Vanished

finger on the odour, couldn’t quite define it in my head, but the closest I could get was the same as before: old dishcloths. That smell you got when they were screwed up into a ball and left, still stained with food and soaked with water, never quite drying, the odour just getting stronger. It wasn’t unbearable, just unpleasant.

I closed the door beneath the sink, got up and walked around the kitchen, running a hand along the edge of the worktop as I moved from one side to the other.

And then I felt something beneath my boot.

I looked down. A slight indentation in the floor, the size of a beer mat, about two feet in from the skirting boards. I prodded it with the toe of my boot. There was something in the middle of it: a bump. I leaned down, running a hand across it, and then – in my peripheral vision – noticed something else: the lino in the corner of the room hadn’t been set properly. It was curling up, as if it hadn’t been stuck down.

Or it had been placed back in a hurry.

I went through Smart’s knife drawer and picked out an old-fashioned potato peeler. Using the V-shaped end, I forced it down into the corner of the room, where the lino met the skirting board, and prised the lino away. It came out easily. I grabbed a handful of it and then pulled it back with me, edging across the kitchen. It unfurled like a layer of skin, peeling slowly away, revealing wooden floorboards underneath. The smell was stronger now, and I realized why: the floorboards had been wiped down, cleaned of whatever had spilled across them, but when the lino had been placed back on top, the floorboards hadn’t been dry. Despite that, despite the swipes left on their surface by the cloth, they were still in immaculate condition, oak panels laid perfectly from one side of the room to the other. Except for one square the size of a beer mat.

In that space was a flip-up handle.

Under the lino was a trapdoor.

75

The only thing that gave the game away was the handle itself, cut into a space about two inches deep, and then a thin line running in a square – about two feet across by the same long – which marked out the edges of the trapdoor. The trapdoor was finished in the same oak boards as the rest of the room. I dropped down, gripping the handle as tightly as I could, and opened it.

The door locked at ninety degrees, on a hinge. Inside I could see a concrete staircase dropping down into the dark. Once the shadows sucked up the uneven steps and the crumbling stone walls, there was nothing else.

Just black.

I got up and looked around the kitchen for a torch, figuring he’d need one if this was where he’d been keeping them, and – after some searching – found one right at the back of the cupboard under the sink. It was black and rubberized, its casing marked with dust. I flicked it on and directed it down into the darkness. Further down, I could see part of the wall at the bottom of the stairs. It was covered in what looked like black egg cartons.

Soundproofing.

I felt a stir of disquiet, the cone of torchlight unable to illuminate anything else in the room below. Then I started down.

After five steps, my head level with the kitchen floor, I felt a subtle change in temperature, as if I was stepping into a freezer. There was a faint draught coming in from somewhere, and the distant sound of dripping, but nothing else. Once I was completely immersed, the kitchen just a square of light above me, I stopped and directed the torch down, into the spaces in front of me. It was a basement. Concrete floors, completely unfurnished. It was difficult to tell how big in the dark, but it must have been the length and width of the house. Every so often there were brick pillars – thick columns holding the building up – and attached to one of them I saw a metal plate flecked with rust, and a chain coming off to a pair of shackles. The shackles had a red dot on them. The same as the key from the kitchen. The key had never been for the lift shaft, just as the bodies had never been dumped there. It had all been a lie; an attempt to confuse.

I carried on down, pausing at the bottom.

Now I could smell something. Something worse than damp. I placed a foot on to the basement floor and slowly moved the torch from right to left. The beam glided past the mid-section of the room and – a split second later – something registered with me.

I moved it back.

In the darkness, barely illuminated by the torch, I saw something shift. I edged further in, keeping the beam high and my eyes fixed on the shadows. I passed one pillar, and then another. The second had started crumbling around its middle and, when I stopped for a moment, I could see why: it also had a metal plate and a chain attached to it – as well as another red dot on the shackles – just like the one close to the staircase. But this one had become almost detached from the wall.

As if someone had been pulling at it.

I felt a shiver pass through my chest, my body sounding an alarm, and then I refocused the torch on the shape.

It was a man.

He was on his side, ankle chained to a metal plate on the back wall, facing me but with his head tucked into the bend of his elbow. He was shivering. There were no marks on him, or at least none I could see. I dropped to my haunches and directed the torchlight away from him, off to the side where it wouldn’t be directly on him.

And I saw someone else.

Another man.

This one was also chained to the back wall, about seven feet further on. He wasn’t moving. I got to my feet, took a sideways step, and picked him out properly. There were bruises all over him, and it looked like his wrist might be broken. His arm was out in front of him, his hand a deep purple, angled away unnaturally. When my torch passed across his face, there was nothing in his eyes. No reaction. No colour. I recognized him instantly from the files Healy had shown me: Joseph Symons, the third Snatcher victim. He wasn’t dead, but he didn’t have long: I could see the soft rise and fall of his stomach, bones showing through his broken skin, and there was dried blood all over his groin.

Like Leon Spane, Smart had removed his penis.

I covered my mouth, nausea rising in my throat, and swung the torch back around to the man in front of me, trying to concentrate on anything but Symons. The man moved slightly, out of the crook of his elbow, his head propped on the upper part of his arm.

It was Jonathan Drake.

He gazed right at me, eyes distant, as if the fight had been beaten out of him. But he didn’t move, even though – for all he knew – I could have been Smart. I inched closer, using the torch to paint him in a soft yellow glow. On his back there were bruises everywhere, most either side of his spine.

‘Jonathan?’

Something sparked in his eyes.

‘My name’s David Raker. I’m here to get you out, okay?’

He blinked. Whimpered.

‘He’s not going to hurt you again.’

Drake shifted on the floor, coming towards me, but the chain locked into place at his ankle. I held out a hand, moving closer, and gently touched him on the shoulder. He flinched. He wasn’t in as bad a state as Symons – physically at least – but then Symons had been missing since 28 February. Almost four months. Drake had been missing six days. He’d suffered, but not like Symons.

‘It’s okay. No one’s going to …’

And then I saw the rest.

They were off to my left, in the opposite direction, chained to metal plates lined up on the outer wall. Some at the ankles, some at the wrists. There was about ten feet between each of them, and – when I could bear to look – I realized Smart had taken something from each of their bodies, just like he’d done with Symons. The one closest to me I knew straight away from the photo of him I’d seen in his file: Steven Wilky. When my torch caught his face, nothing came back; just a glazed stillness, his body curled up in the foetal position, his skin almost translucent, veins showing through like a road map.

Beyond him it got worse: the tiny figure of a man – a boy, really – head shaved, both hands locked together