Intrusion

22. The Light at the End of the Tunnel

‘It’s a game,’ Hugh said. ‘The police are practising finding people on the moor. And here’s how we can help them. We’ll hide, and make it more interesting.’

‘Where can we hide?’ Nick asked.

‘Right here,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ll show you.’

He sat down on the edge, then pushed himself off, landing with a lurch. He turned and lifted Nick down, then caught Hope under the shoulders as she slithered over the bank. To the pursuers they must have simply disappeared into the ground. Even the drone was, at that moment, below their skyline. Hugh looked quickly to left and right. The dark rectangular opening was still there.

‘Let’s hide in here.’

Hope and Nick followed him as he ducked into the culvert’s entrance. Nick hung back, just inside.

‘Don’t like it,’ he said. ‘Dark.’

‘It’s all right,’ Hugh said. ‘I came here when I was a boy, and it’s all right. There’s something really exciting inside. Have you got your torch?’

Nick reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a yellow plastic torch and switched it on. Hugh turned away, blinking at the after-image, and switched on his own torch. Hope’s beam joined it, wavering around the floor and walls.

The floor was damp, and the smells were stronger than he remembered. Old concrete, mould, rotted vegetation, droppings that had dried and then got wet again. He had to bend almost double to walk forward. He looked behind, at Hope and Nick huddled together. Hope looked excited, surprised, Nick a little scared.

‘I’ll go in front,’ he said. ‘Nick behind me, OK?’

‘Yes,’ said Hope, easing Nick forward.

They’d taken only a step or two when the drone’s buzz came out of nowhere behind them, loud in the tunnel, a waft of air disturbing the floor litter. Hugh could imagine the drone banking to angle its camera, skimming the lip of the gully, and the cops running. He hastened forward, torch beam probing ahead. The downward slope and rightward curve were just as he recalled, his progress more uncomfortable with his adult height, but quicker.

He saw the light ahead, and stopped, switching off his torch. Nick bumped against the back of his legs.

‘Do you see it?’ Hugh said, looking back. ‘The light.’

‘Yes,’ said Nick.

Hope was peering forward, over Nick’s head, and had just opened her mouth to say something when a much brighter light shone behind her. An amplified voice boomed down the tunnel, echoing against the sides, distorted but plain enough:

‘Armed police! Come out at once! Throw out your weapon!’

‘What bloody weapon?’ said Hope.

Hugh gave her a feral grin, and slapped his jacket pocket.

‘Oh God,’ said Hope. ‘What use is that?’

‘It’s not for them,’ Hugh said. ‘Come on!’

And with that he lowered his head and shoulders and almost ran, knees partly bent, in an ape-like shamble. The light ahead became brighter than the light behind. He felt the fresh air on his face again. He guessed Hope felt it too; he heard her gasp.

Another shout echoed down the tunnel.

Hugh ignored it. The light was now plainly a rectangular opening a few metres ahead.

‘Hugh,’ Hope said, ‘they’re coming after us!’

He looked backward. Were those shadows, moving, on the sides of the tunnel, not far behind?

‘Nearly there!’ he said.

He flashed an encouraging grin at Nick. The boy didn’t look back at him. His gaze was fixed on the light ahead. Behind Nick, Hope was stumbling along, in the same half-crouch, torch swaying in front of her, head down. Hugh couldn’t see her face.

He looked ahead and found himself a step or two from the door in the hill. He reached back, catching Nick’s hand, and drew forward, squeezing to one side so that Nick could press in alongside him and look too. Side by side they took the final few steps, and gazed out.

Hugh saw the same landscape as he’d seen before, but this time in summer, the steep hillside covered not with snow but with heather and gorse and patches of grass speckled with daisies and buttercups. Woodsmoke drifted above the small houses and huts in the middle distance, and some way beyond them, the sea-loch shone blue.

For a moment, woodsmoke apart, it could have been static scenery. Then the bat-like shape of a hang-glider rushed into the view, as if it had just been launched from a little farther uphill on the slope behind and above their heads. Hugh saw the pilot’s legs swing to the side as the glider banked and passed out of view.

‘Wow!’ said Nick. ‘It’s real!’ He shaded his eyes, leaning forward, peering out.

Hope had come to a halt right behind. She reached forward and gripped Nick’s shoulders.

‘Hugh!’ she groaned. ‘Please! Don’t do this to us!’

Her voice didn’t echo. The heavy footsteps not far behind her did. Over his shoulder, over her shoulder, Hugh saw the swaying lights, the shadowed figures moving slowly forward. As he looked back, they came to a halt. They might have been twenty metres away.

‘Don’t do what?’ Hugh asked.

‘Don’t wade into that pool.’

‘Pool? There’s no pool.’ He turned back to the light, waving a hand at the opening. ‘It’s – it’s what I told you I saw long ago. It’s open! We can go through!’

‘There’s nothing there, Hugh.’ She was still clutching Nick’s shoulders, but she looked as if she wanted to grab Hugh’s and shake him. ‘It’s just water, and the torchlight shining off it. It’s deep, it must be, the slope goes sharp down and the roof comes down to the top of the water. You’ll drown, and you’ll drown Nick.’

‘No, Mummy!’ Nick cried. ‘It’s real! It’s not a picture! It’s a nice place! Why can’t you see it?’

‘I can’t see it because it’s not real,’ Hope said, to Hugh rather than to Nick.

Hugh looked from her beseeching, angry, tearful face to the hills and the blue sky outside. He felt dismayed and defeated.

From behind him a voice boomed:

‘Throw down your weapon! Raise your hands and turn around!’

‘Oh, fuck this!’ Hugh snarled. He reached into his pocket, pushing his hand down hard in the squeeze between him and Nick, and pulled out the air pistol. He passed it to his other hand and groped for the ammo box. It might have seemed to Hope he was trying to turn around, to bring the futile weapon to bear.

‘No!’ Hope cried. ‘Hugh, no!’

She let go of one of Nick’s shoulders and lunged to grab Hugh’s wrist. He evaded her, and threw pistol and carton as far away as he could in front of him. He thought he heard a clink as the pistol hit the ground outside; a skitter of metal on rock. Then he lifted both hands above his head, stepped forward and turned around, blocking Nick between him and Hope. The light from the torches shone straight in his face. He couldn’t see who was holding them.

‘It’s all right!’ he shouted. ‘We’re not armed! We’re coming out!’

‘Stay where you are! Throw your bags and torches forward!’

‘It’s my torch,’ Nick protested, as Hope took it from him.

‘It’s all right,’ Hope whispered. ‘We’ll get them back.’

She slipped the small rucksack from Nick’s shoulders, and unslung her own.

‘We’re doing that now,’ she called out, and tossed the bags forward, then the torches, still shining. Some kind of pole or probe waved above the bags, poked them, then withdrew.

‘Walk forward slowly with your hands in front of you and away from your sides.’

Then:

‘The child first.’

‘No, Mummy.’

‘He’s afraid,’ Hope shouted back.

‘All right,’ the voice boomed.

They walked forward, Nick upright and straight with his hands up, as if playing soldiers; Hugh and Hope knock-kneed, bowed, arms outspread as wide as the cramped space would permit. In front of them, the shadowed figures and the lights backed away. Hugh took a last look over his shoulder. The light was still there, the door to the bright land.

He turned his head away from it and walked forward, into the different light, the light at the far end of the tunnel.