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.
CHAPTER 39
Jessie struggled to fight off a searing flare of panic that engulfed her like a boiling wave. Her breath pulled in and out in sharp hits that burned her throat. In the pitch black, and hyperventilating, she lost all sense of direction, and found herself struggling even to determine what was up and what was down.