Watching You(3)

Berger stopped him. Asked them all to point their torches at the change in colour. He got his mobile phone out and took a picture. Then he nodded.

The room was too cramped, too low, for a decent swing. Even so, the black cylinder broke through at once. Berger felt the wall. Plasterboard, nothing more. He nodded, and the ram swung back and forth a couple more times, opening a rectangle in the wall. Then it struck thick concrete. That was as big as the hole would get for now.

The hole into the abyss.

The mirror that was poked through revealed nothing but darkness. Berger could see that Deer knew it was up to her. She would be able to get through most easily. She turned to look at him. There was fear in her eyes.

‘Just be careful,’ he said, as gently as possible.

Deer shuddered. Then she kneeled down, ducked her head and slid in, with surprising ease.

Time passed. More than was necessary.

A flash of terror struck Berger. A feeling that Deer had disappeared, that he had sent her into hell defenceless.

Then a groan emerged from the opening, a restrained whimper.

Berger stared at the officers. They were pale, one of them was trying desperately to stop his left hand shaking.

Berger took a deep breath and crawled through.

Inside the unknown space he could see Deer with both hands over her mouth. He looked towards the other end of the room. Across the floor and some way up the wall were stains, large stains. The smell was now a stench.

No, not one stench. Several.

As he shoved forward, his sensory impressions began to fall into place.

Deer was standing by one wall. An area between two floor supports made of decaying wood drew their attention. There was a large stain on the concrete floor, next to an overturned bucket. And between the pillars was a larger stain, across the wall, that was a similar colour, but very clearly had a different source.

‘Fucking hell,’ Deer said.

Berger’s eyes followed the pattern of the stain across the wall. And it caught in his nostrils. Even with the toilet bucket spilled on the floor.

Enough blood for it to catch in his nostrils.

On the other hand, the stain on the wall had soaked in completely. They weren’t just too late. They were far too late.

He looked at the walls. It was as if they wanted to tell him something. As if they were screaming.

Deer moved towards him. They hugged, just briefly. Any shame could come later.

‘We’d better avoid contamination,’ he said. ‘You go first.’

He watched her feet disappear. Took a couple of steps towards the opening. Then changed his mind. He went back to the two pillars, and ran the beam of the torch down them. There were notches in the left-hand pillar, then similar grooves in the one on the right, at three different heights. He looked down, towards the floor. There was something wedged behind the right pillar. He crouched down and pulled it loose. It was a cog, a very small cog. He inspected it closely.

Then he put it into evidence bag that was almost as small, zipped it shut and put it in his pocket.

He photographed the floor supports from various angles. He turned towards the dried pool on the floor. Photographed that too. He let the torch play over the wall that was partially spattered with blood. Took more pictures, even where there wasn’t any blood.

He took care of it all so swiftly that no one even called through to check on him. He was there, sticking his hands through the hole, letting them pull him out.

They made their way up the steps, emerging one by one into a numbing light. They slipped out onto the porch, the rain had stopped. Berger and Deer stood very close together. Breathing freely.

A number of forensics officers, shuffling their feet impatiently, were waiting outside. The overweight head of Forensics, Robin, was on his way up the steps, but thankfully there were no other bosses, no Allan. The wounded officer had disappeared, as had the ambulance. The police vans were still there, blue lights flashing. Media people with cameras and microphones were pressing against the cordon, and the number of onlookers had increased noticeably.

While the forensics team headed into the house from hell, Berger looked out at the crowd. And he was struck by a strange, fleeting feeling. He pulled the plastic glove from his left hand, got his mobile out and took a picture, then a couple more, but the feeling had already gone.

He glanced at his old Rolex. It felt unfamiliar against his wrist, because he changed his watch every Sunday. The hands were slowly ticking onward, and it was as if he saw the ingenious little mechanism tick out each second from nothingness. Then he turned to face Deer. At first she seemed to be looking at his watch, then he realised that her gaze was focused lower, that she was looking at his hands, the right one of which was still at least partially covered by the plastic glove.

‘You’re bleeding,’ she said.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said, pulling the glove off. He pulled a face.

She gave a brief smile and looked up at his face. She studied him carefully. Too carefully.

‘What is it now?’ he said irritably.

‘Again?’ she said.

He could hear the italics.

‘What?’ he said anyway.

‘When we were about to go into the house you said it was too late. “Again.”’

‘And?’

‘Ellen is our first case, isn’t she?’

He smiled. He could feel himself smiling. It felt wrong, there on the porch in front of the realm of the dead.