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A pain so overpowering I can’t think.
Pain.
It feels as if my eyelids are weighted shut. Just the movement of air in and out of my lungs when I breathe is enough to make my head explode. I gasp and see flashes of blinding light behind my eyes, and then oblivion returns.
The next time I wake, the pain has diminished to a throbbing ache at the back of my skull, leaving just enough space for me to feel the soreness in my neck and shoulders, the numbness in my left arm. Something sharp digs into my back: I’m propped against a stone wall. Concrete beneath my legs and buttocks. Darkness around me, and the reek of urine, sweat, blood and faeces.
And fear.
Vomit suddenly rises in my throat and fills my mouth, and I turn my head, spewing it onto the ground. I feel weak and dizzy from the concussion. I can’t move my left arm. My thoughts are disjointed and confused, floating past me like soap bubbles on the breeze. Every time I try to catch one it bursts in my hand.
I must pass out again, because I’m jolted back to consciousness by a sudden burst of bright whitelight: the harsh glare of an overhead bulb. It takes several minutes for my eyes to adjust, but finally my mind is coming back into focus. I remember what happened: looking for Peter and Stacey, finding Felix, the sudden blow to the back of my head. I have no idea how much time has passed: a few minutes, an hour, a day.
I glance at Felix on the metal bed next to me. He’s not moving. I can’t see the rise and fall of his chest. I don’t know if he’s still alive.
I try to move towards him, and my left arm screams in protest: I’m handcuffed to the same metal pipe as Felix. One tug tells me it’s not coming free.
‘Ah. You’re back with us,’ Stacey says.
She’s standing in the doorway to the small root cellar, safely well out of my reach. I try to speak, but only manage a harsh cough. She points to a bottle of water next to me. Pain shoots through my tethered arm from my wrist to my shoulder as I jam the plastic bottle against my chest so I can open it with my free hand. The water is tepid, but it clears my throat.
‘Where’s Peter?’ I rasp.
‘He’s here,’ she says vaguely. ‘Sorry about the headache,’ she adds. ‘I’m afraid this was the only way.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I told you, he’s here,’ she says impatiently. ‘You’ll see him soon enough.’
Adrenaline is an extraordinary hormone. It’s an amazing thing to have coursing through your system when facing danger – people have been known to lift a car off a child with its help. It increases the flow of blood to muscles, releasing sugar into your bloodstream, along with a cascade of other effects that make your body alert and more able to fight off an attacker or outrun a flood.
My mind is suddenly crystal clear. Stacey deliberately left the door to the cellar open. She knew I was coming to the house to collect Peter: shewantedme to find it.
She wanted me down here, in a cellar no one knows exists.
I scan the room, assessing my options. Stacey is blocking the only doorway. No windows or skylights. There’s a large cage of machinery in the far corner next to the chest freezer: a mechanical pump of some kind. At a guess I’d say it’s for the swimming pool. The small external access hatch above it is probably the source of the fresh air I can feel. Even if I could get free and reach it, it’s far too small for me to climb through.
My only hope is to talk my way free.
‘Felix has been down here all along,’ I say. ‘You’ve kept him locked in here for five weeks.’
‘Literally right under everybody’s feet,’ Stacey says. ‘All those people looking for him, DCI Hollander and DS Mehdi telling me they’d leave no stone unturned to find him, and he’s been right here all along. You’ve got to admit it’s funny.’
‘No one even knew the cellar was here?’
‘Exactly. Not even Felix, until I showed it to him. It’s not on any architectural plans. I only found it by accident a couple of years ago, when I was considering putting in an outdoor shower and discovered the internal dimensions of the corridor upstairs didn’t match the external measurements. I located the stairs to the cellar by a process of elimination. Felix said it’s like one of those secret dungeons in a medieval castle – what’s the name for them?’
‘An oubliette,’ I say.
She comes a little closer to me, but she’s still out of my reach. I deliberately let the bottle of water slip from my hand so it rolls towards her, and she takes another step in my direction to catch it. She’s not foolish enough to hand it to me, though: instead she simply tightens the lid and rolls it back.
‘Why keep him alive?’ I ask conversationally.‘Why not save yourself the trouble of looking after him?’
‘I didn’t want to kill him,’ she says, sounding almost indignant. ‘That was never the plan.’
‘Then why is he here?’
‘It washisidea,’ Stacey says.
