There was certainly nowhere to hide. Nevertheless he waited, hands on his hips. “I don’t think so.”
Zeke turned round from another glance up and down the corridor, eyebrows on the rise. “Well, unless he’s planning to jump out of the loft to give us a Halloween scare—”
“There’s loft space?”
“I assume so. There’s a hatch in the bedroom, anyway.”
“Then we look.”
“Seriously?”
Gideon strode past him. He was annoyed with himself: he was a copper; he should have observed the hatch. He had absolutely no sense of his husband’s existence above him, though, not in the loft or the roiling grey-orange clouds or the glimmering star vaults beyond. The bedroom ceiling was low, but he’d still need a boost. “Give us a hand, Zeke.”
“So you can plant your size ten in it?”
“Coming from a record-breaking size fourteen, that’s rich.”
“Nonsense, Gideon. My feet, and all other parts of my anatomy, are in excellent proportion.”
Gideon’s jaw dropped a little. Mischievous Samhain spirits must have got into his brother tonight. “I’ll take your word for that,” he said, and carefully laid one boot into the double-handed stirrup grip Zeke was offering. “Right. Brace up—here I go.”
“Good Lord. It’s like lifting a tank.”
“Better than a tank and a half, which is why we’re doing it this way round. Save your breath for holding me still.” Gideon’s own parts were in proportion too, and included shoulders too broad for the hatch. It didn’t matter: he could see all he needed to with one sweep of the torch he carried from long-established policeman’s habit. The loft was bare, not even a pair of mouse eyes gleaming back at him to alleviate its dry deadness. “Nothing up here. Coming down.”
“Let’s head back to the last place where we were getting a signal and give him a call. Knowing Lee, he’ll have invited the film crew to the party, and they’ll be home by now, hip deep in the punch and mulled wine.”
But the truth was that Zeke didn’t know Lee. Had become a devoted brother-in-law to him, loved him with a generosity Gideon could never have predicted, but the bone-deep knowledge of him—heart, marrow, intermittently besieged soul—was Gideon’s alone. Only Gideon could read him, using the pores of his own skin, the follicles of his hair, the very soles of his great big copper’s feet... “Cellar space,” he said suddenly, stepping back from Zeke.
“I’m sorry?”
“Cellar space. If there’s a loft, why not a cellar?”
“It could have catacombs, for all we know. But I knew there was a loft because I’d seen the hatch. But there’s nowhere at all to hide a cellar entrance, let alone TV’s most popular psychic. Come on, Gid.”
There wasn’t a scrap of carpet in the house. There was only one large cupboard, a closet in the hall both Gideon and Zeke had checked twice. Like the walls, the floors were laid to concrete. Zeke was right, of course. It was time to go.
But the soles of Gideon’s feet were tingling. He drew a deep breath. He’d worked every day since midsummer to counteract the injuries he’d sustained in Falmouth, and had no regrets about his decision to steer clear of CID. He was only the village bobby of Dark, but his inspectors included him on teams and sent him to investigations beyond his official remit. His experience, running in tandem now with Lee’s gifts, made him a force to be reckoned with. He knew how to walk through a crime scene.
That was the one thing he hadn’t yet done. He’d entered the house as a casual, unobservant lover, a bit concerned that the place was in darkness, but still expecting to find Lee any second, packing up his kit and coming to meet him with a smiling, ferocious end-of-day hug. Ezekiel had done better than he had. Deliberately he set aside his growing fear. “Zeke, have we touched or disturbed anything since we came in?”
“Other than the loft hatch? No, I don’t think so. There’s nothing else in here to move.”
“Can you put all the overhead lights on for me, then? And once you’ve done that, stand clear?”
For a moment he thought Zeke would protest. Then his brow contracted. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”
“I’m sure there’s no need. But... yeah.”
“All right. Do what you need to do.”
Neon tube lights everywhere, as if someone had been determined to throw the ugliness of the house into the harshest possible relief. The glare made Gideon’s eyes ache, but it was what he needed, a dead blaze that allowed for no concealment. In the living room, Zeke was waiting, pressed obediently back against the wall. Gideon came to a halt just inside the door. “He was wearing the sweater Ma knitted for him for Halloween.”
“The day-glo orange one with the pumpkin head? She was thrilled that he was going to wear it on the show. Does he, er... does he love it as much as he told her he did?”
“Hates it, poor bugger. Brought him right out in a rash. I can see a couple of fibres from it on the floor.”
“Well, that’s normal, isn’t it? He must’ve been back and forth through here all day.”
“Yes, but...” Gideon scanned the room once more. Then he strode across to the far wall and crouched beside it. “It is not fucking normal,” he went on, voice tight, “for a fibre to be caught between the floor and the wall.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I. It’s set into the concrete.”
Chapter Five
Resplendent in her silver fur, the transformed author leapt into the tunnel in pursuit of Bill Prowse, whose body shape had no bearing on his character but did inevitably influence the unfolding of plot, since he wasn’t going to be able to outrun her for long. Deeper and deeper into the tunnels they ran, Prowse shrieking and sobbing, the monster—free at last in her beautiful new skin—majestically silent.
From a great distance, Lee wondered how she was managing to type with the combine-harvester claws. Then, if the lack of a typewriter hadn’t been holding her back, let alone the fact that she’d been dead for half a century, in some way murdered by bloody Bill Prowse... The A4 sheet in his hands ceased its clicking vibration and lay still.
Lee hadn’t noticed the tunnel. He wasn’t overly keen on them, just as Gideon had recently lost his casual enjoyment of werewolf movies. There’d been a few long hours, in the caverns beneath the Cheesewring rocks, when he’d thought he would never see daylight again. Of course, he hadn’t known Gideon then. Had met and fallen in love with him, but didn’t know him, not with the pores of his skin and the very follicles of his hair, which were stirring and making his scalp tingle now with the conviction of his lover’s presence. Gideon was near him, somewhere up above. He’d come to find him all that time ago. He would find him now.
Bill’s shrieks had stopped. Instead there came a single lonely cry, pitiful and afraid. There was no reason on earth why Lee should go to him. The man had brought nothing but misery into the lives of all those who’d known him.
“Oh, God, Tyack, help me! Please!”
He got up from his packing crate. He waited to see if Ruth Cadwallader might offer some instructions, but the page remained motionless. The hole in the opposite wall, nothing more than a shadow within shadows, gaped at him in silence. He folded the paper, slid it into the pocket of his jeans and set off.
The gifted young clairvoyant entered the tunnels and immediately became hopelessly lost. That was Lee’s assessment, not Ruth’s, although just now he felt anything but psychic. Not even all that bright. He had no idea how he’d done it. Even down in the Cheesewring caves with Joe Kemp’s gun to his head, he’d managed to keep his wits about him, to drop his silver chain for Gideon to find. Here, he’d taken one turn right and one turn left—or was it the other way round?—and lost his bearings completely.