Couldn’t even call Alice. No idea what her mobile...
Wait a minute.
I fumbled in my pocket and dug out one of the business cards I’d liberated from Alice’s handbag.
You wee beauty!
All her contact details were there. I punched in her number and listened to it ring and ring and ring, then finally go through to voicemail. ‘Alice? It’s Ash. I need you to call me back on this number ASAP, OK? It’s really, really important!’ And in case she didn’t bother listening to her voice maiclass="underline"
Alice — I’m in BIG trouble. I need your
help.
Call me back on this number!
SEND.
Oh for... She’d have no idea who sent it, would she.
It’s Ash — I’m on someone else’s phone and
I need you to call me soon as you can!
SEND.
Now all I had to do was sit here and wait till she got back to me. Which could take minutes, or hours, knowing Alice. Hours sat here, in the cold and dark, like a useless lump of skin. Because it wasn’t as if the stump where my finger used to be was going to get infected or anything, surrounded by all the crap that’d been dumped in here.
God’s sake.
OK, so all I had to do was get myself out of an eighteen-foot-deep brick-lined pit with no ladder and a buggered hand.
Yeah... Alice was right: I should’ve stayed at home.
The last chunk of agricultural rubbish went on the pile in the corner. That was pretty much all of it, leaving the inspection pit’s dirt floor bare. Had to be nearly seven feet between the top of the heap and the barn floor above. Reaching distance.
Assuming my ruined hand held out. The fire had settled to a dull throbbing ache, but knowing my luck, the slightest knock would set it alight again. But it was too late to worry about that now.
I backed off to the opposite corner.
Helen lay flat on her back, arms crossed over her chest, eyes pulled closed. And yes, I know it didn’t make any difference to her — she was dead. Still...
I turned off the phone’s torch again.
Up above, that rectangle of concrete roofing had darkened a couple of shades. The sun wouldn’t have to sink very far to plunge Wester Brae of Kinbeachie’s ninety-three awful acres into darkness. And there was only so long a mobile phone’s battery would last.
Right.
Let’s do this.
Took off at a lumbering run, across the narrow space, and leapt, my bad foot scrunching into the pile, pushing off, left foot sinking, push off again, right foot—
The entire thing collapsed, bags and tubs and folded sheets of binding and wrapping slithering off each other in a dusty avalanche. Stumbling. Falling. Arms and legs flailing. Then BANG, smashing into the dirt floor as crap tumbled over me, left hand bouncing off the—
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’
Like someone was holding a lit blowtorch to it, the skin blackening and curling, smoke rising from the hacked stump where my first finger used to be, spreading through my hand and up my arm until the world roared and crackled and...
Darkness.
My eyes flickered open, and there was that patch of roofing again, every inch as far above me as it’d been the first time. Only now it was the colour of ancient tarmac. Digging Helen’s phone from my pocket explained why — five minutes to three. I’d been out for about half an hour.
Just enough time for that bastarding missing finger to settle into pulsing waves of heat and pressure. Each one breaking against my forearm. Probably infected.
Still no reply from Alice.
Where the hell are you? I need you to call
me back! This is serious and urgent, Alice,
I’m not kidding about here.
CALL ME ASAP!
SEND.
A shiver rattled its way through me. Lying down here, in the cold and damp — it’d seeped its way deep into my bones. Wonder if it was bad enough to cause hypothermia? Maybe not now, but by about three in the morning? In November. In the wilds of Scotland?
Wonderful.
I switched on the torch app again. This time the light was slightly less bright than before — the battery showing twenty percent as I drifted the beam around the pit. Brick walls, streaked with mould and glistening with moisture. Patches of greasy white fungus, growing out of the mortar.
Why the hell wasn’t there a ladder?
There should’ve been a bloody ladder...
But there wasn’t, so no point moaning about it, was there? Think.
OK, so piling the crap up didn’t work.
What else?
I shoved a chunk of that spider’s web stuff off my legs and sat up. Then frowned at it. There was a good chunk of it down here — thin plastic netting. Thin, but tough. Robust enough to wind around a four-foot bale of hay to keep it all in place while it got shifted about by tractors and forklifts. Maybe even robust enough to take my weight?
One way to find out.
Twenty-two past three, according to Helen’s phone, and the corrugated roofing was nothing but a patch of slightly lighter black overhead.
Still nothing from Alice.
I wrapped the end of my makeshift rope around the middle of my walking stick and tied it off with a couple of clove hitches. Mostly by touch — which wasn’t easy with frozen numb fingers — because the mobile’s battery was down to five percent. Half a dozen chunks of webbing, all twisted and tied into a lumpen cord with big knots every twelve inches or so. Seemed solid enough.
Hopefully...
Now all I had to do was chuck the walking stick up into the barn above, and it’d catch on something and I’d haul myself out. Easy. Nothing to worry about.
I rested my forehead against the damp brick wall.
It was about time my luck turned, right?
Please.
I wrapped the loose end of the netting rope around my right wrist, then javelined the walking stick up over the lip of the pit — hard as I could. Clunks and clatters as it bounced off the concrete floor. Then silence.
OK.
I pulled on the rope, reeling it back in.
Come on, come on, catch on something you rotten...
‘Bastard!’
The stick came rattling back over the edge and thumped down into the pit again.
Another go — trying a different side this time.
Clunk, clatter.
Pulled on the rope again...
And there was the stick again, falling into the pit.
Again. And again. And again. With exactly the same result every time.
I was going to die in this bloody pit and all because Alice wouldn’t ANSWER HER BLOODY PHONE.
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’ Kicking a tub of supplement, sending it bouncing off the bricks to BOOM and splinter.
Slumped back against the wall.
This was impossible.
So call 999 while you’ve still got some battery left, you idiot. Or are you actually planning on dying from sheer pig-headed obstinacy.
Eight years in prison.
Damned if you do, dead if you don’t...
One more go.
Maybe if I could get the stick to catch across the corner of the pit?
It’d break. The plastic webbing might be strong enough to take my weight, but I doubt a wooden walking stick would. Needed something a bit more solid...
I risked another chunk of the phone’s battery, turning the torch on again as I dug through the rubbish Gordon and Leah had dumped in on top of us. They’d chucked Helen’s rusty sledgehammer-thing into the pit too — I’d definitely seen it when I was searching for her phone.