‘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.