Sacrifice (31 page)

It had occurred to her in the lonely hours following that maybe she’d been drugged. She’d felt nauseous and shivery, her head splitting – though it was difficult to pin the cause of this down with any certainty because incarceration in this dungeon was hardly likely to be good for her health. Despite the water she regularly drank, her throat was sore from her persistent pleading into the darkness above. On those few occasions when the light was lowered so that she could see into the bucket, her eyes stung from lack of use. As there were no seats to recline on, she was constantly on the floor, squatted or crouched against the wall, her joints aching, her limbs cramped. Then there was the smell of her own excrement; there was now a mountain of it on the other side of the pit, and its stench had become overwhelming. Sometimes it caused her to vomit, and, when there was nothing left inside, to dry-heave, which in itself was agony. God alone knew what kind of germs she was breathing down here.

‘Whoever you are … whatever you’ve got planned for me, you’d better get it done soon,’ she croaked up into the blackness. ‘Because I’m pretty sure I’m going to die in this place …’ Her head slumped backwards onto aching shoulders; the mere effort of raising her voice now exhausted her.

There was an echoing clunk of woodwork.

Gracie froze, her eyes snapping open and straining upward.

A light appeared, but it wasn’t the light she’d seen before, the electric bulb attached to the bucket cable. This one had a reddish, wavering tint, and it swayed from side to side. An oil-lamp, she realised. It was maybe ten feet above her, but it was slowly descending. With a thump, something landed in the pit. The expanding glow revealed that it was the foot of a rope-ladder.

Gracie scuttled backwards until she struck the wall. Sweat prickled her face, her heart beating ten to the dozen. Was this it? Was this the moment?

A dark humped shape descended. The lamp she saw was swinging from its belt, the red light reflecting on the encircling brick walls. She could tell from the outline that the incomer was a man. When he alighted on the dungeon floor, he had his back to her, but he was tall, strongly built. He wore boots and waterproofs; the hood was pulled down, revealing a tousled thicket of black spiky hair. Even before he turned to face her, she knew who she was going to see – the young man who, along with the blonde girl, had first lured them into captivity.

On that occasion, though an impressive physical specimen, he’d seemed nervous and shy. He’d worn glasses and had smiled a little boy’s smile, but he’d been handsome too – square jawed, with bright blue eyes, a firm red mouth and sharp, straight nose. He was still handsome now if she was honest, but in a cold, severe sort of way. When he took the lantern from his belt and held it up in his gloved fist, she realised – to her incredulity – how young he actually was. No more than eighteen.

With his other hand, he produced something from under his waterproofs: a flattish metallic device, about the size and shape of a small directory. When he dropped it on the ground, and she saw its rubberised upper plate and the neon numerals darting along its glass frontage, she realised that it was a set of weighing scales. So mundane an item was this that at first, perhaps absurdly, it had the effect of reducing her terror – though very quickly the increasing weirdness of this predicament struck her.

Weird could never be good.

‘What … what do you want with me?’ she stammered.

He didn’t look at her, merely signalled her to stand. At the same time, he fished a roll of something from his pocket and unravelled it. It looked like a tape measure.

Slowly, nauseated, Gracie managed to get to her feet. ‘Look, I … I don’t know what this is about. If you’d just talk to me …’

But he remained silent, concentrating carefully as he extended the tape and dangled it alongside her, evidently taking note of her five feet, five inches. With a snap of his fingers, he indicated the scales.

‘You want to weigh me?’ She almost laughed at the craziness of it.

He snapped his fingers again, irritably, still not meeting her gaze though his eyes, whatever they were focused on, were suddenly bright, as if filled with intense but suppressed rage. Frightened again, though dizzy and awkward in her thigh-boots, Gracie stepped gingerly onto the horizontal scales and stood there, teetering; the whole thing would have been too ridiculous for words if she hadn’t felt so sick with fear and exhaustion. A second later, he nudged her aside with his elbow, picked the implement up and shoved it back under his waterproofs.

‘Look,’ she pleaded. ‘Just stop … stop this madness. I beg you … you’ve surely nothing to gain from it.’ As he turned back to the ladder, her voice rose, becoming shrill. ‘For God’s sake, you’re not leaving me here in the darkness again?’

She lurched forward, hooking her hands into his clothing, trying to cling on to him. He swung back to face her, and slowly and patiently, but with crushingly superior strength, took her wrists in his big, gloved paws and forcibly pulled her loose. Fleetingly, their faces were only inches apart – Gracie’s scrawny and tear-stained, her captor’s flawless, and icily indifferent. With a single shove, he sent her tottering backwards. She fell, landing hard on her bottom, though she barely felt the pain that jolted through her weakened body.

‘Just … just don’t,’ she wept. ‘Don’t leave me down here. Please, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it …’

‘It won’t be for long.’

These were the first words he’d spoken to her – the first that anyone had spoken to her since Chantelle had disappeared – and initially Gracie was so shocked that she clamped her lips together, gazing up at him with mute disbelief.

He smiled at her reaction, but it was the least warm, least enticing smile she’d ever seen. It wasn’t even what she’d have called an evil smile – it was more an utterly blank smile. There was no emotion behind it at all.

‘And … and what then?’ she asked in a quavering voice, only too late realising what a mistake it might be to ask such a question.

He placed one foot on the rope-ladder, but paused as if to think, his head bowed. ‘Do you know May Day?’ He sounded educated; there was no accent there – but suddenly there was feeling. Tension maybe. Indignation.

‘May Day?’

He glanced over his shoulder, eyes gleaming like polished buttons. ‘A rancid political event in our time … espoused by those who’ve replaced our beloved religious and cultural ideology with a soulless humanist doctrine of their own manufacture, a doctrine which in practice has proved to be the most vicious in human history …’

Dear God,
she wondered, ever more bewildered.
What is he talking about? He has to be insane.

‘I … I know May Day,’ she ventured. ‘I think.’

‘Good.’ He began to climb, the hellish glow rising around him, leaving only blackness below. ‘We … or rather
you
will restore it to its former glory.’

‘Wait please … tell me what you mean!’

But he said no more, and a few seconds later had vanished. Something heavy and wooden thudded into place overhead, and to Gracie’s hopeless wails, the last vestige of crimson light was extinguished.

The Moorside was a tall, narrow, redbrick building, located next to a humpbacked bridge and a disused station on the Manchester to Buxton railway line. A vast Victorian cemetery, complete with sooty sepulchres and crabby, moss-covered angels, lay to one side of it, while on the other was a sprawling council estate. No doubt this latter had once been the moor that The Moorside had overlooked.

Heck appraised it from his car. Without doubt, this was the dreariest-looking pub the investigation had brought him to thus far. Of course, the turbulent, rain-filled sky made a gloomy backdrop, and his own mood didn’t help.

He’d woken that morning cold and alone.

The glimpses afforded to him last night through Claire’s open bathrobe had aroused him the way they would any other red-blooded male, but she’d been drunk and vulnerable at the time. He’d kissed her long and deep, but had come to his senses before things had gone too far, and, despite her slurred protests – and a voice inside shouting hoarsely that desperate bastards like him couldn’t afford to be so bloody ethical! – had tied the flaps of her robe together, and steered her back down the passages to her own room, laying her on the bed himself when they got there because she’d passed out in the doorway. It was the sort of gallant deed that might get him a reward in heaven but probably not on earth, he reflected morosely. Not only had he got up alone that morning, he’d then found a note pushed under his door from the lady in question, reiterating that she wasn’t sticking with the job. It was just too much for her, she said, and though she expected that she’d probably get hardened to it eventually, all she could visualise at present was a future of being taken places where she didn’t want to go. She hoped he understood and didn’t think too much the less of her.

‘Thanks for everything,’ Claire’s note had concluded.

Heck locked the door to his Volkswagen, and walked into the pub. Though a large building, only a fraction of the place was in use. Doors leading into other sections were closed and locked, chairs and tables stacked in front of them. The bar counter itself was small, eight feet long at the most, with a stack of well-thumbed newspapers at one end and a portable television at the other, on which the day’s first race-meets were screening. It wasn’t yet lunchtime, but several forlorn, unemployed drinkers were already gathered in there.

The barmaid was pleasant enough: young and pretty, wearing her blonde hair in a long ponytail. Her white t-shirt and tight jeans accentuated her buxom figure. When she spoke, it was in a Polish accent. ‘Hi. What can I get you?’

Heck flashed his warrant card, and the welcome faded from her smile. ‘DS Heckenburg,’ he said. ‘I understand you have a lad works here, name of Pete Dwyer?’

She nodded uncertainly. ‘Yes … erm, Pete is not working today.’

‘I understand he lives upstairs?’

She shrugged again.

‘Well does he, or doesn’t he?’ Heck had long passed the stage where he was prepared to tolerate the runaround.

‘I … erm …’ Suddenly it seemed that she didn’t understand English.

‘Miss … if you expect me to believe that you don’t know whether one of your co-workers lives on these premises, then you’re taking me for a fool, and that’s not something I appreciate. In fact, I so
don’t
appreciate it that if you refuse to tell me exactly what I want to know right now, you could find yourself under arrest for obstructing an investigation. Pete Dwyer? Where is he?’

She glanced nervously at the other drinkers, though no one else was paying them much attention. Still not wanting to take chances, the barmaid produced a pen and scratched a number on a beer mat. It read ‘19’.

Heck nodded and moved away.

Access to the pub’s upper floors was gained by a door to the left of the toilet passage. The stairwell was dingy and unlit, its paper mouldering, its carpet threadbare. He passed several other rooms on his way up. A couple stood open, their interiors dark and musty, smelling of stale beer. When he finally found number nineteen, it was at the very top of the building, on a narrow, creaky landing illuminated by a single, dust-covered skylight. From beyond the lone door came a low pulse of music: hard rock, accompanied by a repetitive gasping and grunting.

That bedsit of his is like a backroom in Bangkok
, Cameron Boyd had said.

Heck knocked.

‘Who is it?’ came a gruff voice.

‘Pete, I need a quick word.’

‘I said who is it?’

‘Can you just come out? Won’t take a sec.’

There was a shuffling of feet on the other side of the door, and it opened a crack. The bloke peeking out was tall and thin. He had a bush of dark hair, a long, acne-scarred face and a lantern jaw. He was clad only in boxer shorts and mismatched socks.

Heck lunged forward, shouldering the door open and shoving him backwards. ‘DS Heckenburg, Serial Crimes Unit. Can I come in? Oh … thanks.’

Dwyer hit the floor with such a bang that it sent a vibration across the room, flickers scurrying over the various computer screens. All were playing different types of kinky porn, but on the one directly facing Heck, a freckle-faced redhead in Swedish pigtails was frolicking with a Shetland pony in a manure-filled stable. Fascinated, he looked further afield. Jerry-built shelves sagged beneath the weight of DVDs, some of whose colourful plastic cases made them look legitimate, though others wore cardboard and had homemade labels affixed. In one corner, an open box spilled a host of foreign imports. Heck assumed they were foreign, as they all had photos of Japanese schoolgirls on the covers. Scruffy clothing littered the floor, alongside beer cans and unwashed plates and cutlery. The unmade bed looked damp and dirty.

‘Caught you in mid-wank, did I?’ Heck said. ‘Or is this actually more of a business enterprise?’

Dwyer scrambled angrily to his feet – though he noticeably didn’t approach. ‘Hey … I don’t know who the fuck you think you are …’

‘I’ve told you who I am.’ Heck showed his warrant card, but continued to glance from screen to screen. ‘My, my … this is what you call the extreme end of the market, Pete. I guess the regular stuff is too easy to get hold of, eh? Blokes like you need to go the extra mile to make a profit these days?’

‘It’s for my own use,’ Dwyer said defensively.

‘Even so, I can’t think what the Cyber Crimes Unit will make of all this.’

‘I’m not doing anything wrong. There’s nothing illegal here.’

‘Maybe not, but they’ll want to take a good look first. Ship everything back to the office – in sterile evidence sacks, obviously.’ Heck pulled out a drawer. It was filled with unmarked computer disks and pen-drives. He shook his head. ‘Got a lot of storage space here, Pete. Gonna take us a long time to trawl our way through this lot. But we have to be safe, you know what I mean?’

‘You can’t do this.’ Dwyer pointed a shaking finger. ‘This is an illegal search.’

‘What would you say, Pete, if I told you that it’s not you and your collection we’re actually interested in?’