91

INSTINCTIVELY, I FLICKED OFF THE TORCH. THE VOICE WAS followed by a crackling sound like paper being torn. Or the hiss of a police radio. Impossible. They could not know I was here. I’d heard something from street level, that was all, a sound that had travelled down through one of the ventilation grilles.

I wasn’t anywhere near the ventilation grilles. I was crossing the basement, the grilles were in the horse tunnels.

For God’s sake, I’d been ultra careful, there was no way the MIT could have found me. They hadn’t even been looking. All the surveillance and tracking equipment Joesbury had given me had been wrecked the night I fell in the river; he hadn’t replaced any of it.

Except the phone.

Only the growing conviction that someone was close enough to hear kept me from moaning out loud. I’d been issued with a new phone while I was in hospital, one that had come from the specialist crime directorate that sends its officers into dangerous situations and needs to keep track of them. I’d kept it switched off for most of the day, thinking a phone needed to be on to be traceable. What if Joesbury had put some sort of device inside mine that was permanently active whether the phone was on or not?

Gently, I pulled it out of my pocket. As I did so, any doubt I might be clinging to disappeared. From not too far away came the sound of someone stepping into water.

The MIT hadn’t needed to look for me. They’d known exactly where I was all day, probably from the moment I’d left Joesbury’s car. They’d been watching and following; waiting for me to lead them here.

I almost gave up there and then, almost switched on the torch and called out to them. But something stopped me. It wasn’t over yet.

I’d been following the south wall of the goods-shed basement. If I reached out it was close enough to touch. I bent down and soundlessly put Joesbury’s traitorous mobile by the wall. Then, with the fingers of one hand tracing the outside wall, I set off. After a few more minutes I reached the corner. By a massive stroke of luck, my left hand found the hole in the wall that would take me through to the western horse tunnel. I risked the torch for less than a second, and went through, knowing I was very close now. A corner, a few more metres and I would be able to enter the Engine Vaults at the upper, gallery level. If I’d got it right, Llewellyn would be at the far end of the structure watching the stairs. If I were wrong, well, all bets were off.

I waited just before the corner, listening. Then, in almost total darkness, I turned and walked into the vaults. I was near water again. A lot of it. The floor of the Engine Vaults is permanently underwater and ten years ago we’d built our little homes on the gallery that runs around three sides of the perimeter.

I moved slowly, praying the gallery floor was still solid. A lot can happen in ten years. The structure was 170 feet long. Maybe a hundred slow steps to take me along the main gallery to the upper floor of the eastern boiler room. The boiler rooms were smaller spaces and less draughty; in the old days they’d been the most coveted spots. They were where Llewellyn would be holding Joanna.

It was far too dark to see the water beneath me but I could hear it moving, soft little ripples and splashes, and the smell of it seemed to be coating the inside of my throat. I could almost imagine it had grown deeper, deeper even than the ten feet I remembered, stretching up towards the gallery, that if I leaned out from the edge, my hand might touch it. I had an unnerving sense of walking around the perimeter of a vast underground swimming pool.

My fingers found the corner of the gallery and I took a few sideways steps. When I touched the suspended sheet of polythene, I knew I was at the entrance to the boiler room. As I pushed it silently to one side and stepped through, I heard movement.

The darkness in the boiler room was absolute. I remembered the space all too well, had made my way around it before in almost complete darkness, but there is a difference, I was discovering, between the almost complete and the absolute. A decade ago, there had always been a candle, or a gas lamp, or an oil drum somewhere. Now, someone could be inches away from me, staring straight into my eyes, and I wouldn’t know it. Torch or voice, I would have to use one of them.

‘Joanna,’ I whispered, knowing that, of the two, a low sound would be the less noticeable.

Another movement, this one more urgent. And the sounds a woman makes in the back of her throat when she can’t speak.

‘Shush,’ I risked. ‘Don’t talk.’

She whimpered a couple of times more, enough to give me a fix. She was about three metres away. I moved forward, one small step at a time, until my foot came up against something soft. Another whimper.

I crouched low.

Not daring to put the torch down in case I never found it again, I reached out and touched her legs. She was wearing nylon tights and was freezing. I ran my hand down her legs to her ankles and found them duct-taped together. I was just pulling my rucksack off to find the knife when she pulled her knees up towards her chin and kicked out at me.

As I went down, I couldn’t stop the yelp slipping out. I pushed myself up but had no idea where she was, where the torch was, where I was. I made myself keep still and listen, it was the only thing I could do.

The darkness felt solid, as if it was pressing into me on all sides. Then two distinct sounds: the first, that of someone scuffling along the ground away from me; the second, footsteps behind. Before I could turn, a powerful beam of light shot across the room. I had a moment to see Joanna, curled up like a filthy, terrified child. Less than a moment really, before I was grabbed from behind and dragged to my feet.

‘Victoria Llewellyn,’ said a voice in my ear, as my right arm was twisted up behind me, ‘I am arresting you for the abduction of Joanna Groves and for the murders of Geraldine Jones, Amanda West, Charlotte Benn and Karen Curtis.’