Page 59

FIFTY-EIGHT

‘It’s a dead end.’ Literally it was, what with Eric Hathaway leaning forward, kneeling on the floor, a rope around his neck that had been tied to a rail on the wall.

She turned away, not wanting to see his protruding tongue or the blood-specked whites of his eyes. The smell was getting stronger.

Not that he was alive, but instinctively she reached for his neck to see if she could find a pulse. He was still warm, but Eric was dead.

As much as she hated the smell, her need to breathe overruled her reluctance to take another breath. It wasn’t coming from Eric.

She scrunched her brows.

Gina bit her bottom lip and focused her attention on the four walls surrounding the body.

There was no sign of Luna or Ruth, and no clues as to where they might be, but the scent of death told Gina that there was a body close by.

She clenched her fists and roared in frustration. Jacob began pushing the walls, as if he might happen upon some secret passageway. ‘There has to be something else in this box room.’

She agreed. The walls were thick. The thought of a screaming victim not being heard sent a shiver through her.

Gina spotted Eric’s phone on the floor, cradled in the back of his bent knee. She scrunched her nose as she leaned over to retrieve it.

It wasn’t password protected.

His screen lit up, showing the last thing he was looking at. It was a CCTV screen showing a kitchen under a wash of red light. The tap gently dripped into the tiny round sink.

Gina flicked to the next camera, its room in darkness. She spotted the time on the screen. Seconds were passing. It was a live feed. A red light flashed, momentarily lighting up the curved walls of the tiny room.

Jacob leaned over her shoulder. ‘Did you catch that?’

‘Barely.’ The red light flickered on again, this time it was for a little while longer. ‘It’s Ruth and there’s someone else on the floor.’

An oxygen tank and mask had been strewn next to a small bed. The table with the chessboard filled the left-hand side of the room. The girl with the birthmark under her eye lay with her head on Ruth’s chest and Ruth cradled her, but neither of them moved.

‘Guv,’ O’Connor shouted from the entrance. ‘We’ve just found something in a room in the main building. What looks like a cupboard door leads to a small room. It looks like some sort of control room and it’s called the bunker. There’s an intercom system, CCTV, controls for heating, air ventilation system and lighting. The screens are showing Ruth and the girl being held somewhere, and they’re not moving.’

Gina glanced back. ‘Do you know where they are?’

O’Connor came through and looked away from the body. ‘No, guv. It just shows these rooms, like they’re in a divided-up bunker of some description, but we can’t tell where they are.’ He paused. ‘One of the monitors is coming up red. The ventilation system isn’t working and it’s showing low oxygen levels.’

Gina showed O’Connor the screen on Eric’s phone. ‘We’ve seen. Is there anything you can do to restore the oxygen levels? Can Garth help?’

‘He’s trying as we speak. It’s as if the systems have some sort of virus, but the team are working on it now.’

‘Tell them to keep going.’

She looked at the four walls again. ‘They’re in a bunker.’

She jumped up and down on the floor and heard the creak. She peered down at the plain sheet of linoleum they were standing on and quickly stepped aside. Jacob nudged Eric’s body aside as he grabbed the other end and, between them, they managed to remove the flooring, passing it to the PCs and O’Connor, who were still in the doorway.

‘It’s a handle,’ Gina said.

The handle to the hatch was flush with the floor, so it didn’t stick out. Just as Gina reached down and lifted it from the recess, she heard a whirring sound.

‘Sounds like the ventilation system has been restored. We need paramedics here, now , with oxygen, and someone from the fire department with hoists.’

She recoiled at the sight of the body below.

Jacob gasped. ‘That’s Gary Pritchard.’

The man’s body lay at the bottom of the metal steps, blood pooled around his chest area, his body contorted after what Gina thought might have been a rough landing. A bloodied knife lay on the floor next to him.

Jacob shone his torch into the room. Gina popped Eric’s phone into her pocket as she climbed down, careful to not step on Gary’s body as she reached the concrete floor.

That’s where the horrendous smell had been coming from.

Gagging as she breathed in the thin air, she grabbed a face mask from her pocket and popped it on, not that it was going to be much help. She heaved a couple more times before finding her composure.

‘There’s a door here,’ she yelled up. The ventilation system rumbled. ‘Ruth,’ she called out, in the hope that Ruth had just been slipping in and out of consciousness, but there was no answer.

Jacob jumped down beside her and pulled his coat over his nose. ‘Jeez,’ he said as he sidestepped the body.

Gina went to grab the door, but it was locked. She pulled out Eric’s phone again and went back to the CCTV images. A wash of light-headedness came over her, but with the systems back up and running, the room would soon be filled with precious oxygen.

Jacob began banging on the door. ‘Ruth,’ he called, but the woman on the screen didn’t move.

‘We have to get in there.’ The human body could only last so long without oxygen – only a matter of a few minutes at most. She began to flick through everything Eric had been using on his phone, and she spotted an app with a door logo.

She pressed it and hit the ‘unlock bunker’ button. A clunking sound of the door unlocking filled the tiny space. ‘We’re in.’

She swallowed as she pushed the door open.

They’d already found two dead bodies. Were they about to find another two?