicked.
To his surprise, this door opened wide enough on the first pull for him to slip through without difficulty and step into what appeared to be another tunnel. He held his mobile out in front again, worried that the screen might fade at any time – how long did these things last anyway? He had already taken longer than expected.
This tunnel was wide enough for one person. It had a concrete floor, but the low ceiling made walking upright impossible—
The walls lit up like an explosion.
Gilchrist’s body jerked as if shot. He managed to hold on to his mobile, but had to squeeze his eyes against the sudden brightness.
‘Don’t move.’
The voice came from behind and hit him like a rabbit punch to the neck.
He spun around.
Magner crouched at the foot of a wooden ladder that reached to the tunnel ceiling and the inviting opening of a cottage trapdoor. His face was bloodied and bruised, his jaw twisted at an odd angle. His bloodshot eyes glared at Gilchrist, twin blistered slits of red. If utter vitriol had a look, this was it. And it struck Gilchrist with a flutter of surprise that Magner handled a shotgun every bit as smoothly as Purvis did.
‘Drop the phone.’ The shotgun barely twitched.
Myriad questions blasted through Gilchrist’s mind with the power of a tornado. How had Magner broken free? Where was Jessie? Was she alive? Where were Purvis and Mhairi? Had the backup arrived? And how the hell had he fucked up so badly?
‘The phone,’ Magner reminded him.
Gilchrist threw it towards Magner’s feet, where it landed with a clatter.
As nonchalant as you like, Magner lowered the shotgun and let off one barrel. The mobile exploded, sending pieces of plastic and metal ricocheting off the tunnel’s walls and ceiling. Somewhere a light bulb popped and the tunnel dimmed as glass tinkled to the floor. Gilchrist shielded his eyes as shrapnel stung his face. Still, if he could take any heart from the moment, it was that Magner had only one shot left.
As if to confirm Gilchrist’s thoughts, Magner dropped his left shoulder and slipped a strap off it, which materialised into a rifle that he pointed at Gilchrist’s head. A quick check confirmed that Magner had only the rifle and shotgun, although from where Gilchrist stood it was impossible to tell if he had his SIG Sauer on him.
The barrel wiggled – an instruction for Gilchrist to move.
‘Turn around,’ Magner ordered, his voice slurred through his broken jaw.
‘You’re only making matters worse,’ Gilchrist said.
Magner kept the rifle steady. ‘I’m thinking they can only get better from now on.’
It looked to Gilchrist that Magner would smile if he could, and he slowly turned his back to him, knowing that any second now he would be shot through the back of the head.
‘On your knees.’
Gilchrist did as instructed, taking his time, his survival instinct fighting to eke out every last second of his life.
‘I should have killed you back there,’ Magner said. ‘Killed all three of you.’
‘Don’t do this—’
‘Shut up.’
Gilchrist held up his hands, shoulder high. ‘I’m unarmed.’
‘I said shut the fuck up.’
Gilchrist closed his eyes, and took his last breath.
The rifle shot snapped like a whip-crack.