Percy yelled at Gabe, pointing the torch in the engineer's direction: 'The floodwater will funnel into the well! It shouldn't rise much more than this!'
'Maybe! But well be safer if we move up!' Gabe called back.
Percy showed the way ahead and they began to climb the trembling stairs. Before stepping onto the gallery landing Gabe, with Cally carried in his right arm, snatched a quick look over the stair rail into the hall. There wasn't a lot to see in the darkness, but he noticed that the tiny lambent orbs were back.
They skimmed above the surface of the rough swirling water like excited fireflies, exuberant with energy.
He counted nine of them.
80: SATURDAY
The river was unbelievably calm that morning, fast flowing still, but no longer swollen or threatening. The air smelt strongly of damp earth, and natural debris lay scattered everywhere: shrubbery, bushes, leaves, twigs and tree branches, even stones and sizeable rocks. Here and there, and particularly on the lower slopes of the gorge, whole trees had been uprooted. Two yellow Sea King rescue helicopters passed low over Crickley Hall, heading towards the bay, the sky above them a near-perfect blue with only a few puffball clouds floating in its expanse. A wide pre-constructed metal bridge spanned the river in place of the wooden bridge that had been swept away. Various vehicles, including an olive-green military lorry and two police cars, one unmarked, cluttered the nearby lane. (Pyke's Mondeo and Lili Peel's Citroën had been carried off down the hill by floodwater some time during the night and were now floating in the bay along with other wrecks and overturned fishing boats.) Parked on Crickley Hall's muddy front lawn were an ambulance with its rear doors open, a police van and a Land Rover 90.
Loren and Cally were glad to be outside in the sunshine and had watched the comings and going of policemen and various rescue team personnel with interest. The most exciting were the police divers, but the girls had not been allowed to follow them into the house. If their mood was a little subdued it was because Cam's death had been confirmed and only partly due to the dramatic events of last night, which so far seemed to have had no harmful effect on either of them (nevertheless, Loren, in particular, would be closely watched over the next few weeks for any delayed reaction to the ordeal she had been put through). They had managed to catch some sleep, at first in their parents' arms on the landing overlooking the flooded hall, then later in their own beds while Gabe and Eve kept guard outside their room with Lili and Percy.
A group of men, Gabe Caleigh among them, had gathered by the big oak tree where a broken swing hung forlornly from a branch, one end of the seat resting on the damp grass, its rusty severed chain curled on the ground like an iron snake.
Gabe was speaking to the yellow-jacketed man on his left, the deputy chief of the emergency services, Tom Halliway. 'Thanks for all the attention. I'm sure you gotta lot to do in the village.'
'Not as much as we expected,' Halliway replied. 'Hollow Bay got off comparatively lightly because of the flood precautions taken over the years. Plenty of cars swept away and overturned, several properties seriously damaged, but overall there's been no great harm done to the village. The main thing is, there's been no loss of life as far as we can tell. Sorry, didn't mean to disregard your friend.'
'Pyke? No, he wasn't a friend. Barely knew him. He turned up two days ago calling himself a psychic investigator, looking for ghosts.'
The uniformed policeman to his right, Chief Superintendent Derek Pargeter, remarked: 'Because he'd seen the article in the Dispatch this week, you told me earlier.'
'Uh-huh. The guy had read the crazy story about Crickley Hall being haunted, said he wanted to disprove it—or prove it, I'm not sure which now. So we let him go ahead with his investigation.'
'Last night.' It was a statement, not a question.
'Yeah. Last night. He was setting up his equipment when the flood hit. Poor guy never stood a chance. He was swept down into the cellar.'
The thin-faced policeman nodded gravely. 'Poor man. Wouldn't have stood a chance because of the well there.' He jerked his head towards the house. 'The divers should have completed their search by now, but I doubt they've had any luck in finding the body; it would have been carried out to the bay by the underground river—the force would have been incredible. The coastguard and sea rescue helicopters will keep a lookout for Mr Pyke's body, but the currents along this coast can be unpredictable.'
Gabe looked down at the ground and said nothing. He and his family, with Lili Peel and Percy Judd, had spent the night huddled together on the landing, ready to move to the upper floor should the water rise to a threatening level. Once Loren and Cally had fallen asleep and been put into their beds, the group had discussed everything that had happened in the past week as well as the whole story of the evacuees and their horrific deaths. Lili had spoken of the vision or 'insight' she'd had while lying semi-conscious on the lawn after having been hit by the windblown swing—if it had been windblown, that is—and Eve had wept at the children's fate. But they all agreed that the true story of all that had gone on should be kept to themselves. Who would believe the truth anyway? As far as anyone else was concerned, Gordon Pyke had been unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was Gabe who had put the question: 'Who could've guessed the authorities had hushed up the real causes of the evacuees' deaths all those years ago?' The question rhetorical, he had gone on: 'As Percy told Eve the other day, the lid was kept on it because if the fact was ever known that the kids' bodies had strangulation bruisings round their throats, a couple of them with broken necks, then no caring parent would ever let their child be evacuated. Then, was it in the public interest to know in time of war? What about the morale of the country? Yknow, all that stuff. Besides, their only suspect was already dead—he'd paid for his crimes, so no point in dragging it all out into the open. The cane strokes and scars on Cribben's naked body—ignoring the fresh cuts from flying glass—must've got the authorities and police thinking something was not quite right about the guy. The only possible witness they had—maybe she was a suspect too, at first—was Cribben's sister, Magda, and she wasn't saying anything any more.
'I guess the vicar at the time—Rossbridger?—knew the truth of it, because he had Cribben's body buried in a neglected part of the graveyard and well away from the evacuees' graves. Rossbridger would've kept the secret outa self-interest—it might've damaged his reputation.'
Gabe's surmise had given them all something to think about during the hellish long night.
Halliway interrupted Gabe's thoughts. 'Not much more we can do here, Mr Caleigh. The last of the floodwater has been pumped from the cellar—most of it had already drained into the well anyway.'
'Thanks for what you've done,' Gabe said gratefully, shaking Halliway's hand.
The stocky deputy chief merely nodded and walked to his mud-caked Land Rover, where he was joined by two other members of his team. Before climbing in, he turned and called back to Gabe.
'Your vehicle's more or less where you left it last night. We just moved it to the side of the road when we cleared the fallen tree. Good thing you left the keys in the ignition.'
'Right. I'll go get it later. We're moving out today.'
As the Land Rover backed across the bridge, a policeman in wet Wellington boots came hurrying out of the house. Gabe hadn't noticed him before but he now recognized PC Kenrick, who had called on them earlier in the week after the two local kids had got a fright in Crickley Hall.