From about ten feet to her left came the sound of a motor. A whine that put talons into her head. The angle grinder. She took a confused step sideways, flailing for something to hold on to, banging into the rucksack, making it swing crazily. The grinder disc bit the metal with a high-pitched scream. Through the hole the cascading sparks lit the tunnel like Guy Fawkes night.
‘Stop!’ she yelled. ‘Stop!’
He didn’t answer. The hemisphere of the grinder disc showed through into the hull, a slice of moonlight coming with it. It was at a point halfway between her and the hatch. It moved slowly down, gnawing at the iron hull. Moved about ten inches. Then hit something immovable. The grinder jumped, rattled madly, shooting sparks into the air. A particle ricocheted around the hull, pinging into the water somewhere in the dark. The disc recovered, bit into the metal again, but something was wrong with it. The motor stuttered. Ground noisily at the iron. Whined and decelerated to silence.
On the other side of the hull Prody swore softly. He pulled the disc out and spent a moment or two tinkering with the machine, she listening to him, hardly breathing. He started the grinder again. Again it stuttered. Coughed. Whined and juddered to a halt. The acrid, burning-fish smell of failing machinery wafted into the hull.
A stray sentence went through her from nowhere. I saw a little girl thrown out of a windscreen once: did the last twenty feet on her face. That had been Prody speaking on the night he’d breathalysed her. In retrospect there had been something creepy about the way he’d said it. A note of pleasure in there. Prody? Prody? Prody? An MCIU detective? The guy she used to see coming from the gym with his kit over his shoulder? She thought about the moment in the pub – how she’d looked at him, thought about something happening between them.
Sudden silence outside. She raised her head. Looked with watering eyes at the hole. Nothing. Then a splash about twenty yards away. She tensed, ready for the whine of the angle grinder. Instead his footsteps faded – as if he was going to the very end of the chamber near the furthest rockfall.
Clumsily she wiped her mouth, swallowed the sour taste and, taking care not to move too fast and set her head spinning, carefully knelt up on the ledge. Clutching the lip of the porthole on the starboard side she steadied herself and peered out.
The section of the tunnel that reached to the rockfall was visible from this side of the barge. The water in the canal shone dully: the moon had moved and was now shining directly down the shaft. The walls narrowed at sickening angles, making her head lurch, but she could see Prody clearly. About twenty feet away from her. Almost in the darkness. Focus, her exhausted mind said, watch – he’s doing something important.
He was a long way down the chamber, at the edge of the tunnel where the water level had lowered over the years to reveal a strip of ground about a yard wide – the same path that ran the length of the canal, and that she had walked with Wellard on Tuesday. Prody had his side to her. His shirt was filthy with black canal water, his face not visible in the bad light, and he was studying something in his hand. Martha’s shoe. He put it into the pocket of his fleece and closed the popper to keep it secure. Then he dropped to an ugly crouch and began to study the ground. Flea gripped the edges of the hole tighter and pressed her face into it, breathing open-mouthed, straining to see.
He was pushing away the leaves and the muck, scooping it in great handfuls and letting it pile behind him the way a dog would, digging a hole. After a few minutes the scooping stopped. He shuffled a little nearer on his haunches and began to scrape carefully. The ground there was soft – like the rockfalls, it was mostly fuller’s earth, with one or two boulders lodged in it – but she didn’t think it was a rock he was cleaning around. It was too regular. Too clearly a shape. If anything it was corrugated iron. A wave of weakness passed through her. It choked her and sent pins and needles sparkling through her head. It was a pit. She hadn’t noticed it before – would never have noticed it – because he’d covered it so well with earth, but she knew instinctively what it was. A grave. Somehow Prody had sunk a pit into the floor of the canal. It would be where Martha was buried.
He sat for a few moments contemplating the shape. Then, seemingly satisfied with what he’d seen, he began to scoop the earth back. Flea’s trance broke. She ducked under the rucksack and waded back towards where she’d dropped the acrow. Arms out in the dark water she groped blindly for it. She could drag it through into the aft compartment. Wedge it somewhere and tighten it against the closed hatch. That would give her some time. But not long enough. She straightened, eyes darting from side to side. The rope locker caught her eye.
It’s not a sweetie, Flea . . .
Stealthily she snaked her hand into the rucksack, pushing past the hard, salty chemical ball, feeling around the other things. The chisel, the climbing cams, the length of green parachute line that went everywhere with her because her father had sworn by it. Never underestimate the problems para line can get you out of, Flea. Her fingers found something small and plastic – a cigarette lighter. Another of Dad’s must-haves. She usually carried two – no, today it was three: there was an extra one at the bottom. Teeth clenched, she raised her eyes again to the rope locker.
Outside she heard a splash. Closer to the barge than she’d have expected. Another. Closer yet. And another. By the time she’d realized he was running towards her the impact had already come: the barge seemed to lift nightmarishly, tremble and shudder, as he hurtled into the hull. She heard him bounce away into the water, splashing. She shrank back from the rucksack, cringing. Saw a flicker of light and dark go past the hole. Then silence again.
She began to pant with fear. She couldn’t help it. She looked across at the bulkhead – it seemed miles away. At the other end of a very long, narrow tunnel. The walls were seesawing from side to side. Nothing was real. It was like something she had dreamed.
Another series of splashes. This time from behind. She cramped herself forward. Tensed. Prody landed exactly behind the place where she stood. She actually felt his weight on the hull. Felt it echo through her own muscle and organs like a sonic boom. As if he wanted to shake the barge out of the water.
‘Hey!’ He banged on the hull. A series of sharp hammerings. ‘Wake up in there. Wake up!’
She groped numbly for the ledge, sat on it and put her head into her hands, trying to stop the blood falling away from her brain. Her chest rose and fell convulsively; shivers ran up and down her arms.
God, God, God. This was death. This was her death. This was how it was going to end.
65
The woman standing in her dressing-gown on the gravelled driveway had gone through most of her life with the name Skye Blue. But, then, what else would hippie Mr and Mrs Blue have called their only daughter if not ‘Skye’? It was obvious, and really she should count herself lucky their name hadn’t been Brown. It was only in the last year, when a good and decent man with the sensible name of Nigel Stephenson had come along and made her his wife that she’d stopped having to make defensive little antihippie jokes every time she signed her name.
Skye Stephenson had a lot more to thank Nigel for than just a name, she thought, as the lights of his taxi disappeared at the end of the road. A lot more. She had peace, fun, great sex and great cuddles whenever she put out her arms for one. She had a beautiful house too, she thought, pulling the dressing-gown around her and going back down the silent garden path to the opened front door – a detached Victorian with bay windows, a front garden full of peonies and a real feel of home. The windows needed replacing and they’d probably have to put in a new heating system before next winter, but to her it was exactly how she imagined a family home. She smiled down the road after Nigel, closed the door behind her and put the chain on because he would be two days on his business trip and the door couldn’t be seen from the street, which sometimes made her feel vaguely insecure.