The Jonah (26 page)

‘That’s where Trewick finished up!’ the voice bellowed. ‘He was ground to dust, Kelly. Into animal feed. Not a bone of him left. You’re going to go the same way
unless you come clean with us!’

‘He can’t hear you! He’s too far gone – he doesn’t know what you’re talking about!’

But Kelso did, and he was even more afraid. His mouth was dry, his throat parched.

They dragged him on, through a doorway, past a steep concrete stairway that disappeared into the darkness above, and towards an area of solid concrete. They stopped before a wooden trapdoor in
the stone.

‘That’s what the workers here call The Pit, Kelly! It leads to the conveyor-belt that carries the grain from the bins above us to the outside! If anything goes wrong with the belt,
someone has to go down there to sort it out. Only trouble is, no one wants to go down there!’

Their laughter beat at his mind, bludgeoning his senses.

‘You know why, Kelly? Because it’s bloody dark down there, even in the daytime. And it’s full of rats! Have you seen the kind of rats that run loose in feed mills, Kelly?
They’re big because they’re well fed! There’s no way that we can keep them down, not in a place like this!’ Again the laughter, but there was also fear in the sound.
‘They’ll be keeping you company tonight. If you’re lucky, they won’t eat you! But they might try!’

The trapdoor was lifted and Kelso stared into the black world that was from another dimension. He tried to scream again, but the sound was muffled. His hands were suddenly loose and the knife
that had freed him prodded his back.

‘Down you go!’ a voice shouted.

He saw the rungs leading down and he backed away from them because they were not solid and he would sink through them.

‘Down, Kelly. You’re lucky Sir Anthony wants you alive, otherwise we’d have left your hands tied. You’d have had no protection at all!’

He tore the gag from his mouth and began to plead, his mind, through fear, focusing in on what was happening. They grabbed him and threw him down.

One hand held onto the lip of the opening, but the fingers were viciously kicked away. He fell, the few feet feeling like miles, and landed on the concrete floor. The trapdoor was slammed shut
above him and he clapped his hands against his ears to block out the thunder. A deep rumbling sound followed as something heavy slid over the hatch for added weight.

A squeaking sound told him he was not entirely alone in the darkness.

‘Let me out!’ he screamed, reaching out for the ladder he knew was somewhere in front of him. His hand closed around a metal rung and he pulled himself towards it, reaching up for
the next, then the next. His head hit the trapdoor as soon as he stepped onto the first rung and the pain flashed through his brain like sheet lightning, stopping not only there within his mind,
but spreading throughout his body, flowing out again through his extremities. Reason told him that the pit he was in was not deep, yet he could not shake off the feeling that he was in some vast
arena. He reached up once more and beat against the wood, screaming for them to let him out. He could hear scuttling noises all around.

He had no idea of how long he stood there, pleading and trying to force the trapdoor upwards, for time had suddenly lost all meaning. It was
now,
and he was
now,
and his screams
were
now,
and the darkness was . . . no longer darkness.

Lights were exploding around him, beautiful lights that appeared as blinding white suns that showered into violent shades of red, blue and purple. Kelso sank to his knees and hid his eyes from
them, but there was no escape for they were inside his own head. The lights dazzled him and he became no longer afraid of them, for they released his thoughts, somehow freeing his spirit. He wanted
to see them, wanted to experience them. He wanted to
be
them. And he was. His body began to glow; his nerve ends began to tingle. Electric currents were running through him and a part of him
that came from his mind ran with the currents, exploring his own body, one moment inside his fingertips, the next following the flow of blood inside his heart. He felt close to orgasm, each
separate part of him an organ for pleasure, his enlarged penis no longer the sole instrument for such pleasure and release. But even that feeling was transcended as everything around him took on a
brilliantly light blue hue; he was in the sky and there were no confines around him. The concrete grey slabs from where grain was fed through became gigantic buildings, none of their edges
parallel, but each one related to an adjoining line, bending to meet each other and bristling with vitality, a life that was not of the material kind but the same as his own, for he had become part
of that incredible landscape and the landscape had become a part of him. Then he was no longer just a part – he
was
everything around him.

Tears glistened in his eyes and he saw everything through a multi-faceted diamond; nothing was singular, nothing stood alone. He felt close to something that was subliminal, something that was
real, could be perceived, yet still could not be touched. Something in a dimension that was so close to the one that he, himself, existed in, only a thin tissue, an incorporeal substance separating
them. He glided into the ethereal barrier, knowing he only had to rend the tissue with a fingernail to pass through . . .

. . . and everything began to change . . .

Blackness threw itself at him and creatures scuttled across the void, creatures with long pointed heads and bristling fur; and the euphoria vanished to be replaced once more by the excruciating
fear.

And there was the smell.

Not the smell of the dust around him, nor even the smell of the crushed powder. It wasn’t the smell of rat spoors and it wasn’t the smell of spiders in their webs.

It was the stench of corruption.

The odour that had assailed him so many times in the past. And suddenly, he was reliving those moments. Images flashed through his mind, parts of his life that he had tried to dismiss, tried to
block out for the sake of his own sanity. Some memories were stronger than others, lingering before him as though they were taunts, tormenting and causing him to cry out with their clarity.

The smell became even stronger and he began to retch. Even though his body convulsed, his muscles tensing then jerking loose, his limbs twisting uncontrollably, the memories flooded through.

He was gazing down at Sandy lying crushed and broken on the pavement.

Years between sped by, incidents that he could never explain appeared briefly, then dissolved into other incidents.

He was staring at his father’s naked body draped over the side of the bath, the old man’s face contorted in an expression of horror and pain.

More years flew by. More incidents.

He was cowering in the bombed-out house and the three boys were coming up the stairs after him. He was turning and they were no longer there. The terrible screams over the tearing, crashing
sound as they had plummeted down into the floor below, one to be killed, one to be forever paralysed, the other, the youngest, never to remember what had happened that day.

More time streaked by, always going back, and all clearly seen.

He was in the orphanage, sitting on a bed, talking to someone – a friend, but it wasn’t clear who the friend was. The door, already open, swung wide and the old man had charged in,
had shaken him, cursed him. And the terrible sound only moments later when the old man had tripped and fallen down the stairs. The odd look on his face, the odd angle of his neck, when all the
children had rushed out to see what had caused the noise.

Years becoming slow, like a train approaching a station.

And then . . . oh God . . . and then . . . he was tiny. He couldn’t move. His head was filled with a steady thumping noise that was somehow comforting. And everything was black. But not
just black. It was red too. Blood red. And it was becoming bright, too bright. And something was pushing him out, out into a blinding vastness that frightened him. And he slid from the womb easily,
even though there was no one else to help, only the trembling exhausted hands of his mother. He could hear her sobs, her cries of agony, and the rough sheets he lay on were covered in blood. And he
lay between his mother’s thighs, and there was something else emerging, something that made his mother scream, something he could not see with his eyes, for he had no vision, but something he
knew was with him, was part of him. And soon it was lying beside him, its limbs moving feebly as were his own. And he was pushing at it, not knowing why, a baby only just formed that was repulsed
by something that had entered the world with him. And everything was black, black, BLACK!

As Kelso crouched there in the darkness of the pit, his body racked by his own sobs, his mind tortured by his own memories, the smell became intense, suffocating. A cloying sickness that covered
him like black oil.

And something touched him. A hand scaly and brittle – and cold – closed around his and held it tightly.

Ellie was surprised to see, through the cabin windows, that the cruiser had turned off from the river and was heading into the marshes. She felt sure that the boat would become
bogged down in reeds and mud, but soon realized that whoever was steering knew a way through. The roof and upper storey of the old mill rose up from the heavy morning mist, its lower portion
vignetting into a swirling grey. Even at that distance, she could see the building was in a dilapidated state: the red brickwork was stained and badly patched and the tiled roofing had collapsed
inwards at several points.

Was that where they were taking her? To Slauden’s mill? Was it there that they were holding Kelso? She looked across at the thug sitting on the opposite bench seat in the motor
cruiser’s compact cabin and caught him coolly appraising her body. He grinned when their eyes met, and deliberately scanned her figure again, his gaze slow and lingering.

Ellie turned sideways on the cushioned bench and drew her legs up, hugging her knees to her chin, grateful that she was wearing jeans. The night had been a long one, full of fears, full of
anxiety over the safety of Kelso. They refused to tell her what they had done with him, only taunting her with the threat that she would receive the same treatment if she didn’t answer their
questions. A tall, grey-suited man had conducted the interrogation and Ellie assumed he was Sir Anthony Slauden’s personal secretary, Julian Henson. She had seen nothing at all of Slauden
himself.

Ellie had fought wildly when they had grabbed her at the caravan site, but a painful bruise on her right cheek and a tenderness around her ribcage had been the only reward for her resistance.
Although they had thrown a blanket over her head, she felt it reasonable to assume from the length of the following car journey and by the view from the room they had locked her in later, that they
had taken her to Eshley Hall. Henson’s questioning had been soft at first, implying rather than stating that he knew both she and Kelso were involved in drug pushing and that their source was
Andy Trewick; he wanted to know who else was involved and where the stolen drugs were distributed. She had feigned ignorance and gradually his tolerance towards her began to wear.

Her boyfriend had already admitted stealing the drugs with Trewick, she was told, and to save Kelly’s skin she had better add a few details of her own. Ellie had managed an astonished
laugh, but it wasn’t convincing. The two thugs – not Suffolk folk these two, more like Whitechapel – were all for slapping her around a little, but Henson would not hear of it.
Sir Anthony would be displeased. God bless Sir Anthony. The interrogation had continued, but Ellie had refused to be worn down: she didn’t know what they were talking about, and knew nothing
about drugs. Who the hell was Trewick, anyway?

Eventually they had left her alone for a short time, giving her a chance to explore the small, bare room that was her prison. Naturally the door was locked and there would have been no point in
climbing out of the tiny window, even if she could have opened it, for she was at the top of the manor house in what must have been the servants’ quarters at one time. Either that, or an
attic. The sky was slowly dawning grey outside and she could see the wide river below, dark and brooding. Even as she watched, a mist swirled in from the direction of the sea and covered the
river’s surface in a smothering shroud.

The sound of the door being unlocked had made her turn and Henson marched in, swinging the door wide so that it rebounded off its hinges. It gave her some satisfaction to see he looked as weary
as she felt, but that little ray of pleasure swiftly dissipated when he snapped at her: ‘We know you’re both working for the police, so you may as well tell us everything!’

For a moment – just for the briefest second – she almost fell for the bluff; then quickly dismissed the doubt. Firstly,
she
wasn’t with the police, and secondly, if they
really thought she and Kelso were, then why all the questions about drug pushing?

When Ellie informed Henson that he was mad, she thought he would hit her, despite Sir Anthony’s displeasure. Instead, she was dragged down the stairs and through the grounds of the estate
into the boathouse. The trip up and across the broad river had been short; now she could see they were travelling along a narrow waterway leading through the marsh, long reeds brushing against the
motor cruiser’s windows as the boat passed. A small jetty came into view.