Then the moment passed, and he gasped, sucked in air, gripped his torch.
And shone it at the hellish scene before them.
CHAPTER 31
Gilchrist tried to hold his torch beam steady, but his hands and fingers seemed to have developed a nervous system of their own. The figure… the thing, because that was what he was looking at – a thing that seemed part human, part alien – was hanging from a hook secured into the concrete ceiling.
Its glazed eyes stared at some point directly over Gilchrist’s head, as if it were interested in something beyond him. As he traced the beam down its length, he was struck by the strangest sensation that he was looking at a work of art, a sculpture of sorts, comprising body parts and metal wires and pieces of wood and cloth, which together formed a discernible human shape – a creature that seemed to be captured in the sculptor’s snapshot of life… or death.
A woman’s head sat atop a wire-meshed cage that resembled a skeletal frame covered in strips of skin that curled like dog-ears. Through the gaps in the skin, and beyond the metal mesh of ribs, Gilchrist could not mistake a ruddy lump of meat that had once been a beating heart. Beneath that, in a cavity of their own, coiled intestines lay like a sleeping nest of snakes. Arms stretched out both sides in scarecrow fashion, strips of skin frayed like tattered clothes, ending in wooden fingers tipped with human nails for claws. Lower, too, legs dressed in stripped skin for trousers, and shoeless feet of wire and toes of wood with toenails that glistened in the flickering beam.
Gilchrist was aware of Stan by his side, shocked into momentary silence, their torch beams frozen on the horrific figure before them.
‘Is it human, boss?’
An image of Amy McCulloch’s gutted and skinned body hit Gilchrist with a force that had him gripping his throat to avoid retching. He flashed his torch to the head, then down to the heart, the intestines, and along one leg to the full set of toenails that had been torn from a once-living human being. ‘She’s human,’ he said.
‘Who is she?’
Gilchrist flicked his beam back to the head to confirm that this was not Amy McCulloch, but some other poor soul whose life had been stolen.
So if this was not Amy McCulloch, then where was she?
He shone his beam to the side and gasped. ‘Jesus, Stan.’
Stan’s beam flickered alongside Gilchrist’s, forcing light into deeper recesses, and a row of concrete chambers that housed a series of individually wired figures, as if each were set in its own personal sarcophagus.
Stan was first to recover. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘We need to get this seen to.’ The light from his torch flickered around the walls of the chambers as he pulled out his mobile.
Now that the initial shock was past, Gilchrist’s instinctive curiosity overpowered all reservations and he stepped deeper into the catacombs. He counted six other figures and stopped at the first – a young woman with blue eyes glazed like icing and blonde hair as dry as straw. Within her wired body, her lungs and heart reflected his torch beam like the sheen from plastic. Intestines lay curled beneath a bloated ball of a stomach. Her blue fingernails reminded him of Janice Meechan’s bare foot dripping with rain.
Who was she? Was she a mother, a daughter, a sister? When was she killed? Had anyone even reported her missing?
‘Can’t get a signal, boss.’
Gilchrist pulled out his own mobile, but the concrete labyrinth was blocking any kind of signal. He was about to ask Stan for the camera when he cocked his head to the ceiling. ‘You hear that?’
Stan frowned as he shone his torch at the concrete roof. ‘Sounds like a motor.’
At first, Gilchrist thought Purvis must be making his escape in the BMW. But why would he do that when the Focus was parked in his driveway? As the logic tumbled into place, Gilchrist came to understand that the sound was not the revving engine of a top-of-the-range Beemer, but something much heavier, more industrial.
‘It’s the generator,’ he said.
‘Purvis knows we’re here?’
Gilchrist caught the alarm in Stan’s voice. ‘Someone does.’
‘We must have triggered something,’ Stan said. ‘Maybe there are webcams down here.’ He flashed his beam along the corners of the ceiling then walked towards the entry shaft. ‘Let’s go and get him before-’
‘Don’t, Stan.’
Stan stopped and swung his beam at Gilchrist.
‘If it’s Purvis, he’ll be armed. He’s got two shotguns and a rifle in that cottage.’ And God only knows what else, he wanted to say, and almost cursed his own stupidity. He should have insisted on a search warrant and seized the cache of arms before trying anything like this.
‘We can’t stay down here and do nothing, boss. What if he locks us in?’
Gilchrist saw that Stan had a point. But he also saw that Purvis was not someone who let loose ends lie around. He would not want two detectives sniffing around his underground graveyard. And Gilchrist came to see that if Purvis had caught them on a webcam he would know exactly how many were down here.
Would he lock them in and leave them to die?
Or would he flush them out like rats from a nest?
The noise from the generator gave Gilchrist his answer.
Purvis was going to switch on the lights and come down with a loaded shotgun. His criminal past spoke of a man who was not afraid to take on the law. He would do whatever was necessary to make sure he never spent time behind bars again – including killing two detectives, if he had to.
From somewhere overhead, the sound of a fan starting gave Gilchrist a jolt. He strained to hear footsteps in the barn above, but the concrete roof was as good a sound-damper as any. Even so, Gilchrist knew that he and Stan were running out of time.
He shone his beam over the bare concrete walls – there had to be a light source somewhere. But he could find no switches on the walls, or light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Then the ringing clatter of metal on metal to his right warned him that someone was descending the ladder. He switched off his torch.
‘Lights out, Stan.’
Stan did as ordered.
A pitch blackness, thicker than any Gilchrist had experienced, descended on them with the suddenness of a guillotine chop. In the darkness, the heavy weight of the torch felt good. He slapped it into the palm of his hand. Not much of a weapon, but it was all they had.
Or maybe not.
‘Purvis is as blind as we are,’ Gilchrist whispered. ‘So we’ll wait until he switches on the lights, then surprise him.’ He tried to pull up what he could remember of the basement’s layout in his mind’s eye, and edged along a wall, his back against the cold concrete. Then he caught the leathery scrape of shoes on the floor. ‘Lift your feet, Stan. Don’t drag them.’
In the ensuing silence, Gilchrist heard the steady crunch of someone walking towards them – not creeping like they were, but striding with confidence, as if he knew every twist and turn of the labyrinth.
As if he could see in the dark.
And Gilchrist realised that the binoculars on the workbench in the barn were not binoculars at all, but night-vision goggles.
The footsteps stopped, and Purvis said, ‘Just look at the pair of you. Cowering in the corners.’
Gilchrist peered into the darkness, in the direction of the voice, but he was as good as blind. The footsteps shifted, shuffled on the concrete, crackling clumps of dust and fragments of stone. A bit more to his right, Gilchrist thought, but closer, too.
Then silence.
Gilchrist waited, his senses stretched as tight as wire.
Not a sound now, except the hard beating of his heart.
Gilchrist pushed to his feet, and stepped into the darkness. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he shouted, imagining Purvis facing him from about ten yards away.
He lifted his torch and clicked it on.