There was no reply. Not a sound above the sea and the gulls. Even the siren back at the camp had stopped now. She approached the doorway, wishing she had Lucas and Sid to dowse what was in there. The mandatory stink of old urine met her nose as she drew closer. ‘Craig!’ she called again. ‘Nikki!’
Nothing. She took another lungful of air, held her breath and leaned in, shining her torch into the fetid gloom. At once, the light picked out eyes. Wide, staring, shining eyes. She jolted in shock, even though there couldn’t be much to surprise her in this. But the eyes were not fixed and cold… they were very much moving and alive. Nikki and Craig were sitting up against the far wall of the bunker. Their mouths were tightly gagged with some material and their hands were behind their backs.
But they were alive! She held back from rushing in. Exhaling slowly, she shone the torch into every corner of the bunker. It was twice the size of the other two and she would need to venture much further in, away from the beach and what might come for her along it, but there was nobody inside and nobody outside that she could see. With luck the next person here would be Lucas. Maybe the killer had finished… maybe this was all of it.
She didn’t believe that. He’d taken way too much trouble. But she had to release her friends and get them out. What if there was an explosive device buried in the detritus across the slanted floor? Nothing would surprise her. There was no MO you could trace with this guy… throat-slitting, drowning, strangling, shooting, lard, frogs… it was any method to fit his twisted narrative, and she still had no idea what the story was.
She stepped in carefully, hugging one wall and keeping clear of any potential pressure plates in the centre. Nikki whimpered and rolled her eyes. The phone torch beam flashed across more red paint. Thick and tall this time. One message stretching the length of the opposite wall.
You should have said sorry.
What did they do? What did they say? She had a mental flashback of the many sessions of bitching and gossip, and heedless name-slinging and casual, light-hearted bullying that had gone on. She hadn’t really joined in… had she? She recalled trying to make them all play nicely… what about that time with Backflip Barney..?
Oh shit. Not Barney! He was here! He had tried to talk to her earlier on the beach.
She reached the corner without setting anything off. No. Surely not Barney? The guy was a bit odd, but he was good-hearted. She couldn’t believe he would do this. Yes… her friends had royally taken the piss out of him, but they’d all come around in the end, hadn’t they? They were mostly nice to him once they’d got to know him better.
‘Are you attached to anything electrical?’ she whispered to Nikki and Craig. ‘To any devices?’
Craig and Nikki shook their heads. Closer to them, she could see that their wrists were handcuffed to some old piping that ran down the back wall. She guessed they must have tried hard to pull against it and failed to budge it an inch. These old bunkers had been built to last.
‘Are you hurt?’ she whispered, setting her phone torchlight against the wall and reaching behind Nikki with her metal pick.
They both shook their heads again. She could take off their gags, but she needed to keep things quiet; to hear what might be going on outside. ‘Was it Backflip Barney?’ she whispered again. They shook their heads.
‘Do we know him?’
In the torchlight they looked at her and then at each other, eyebrows raised in uncertainty and confusion. And fear. A lot of fear.
‘It’s OK,’ she murmured, working the metal pin. ‘I’m going to get you out of here. And my friend Lucas is on his way to help. He’ll be here any minute.’
At that point she heard movement outside and her adrenaline surged, feeding both fear and hope. There was a thud and the light from the doorway vanished. She swung around, ready to see someone standing there, blocking it. But the light was gone completely. She realised, too late, that the discarded boarding had been put back into place.
She hurtled across to throw herself at it and shove it out onto their foe, but before she could reach it there was a gritty crunch. Something heavy had been pulled against the stout wood panel.
‘STOP RIGHT THERE! POLICE!’ she bawled, launching a flying kick at the door. But although it juddered, it did not shift. She rebounded back onto the pebble and litter-strewn concrete floor, knocking the breath out of herself. She was up a moment later and trying again, but even as she launched another kick she heard more grating noises and grimly realised that this, like everything else, had been planned. If she’d paid more attention she might have realised that the slabs of concrete beside the bunker had a purpose. She had assumed they had randomly fallen… now she knew there was nothing random about what was happening.
A hissing sound caught her attention, and she grabbed up her phone and shone the torchlight up to the ceiling to see another column of falling sand. And then a second. And then a third. Thicker and heavier sand, falling through from gaps she had not noticed. A red light blipped in the far corner of the hut and a voice played out of it.
‘Say sorry,’ it said.
‘What for?’ yelled the muffled voice.
He smiled. He might as well have written the script for all of them. They had all said and done precisely what he had imagined they would say and do, during the many weeks in which he had planned and rehearsed and visualised each and every scene of his revenge play. Ever since he’d seen the name — Talia
