Gone

79

‘What did she say? What’s she talking about?’ Caffery had to yell to be heard above the noise of the second HEMS helicopter that was landing a hundred yards away in the clearing at the end of the track. ‘Did she say “spit”?’

The paramedic scrambled out of the hole as Wellard and two officers from the top team manhandled the stretcher out of the shaft. ‘She says she feels sick,’ he yelled. ‘Sick.’

‘Sick? Not spit?’

‘She’s been saying it since they pulled her up. Worried she’s going to be sick.’ He and Wellard got the stretcher on to an ambulance cot. The HEMS A and E consultant – a small, hardgrained man with dark hair and walnut skin – came forward to examine her. He lifted the portable monitor and checked it, pressed her fingernail between his thumb and forefinger, timing how long it took for the blood to flood back into the tissues. Flea groaned as he did it. Tried to shift on the spine board, reach her hand out. She looked like something that had been hauled out of a Cornwall surf accident, with her ripped blue immersion suit. Her face was clean except for the two blackened smudges under her nostrils where she’d breathed in the aftermath of the explosion. Her hair was thick with muck and leaves, her hands and fingernails caked with blood. Caffery didn’t try to get near her. Or put his hand near hers. He let the doctor do his thing.

‘You OK?’

Caffery glanced up. The doctor was busy helping the paramedic lock the stretcher to the cot. But his eyes were on Caffery as he worked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said you OK?’

‘Of course I am. Why?’

‘She’s going to be fine,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to worry.’

‘I’m not worried.’

‘Yeah.’ The doctor kicked up the brake on the cot. ‘Sure you’re not.’

Caffery watched them numbly as they trundled her away, down the slope, getting the stretcher on to the track that led back to the clearing where the first helicopter sat, its engines running, the rotors waiting to be engaged. The slow, solid heft of the knowledge came home – that she was going to be OK. ‘Thank you,’ he said, under his breath, to the backs of the paramedics and the consultant. ‘Thank you.’

He’d have liked to sit down now. To sit down and hold that feeling and do nothing more for the rest of the day. But he couldn’t stop. A squawk box in the grass near the hole was broadcasting the efforts of the rescue teams still in the tunnel. The helicopter air paramedic – who’d been given a caving helmet and a crash course in rope-access technique – had got into the tunnel, taken one look at the way Prody was skewered to the wall and ordered cutting equipment dropped down the shaft. No way could Prody be simply lifted off the wall – he’d bleed to death in seconds. He had to be cut down with the section of barge hull still embedded in his torso. For the last ten minutes the squawk box had been live with Prody’s agonized breathing and the rasp of the hydraulic shear going through the iron. Now the machinery had stopped and a disembodied voice said clearly above the noise Prody was making, ‘Prepare to haul.’

Caffery turned. The Rollgliss pulley system ground to life, the officer at the lip of the air shaft monitoring the spool-up of line. Wellard had already come out of the tunnel and was standing a few feet away, unhooking himself from the harness. Like a demon from hell with his grimy face. There was a line of blood on his face that might be from a scratch on his temple, or might have been someone else’s blood.

‘What’s going on?’ Caffery yelled.

‘They’re bringing him out now,’ he shouted back. ‘They’ve worked like bastards.’

‘The girls?’

He shook his head. Grim. ‘Nothing. We’ve searched every inch of the place. The barge and through into the next section of tunnel. It’s unstable as hell in there – can’t keep the team down there a minute longer than we have to.’

‘What about Prody? Is he speaking?’

‘No. Says he’s going to tell you when he comes out. Wants to tell you to your face.’

‘Well?’ Caffery yelled. ‘Do we believe him or is he stalling?’

‘I don’t know. How long’s a piece of string?’

Caffery sucked air through his teeth. Put his hands flat on his stomach to keep the rolling fear still. He looked at the lip of the shaft. At the complex pulley system laboriously cranking away. The lines from the tripod buffeted the shrubs that clung to the side of the shaft, cut gouges into the soft soil at the lip.

‘And haul,’ came the voice from the squawk box. ‘Haul.’

Fifty yards away through the trees Flea was being loaded on to the helicopter. The rotors were engaged, picking up speed and the forest was drowned with noise again. The team from the second helicopter was arriving at the edge of the shaft. Two male air paramedics and a woman who, if it hadn’t been for the word ‘doctor’ emblazoned across the back of her green flying suit, could have passed for a gone-to-seed pole-dancer. A short ugly pug of a woman with broken veins on her nose, a scowl and bleached-blonde hair. She carried herself like a centre forward, her solid shoulders set broad and square, her steps slightly wide, as if the muscles on her inner thighs stopped her bringing her feet together.

He came and stood next to her. Quite close. ‘Detective Inspector Caffery,’ he murmured, holding out his hand.

‘Really?’ She didn’t shake it or look at him. She put her hands on her hips and peered into the shaft, where the first of the access teams’ yellow helmets was visible, ascending from the gloom in fits and starts.

‘I want to talk to the casualty.’

‘You’ll be lucky. The moment he comes out of this hole we’re getting him into the paraffin parrot over there. His injuries aren’t going to let us give him any treatment in the field.’

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘Doesn’t matter who he is.’

‘Yes, it does matter. He knows where those two little girls are. He’s going to tell me before you get into the HEMS.’

‘If we waste any time we’re going to lose him. I’ll make you that guarantee.’

‘He’s still breathing.’

She nodded. ‘I can hear. He’s breathing fast. Tells me he’s lost so much blood we’re going to be lucky to get him to the hospital at all. The moment he breaks surface he’s in that ’copter.’

‘Then, I’m coming with you.’

She gave him a long look. Then a smile. Almost pitying. ‘Let’s see what sort of state he’s in when he comes to the surface, shall we?’ She lifted her face to the officers. ‘When he comes out it’s going to be everything on full alert, so this is the protocol. You,’ she pointed to two of the men, ‘at the top two corners of the stretcher, and the rest of you at the bottom. I’ll give you a warning, “prepare to lift”, then the order “lift”. We go straight to the ’copter. Get it?’

Everyone nodded and peered dubiously into the shaft. The squealing noise of the pulley system reached across the clearing. Caffery yelled at the CSI officer who’d videoed the last twenty minutes next to the air shaft. ‘Is that thing recording sound?’

The officer didn’t take his eyes off the monitor. He held up a thumb. Nodded.

‘You’re going to run with me to the helicopter. Get as close as you can – I want to hear every squeak he makes, every fart. Tread on these bastards’ toes if you have to.’

‘Treat us like professionals,’ yelled the doctor, ‘and you’ll get a lot further.’

Caffery ignored her. He took up position on the edge of the shaft. The ropes were creaking against the tripod. The sound of the heart monitor beeping, and Prody’s breathing, were getting louder. The first of the team appeared. Helped by a surface attendant, he scrambled on to the lip of the hole and the two of them turned to help haul the stretcher up. Caffery’s palms broke into a sweat. He wiped them on the front of the body armour.

‘And haul.’

The stretcher came halfway out, pausing at an angle on the lip. ‘He’s tachycardic.’ The accompanying paramedic scrambled out, covered with blood and dirt, holding aloft a drip bag. He was streaming out information to the doctor as he got to his feet. ‘Hundred and twenty a minute, respiratory rate is twenty-eight to thirty and the pulse oximeter readings dropped straight out during the ascent – about four minutes ago. No pain relief – not in the state he’s in – but I’ve put up five hundred mils of crystalloids.’

The top team took up the last of the slack and, with one more jerk, the rest of the stretcher was delivered to the hard, cold ground, dislodging a few rocks that bounced and rattled into the echoey dark below. Prody’s eyes were closed. His bluish, cyanosed face, sandwiched between the tongues of a neck splint, like a boxer’s face guard bulging the flesh on either side of his nose, was expressionless. He was smothered with filth and dried blood. The nylon jogging jacket he’d been wearing had caught fire in the explosion and melted, curling long sections of crisped skin away from his neck and hands. Under the aluminium blanket the stretcher was soaked a dark wet red.

The team got into position at each corner, squatting, ready to lift. As they did Prody began to tremble.

‘Wait. He’s fitting.’ The doctor dropped to a crouch next to the stretcher and studied the portable monitor. ‘We’re losing that heart rate . . .’

‘What?’ said Caffery. ‘What’s happening?’ Under the fake tan the doctor’s face was hard and concentrated. Caffery’s mouth was dry. ‘He was fine a second ago. What happened?’

‘He was never fine,’ the doctor yelled. ‘I told you that. He’s forty-five beats a minute, forty, yes, he’s lost it – he’s gone straight to bradycardia now, and before you know it he’ll—’

The monitor emitted a long, continuous tone.

‘Shit. Cardiac arrest. Chest compressions, someone. I’m going to intubate.’

A paramedic leaned over and began compressions. Caffery inched himself between the two paramedics and got to his knees on the blood-soaked grass. ‘Paul,’ he yelled. ‘You piece of shit. Paul? You’d better fucking speak to me, that’s all. You’d better fucking speak to me.’

‘Out of my way.’ The doctor had sweat on her face as she slid the laryngeal mask into Prody’s slack mouth, fitted the bag valve to it. ‘I said, out of my way. Let me do my job.’

Caffery dropped back on to his heels, pressed his finger and thumb either side of his forehead, squeezed his temples and took long, deep breaths. Fuck fuck fuck. He was going to be beaten. Not by the bitch of a doctor, but by Prody himself. The bastard. The clever bastard couldn’t have worked it any better.

The doctor kept squeezing the bag, the paramedic continued the compressions, counting aloud. The line on the monitor stayed steady, the tone echoing around the trees. In the clearing no one moved. Every officer in the place had been turned to stone and was watching, appalled, as the paramedic kept pumping.

‘No.’ After less than a minute she stopped squeezing the bag and let it rest on Prody’s chest. She put her hand on the paramedic’s arm to stop him doing the compressions. ‘He’s in asystole – flatline. His capillary refill’s not happening. Really, this is futile. Are we in agreement we stop?’

‘You’re kidding me.’ Caffery couldn’t keep still. ‘You’re just going to let him die?’

‘He’s dead already. He’s never going to make it. He’s lost too much blood.’

‘I don’t fucking believe I’m hearing this. Do something. De-fucking-fibrillate him or something.’

‘No point. There’s no blood left in him. He’s shut down. We can stimulate his heart until the cows come home, but if there’s no blood to pump . . .’

‘I said fucking do something.’

She gave him a long, steady look. Then she shrugged. ‘All right.’ With a tight, irritated expression, she unzipped her green emergency rucksack and pulled out a set of boxes, shook two foil wrappers out of them. ‘Let me show you how futile this is. Adrenalin, one mil to ten thousand. This would jump-start the Titanic.’ She opened the first wrapper with her teeth and took out a preloaded syringe, which she handed to the paramedic. ‘Follow it with this one – three milligrams atropine and run it through with twenty-five-mil saline.’

The paramedic opened the drugs port on the Venflon and pushed in the drugs, flushed it through to make sure it got to the heart. Caffery stared at the monitor. The flatline didn’t move. Across the stretcher the doctor wasn’t looking at the monitor, she was watching him with steady eyes. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s the defibrillator. Do you want me to turn it on, make him jump up and down like a puppet? Or are you satisfied I know what I’m talking about?’

Caffery dropped his hands and sat helplessly in the grass, staring at Prody’s slack, yellowing body, the waxy mask of death creeping silently across his face. The steady straight heart-rate line on the monitor. The doctor was checking her watch for time of death and, seeing her do it, Caffery jerked to his feet, turning his back on her as quickly as he could. He put his hands into his pockets and walked twenty yards away, through the crunching frozen grass. He stood at the edge of the clearing, where a pile of felled silver birch blocked the path. He tilted up his chin, tried to concentrate on the sky beyond the branches. On the clouds.

He wished and prayed for something natural and calm to come and lie cool against his thoughts. He could feel Rose and Janice watching all this from the trees. He’d known they were there for the last half an hour, had long felt their eyes boring into the side of his head, but he hadn’t acknowledged them or moved them on. They were waiting for him to take the futile, scattered set of facts out of the clearing and bring them down to a calm, measured plan of action. And how the hell was he going to do that now that the only person who could give them a clue about where Martha and Emily were was lying dead on a stretcher in the grass?