Sacrifice (13 page)

Kate wasn’t sure how long the racket from overhead had been going on for, but it seemed like a day at least: the relentless hammering, the grinding shriek of wood-saws. It echoed in the deep, narrow dungeon, beating the three prisoners down like a fist.

But this was only a new torture to lay alongside those others they’d already been suffering. The heat in the cramped cell had become stifling, and with it the stench. Three people having to defecate in the same place over and over created a reek so overpowering that they could almost taste it.

And then there was the thirst.

Every so often a cable was lowered from the blackness overhead – it was a coaxial cable with a dim bulb located halfway up it to allow them to see, and a bucket suspended at its end. Sometimes this bucket contained a few scraps of bread, a few rashers of bacon, a raw carrot or two, but though Carl said that at other times it was filled with water, there hadn’t been anything to drink all the time Kate had been held here, and they were now parched.

Carl and Lee’s answer to this was to lie groaning, though the latter’s suffering was worse as he was also going through cold turkey. Kate understood this to an extent; her own cravings for a cigarette were nagging at her, though they couldn’t be half as painful as Lee’s. She’d tried to assist, but her lighter had long ago exhausted its supply of fuel and in the pitch-dark she’d been unable to do anything useful with his trembling, sweat-soaked form. Carl, who’d initially appeared to be the stronger of the two, hadn’t turned out to be much of a cellmate either. On this last day in particular, he’d collapsed as though having a breakdown, whimpering about the noise, about his throat being dry as shoe-leather. But even before then, when she’d attempted to talk to him about a possible escape, he’d been spectacularly useless.

‘Look … I couldn’t have dropped too far,’ she’d said quietly, fearful that their captor might be listening to them. ‘Otherwise I’d have broken something. That means if one of us climbs on the other’s shoulders, he might be able to reach the trapdoor.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Carl had replied in a voice of disbelief.

She’d imagined his weasel face elongated with shock at the mere suggestion he do something physical, those jaundiced bug-eyes ready to plop from their sockets like poached eggs.

‘I know we’re not gymnasts,’ she’d persisted. ‘But how hard can it be when our lives may depend on it? Look, you try climbing onto my shoulders first.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

‘For Christ’s sake, Carl … you might be able to get out of here! Then you can go and get help.’

‘
Me
… go to the pigs?’ He’d sounded outraged by the mere notion.

‘Who else do you think is going to come and save us? The House-Breakers Union? Car Thieves Incorporated?’

‘I’ll never fucking make it,’ he’d whined.

‘We’ll never make it if we stay down here. At least Lee won’t. He needs to be in hospital.’

‘That’s his fucking problem. He’s the junkie. Do you think
I
haven’t wanted to do drugs? Think I haven’t had a shit life I’d like to forget from time to time …’

She’d sighed, rubbing her aching forehead. ‘Maybe I can get on your shoulders then.’

‘Yeah, right,’ he’d scoffed.

‘Christ, you’re fucking spineless!’ It was a rare occasion when Kate lost her temper. Apart from anything else, it generally served no purpose. She’d learned from experience that people who faced abuse every day tended to stop responding to it. The same thing had happened now.

‘Whatever,’ he’d said, uninterested.

‘You can at least try,’ she’d pleaded. ‘If we don’t try, we’ll be stuck here.’

‘We won’t be stuck here. He’ll let us out at some point. He must do. Why would he be keeping us alive?’

That
question again – increasingly one Kate had no desire to ponder.

And then they’d heard movement overhead, and any hope that they might climb acrobatically out of here was gone, because the hammering and sawing had started. At first Kate had shouted, trying to be heard above the ear-pummelling dirge.

‘For God’s sake give us a break, won’t you! Isn’t it enough that we’re turning blind down here? Isn’t it enough we’re choking to death on our own stink? For Christ’s sake show some pity! We’re human beings, not animals! You bastard … you sodding, heartless bastard, we’re dying down here!’

Of course, even she at length had slumped down, broken and sobbing, though she knew that was unwise as it would expend even more vital moisture from her body.

Uncountable hours later it seemed, the bedlam above ended as it had begun – abruptly, without warning. A roaring silence followed.

Kate gazed weakly up into the blackness. As always, not even a glint of light was visible. Carl was moaning to himself again, muttering incoherently. There was no sound from Lee, which was some kind of small mercy. Slowly and exhaustedly, Kate rose to her feet. She crooked her neck back to shout again. ‘Please … pleeeaaase … give us something! If nothing else, we need water!’

She was so unused to getting any response that her surprise when a hatch creaked open almost knocked her flat. She peered upward, fascinated, at a square of dim light. She heard a dull clank and realised that the metal bucket was being lowered. Droplets of cold water scattered over her as it slopped during its descent.

It was the same pattern as before. The electric bulb, fixed about seven feet above the bucket, was activated when it was almost within reach. The drear brick walls of the cylindrical prison sprang into blinding relief. Carl came scuttling from his corner, a begrimed stick-insect, his red-rimmed eyes goggling, but Kate got hold of the bucket first. Only a few days ago it would have been inconceivable that she’d take any food or drink from a receptacle like this. It was dirty, dented, its rim rusted, its broken handle fastened with duct-tape. But at this moment it might have been a crystal goblet. What was more, it was brimming with fresh, clean water.

She took several deep draughts before Carl snatched it away and began to guzzle. There was only a quarter of the bucket left when it occurred to Kate that Lee would need some as well. She grabbed the bucket back and carried it over to their semi-comatose companion, managing to dribble some water into his gaping mouth. At first it overflowed and ran down his chin, but then he coughed and choked and even though he didn’t open his eyes, he began to swallow – swallowing and swallowing until there was no water left.

Immediately the bucket ascended, swaying out of Kate’s reach. She glanced up, wondering if she might see their captor’s head in the aperture, but there was nothing.

‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Hey, you’ve not gone too far yet! We’re all still alive down here, no thanks to you! Look … why don’t you let us go before this turns into something much worse? I don’t care how you do it … blindfold us, gag us, take us and dump us on a motorway somewhere. But we’re not dead yet, so you need to get real!’

Carl muttered something. It sounded like: ‘Can’t feel my feet …’

She glanced around at him. The light from the bulb was extinguished as the bucket was lifted from view overhead, but the dim pillar of radiance descending from the hatch was still sufficient to show Carl standing against the wall. He leaned on the bricks with one hand but had doubled forward. He shook his head groggily, and his free hand groped at his brow, which shone with sweat. As he sank slowly to his knees, Kate felt a growing lethargy and heaviness in her limbs, which went way beyond anything she’d known up to now. Suddenly she too was groggy – she tried to shake it off, but she was turning nauseous as well. Her vision fogged over and she slumped down onto her side. The last thing she saw before unconsciousness overwhelmed her was a rope-ladder unravelling into the pit, and a figure descending with what looked like several bundles of cable over its brawny shoulder.

Even for officers in SCU, messages arriving before six in the morning were so rare that they tended to mean bad news. Heck wasn’t aware what time it was when the mobile, which he always left on his bedside cabinet at night, began bleeping in the darkness. Before his groping hand managed to locate the offending article, he focused across the room on the digital clock, whose glowing numerals read 5.58 a.m.

He put the phone to his ear, at the same time yanking the pull-cord on the bedside lamp. ‘Yeah, Heckenburg?’

‘Heck!’ It was Shawna McCluskey. ‘Are you online?’

‘I’m in bloody bed. What’s going on?’

‘You’d better get online quickly.’

Heck cradled the phone under his chin as he blundered down the darkened passage to the small, cold room he used as his office.

When he got online, he found that Gemma had just circulated an MPEG.

‘That’s crime scene footage … shot about an hour ago by Merseyside Police,’ Shawna said.

Heck’s matted hair stiffened as he gazed at the pixellating image.

‘Well?’ she asked. ‘What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’ he said. ‘I think someone’s just cancelled the Easter break.’

Bad as it had appeared on film, the crime scene was even more terrible in reality.

Though most of the team was able to cut short their weekend break early, the Bank Holiday traffic was flowing thickly by mid-morning, so it had taken them several hours to flog their way up the M1 and M6 motorways, and then join the M62, where it ran west from Greater Manchester into Liverpool. The weather was fine, remarkably sunny for an early day in April, so that made the going all the heavier.

The slagheap in question, a great barren hummock of spoil-land on the north side of the motorway, had once been part of the Sutton Manor colliery complex, the rest of which was now long vanished. It stood maybe fifty metres at its apex, so its upper ridge was visible from the M62 even though Merseyside Police had managed to screen off its lower section with tall curtains of canvas and steel, which they’d borrowed from a festival staging company and had deployed along the motorway’s hard shoulder, having first closed that stretch of the nearside lane and turned it into a temporary car park. Gemma’s team left their vehicles here because in this first instance they themselves were not permitted access to the slagheap. An unmade road led onto it from the rear, but for the time being that, and much else of the open land on the other side, had been closed off for finger-tip inspection by Merseyside crime scene examiners.

‘Good God!’ Mike Garrickson said, peering up the motorway embankment. ‘Good God in heaven!’

‘Well he isn’t down here, I’ll tell you that, boss,’ Gary Quinnell replied in a daze. ‘Not today.’

‘They wouldn’t like that in Chapel, Gaz,’ Shawna McCluskey replied.

The big Welshman made no further response. His mouth had sagged open. Heck understood why. For everything they’d experienced thus far in this specialist murder squad, none of them had ever seen anything like this. In fact, it was likely that no one had seen anything like this for several centuries or more.

‘Someone tell me this isn’t real,’ Charlie Finnegan said.

‘This is the most real Good Friday you’re ever likely to experience,’ Garrickson replied.

Mid-way up the slagheap slope, three heavy crosses had been set up in a row. They had been constructed from new, freshly-sawn timber, and were all roughly the same size: their uprights stood to about eight feet; their crossbars, which had been bolted into squared-off grooves cut specifically to accommodate them, spanned about six feet each. At first glance, the symmetry of the display was amazing, even down to the naked bodies spread-eagled on each frame. Those to left and right were white males of as yet undetermined age, but in rank-poor physical condition – spindly, undernourished, covered with old scars and jailhouse ink. Their legs were mottled purple by post-mortem bruising, their lifeless faces fixed in contortions of agony. The one in the centre was a white female; she was in a slightly better state – if it was possible to use those terms to describe someone who had died by crucifixion. Her fair hair hung down over her face in a stringy mat, covering it, but her body was hourglass shaped, only wrinkled here and there, which suggested she’d been no more than thirty years old. She was white as porcelain, though, like the others, her lower limbs were tinged purple where the blood had settled after death.

The only movement came from the early-season flies crawling on the bodies, and the two Merseyside medical staff in Tyvek coveralls, taking measurements and writing on clipboards. Further out, beyond the inner cordon of tape, officers from the Merseyside photography unit were packing up their gear.

There were ongoing gasps as more SCU arrived, crowding into the narrow space behind the screens. It occurred to Heck that Claire would turn up at any moment. She’d presumably set off at roughly the same time as all the rest, but she’d be driving her own car and was unlikely to be as gung-ho about getting here as the others. It was tempting to go around to the other side and wait for her, to advise her to gird herself for what she was about to see, but there was no time. Heck was already assessing the scene, trying to bring a professional eye to bear, and immediately noticing oddities.

Whoever the three victims were, they had been transfixed to their crosses in the traditional way, by nails or spikes. No other bindings were visible – no ropes, no chains. But there was a variation from the norm – at least the norm as it appeared in Church artwork. The victims’ hands were all hidden from sight, because they had been nailed to the back of the crossbar, the steel driven in from behind. Likewise, they had not been nailed through the front of the feet, but through the ankles, one to either side of the upright. So four nails had been used per victim, instead of three. Heck wondered if this could be a mistake, though so far the killer had been very meticulous. If he had consciously altered the method that everyone else believed had been used when Christ had been crucified that first Good Friday two millennia ago, then something told Heck that everyone else was wrong.

‘When in Rome,’ he said under his breath, ‘do as the Romans do …’