Gone

60

Flea wasn’t hungry but she needed the fuel. She sat on the ledge in the hull, her legs in the sludge, and listlessly chewed the sandwich Prody had left her. She was shivering, her whole body convulsing. The meat in it was greasy and heavy-tasting, with tiny bits of cartilage and other gristle. She had to follow each mouthful with a gulp of water to wash it down her sore throat.

Prody was dead. No doubt in her mind. At first she’d watched the rope moving back and forward, leaving a scar in the moss and slime on the wall. That had gone on for fifteen minutes. It had stopped when he’d got to the top of the forty-foot shaft. ‘Going for a walk,’ he’d yelled down at her. His voice echoed and bounced around the tunnel. ‘No signal.’

Of course there’s not, she thought bitterly. Of course not. But she’d wet her lips and yelled, ‘OK. Good luck.’

And that had been that.

Something had happened to him on the surface. She knew what the top of the air shaft was like. Years ago, on the training exercise, she’d been there. She recalled woods, bridle-paths, grassy glades and yard after yard of impenetrable undergrowth. He’d have been tired. Would probably have sat down at the top of the shaft to recover after the climb. Easy pickings for Martha’s kidnapper. And now the day was on the wane. The great circle of daylight powering down from the shaft had moved slowly across the canal, throwing down the shadows of plants. It had thinned to an irregular sliver on the moss-covered wall, like a smiling mouth. All the shadows in the tunnel were starting to run into another so when she looked through the hole she couldn’t see the corners of the tunnel any more. Could hardly see Martha’s shoe.

Prody had reacted badly to the shoe. He’d been in Traffic, first on the scene to all the unimaginable accidents. He was supposed to be unflappable, but something about the shoe had shocked even him.

She lifted her arm and studied her hand. Her fingers were patched purple and white – one of the early symptoms of hypothermia. The body-racking shivering wouldn’t last. That would go as she sank nearer to death. She balled up the cellophane, pushed it inside the bottle. There was hardly any light left. If she was going to get out of here she had to do it now. She’d spent an hour sculling around the sludge and had already found an old acrow – an iron pit prop – lying in the sump hole. It was covered with slime but not too rusted and she’d lodged its top plate under the hatch. She’d found a sturdy six-inch nail that she could wedge into the acrow-winding mechanism and for the last two hours she had been laboriously tightening it, pushing the prop up into the hatch. She planned to dislodge the windlass. And then what? Crawl to the surface and be picked off like a First World War soldier going over the top? Better than dying from cold down here.

Hey? You know how to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.

she got to her feet, legs creaking and aching. Wearily she put the bottle into the net pocket of the rucksack, then reached for the nail to start winding the acrow. It was gone.

It had been on the ledge – right here next to her. She moved her hands frantically, skimming over the rivets and the slime. Half an hour it had taken to find that nail, feeling around in the muck at the bottom of the barge sump. She fumbled for the head torch in the rucksack, pulled it out and the nail came with it. Fell, plinkplink, on to the ledge.

She froze. Stared at the nail. It had been in the rucksack. But she’d left it on the ledge. She remembered making a careful decision to put it on there. Or did she really remember that? She put her hand to her head, momentarily dizzy. She did remember putting it on the ledge, she was sure. It meant her memory was slipping. Another symptom of hypothermia shutting her system down.

She picked up the nail in numb fingers. It wasn’t quite thick enough for the hole in the acrow and she pushed it easily into the mechanism. There were tender gullies in her palms where the nail had dug in earlier, even through the gloves, and now she lined it up with those channels, ignoring the pain, and leaned all her weight on the nail. It didn’t move. With a grunt she did it again. And again. It didn’t move. Fucking thing. She rammed at it again. Still nothing. And again.

‘Shit.’

She sat on the ledge. Sweat prickled under her arms in spite of the cold. The last time the nail had moved was more than an hour ago. And then it had been less than half a centimetre. A sign like that was telling her to give up.

But she had no other choice.

The right ankle cuff on her immersion suit felt wrong. She submerged her hand in the water and touched the ankle carefully. The cuff itself was OK but, above it, the neoprene bulged tight as if water was trapped in there. She used her hands to lift her leg out of the muck, rest it on the ledge. She strapped on the head lamp and she leaned over to study the suit. Above the ankle it ballooned out. When she moved her leg she could feel fluid sloshing around. Gingerly she slid a finger under the cuff and pulled it. Something like water gushed out. Warm. Red in the torch beam.

Fuck. She leaned her head against the bulkhead, took deep, slow breaths to stop the giddiness. The wound in her thigh had opened and that was one hell of a lot of blood to lose. If she’d seen someone else lose that much she’d be getting them to hospital. And fast.

This wasn’t good. Not good at all.