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‘What’s that trench for?’ Sam asks.
‘Ithinkit’s the old mill race.’ Miranda holds up her sketch and the two of them study it, mentally matching the reality with her vision of what the space will eventually look like. ‘They split the river further up the hill, and this channel runs down from there and across the back of all these properties. It once powered the mill over there.’ She points towards the flats to the right. ‘When it used to be a mill, I mean.’
‘Higher Mill flats.’
‘Exactly. Like the mill race down to the brewery as you go into town. Except that one’s still in use obviously.’
‘Gotcha. So… does it run all the way under the garages?’
‘I’ve not inspected it, to be honest. Only the exposed bit is on the surveyor’s report.’
She jumps down into the shallow trench, bends to shine her iPhone torch where the channel passes under the concrete base of the ancient shed. She crouches, peers into the gloom, then kneels before lowering herself onto her elbows, her head disappearing momentarily beneath the concrete.
‘It’s closed off up ahead, but…’ She backs up, her head reappearing. He holds out his hand, pulls her up. ‘It looks like there’s another channel off to the right. Hard to tell.’ She pockets the phone, chafes her hands together.
‘To the right as in towards the river?’
‘Yeah. Not sure. It’s pretty dark in there.’
‘There might be an opening though. At the river.’
Sam wanders out of the garden, jogs down the driveway and across the lane. At the railings, he leans over. It’s overgrown; he can’t see much, so he vaults over and scrambles down the bank. The water races past, down towards the salmon steps, the brightly painted houses of Jericho. Against the flow of the river he strides, cold water leaking into his socks now. And there, almost opposite the property and hidden in the bank, is a rough man-made arch of sandstone bricks, the mouth of what looks like a tunnel.
‘Mi,’ he calls out. ‘Miranda! Over here!’
The opening is tall enough that if he bends forward, he can walk right inside. It is dry, the rush of the river at his back. He takes out his phone and shines the torch ahead. It is a kind of secret grotto, like a mine shaft. He keeps going, bending lower and lower as the tunnel closes in, sensing he has passed beneath the road, that he must be somewhere under the driveway. It is cocoon-like. Silent.
‘Sam?’ Miranda’s voice echoes in the chamber. The passage darkens. He glances over his shoulder, sees her outline at the entrance. ‘Be careful,’ she calls to him. ‘If it collapses on you, I’ll never… Look, I’m not insured, OK?’
‘Nice.’ He laughs, dropping now to his knees. There is a wall ahead, as if he is coming to a dead end. It looks far enough away to be under the garden, under the shed maybe. He is down on his elbows now. From the left, light penetrates. He crawls towards it, sees that the right-hand side is completely blocked, as Miranda said, but that the left emerges exactly where she was standing a few minutes ago. Wriggling on his belly, he manages to squeeze himself out and stand up.
‘Mi!’ he shouts. ‘Hey, Miranda! Look where I am!’
A moment later, she appears at the gate, her eyes round. ‘What the hell?’
‘It’s a secret passage! It’s like something out of the Famous Five, like a smugglers’ den or something!’
She laughs, her expression of infantile joy mirroring his own. ‘That’s insane.’
‘I know!’
‘It must have been the old floodgate. Must be. What else could it be? That’s what the other mill race does further down, right? You see it when the rain’s heavy; the water comes battering through that little door thing in the wall. Well, the floodgate.’
He drops to his knees. ‘I’m going back in.’
‘Oh my God, you’re braver than me. Meet you at the river!’
Heart beating with childish excitement, he crawls back, using his phone to take photos all the way along, the camera flashing white. ‘Bloody hell,’ he mutters. ‘This is epic.’ And, ‘I can’t believe it.’
On the riverbank, Miranda is grinning down at him as he straightens up out of his stoop. Her delight so obviously matches his own that for a moment he thinks he might hug her. Instead, he passes her the phone, their heads almost touching as she scrolls through the photos.
‘This is so cool,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe it wasn’t on the survey. I wonder who else knows about it?’
‘No idea!’
‘I tell you what though.’ She hands the phone back to him. ‘It’s a great place to hide a body.’
Look, I wish I’d never said that about the body, OK? I didn’t mean anything by it; it’s just the sort of thing you say if you come across a dark, spooky hidey-hole. A joke, less than a joke. I wasn’t to know what Sam would end up doing. And I know there were those who judged him harshly for what he did, but what I say to anyone who stuck the knife in afterwards is: can you honestly say you’d have been in your right mind? Can you actually stand there andjudge?
