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“I have a friend…”
“Apart from me, you mean?” said Gardener, smiling.
“I never actually included you.”
The senior officer appreciated the working relationship that he and Reilly had. No matter how serious the situation there was always banter between them. It helped.
Gardener glanced at the phone and then his partner. He summarised what had happened before saying, “Someone’s controlling us, Sean. He wants us here for a reason.”
“Backs up the fact that what Gary saw on the monitor was real.”
“I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.”
“I have a friend,” said Reilly, continuing with his earlier statement. “Very good at crosswords, and I remember him telling me how to interpret the clues.” Reilly pointed to the retro mobile that Gardener still held in his hand. “‘Rearrange the dear nun.’ He means shuffle the letters around to make another word. If we do that, it might help us decide what to do next.”
Gardener wasn’t happy. He knew at the moment it wasn’t a full-on investigation: that there was no body, but he was trapped here because it could be serious – so he had to do something.
He stared at the phone, willing himself to figure it out. The light-bulb moment came when he thought about the trapdoor.
“I’ve got it.”
“Go on,” said Reilly.
“The trapdoor, jumble up the letters, and you get the word ‘underneath’.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Might be a trap when we get down there. What if he’s rigged the place with explosives?”
Reilly hesitated but still answered positively. “I don’t think he has. He wouldn’t run us ragged just to blow us up. He wants us to find the answer.”
“To prove what?”
“At the moment,” replied Reilly, “I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m going back into that shop, the one that’s full of tools. I’ll grab an angle grinder and grind that fucking lock off. At the end of the day, boss, if there is someone down there then our first duty is to preserve life.”
Gardener didn’t think about anything else. “You’re right.”
Before entering the shop, he ran over to the pool car and searched around for an item he desperately needed – a Faraday Bag. It was slightly bigger than a Walkers crisp packet and made of a shiny metal foil. The phone was bound to be part of an ongoing case, but until the tech boys could download all the information, he would have to treat it as live. The bag would allow him to read the contents without altering it. If another text message came in and forced the last one to drop off, no one would be very pleased.
Once inside the shop, Gardener slipped back around the counter. Reilly found what he wanted before ripping apart the box.
“Christ, Sean, couldn’t you find a bigger one?”
Reilly laughed, connected the blade to the machine, plugged it in and set to work.
Within five minutes the job was done. The padlock was no longer a problem, and access was theirs.
Chapter Ten
Gardener slowly lifted the hatch.
The first thing that hit him was the smell, the unmistakable sour stench of bodily fluids and blood.
As he carefully dipped his head into the room, he noticed a number of cardboard boxes. They had all been neatly stacked according to size, and the floor was very clean, as if it had been swept regularly.
“Sean, pop back to the car and grab three scene suits, will you? Judging by the smell it’s serious.”
Reilly returned and within minutes they were suited and booted. The Irishman nodded and took the first tentative steps into the cellar below. Gardener followed, with Gary Close in tow.
