On the dry stones of the path there were footprints. Two sets of them, one large, firm and steady. The other set smaller and scuffed, not moving in a single forward direction, but instead looking as if the smaller person was almost dancing round the larger one.
Or being pulled along against their will.
He bent down and looked more closely at the smaller prints, trying to see something in the marks that might suggest what type of shoe the person was wearing. In one clear print, he saw the logo of a little-known sports brand. But he knew it. He’d seen it on the sole of Liv’s shoes only the day before.
‘Liv . . .’ It came out as a whisper this time.
He had no time to lose, so he set off at a run, holding his phone out in front of him for light. If Liv had been dragged in here straight after he’d called her from the pub, whoever had taken her had one hell of a start on him. But he should be able to catch them up, as it looked like they’d been struggling.
Jesus. What if Liv had been grabbed by the Poison Ink killer?
He ran faster, using his phone torch to see where the footprints led, but then the tunnel bottomed out in a large puddle that stretched ahead into the darkness. The air down here was foul and Alex realised he’d come down into the old Victorian sewer system that cleared the city’s waste. The water he was running through looked inky black in the half-light, and he tried not to think about what it might contain. The tunnel he was following opened out into a much larger tunnel and he found himself on a walkway along the side of one of the main sewage channels. The smell was overpowering and, as he looked around, he had no way of knowing which way Liv had been taken by her abductor.
He didn’t dare call out her name – he didn’t want to alert the attacker to his presence. But maybe if he did call for her, she could call back, if she was in earshot. Then he’d be able to find her. He stopped to catch his breath.
Was that a flicker of light off to his right? He shone his torch in the direction from which it had come, but he couldn’t see anything moving. Then, realising his error, he switched his light off and was plunged into absolute darkness. There was no light in that direction or any other, but he figured that if he had seen a light down there, that was the way to go.
He set off again at a gentle jog. The walkway along the side of the larger channel was wet underfoot, but he wasn’t actually running through water like he had been before. However, the roaring torrent of sewage was wider and faster here – probably strong enough to sweep a man away. Then he saw it again – the edge of a flicker of light where the tunnel went round a corner. He ran faster, feeling sure that he had nearly caught up with them. He hoped he’d be in time, that the bastard hadn’t hurt her yet.
‘Liv!’ he shouted, without thinking that he would be giving himself away.
‘Stop! Who’s there?’
‘Who’s that?’ he called, but he knew the voice from somewhere.
He rounded the corner. A light flashed on in front him, aiming straight at him and blinding him with its glare.
‘Alex Mullins,’ said a voice he knew all too well. It was DI Sullivan.
Fuck!
What were the police doing down here?
‘I had a feeling it was you we’d come across,’ said another voice from somewhere in the darkness.
Alex turned away from the glare and started to run, but a man stepped out from the shadows ahead of him.
Rory Mackay.
He was trapped.
Mackay was holding a baton, ready to strike.
‘No,’ cried Alex. ‘You’ve got it wrong. Someone’s taken my cousin Liv – I’m trying to find her . . .’
He heard a loud crack, and the tunnel seemed to spin around him as pain radiated through his skull. Then the world went black.
60
Saturday, 2 September 2017
Angie
The man from Southern Water whom Angie had called on to let them into the sewer system hadn’t been overjoyed at the prospect of a load of policemen descending into the tunnels.
‘Not in this rain,’ he said grumpily. ‘I really wouldn’t recommend it. If it carries on like this, we’ll probably see a flood surge and I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe down there.’
Drowning in sewage wasn’t exactly Angie’s idea of fun either, especially as it meant working late on an evening that she and Tony had managed to secure for themselves. But it looked like another girl had been abducted, and she would be damned if she didn’t do all that she could to find her.
She printed out a schematic of the sewers, and she and Tony left John Street in the direction of the front. She’d agreed with Rory on the phone that they’d head into the sewers from the entrance under the pier. This was where the sewer tours started from and the man from Southern Water had agreed to meet them there to unlock the door.
The rain hadn’t let up and by the time they got there, they were both soaked to the skin.
‘Fucking great,’ said Tony, blowing a drop of rainwater from the end of his nose. ‘The timing of this couldn’t have been worse.’ His wife had gone to see her mother, making it easy for him to have an evening with Angie without needing to make up a complex excuse.
Angie sighed, shaking her wet hair and raking through it with her fingers. This had the potential to stretch long into the night. There were thirty miles of sewers under the city, so a thorough manhunt would take hours. Using dogs had been mooted, but they didn’t have a guide scent for the killer, and the sewers were so overflowing with different smells that the handlers thought the dogs would simply be overwhelmed.
‘So it’s down to us stupid mutts,’ Tony had murmured when he’d heard.
Mr Grumpy was waiting for them by a black metal door just on the left-hand side of the walls under the pier. They showed their warrant cards and he opened the door for them.
‘How long will you be?’ he said.
‘There’s a girl missing. We’ll be searching until we know she’s safe,’ said Tony.
Angie shrugged. ‘Two or three hours, maybe. You going to wait here to let us out?’
The man looked horrified by the suggestion. ‘I’ll leave the door unlocked. Just make sure you pull it shut after you come out, so it’s not obvious.’
‘No way. We’re looking for a potential murderer down here – do you understand?’ Tony’s tone was gruff. ‘You leave the door unlocked and you’re giving him an escape route. We need you to wait here until we return.’
‘But what if we leave by a different exit?’ said Angie, ever pragmatic.
Tony shrugged. ‘Then we’ll call.’
Mr Grumpy scowled. Angie sympathised but it couldn’t be helped.
He opened up and showed them inside, issuing them with hard hats and strict warnings about what to do if they heard an alarm going off. ‘Depending on where you are,’ he said, ‘if the high-water alarm goes off, you’ll have just minutes to clear the main sewer tunnels.’
They set off down the passage, Tony leading the way with the torch they’d brought from the station.
‘God, it stinks down here,’ he said.
Angie couldn’t answer him. She was retching. She switched to mouth breathing but it hardly helped. The brickwork floor was wet and slimy and even the walls and the top of the tunnel seemed to be dripping.
Tony marched on relentlessly, setting a pace Angie found it hard to keep up with.
‘Sooner we’re out of here, sooner we can get to doing something a whole lot more pleasurable,’ he said, waiting for her to catch up.
He shone the torch ahead.
‘Look, the tunnel splits here. What does the map show?’
Angie got the printout out of her pocket. ‘Where are we supposed to be headed?’
‘Rory said to cover the southern part of the system. He and the boss are searching these tunnels to the north.’
/> Tony switched off the torch, plunging them into darkness. ‘Come here,’ he said.
He embraced her and for a moment they clung together, Tony stroking her wet hair.
‘I’m sorry about this evening,’ he said. ‘I was really looking forward to it.’
‘Mmm . . . me too. Maybe we’ll still salvage some time later on. Come on, let’s get going.’
When they broke apart, Angie couldn’t remember which direction they’d come from and which way they were meant to be going. Tony switched the torch back on and they consulted the map. She couldn’t work out which junction they were at.
‘Did you bring a torch?’ he said.
‘I’ve got my phone,’ said Angie. ‘I can use the torch app.’
‘Okay, let’s each go fifty metres up one of the tunnels. If we’re here’ – he pointed at the map – ‘one of us should hit a dead end. Then we’ll know to follow the other tunnel.’
‘I’ll take the left one,’ said Angie, fishing her phone out of her jacket pocket. ‘You’re right, let’s get it over with as quickly as possible.’
‘Okay, see you in moment,’ said Angie, as she headed off up her chosen tunnel.
She didn’t think they had their location right. The tunnel she was in twisted sharply away to the left. That wasn’t what it showed on the map. And as she went further into it, the gradient tilted steeply upwards. The sewage in the bottom of the channel here had less space so it ran faster. She wondered where she was in relation to the surface. When she hit fifty or so metres, Angie continued a little further, just to see around the next corner. Nothing if not thorough, she thought to herself. She shone the small beam of light in front of her, alternating between checking where she was putting her feet and trying to see further into the darkness ahead.
Another thirty metres on and the light showed, if not exactly a dead end, the end of the walkway. The sewage channel continued, but a rusted grating stretched across its path, so Angie couldn’t have gone further even if she’d wanted to. Which she didn’t, as it would have meant wading in the sewage. She needed to head back anyway. If Tony had stuck to fifty metres, he’d be waiting for her already.
As she retraced her footsteps, she realised that the light from her torch was weakening. She walked faster. She wanted to get back to Tony, who had the proper torch, before hers ran out.
Nearly there.
‘Tony?’ she called. ‘Find anything?’ Her voice echoed in the brick vault.
He didn’t respond.
Just as she came to the junction, her torch gave out. She was plunged into darkness, and despite looking round in all directions, there didn’t seem to be a glimmer from Tony’s torch.
‘Tony? My torch is out of juice. Can you turn yours on so I can see where you are?’
Still no answer.
‘Tony, this isn’t funny. Turn on the torch.’
In the distance, along the other tunnel, she heard something splash into the water. She put a hand out until she felt the wet brick wall and began gingerly to feel her way in that direction.
‘Come on, Tony.’
What the hell was he playing at? It wasn’t the time or the place for messing around.
She started to feel nervous. Could something have happened to him? If his torch had run out too, surely he’d give her a shout to let her know where he was. The wall she was skirting along started to curve. She carried on following it round, feeling sure she was nearly fifty metres into the tunnel.
When her foot struck something, she very nearly tripped over. She stopped in her tracks and felt what she’d come across with the tip of her toe. It wasn’t solid – it gave a bit. It lay right across the path. And with creeping dread she knew what it was.
She dropped to her knees.
‘Tony?’
She put out her hands and felt clothing, an arm. She ran her palm up his sleeve, across his shoulder to his neck. When she felt for his pulse, her hand encountered wet, sticky, warm blood. Her fingers felt the edge of a gaping wound and she snatched her hand back.
‘Tony!’ she shrieked. She tried to shake him. ‘Tony, wake up.’ She knew he wasn’t asleep. She knew she was wasting her time. ‘I’ll go for help.’
Tony didn’t answer. He was dead.
61
Saturday, 2 September 2017
Francis
They found Liv Templeton’s phone in the back pocket of Alex Mullins’s jeans.
In Rory’s eyes, there was now no question of his guilt, but Francis wasn’t so sure.
‘He told her mother she was missing, right?’ said Francis, trying to work out exactly what might have happened. For Marni’s sake, he desperately didn’t want to reach the same conclusion as Rory.
‘That’s what Sarah Templeton told me,’ said Rory.
‘So, if he was holding her captive somewhere and was about to tattoo her and drill holes in her, why would he go to her mother?’
It didn’t make sense.
Alex was slumped on the brickwork floor between them, groaning but conscious.
‘Right, we going to arrest him now?’ said Rory, as it became clear the boy was lucid.
‘Let’s see what he’s got to say about Liv’s disappearance.’
‘He did it, obviously. We’ve caught our main suspect in a place we already thought the murderer was using, when another girl with a link to him has gone missing. What more d’you want? I can’t believe there’s some other villain lurking down here.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Alex grunted from the floor.
Francis squatted down. ‘Okay, Alex, tell us what happened.’
Alex pulled himself up into a sitting position. His clothes were soiled with filthy water, and so was one side of his dreadlocks.
‘I was meeting Liv for a drink, but she never showed up. I went looking for her. I checked her flat and her mum’s house and she wasn’t there.’
‘So how do you come to have her phone in your pocket.’
‘I traced it using Find My Phone on her laptop. It showed up as being in the memorial garden. I think she’s been taken by whoever took Tash and Sally Ann.’ He was talking so fast the words were almost garbled.
‘You expect us to believe that?’ said Rory
A distant scream stopped Francis from making any response.
‘Liv!’ said Alex, scrambling to his feet.
‘Come on,’ said Francis.
The three of them set off at a run in the direction of the scream. The beams from their torches bobbed up and down across the greasy walls and black water. Francis took the lead. Alex was slightly unsteady on his feet after Rory’s punch, so Rory grabbed him by one arm to keep him upright.
‘Liv?’ shouted Francis. ‘Are you there?’
They splashed through the mucky water, their footfalls making it hard to hear anything else. Francis strained his eyes and ears, desperately trying to catch a flicker of light or a sound in the darkness ahead.
‘Liv?’
‘Boss?’ The voice that echoed out of the tunnel ahead wasn’t Liv Templeton’s.
‘Angie? Where are you? Put on your torch.’ She’d sounded distressed. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Boss . . .’ She sounded like she was crying now. ‘Tony’s dead.’
‘What the fuck?’ said Rory behind him.
Finally, round the sweeping curve of the wall, Francis’s torch beam picked up a kneeling figure silhouetted against algae-covered bricks. He ran faster towards her.
‘Jesus, Angie, what happened?’
In the light, he could see her properly now. She was covered in blood. Next to her lay a body. He moved his torch to see who it was. Tony Hitchins was lying in a puddle. His head was at an angle and his throat had been slashed. The water underneath him had turned a brackish red.
Angie was crying insistently now and couldn�
��t even talk. Francis pulled her into his arms.
‘We’re here, Angie. We’re here. You’re safe.’
‘Who did it?’ said Rory.
‘I don’t know,’ said Angie between gasps. ‘I was in the other tunnel.’
‘We need to find Liv,’ said Alex.
Francis helped Angie to her feet.
‘Rory, is your radio working?’
Rory unclipped his radio from the harness he was wearing under his jacket and tried it.
‘No, boss. No signal down here.’
‘Right. Rory, you head out and get help fast. Call an ambulance for Tony and get this tunnel network flooded with uniform branch. See if you can get some armed officers down here.’
‘Got it,’ said Rory.
‘Take Alex with you and get someone to take a statement from him.’
‘Right.’
‘Then go, go now! Angie, can you stay here with Tony until Rory comes back?’
Angie nodded and sniffed loudly. Rory started heading down the tunnel towards the exit by the pier, one arm holding Alex roughly by the elbow.
‘What are you going to do?’ said Angie.
‘I’m going to find Liv Templeton.’ He embraced Angie again, and whispered in her ear. ‘I know about you and Tony, Angie. I’m so, so sorry. I won’t rest till I get the cunt.’
‘Thank you,’ said Angie, struggling to get the words out.
‘They won’t be long,’ he said, hoping that would be the case.
It seemed immediately obvious to head up the tunnel in the direction Tony had been going when he met whoever had killed him. Francis was in no doubt that the person who’d slashed Tony’s throat was the Poison Ink killer. He was sure it wasn’t Alex Mullins, though for protocol’s sake they needed to keep hold of him until they could properly exonerate him.
He shone the torch beam to show the way ahead, as other questions churned through his brain. If the killer wasn’t Alex, who was he? What had they missed? There had to have been a clue to his identity somewhere. Was he even still down here or had he scarpered after running into Tony? And what the hell had become of Liv Templeton? For the first time in weeks, Francis felt able to send up a heartfelt prayer.
Her Last Breath: The new crime thriller from the international bestseller (Sullivan and Mullins) Page 30
