Poppet

Crash and Burn

FLEA CAN’T AFFORD to ignore any of the safety stops. Especially diving alone and deeper than she’s qualified. She climbs the chimney, monitoring herself rigidly. It’s been such a long ascent a lot of the nitrogen has seeped out of her muscles and joints. This, the last decompression stop, is only five metres below the surface, but it’s the most important of all. She wedges herself in the tube and wills the minutes away, impatient to be moving again. After a hundred breaths – each one counted with the concentration of a Zen master – she opens her eyes and clicks on her torch.

Above her the chimney widens. A faint hiss as her jacket inflates, and she begins to rise. One hand is raised, as it always is on an ascent, to protect her from unseen obstacles above, the other is on her regulator, held at an angle so she can see her wrist computer clicking off the last few metres. Her cylinders scrape briefly against the rock wall. Two more metres, then the chimney opens and she bobs like a cork to the surface of the water.

It’s a massive cave, twelve metres high; part of the complex of Roman lead mines.

She lifts her dive torch up out of the hole and plonks it on the cave floor. She’s tested the air before and knows it is safe to breathe, so she pulls off her mask and rests, arms on the edge, head on her hands, breathing hard. She’s done it. No problems with her ear – she puts a finger in there and wriggles it. Mr Doctor, I can tell you before I even see you – the ears are perfect. Epic, in fact. Good to nearly sixty-five metres – beat that!

When the strength returns to her arms she boosts herself out of the hole, her chest and legs screaming after the long minutes braced against the shaft of the chimney. Quickly she strips off her weight belt and cylinders, picks up the torch. It has been battered in the ascent, but it’s still working. She shines the beam around the cavern. The black walls glitter like anthracite: lead ore and galena, mined from the Mendip Hills since the first millennium. The one person who knew about this place has long gone – it’s as silent and undisturbed as it was the last time she was here.

She bends to take off her fins.

A high squeak comes from behind her; she snatches up the torch and pivots, sweeping the beam over the northern wall of the cave, sees twin circular reflections. A rat. It sits back on its haunches, contemplating her, then turns and ambles away – flowing off into the darkness. An answering squeak and patter of paws. Impossible in the echo-chamber of the cave to say which direction they’re coming from, but from the different pitch and tone she’s sure the place is teeming with them. There are boreholes the rats can come through – they’ve been here since she can remember. Their presence means nothing at all. Nothing has changed.

Jamming the dive torch under one arm, she rips off her second fin and in her thin dive boots picks her way deeper into the cave, the torch out in front of her. Glinting dully in the beam of light, she finds a long narrow ridge of blackish stones, like a keloid scar. You wouldn’t notice this unless you knew exactly what you were looking for – unless you were combing the place from top to bottom. Under this unremarkable scatter of stones are Misty’s remains. Flea crouches and digs with her hands until she finds the edge of the dirty plastic sheeting. Her heart gives a little relieved skip to find it’s exactly as she left it.

The plastic is dirty. She pulls it away and shines the torch on what is inside. In life Misty Kitson was a well-fleshed, well-tanned and highlighted young woman. A beauty, according to some newspapers. Body of the year, according to Nuts magazine. Time, though, has boiled her down. It’s stripped her of skin and features and fat and muscle. Her golden hair is now a few scraps pasted to a crackling yellowing skull. Her bones have accordioned in on themselves. Her shin bone lies on the right of her skull and her ribcage has toe bones resting on it. Amazing that a full-grown woman could be parcelled up so small – just a tiny package. A human.

Flea examines the plastic. It’s been gnawed in places where rats have got in. Caffery obviously hasn’t thought this part of it through. Misty’s bones are going to have a completely different forensic signature after being left here, wrapped in plastic, than if her body had decayed out in the woods. He’s overlooked the artefacts left by animals on the body. Animals can change a human corpse into something utterly unrecognizable – it doesn’t take long.

She turns the torch in the direction of the chimney – then back to the remains, measuring the distance. She could parcel this up, make it watertight, and take Misty to the surface. Open a box that doesn’t need to be opened. She could, but she’s not going to. It’s OK. No one is going to come here – no one is going to find this. She can keep on flying.

She refolds the plastic and begins to pile the stones on top.

I am so sorry, Misty. Sorry for you, and sorry for your mum. I know what it is to lose someone and have nothing to put in a grave, but for now I can’t. It’s not my time to crash and burn.

Not now. Maybe never.