Marina nodded and got in the car. They set off for Halstead.
Neither spoke.
‘You OK?’ Marina asked eventually, her voice low.
Johnny Cash was singing about how everything was done with a Southern accent where he came from. Some beautiful guitar work accompanying him.
Phil nodded as he drove. ‘Working through it. You know.’ He turned to her. Smiled. ‘We’ll get there.’
She placed her hand on his thigh. He kept it there.
The drive out to Halstead was busier than they had expected, catching the tail end of the evening rush-hour traffic. With the darkness had come rain, blowing across the road in front of them, hitting the windscreen like sheets of diamond-hard static. Cars were moving slowly on the twisting country roads, taking time on the hills, avoiding skids and spills.
They followed the villages along the River Colne, eventually arriving in Halstead.
Phil came to the crossroads in the town centre, went right. As he did so, he looked down the hill leading to the old mill at the bottom that represented the town centre. It was an old market town, the original architecture maintained, a place of decent restaurants, bars and pubs, upmarket independent furnishing stores. He and Marina had driven out for Sunday lunch a few times, bought a couple of little things for their new house. The shops were still hanging on. A few more empty ones than previously, a few more charity shops sprung up. He saw Marina looking.
‘We’ll have to come back here one Sunday,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘When this is over.’
‘Yeah. When this is over.’
He drove out of the centre, down the hill towards the Halstead Manor Hotel. Pulled up in the gravel driveway. Johnny Cash was singing that it was so hard to see the rainbow through glasses as dark as his. Phil turned the music off. They looked at each other.
‘Ready?’ said Phil.
‘You sure this is going to work?’ said Marina. ‘Asking a mad tramp what’s going on?’
‘Let’s hope so,’ he said.
‘You sure he’s not the murderer?’
‘Wouldn’t I have brought him in if he was?’
Marina shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You haven’t been thinking straight these last few days.’
Phil sighed. ‘I know. But I looked at him, looked in his eyes. It’s not him, Marina. He’s damaged, yes, troubled. But not a killer. He wanted the Garden to be a place of healing. Retreat.’
‘And look what happened to that.’
‘Let’s go.’
They got out of the car. Seeing the rain start, they had both dressed practically. Jeans and boots. Waterproof jackets. Phil took a torch out of the boot of the car. ‘This way.’
They walked off behind the back of the hotel, started down the bank towards the river. Phil swung the torch around. Picked up marks on the ground.
‘Someone’s been here,’ he said.
‘There was a murder here,’ said Marina. ‘I should think there have been a lot of people tramping around.’
‘No,’ said Phil, pointing to the path they were following. ‘Look. There are fresh footprints. Fresh tracks. Someone’s been down here recently.’
‘Is that good?’ asked Marina.
‘If it’s Paul,’ said Phil, ‘yes.’
‘And if not?’
‘Let’s hope it’s Paul,’ he said.
They walked along the route as Phil remembered it. It was harder going in the dark, harder still in the rain. Secure footholds crumbled away to muddy nothing. Branches and trees used night as camouflage to entrap them. The two of them had to hold on to each other, help each other down and along.
‘Here it is,’ said Phil at last as they reached the river’s edge. ‘At least I think so.’
He swung the torch round. Listened. There was no sound except the rain hitting the water, the leaves. Like hot, sizzling fat or incessant machine-gun fire.
Along the muddy bank the torch picked out a larger area of darkness.
‘There.’
They began to walk towards the cave mouth.
‘This is it?’ said Marina, stopping in front of it. ‘The man who started the Garden. This is where he lives?’
‘Yep. When he’s not in one of his other properties dotted around town. All connected to the Garden, all derelict.’
She nodded. ‘I could get a PhD out of him alone.’ She peered into the cave mouth. ‘Well, that looks inviting. What do we do, call to him? Leave food outside?’
‘Or whisky,’ said Phil. He swung the torch into the cave, stepped inside.
‘Careful.’
‘I am.’ He walked on. ‘I think someone’s been here,’ he called back.
Marina heard his voice echoing round the stone mouth.
‘I think-’
Phil screamed. There was a clattering, smashing sound. Silence.
‘Phil? Phil?’ Marina ran into the cave mouth, still shouting. Panic rising inside her. ‘Phil… Phil… ’
‘It’s… all right… ’ His voice, distant, distorted. Echoing.
‘Where are you? Phil?’
‘I’m… Don’t come any closer. You’ll do the same.’
‘What?’
‘There’s a… an entranceway here. A slope. I didn’t see it and I’ve just slid down it.’
She saw the faint glow of torchlight against the darkness, went towards it. She reached the lip of the shaft Phil had fallen down. Knelt before it. It was just big enough for one person to go down, as long as they weren’t too wide. She could see him at the bottom, looking up. The sides, where the torchlight hit them, looked smooth. Too smooth to climb up again.
‘How are you going to get out?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe Paul’s down here. I’ll ask him.’
‘And maybe he isn’t.’ She sighed. ‘Have you still got that tow rope in the boot?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘I’ll go and get it. Don’t wander off.’
‘Yeah, thanks. I’ll bear that in mind.’
Marina stood up, made her way back out of the cave. She looked around, tried to get her bearings. The woods seemed scarier without Phil. Bigger, wilder. Things unseen lurking behind trees.
Trying to swallow down the panic that was threatening to rise within her, and telling herself there was nothing to be scared of, she set off in what she hoped was the direction they had come from. Back to the hotel, back to the car.
As quickly as she could.
112
The circus was on the move. Under cover of darkness and with the Super’s reluctant, angry blessing. Mickey sat in the first van of the convoy, up front with Fennell and Clemens. Body armour on over his day clothes, the two SOCA officers doing the same.
The Super hadn’t been happy when Fennell had called him. Engaging in a clandestine operation on his turf without his consent was exactly the kind of thing to make him angry. But Fennell, displaying great political skill, had won him round. Reminded him what a feather in his cap it would be for a people-trafficking operation to be halted
