Dead if You Don’t

66

Sunday 13 August

09.00–10.00

A burning pain in his neck startled Mungo, his eyes heavy and feeling desperate for sleep, and he cried out, but made only a muffled noise.

He heard the sound of waves.

Blinking, he stared around. Shivering with cold, his wrists and his neck hurting, badly. Trying to gather his thoughts. For a moment, he thought he was having a nightmare, but then realized he was awake.

Remembering now.

Help. Help. Help me.

He was shivering from the damp chill and his sodden jeans and shoes, and was perched, precariously, on the concrete ledge. The water had receded and he was no longer immersed from the waist down.

He felt exhausted. He desperately wanted to shift his position, but remembered the wire noose, and was scared to risk moving too much and hanging himself.

Shivering, he wished he had on something warmer than his thin hoodie.

Water was trickling beneath him.

He looked around, ahead, upwards. Above him was a domed brick ceiling. Like a tomb. A shaft of light came through a slit in the wall, reminding him of ones in medieval castles he had seen in Game of Thrones, where archers would stand and fire arrows through. He heard the roar of what sounded like the sea.

Aleksander. Where are you?

He tried to call out his friend’s name, but again his voice stayed trapped in his gullet. He could not open his lips.

What was his friend’s game? He felt totally bewildered. Had Aleksander double-crossed him in some way? Why? What—?

He was remembering the men in black, in balaclavas, entering the room in silence. One of them taping his mouth. The other restraining his hands behind him. The two of them carrying him out. Putting him in the boot of a car. The journey. Rolling around. The stink of petrol. He had lost track of time. Then they hauled him out. He could hear the sound of the sea. Breathed in fresh, salty air. He was carried a short distance. Into a partly submerged chamber or tunnel. Down steps. The dank smell of weed and rotting fish.

The smell in his nostrils now.

Looking around, he noticed slime covering the walls either side of him. And the ceiling. Tendrils of weed on the walls, all the way up almost to the roof. At high tide, this chamber would be completely flooded, he realized. He looked down at the ground below him, one moment covered in water, then just puddles remaining as it retreated. Saw a small, white, dead crab. Another roar of the sea and a small amount of water sluiced in, then retreated. The crab was moved a few inches.

Tide going out. Is good. When tide come back in, is not so good.

Panic-stricken, he wondered what the time was. Daylight. Was the tide going in or out? He tried turning his head to read the time on his watch, but the wire stopped him. He looked up at the ancient-looking brass hoop set into the ceiling above him, and the wire coming down from it, taut, to the noose round his neck. Behind him was the barnacle-encrusted cannon.

‘Gmmmh. Hlllpwwwwww!’ he shouted in frustration through the restraint over his mouth.

Aleksander, you bastard, just what are you bloody doing?

Thoughts strobed through his mind. Where was he? What was the time? Who had brought him here? Why? What was going on?

He heard another sluicing sound of water. Heard it running along the floor beneath him. Saw the little dead crab shoot past him and then get beached as the water retreated. The tide must still be going out. Please. Was it low tide now? His mind went into overdrive, thinking about the geography classes at school which never interested him. Tides. There had been a whole class on tides just recently. The pull of the moon. Spring tides, neap tides, the planets’ effect on the tides. New moons and full moons gave the most extreme tides — the highest and lowest.

The high-water mark was about three feet above him.

It had been a full moon last night.

Which meant the tide would be both at its lowest and highest.

He stared up again at the high-water mark, shaking in terror.

Then he heard the sound of a metal door opening and closing. Footsteps. Thank God! Aleksander finally coming back!

A sudden bright beam of light dazzled him. A camera torch.

The tape was torn from his mouth. But before he could speak a man in a balaclava pushed a water bottle between his lips. He drank greedily. It was jerked away and immediately replaced by a spoonful of muesli. He ate it, hungrily, then another, and another. Then drank more water.

But as he said, ‘Pleesh — shwat shi—?’ fresh gaffer tape was stretched across his mouth.

He yammered, desperate to get some response from the men. Pleading with his eyes. But there was nothing.

He heard the footsteps fading away. The sound of a metal door opening then closing.

Clang.

A brief silence.

Then the sound of a breaking wave.