I remember a second set of gates at the rear of the building, and memory serves. They are smaller, less forbidding than the front gates, and it is darker at the back. Women of my age are not natural climbers, but I am worried about neither dignity nor clothing. I push my tools and bag through the bars and in less than a minute I am in the yard.
There are no vehicles parked here. No lights in the building.
I make my way round the walls, keeping to the shadows, watching out for surveillance devices, knowing that if Ben is here, he is likely to be guarded. At the same time, I am going as quickly as I can because they are coming. The metal trapdoors are at the side of the building, just as I remember them, but there is no way to access them from the yard. They will be bolted from beneath.
Thirty years ago, Larry found his way into this building. Back then, though, it was derelict, and my captors wanted him to find me, could even have left the door unlocked. I wonder how scared he was, making his way through the dark mill, whether at any time he was tempted to give up.
Larry was acting to save his child, as I am. I stop moving for a second, when the thought occurs that Larry may also have been acting to save me.
I keep going, looking for the entrance Larry may have used. There is a side door round the next corner, but it’s locked. I carry on, and the smart office windows at the front and side give way to more utilitarian ones at the back. This will be where the maintenance rooms and kitchens are. I spot patterned glass, which probably indicates a bathroom.
I left the station twenty minutes ago. They are coming.
Back at the bathroom windows, I roll a metal bin until it can get me up high enough and use the jemmy to smash the glass. No alarm sounds, but I feel a stinging pain in my right hand, and when I reach down, touch the sticky warmth of blood. Cursing my own clumsiness, I pull my sleeve down round the wound and scrape the rest of the glass from the window ledge before scrambling through. Still no alarm. I am in a male bathroom, about to climb down into a washbasin. It holds my weight and I land on the tiled floor.
Instantly my head starts to throb. I give myself a second, breathing deeply, but the room has been cleaned recently and the smell of bleach seems to burn its way into my throat. When I turn back to the basin, I see the scarlet splashes of my own blood and suddenly I feel deeply unwell, as though I might faint.
From the first cubicle I pull a length of toilet tissue, twisting it into a rope and wrapping it tightly round my hand, but the pain in my head is getting worse.
Already this is going badly.
And then I realise I’m not alone. Someone is standing behind me. I can feel his breath on my neck, actually hear the rattle in his lungs. I spin round, already cringing back against the cubicle wall, and see nothing but a central heating vent on the opposite wall.
I have to get out of this bathroom.
The door opens onto a corridor that is dimly lit by security lights. I turn left, heading towards the trapdoors, through an interior that has changed completely. There are glass-walled offices to my right, and beyond them an atrium, which will let in light when the sun comes up. On its far side are more offices and the outer wall of the mill. There is no light coming in now.
People in the glass-fronted offices! I see several figures, dark shapes, moving with me, speeding up as I do, racing for the doors to cut me off in the corridor. I turn, head back the other way, and they turn too. My head is pounding and I think I am about to be sick.
As I pull open the bathroom door again, a gust of fresh air hits me from outside. I smell grass and woodsmoke and it clears my head a little. A thought occurs to me and I turn once more.
The figures in the offices are stationary, watching me. I lift my right arm. They copy. I step forward. They do the same, so that the distance between us narrows, and so convincing are my doppelgangers that I almost turn and run again. But I know them now for what they are. Shadows and reflections, given a grim power by my own fear.
I am wasting too much time, jumping at ghosts. Outside, I think I hear a car engine.
I set off again, ignoring the odd noises that the building produces. The sibilant sound is internal plumbing, not the hiss of lurking snakes. The flickering shadow high on the wall is made by a night bird passing by outside. It is not a bat.
I reach the end of the corridor and turn. In the old days, there was a narrow doorway here that opened onto stairs, leading down to the subterranean floor below. My headache is fading, but in its place is the weariness that might be the result of several hours of frantic worry. I need adrenaline right now, nervous energy, but that most basic of instincts seems to have deserted me.
The air in here is hot and stale.
The rotting wooden door I remember is gone, but in its place are larger, steel-slatted doors. Doors like that always lead into maintenance rooms, or boiler rooms, or basements. I reach the doors and stop to catch my breath. Still no alarm has sounded.
The door is locked, but it is no match for Larry’s jemmy and my desperation. The lock breaks on my fifth attempt. Were I myself, it might only have taken three, but at last the door swings open. I am no longer expecting alarms. For whatever reason, this place isn’t protected by the normal security installations. The staircase in front of me leads down into darkness, and diviner or not, I have no way of knowing what I will find at the bottom.
I have been here before. Hello, Florence, the darkness says. Welcome home.
I give myself a second. The locked door suggests Ben might not be guarded. I may have to do nothing more than descend this staircase, free my son and help him out of the building. But there is dark magic at work here. I sensed it the second I broke in. Even now, staring down into blackness, I can almost see it moving, as though there is a presence lurking below.
I switch on the torch and shine it down. I see bare plaster walls, a metal handrail and concrete stairs that go on forever. There is no end to these stairs; they are leading the way straight down to hell. At that moment, the top step, the one I am standing on, gives away and I fall. As I reach out and grab the safety rail, the torch leaves my hand and goes clattering down the steps. My arm is wrenched; my head hits the wall, but I don’t tumble. Not daring to let go of the rail, I look back at the top step. It is intact. I lost my balance, that is all.
At the bottom of the steps, and there is a bottom, I see now, not twenty steps below me, my torch beam shines out, illuminating the damp-stained stone floor, the dust of years. It is pointing the way to my son.
If ever I needed to be brave, it is now.
At the four corners of town, my sisters are sending every bit of strength and courage that they can. They’ve had no time for complex preparations, so will have to fall back on the simplest of rituals, a time-honoured spell. Basically, they are praying for me, and I will take that.
On the third step down, I hear mewling.
I freeze. There is an injured animal below that is bleating out its pain. I picture it crawling towards me, dragging a skeletal body across the cellar floor, wrapping itself round my foot and sinking its starving teeth into my flesh.
For God’s sake! I have to get a grip. It is my son that I can hear below.
‘Ben!’
The whimpering stops.
‘Ben, it’s me. I’m coming.’ I carry on down the steps. I get halfway before the torch goes out.
I keep going, stepping down into complete blackness now, but I am afraid that if I stop, I will never move again. I think I remember at least nine more steps. On the seventh, I tread carefully and can tell when I’ve reached the bottom by the different feel of the cellar floor.
I look back up at the open door, but the corridor was very dimly lit and none of its sparse light can reach me here. I bend down, feel for the torch and try to switch it back on again, but the fall has broken it. I must find Ben in complete blackness.
If they come now, we are both trapped, defenceless in the dark.
‘Ben,’ I try. ‘I’m here, but I can’t see you. Can you
hear me, baby?’
That noise again. The high-pitched puling that I can’t associate with my tall, strong son. I force myself to turn in its direction and take a step forward, then another, but it is so hard to keep moving when every second I could come up against a brick wall, or a sheer drop, or a snarling face.
Above me, the cellar door slams shut.
Now I am whimpering and I have to force myself to be calm. Ben is in here somewhere and he needs me to be strong. But the mewling sound has started up again and now it’s coming from somewhere completely different. I turn towards it and take a step, but I’ve lost all sense of direction. I don’t know where the stairs are, where I thought the sound was coming from before.
‘Ben?’
The hideous noise he is making, if it is he and not the vile crawling thing of my nightmares, seems to be coming from all around me, as though the cellar has an echo. I’m no longer sure whether my eyes are open or shut, but I can see pictures in my head and they are of creeping things, scraping their claws along the floor, their huge, milky eyes able to see in this blackness. I can hear them. I can hear the sounds as their fleshless bodies drag over the rough floor.
They are winning. The Craftsmen are beating me.
My hand goes to my throat in an instinctive, protective gesture and my fingers curl round the crystal Avril gave me. I think of them, those thirteen women on the town’s edges, and picture their thoughts streaming towards me like moonlight.
Above me, I hear noises and shut my mind to them.
‘Ben!’ I find my voice. ‘Ben, listen to me. I need you to do something and it’s very important. Remember when you were little? When we played hide-and-seek? You’d pretend to be a mouse, remember? And you’d squeak like a mouse and I’d come and find you? I need you to do that now. Squeak like a mouse, Ben. Like you did when you were tiny.’
For a second, then more, there is silence.
And then, ‘Eeek!’
Got him! I spin in the right direction and wait to make sure. It comes again.
‘Eeek!’
Yes. I take a step, then another.
‘I’m coming, baby,’ I say.
‘Eeek!’
The squeak is wrong, but I remember how I was gagged when I was down here. He is doing his best. He squeaks and I take a step forward, and I am thinking back to the days when the only thing that mattered in life was the tiny human who’d been given into my care. We were everything to each other then, Ben and I. The world existed just for the two of us, and most days, from as soon as he could walk until he went to school, we played hide-and-seek.
‘Keep going,’ I say. ‘I’m almost there,’ and I know that I am because the sounds he is making are getting louder and closer. And then my foot pushes up against something soft and I drop to my knees and grab hold of his leg. I run my hands down to his feet and find his ankles taped together, then back up his body to his arms, which are taped behind his back. He is sitting up. I find his face and clutch it tight, cup his head with my hand. I take my hands off him for a second to find the knife.
I cut the tape on his legs first so that he can run, and then the tape round his wrists so that he can fight. Finally, I help him peel away the tape from his mouth so that he can speak.
He gives a soft moan and leans into me. He’s alive. I’ve got him, but the Craftsmen are still out there.
‘Ben, can you stand up? We have to get out of here.’
I wrap my arm around him and try to drag him upright. I had no idea how heavy my son has become, but after a few attempts, when his legs buckle beneath him like a newborn colt, he gets to his feet and can lean against me.
We are surrounded by blackness and I have no idea of the way out.
‘Avril, help me!’
I don’t mean to cry out. I so desperately want to be strong for my baby, but I can’t help it. To have got this far and be stuck here with him, to die together after everything he’s been through.
‘Madness,’ he croaks at my side.
I’m trying not to cry. He’s right. I’ve been fighting off madness all these years. I lost part of my soul in this cellar, and now that I’m back in it, I’m sinking.
‘Madness,’ he says again, except it doesn’t sound so much like ‘madness’ this time, more like—
‘Matches,’ he says, clear as a crystal bell. ‘Mum, you’ve got matches.’
He’s right. There are matches in my bag. Even candles. Telling him to keep hold of me, I rummage in my bag till I find the matches. I strike one and in its tiny, clear light I see the stairs, not fifteen feet away. We are halfway to them when the match burns my fingers and goes out. A second match gets us to the bottom step and then we climb.
The door has only blown shut. We can get out. We stumble along the corridor, holding each other up, and burst out through the fire exit. I drag him to the main gates so that we can look through the bars and see the world again.
Only then, when I know that we are safe and beyond their reach, do I call the police.
69
Ben is taken straight to Burnley General. In the ambulance, there is enough light for me to see his grey, clenched face and trembling limbs. My first act is to take up both of his hands and count the fingers. Ten, thank God. He pulls them away from me and tucks them beneath his upper arms.
I want him to cry, because crying has always felt like the action of a sane person, but he doesn’t.
As we are rushed into Accident and Emergency, Brian Rushton appears, and I explain about seeing the picture of the mill in the old file and working it out. I tell him I saw no one there, that I have no idea who kidnapped my son. He tells me the entire mill has been closed off and has become a major crime scene. They will want to talk to Ben, he says, but it can wait until the morning.
Ben has cuts and bruises, and a suspected concussion, but nothing that I need worry about long term, according to the staff who attend him. Nothing physical, anyway. They talk about counselling and offer contacts, but I tell them I am taking him away as soon as he can be moved.
‘Don’t underestimate the impact something like this will have on a young mind,’ the doctor says, as though I, of all people, need to be told about the long-term impact of trauma. When I think about Ben going through what I did, both in that basement and in the years following, I am taken aback by how much rage I am capable of feeling.
It is two o’clock in the morning by this time, and I think the hospital staff are surprised by the crowd heading our way when the doctor and I leave the private room where Ben has finally fallen asleep.
Daphne, smaller and fatter but unmistakably Daphne, walks towards us on Avril’s arm, the other women following behind. At the back, in between his wife and sister, is Dwane. Daphne takes me into her arms, and the others gather round, pressing close and sharing what little strength they have left. I feel their life forces flowing into me, as though they know how much more I have to do tonight.
‘I don’t want to leave Ben,’ I tell Avril and Daphne. ‘I’m scared to leave him.’
Avril touches my upper arm. It is a gesture of solidarity not comfort. ‘My dear,’ she says. ‘We will be here till you get back. However long it takes.’
Dwane breaks from our little huddle and takes up his stance at Ben’s door. His feet are planted wide, his arms folded. He stares into the middle distance like a Lilliputian president’s security guard and I know he will die before he lets the wrong person into that room. The women settle themselves in the corridor, dragging chairs closer. They take up positions around the door and my sleeping son is safe.
‘Are you sure, Florence?’ whispers Avril, and I know that in spite of everything, she wants me to change my mind.
As I walk away down the hospital corridor, I take out my phone and type a quick text message.
Fancy a swim?
70
I reach the Black Tarn first, as I expected to. As I am counting on. The police have a lot to do tonight and he will not be able to get away quickly. I take
the rug from my car, and the wine and plastic glasses I bought in a twenty-four-hour petrol station. I sit by the water while I’m waiting, scooping up the thick clay mud from the lake’s edge, smoothing it and shaping it, adding drier earth from the bank when I feel it needs more solidity. I am no craftsman, but the picture I am making need not be recognisable. It is my intent that is important. I have to mean it.
I mean it.
I have been here nearly half an hour when I hear another car engine. I put the picture among some reeds and lean down to the lake to wash my hands. I am shaking them dry when Tom’s car appears.
For several seconds I am caught in the headlights. They feel like searchlights and my heart starts to beat faster. I cannot see who is driving that car. Then the lights go out, and as I blink my eyes back to normal, I see the tall outline of Tom getting out of the car. He’s had music playing, of course he has, and he leaves the radio on. I’m not surprised to hear that it’s Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Scarborough Fair’. He walks the last few yards towards me, stops when he is three feet away.
‘How is he?’ he asks.
‘Sleeping,’ I say. ‘Surrounded by an armed guard.’
‘Armed?’
‘With love, courage and the very best of intentions.’ I watch his puzzled frown melt into a smile.
‘You are amazing, you know that? Thirty years on and you still run rings round us.’
‘Want a drink?’ I say.
He nods and we sit. I pour the wine. He tells me what’s happening at the Perseverance Mill, about some fresh leads they’ve found, witness statements that they can follow up in the morning, although of course they’re hoping that Ben’s testimony will help a lot.
I tell him that I haven’t allowed Ben to be interviewed yet and he seems to relax. I check the lines of his jacket for hidden weapons but see nothing. Nevertheless, there is an energy building within him. I check that my bag is within reach.
‘Do you believe the old story,’ I say, as we watch the still, black lake, ‘that women baptised in this water serve two masters?’
The Craftsman Page 34
