Down they went, deeper
and deeper into the valley, as if they were descending into an abyss. The
silence of the woods hammered against Harlan’s ears. He winced at every twig
that snapped or dry leaf that crunched beneath his feet. The Prophet stopped.
Harlan hid behind a tree, heart loud as a drum in his chest, certain he’d been
made. The Prophet swung his torch from side to side as if searching for
something, then started walking again. Down, down, deeper, deeper and still
deeper he unknowingly led Harlan. Harlan lost all track of time and distance in
the cloying darkness. Despite his fear of being heard, he drew ever closer to
the Prophet. If he lost him here, he knew chances were he’d never find him
again or his way out of the woods. Suddenly, the light disappeared. Harlan felt
a rush of something like vertigo as the world seemed to dissolve around him.
Hands outstretched, groping blindly, he took several steps and stumbled to his
knees. He crawled through the undergrowth, and after maybe a minute, found
himself at the edge of a grassy, bowl-like depression. The Prophet was stood at
the bottom of the depression, digging up sods of turf and pilling them neatly
to one side.
He’s digging a grave
for Ethan
, was Harlan’s first thought. But he quickly
questioned it. The depression was open to the night sky. Why dig a grave
somewhere visible from above when you could just as easily do it under cover of
the trees? There was little chance of a helicopter passing overhead. Still, it
was an unnecessary risk. Another possibility occurred to him as the Prophet’s
spade clanged against something metallic –
maybe he’s digging something up
.
But what
?
More photos
?
A corpse
? For the same reason,
neither possibility struck him as likely.
The Prophet cleared
away a square of turf about three feet by three feet, exposing a rusty sheet of
metal secured with a chain and padlock. A length of plastic pipe slightly
longer than the depth of the turf protruded from the centre of the sheet.
What the hell’s that for
? wondered Harlan. His heat began to thump wildly
against his ribs as the answer came to him –
it’s an air-pipe
.
The
metal sheet’s
a trapdoor
.
This is where he keeps them
.
This is where the fucker keeps his victims
. The Prophet unlocked the
padlock, and bracing his legs, lifted the inch-thick sheet. It fell back on its
hinges with a dull thud. He retrieved his torch and shone it down into a round
hole about as wide as his shoulders. Gripping the torch between his teeth, he
lowered himself into the hole.
Harlan waited a few
seconds, before squirming down the bank to the edge of the hole, which radiated
a faint yellowish light. The hole went straight down for about six feet, then
turned at a right angle. A string of fairy lights hooked up to a battery
illuminated a sandy-floored narrow tunnel whose regular angled rock walls bore
the marks of pickaxes. This was obviously an entrance to some kind of disused
mine or cave system that’d caused the ground to subside. The hole smelt of
musty earth with a faint, underlying coppery scent that impelled Harlan to
climb into it. The tunnel descended gently, curving to the left. Taking out his
knife, stooping to avoid hitting his head, Harlan hurried forward. He was less
concerned about being heard now than he was by what the object of his pursuit
might be doing. The Prophet had already gotten rid of anything incriminating at
the caravan. More than likely he was going to do the same down here too.
As Harlan advanced, the
underlying smell grew heavier, thicker. It was a smell he knew only too well,
one that always made his throat tight. The tunnel flared suddenly into a cave
whose outermost fringes were shrouded in darkness. He stood motionless, ears
straining. Not a sound.
The cave was natural.
It had jagged walls. Gnarled roots poked through its ceiling. The fragments of
rock they’d dislodged were scattered over the uneven floor.
Oh Christ
,
please
don’t let it be Ethan
, thought Harlan, as the smell drew him towards the
far side of the cave, where the darkness was as impenetrable as the walls.
Stomach like a clenched fist, he switched on his torch. Its beam illuminated a
dirty tarp wrapped like a chrysalis around something. Kneeling, he peeled away
the tarp and saw what he’d known he would – a corpse. A tiny breath of relief
escaped him. It wasn’t Ethan. The corpse was months, perhaps even years old. It
was rotted down almost to a skeleton. Parchment-like shreds of skin encased its
bones. Its stomach and eye sockets were hollow. Its mouth hung open in a
grotesque parody of a smile. Wisps of boyishly short blonde hair still clung to
its skull. From its size, Harlan estimated the body to be that of a child of
between seven and ten years old. He wondered why it hadn’t been buried. He
could think of only one reason: the Prophet kept it here as a kind of trophy.
He’d read case-studies of killers who kept parts or even the whole of their
victims’ bodies, using them to re-live their crimes over and over again. But
he’d never encountered it himself.
Harlan’s face creased
up so that his features seemed to turn in on themselves, leaving only his blazing
eyes staring out. Even in death, the child hadn’t been allowed to rest. The
same feeling that’d rushed over him as he tortured Jones swelled inside him
again. The same only much, much stronger. He didn’t resist it. He allowed it to
pick him up and carry him back to the fairy lights, which ended at a tunnel
opening braced with timbers. Ducking into it, he hurried onward. As the tunnel
wound deeper into the earth, its ceiling lowered until he was stooped almost
double. He came to a split in the tunnel. One branch angled rightwards and
down. The other turned to the left, climbing gently. He paused, trying to
decide which way to go. After a moment, he moved to the right, urged on by an
inner voice that said,
keep going deeper, deeper
!
The air got thicker and
harder to breathe. Sweat stung Harlan’s eyes. After several minutes, he heard
something that caused him to pause. The sound came again. It was a faint clink,
like a chain rattling. He switched off his torch and felt his way forward. His
nostrils flared at a foul smell. Not a smell of death, but a smell of life
festering in its own filth. The walls closed in to a gap just wide enough for
him to turn sideways and squeeze through. After a short distance, they widened
again and the pale electric glow of more fairy lights shimmered up ahead.
Barely daring to breathe, he advanced to the edge of a roughly circular cave
about fifteen feet in diameter.
The cave’s floor was
littered with empty soup and soft-drink cans, water bottles, crisp packets and
chocolate bar wrappers. In one corner stood a metal bucket brimful with human
waste. In the opposite corner was a mouldering mattress with a young boy sat on
it, knees drawn up against his chin, arms wrapped around the blades of his
shins. The boy’s legs and feet were bare. A chain led from a medieval-looking
shackle on one of his ankles to a hoop bolted to the wall. A ragged blanket was
wrapped around his narrow shoulders. His grimy, pinch-cheeked face, lank hair
and the fear flowing from his trapped eyes gave him the look of some small,
helpless animal. Harlan recognised him instantly, even though he no longer
looked much like his picture in the newspaper. The boy was Jamie Sutton. The
Prophet was sat on a deckchair in the centre of the cave, facing Jamie, his back
to Harlan. His hands were clasped at his chin as if in prayer.
Harlan padded towards
the Prophet. He raised a finger to his lips as Jamie’s eyes flicked at him. Ten
feet. His heart hammered so loudly he was certain the Prophet must hear it.
Five feet. A bead of sweat dripped from his chin and exploded on the floor.
Gasping, the Prophet started to stand and turn. With the speed of a striking
snake, Harlan sprang at him, wrapping an arm around his throat. With his other
arm, he locked in the choke-hold. The Prophet rammed his head back against
Harlan’s face, bringing a stream of blood from his nose. Tucking his head down,
Harlan cranked his arm tighter against the Prophet’s Adam’s apple. His breath
grating like sandpaper in his lungs, the Prophet staggered around, flinging
ineffective elbows at Harlan. Finally, his arms dropped to his sides and his
legs began to buckle. In a last-ditch attempt to dislodge Harlan, he flung
himself backward. As Harlan slammed into the sandy floor, pain crackled up his
spine and all his breath was driven from him. But still he clung on grimly,
wrapping his legs around the Prophet’s midriff to prevent him from twisting
free. The Prophet rolled onto his front, and exerting what strength remained in
his powerful, thickset body, managed to rise to his hands and knees. Arms
burning, Harlan squeezed and squeezed. Suddenly unconsciousness stole the
Prophet’s resistance away. He collapsed. But Harlan continued to squeeze,
driven on by the force of what was inside. It was only Ethan’s face flashing
through his mind that stopped him from crushing the Prophet’s windpipe.
Breathing heavily,
Harlan released his grip. The Prophet’s face was colourless, except for a
bluish tinge to his lips. Harlan felt for a pulse and found one. He quickly
turned his attention to the boy. As he reached for the shackle, Jamie flinched
away from him. “It’s okay, Jamie,” Harlan reassured him. “I’m here to help
you.” Jamie stiffened, trembling slightly, but remained motionless as Harlan
examined the clasp. There were brownish-red, infected-looking sores where it
had rubbed the skin off the boy’s ankle. It was secured with a padlock.
“Where’s the key?”
Jamie pointed to the
Prophet. Harlan stooped over him to search his pockets and found a bundle of
keys in the first one he put his hand into. He tried them on the padlock until
he found one that fitted. Jamie grimaced as Harlan removed the clasp. The
instant he was free, he scuttled naked to a pile of dusty clothes in a corner
and began pulling them on. His body was mottled with bruises, streaked with
scratches, and crusted with excrement. His ribs and backbone were prominent
from starvation, like a concentration camp victim.
Rage pushed up inside Harlan,
almost choking him. He grabbed the Prophet’s wrists and dragged him to the
mattress. The shackle didn’t fit around the Prophet’s meaty ankle, but Harlan
squeezed until the metal clasp bit deep enough into his flesh that he could
click the padlock shut. The Prophet stirred and groaned, but didn’t open his
eyes.
Harlan turned to Jamie,
who was crouched now by the cave’s entrance, tense as a rabbit near a wolf.
Gently taking hold of the boy’s wrist, he guided him into the tunnel out of
sight of the Prophet. “Listen, Jamie, before we can leave this place I need to
ask you something. Have you seen anyone else down here other than that man in
there and me?”
Jamie shook his head.
“Are you sure? This is
very important. There may be another boy like you here somewhere.”
Jamie nodded. He pulled
at Harlan’s arm, urging him onward. Harlan shook his head, prising Jamie’s
hands away. He jerked his chin at the cave. “I need you to wait here while I
talk to him.”
Eyes like full moons,
Jamie shook his head again more vehemently. His lips quivered, but no words
came. He seemed to have been struck mute by the trauma of his experiences.
Harlan gave him a
steady, reassuring look. “Don’t worry. You’re safe now. I’m not going to let
anything happen to you, I promise. Do you believe me?”
Jamie didn’t nod – his
trust in adults had been destroyed too completely for that – but he stopped
shaking his head.
Harlan handed Jamie his
torch, then returned to the cave. The Prophet’s colour had improved, but he
still hadn’t regained consciousness. Taking out his knife, Harlan crouched to
slap him. “Wake up!” The Prophet’s eyelids flickered. Harlan hit him again hard
enough to split his lip. As the Prophet’s eyes popped wide, Harlan pressed the
knife against his throat. “Where’s Ethan Reed?”
“Wha…Who?” the Prophet
said, groggily.
“Don’t give me that.
You know who the fuck I’m talking–” Harlan broke off as, out of the side of his
eye, he glimpsed the Prophet pulling something out of his jacket pocket –
something that caught the light with a glimmer. He moved his arm to block the
Prophet’s thrust, but he wasn’t fast enough. He felt the knife blade grind
against his hipbone as it went in. There was an intense sensation of pressure,
more like he’d been hit with a hammer than stabbed. He slashed at the Prophet’s
hand, opening a bone-deep gash across the back of it. The Prophet jerked the
blade free and made another thrust. It bit nothing more substantial than air,
as Harlan flung himself sideways. Scrambling upright, the Prophet lurched after
Harlan, but the chain whipped his foot from under him. Nostrils flaring like an
enraged bull, he sprang back upright and stood at the full extent of the chain,
knife held ready to strike.
Harlan faced him, teeth
gritted, hand clutched to his side. He could feel blood seeping warmly through
his clothes. A dull throbbing ache was spreading outwards from the wound. He
looked at the Prophet’s knife. It had a tide-mark about halfway up its five or
six inch blade. Deep enough to have pierced internal organs.
Why the fuck
didn’t you search all his pockets
? he thought with bitter self-contempt.
How
could you make such a fucking rookie mistake
? The pain was fast
intensifying, growing hotter. Soon, experience told him, it would feel like
boiling fat was being pumped into the wound. He’d been stabbed once before back
when he was a uniformed copper, just a flesh wound, but the pain had quickly
become almost unbearable, making him shake uncontrollably. He knew he had to
move fast, try and make it back to his car before that stage of shock overtook
him. But his desperate desire to find out where Ethan was held him in place. He
glanced around for something he could use to knock the knife out of the
Prophet’s hand. His gaze fixed on the deckchair. Wincing, he picked it up.