I’m the only person in the grave. The coffin is open, the pink lining clean except for a sprinkling of dirt, and the entire thing is wet. And blurry. The entire coffin is blurry, and when I hold my hand out ahead of me and point the torch at it I see both hand and torch are blurry too. I reach up and touch my forehead, and my fingers come away wet with blood.
I grab the edge of the coffin to try to pull myself up, but my hand slides across it and I slip back. I kill the torch and let the darkness settle over me, and for a moment I have fallen far deeper than the depth of a coffin six feet in the earth, and into another world that light or life has never touched. I listen to the night but can’t hear a thing — not at first — then I begin to make out a soft murmuring. It disappears, and I begin to convince myself it was only the wind when it starts again. I turn the torch back on for a second to orientate myself, then I make my way to the end of the coffin and step onto it, balancing myself by pushing my hands into the damp walls of the grave. I think about Sidney Alderman, and then I think about all the policemen and women I’ve known over the years, and all the cops in movies and TV and books who say they never believe in coincidences. I think of Quentin James and I think of the man I became. I think all those cops who don’t believe in coincidences need to live a little more.
I reach up and brace my arms over the ground and kick at the cold wall of dirt as I make my way up. Every day above ground is a good day, so the saying goes, and suddenly I know whoever came up with that got it dead right. I listen for the sound again but can’t hear anything. I point the torch at the temporary gravestone and highlight Father Julian’s name. There are no other inscriptions — they’re being saved for the real gravestone.
There’s a mound of dirt piled up about a metre away from the coffin. A large tombstone ahead of it must have blocked my view of it before. I stay low to the ground and look around, but all I can see are dark shadows across a landscape of black. I creep a few gravestones along, then squat down. I reach into my pocket for my phone, only to find that it’s been busted in the fall. Maybe God is trying to tell me something about cellphones.
I drop down to my knees and I listen as hard as I can. I close my eyes and wait, and after a few seconds the noise returns — just briefly, but it’s enough for me to get a fix on the direction.
I move a short distance away from the grave.
I take the torch out of my pocket. There is a dark shape on the ground. I crouch and turn on the torch. A girl, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties, is naked, her skin scuffed up with mud.
Her hands are bound behind her, her ankles bound too. The same duct tape binding her has also been placed across her mouth. The rain has swept the blood from a cut in her shoulder over her chest. She is shaking. Her face is so pale she looks as though her body has been completely exsanguinated. Her dark eyes are wide with fright as she stares at me. She tries to pull away. All she can see is the torchlight, and I realise she thinks I’m the one who did this to her. I have no idea who she is, what sister she could be.
I turn off the light and take off my jacket to put over her, and then the sound of a car comes crashing through the silence.
chapter fifty-eight
‘Don’t worry, I’m going to get you out of here, okay?’
The torch is still off, so I can’t tell whether she looks as though she believes me or not. But I’m sure her mind will grip tight to the ‘or not bit when I tell her what’s going to happen next. I have put my jacket back on.
‘I’m going to leave you tied up, okay?’
She starts whimpering.
“I need him to think he’s here alone with you.’
The headlights wash towards me, and I duck down on the other side of the gravestone to where the girl is lying. The car comes to a stop, and I figure David has just dumped Father Julian in the lake. David is following the same routine, even though he didn’t start it.
‘Don’t let him know, okay? If he lets you speak, don’t tell him.
You have to be calm. I’m a police officer, I’m going to help you get through this, but you have to trust me. You’re going to be okay, I promise.’