And a fork. The tunnel split like a lizard’s tongue. One black hole on the left, and one black hole on the right, and nothing to distinguish between them except the track vanished down the right-hand route. Life and death choices had been made on less, so he chose the track.
But all his mind’s eye saw was Katie. He wished he’d gone home. She would be awaiting his call, but his phone was in the shop, a billion miles away, and she would begin to worry soon. He hoped his lack of contact would make her understand the threat they faced and force her out of the house, to her father’s place, which surely the men after them didn’t know the location of. She would call the police first, hopefully. But there was always a chance that she would remain in the house, waiting for the phone to ring – where the bad guys could be headed right now.
His pace quickened. Her grip tightened again, as if she feared he’d slip away. But then she said something.
‘Are you going to tell your wife you touched another woman’s breast today?’
He realised she wasn’t scared of losing him at all. Maybe she had sensed his growing unease due to his increased pace, and she was trying to shift his attention, to lighten the mood. Even amid her own fear and worry, she was trying to ease his anguish. It didn’t, of course, but he stopped and turned to her. Their faces were just inches apart. He wanted to try to ease her pain in return, but no words came.
That was when they heard a noise. Faint. It rolled towards them, and past, and was gone. Karl looked up and over her head, and Liz turned away from him, and they both stared back the way they’d come. The world was black, but way in the distance was a pinprick of light. Like a solitary star in the night sky. Someone had found their entrance.
Someone had entered their world in pursuit.
Twenty-Four
Mick
The collapsed foundations had created a rough and ready ramp into the abyss, with portions of broken concrete forming a handy set of stairs. Mick tried to make his way down slowly, silently, but a wedge-shaped slab of concrete shifted under his weight and took away his legs. Dirt and concrete crumbled down the slope, with Mick sliding behind it on his arse.
Król started laughing from above.
‘Shut your trap,’ Mick hissed. He looked up. Król was at the edge, on his hands and knees and staring down. Wearing a goofy grin that Mick wanted to widen with his knife. ‘Wait in the fucking car.’
Król vanished. Mick got to his feet. The way ahead was pitch-black, but he started jogging anyway. He knew he could trip and smash his nose, might even step out over some great shaft leading a mile down, but he could not dawdle. He had learned about the underground tracks following a quick Google search of this area, but it had taken time, too much time. Seabury and the woman, if they weren’t crushed or impaled down here, were far ahead and getting further.
His eyes soon started to adjust to the gloom. He saw walls, and the roof, and under his feet the twin lines of the ancient tracks. He stopped to listen, but heard nothing. No footsteps or voices. Then he jogged onwards, arms extended before him so they would hit any obstacle ahead before his face did.
His anger started to slip away. This place would make the perfect tomb for the bitch and her saviour. Down here, no chance of a good Samaritan trying to save the day, no matter how loudly she screamed, and he could take his time. Tie them with the string in his pocket, slot his phone on a protrusion in the wall, flashlight illuminating everything, and work at them slowly with his knife. The dark and the cold would heighten their fear. Their cries of pain and his own laughter would probably echo, enhancing the fun. This time, he would record the event, which might go some way to alleviating the irritation that he’d overlooked capturing Grafton’s final moments on camera.
Even better: since this place was abandoned, her body would lie undiscovered. There was no further chance to smash up Grafton, but he could repeat and repeat with the bitch. No need for dreams. Every time the urge resurfaced, all he would have to do is drive out here, and there she would be, waiting for him like a lover. He could slice and smash until he was satisfied. Over and over. Again and again.
Soon, he came to a fork in the tunnel.
The tracks went ahead, but to the left was another tunnel shooting off at ten o’clock. Logic told him they’d gone ahead, following the tracks. Most people would. But they could have taken the left fork to trick their pursuer.
‘Shit,’ he hissed. So far, so close. What to do? He could pick the correct path and be home in an hour, washing their blood off his hands.
But if he chose the wrong route, his prey would escape, and he’d never get another chance to end this.
Twenty-Five
Karl
The shout bounced past them, echoing, as if their assailant had repeated it.
‘They’ll never find your bodies down here, you know?’
They lay on their fronts, facing back the way they’d come. They lay between the tracks, covered in dirt, feeling the cold seeping into their bones. Karl, at least.
‘So your wife is pregnant?’ Liz whispered.
‘What?’ he whispered back. What kind of question was that right now?
‘I’m gonna gut you both, right down here, and leave you for the rats.’
The shout sounded no closer than the first, thankfully. Which meant their prayers had been answered: the fork in the tunnel had halted their pursuer out of fear of choosing the wrong route.
‘I think you were about to say it before that man came in the shop. How far gone?’
He didn’t understand what she was talking about – at first. And then he understood. He had tried—
‘Last chance, Seabury. I’ll ruin your world or save it. You don’t even have to give up. Just knock that bitch out and shout me and you can run and I’ll do the rest, and you can live your life.’
—to distract himself to the mood once or twice with a joke, and he figured she was doing something similar now: acting as if everything were normal, pretending that there wasn’t a madman down here in the dark with them. So, he went along with it.
‘Six months,’ he said, voice low, head close to hers.
‘What are you having?’
‘I want a boy. She wants a girl.’
‘You don’t know yet? Why not?’
‘Seabury, this is your absolute last chance.’
‘There’s two ways to find out. One is when you hold a new baby in your arms and see him or her in the flesh. The other is to see what basically looks like a chalk rubbing on a screen. You got kids?’
He knew she didn’t even before she said so.
‘Ron didn’t want them. I’m not sure. I like children, but as for my own…’
‘He didn’t want them entering his lifestyle, eh?’
A slice of verbal Tourette’s there. But she didn’t seem to take offence.
‘No, nothing like that. I don’t think he thought he was the settling type. But you have to think of the old people’s home, that’s what I said to him once.’
‘I’m going to make you suffer like you wouldn’t believe, Seabury, unless you bring her out right now. No fucking silly gadget’s gonna save you down here.’
‘The what?’ He was finding it hard not to be distracted by the man chasing them. Liz was looking at Karl, but Karl could not ignore the lethal threat just 160 feet from them.
‘You have to think about the old people’s home. That’s where we’ll be one day. You don’t want to be one of those old ones that gets no visitors. I’ve seen them before, when I was visiting my father when he was—’
‘I see you, bitches. Here I fucking come!’
‘Still alive, and I felt sorry for them. They look sad.’
‘Like they were thinking, shit, I should have had kids?’
Despite his claim, their pursuer hadn’t moved towards them. An idle threat, then. A trick designed to make them break cover.
‘Exactly.’ Liz spoke too loud, and Karl watched the tunnel carefully, fearing that the man was going to come running at them.