Part 77 (2/2)

'I can't,' she whimpers, twisting her head back and forth in an anxious, repet.i.tive pattern.

'Please, just listen to me ... When you reach the cellar with no ceiling, you'll have to climb up to reach ground level ...'

'What are you going to do?' she whispers.

'I can't get out, Nelly's got the key round her neck.'

'But ... how am I going to find my way?'

'In the darkness, the blind man is king,' he says simply.

Her faces trembles as she turns round and starts to walk, feeling the ground in front of her with the stick.

He holds the torch up and tries to guide her. The angled light makes the shadows stretch and shrink.

'There's a load of roof tiles on the floor ahead of you,' he says. 'Move a little to your right and you'll be heading straight for the opening.'

Then the pair of them hear the bar being lifted from the cellar door, as it jolts and sc.r.a.pes back against the wall.

'Hold your hand out now,' Erik whispers. 'You'll be able to feel the wall on your left ... just follow that ...'

Jackie walks into something that clatters, a tin of paint rolls away, and Erik sees her shrink with fear.

'Don't stop,' he hisses. 'You have to get home to Maddy.'

The door above them opens, closes, and clicks, but there's no sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Jackie has reached the opening now, and Erik watches her carry on into the pa.s.sage, holding one hand against the wall and sweeping the ground ahead of her with the stick.

Erik points the torch at the floor and sees Nelly come down the stairs and step out into the middle of the cellar. Her yellow oilskin is smeared with blood and she's clutching a smaller kitchen knife in her hand.

Her eyes are staring straight at him.

He doesn't know how much she has time to see before he switches the torch off. Everything goes completely dark, as if someone had swept the whole world away from them.

'Nelly, they'll send more police officers,' he says, holding his injured arm with his hand. 'Do you understand? It's over now ...'

'It's never over,' she replies, and stands quite still a metre or so away from him, just breathing.

There's a clattering sound from the tunnel. Nelly giggles and walks across the floor. Erik hears her hit the stack of tiles, go round them and carry on through the darkness towards the tunnel.

134.

Jackie is heading along a narrow pa.s.sageway as fast as she can. Her right hand is feeling its way along the wall, and she's moving the stick to and fro in front of her.

She needs to get as far away as she can, try to find a way out and then keep going until she finds help.

Fear is was.h.i.+ng over her, it's almost like being burned, and she manages to kick a bottle lying on the floor that she missed with her stick. It tinkles as it rolls away across the rough floor.

Her fingertips slip across the bricks and crumbling mortar, she notes that she's pa.s.sing a seventh vertical indentation in the wall. She keeps count automatically because it makes things easier if she has to find her way back.

Jackie is having difficulty breathing, the pain in her back flares up like a beacon with every step she takes. Warm blood is still trickling from the wound, down between her b.u.t.tocks and along her legs.

She isn't sure if Erik was telling the truth when he said she wasn't seriously hurt, or if he was only trying to calm her down so that she would dare to escape.

She coughs and feels a cramping pain from her injured lung, just below her shoulder-blade.

Her stick isn't quite quick enough.

Her s.h.i.+n hits some sort of apparatus with sharp tin corners and dangling cables. She has to clamber over the machine and her legs are trembling with effort and fear. She has no way of knowing how long the pa.s.sageway is, but she has a feeling that she's inside a system of tunnels and cellars.

She's walking a little too fast the whole time, and knows there's a serious risk that she's going to trip over.

She pa.s.ses a room on her left, it's there as a gap in the acoustics.

Jackie decided to stop counting the indentations, she needs to concentrate on finding a way out.

'Nelly's coming!' Erik calls from the bas.e.m.e.nt room behind her. 'She's on her way now!'

His voice sounds frightened, weakened by the long tunnel, but she hears him and understands his warning.

Nelly's coming after her.

Jackie tries to move faster, makes her way round an armchair and carries on along the wall, her fingers brus.h.i.+ng a number of shelves. Something rattles behind her and she almost cries out in fear.

It's getting harder and harder to breathe. Jackie holds her hand over her mouth and tries to cough quietly as she presses ahead. Mid-stride, her face hits something. An open cupboard door. It slams shut, and there's a tinkling sound of gla.s.s objects rattling on shelves.

Memories of the violence she has been subjected to flash past: the feeling of a sharp knife-blade being yanked out with a sigh, and the constricting pain in her back.

Her breathlessness feels like a weight, she knows she's breathing too hard, but it still doesn't feel like she's getting enough oxygen.

She moves the stick quickly and lets the other hand brush over bricks and joints, past a thick cable, along bare brick again, then some old window frames that are stacked against the wall.

She's trying to read the s.p.a.ce the whole time.

Whenever she hears an opening, she stops for a few seconds and listens, to check if it's another pa.s.sageway or just an enclosed room.

She keeps moving along the main pa.s.sageway, seeing as the weak draught across the floor seems to be coming from up ahead.

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