‘We didn’t put this back yesterday, did we?’

‘No, sir, after you went upstairs I dragged it back over as best I could, just in case.’

‘Just in case what?’

Davey squirmed. He had tried not to think about it for fear of bringing it back to life to haunt his dreams. Then he thought of poor little Joe and scolded himself.

‘In case the thing I saw down there yesterday came back up. I told you I thought there was something down there when I first looked – only it moved so fast I thought it was just a rat. Then when I was in the tunnels I heard something and it scared me so much I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.’

‘What did you hear, Davey?’

‘It sounded like sharp claws, clattering up the tunnel towards me. It gave me a fair old fright.’

‘I knew you had seen something yesterday. You were scared when we pulled you out. Why didn’t you say something? My wife could have been hurt.’

‘I was too terrified, sir. I didn’t think you’d believe me and then I thought that if you did you would send me back down there. I’m so sorry for being a coward.’

James stopped himself from saying anything else. He would probably have done the same. None of this was Davey’s fault. It was all his and he would pay for this every second of every day until he died. He lifted a hand and squeezed his shoulder.

‘It’s all right. I’d probably have done the same thing if it had been me.’

Davey let out a sigh of relief and Mitchell stepped forward.

‘Well, I’m not scared. It’s probably some mutant rat. You should see the size of the ones we get on the farm sometimes. I’ll go down there with the gun and, if I see it, I’m shooting it on first sight. Is that okay with everyone?’

The others nodded, except for the policeman, who hadn’t really spoken up until now. ‘I don’t know if you should be firing a shotgun in a narrow tunnel, Mitchell. What if it hits the wall and ricochets? It would kill you outright.’

‘I’m not going to shoot the wall, now am I, officer? That would be a pretty stupid thing to do and a waste of good ammunition. I’m a trained gun man, been shooting rats since I was seven years old when my dad taught me.’

James stepped forward and nodded at Davey to grab hold of the cover. Both men bent down and pulled it over, leaving a gap big enough for Mitchell to climb down, but not taking it off completely in case they had to drag it back in a hurry. Mitchell jumped down into the hole and James passed him the lantern and the gun. Mitchell nodded at him, then bent down to shine the lamp around the tunnel to see if there were any rat droppings or signs of any other animals. It was clear. He had barely managed to fit into the tight space and had to shuffle around to get his rifle in position in case he needed to fire it.

‘It’s all clear up to now. I’m going in.’

Davey crossed himself and James felt his heart begin to race. What if he had just sent an innocent man to his death? But there was no proof that his son was dead. He was jumping to conclusions. They waited for what seemed like hours and the policeman began to get fidgety. James hoped that nothing had happened to Mitchell but there had been no shots fired or any shouting. Finally they heard him scrabbling back down the tunnel. It wasn’t wide enough for him to turn around in so he had to crawl backwards, which was not an easy task in a tunnel that size. His feet appeared at the mouth of the tunnel and then he pushed himself back. With a face that was covered in black marks, he looked up at them.

‘Nothing down there as far as I can see. There is a narrow tunnel that leads off from the main one but I don’t even think that it’s big enough to get a small child down. There is a bad smell coming from that tunnel, though. Smells like there might be a blockage or a dead animal down there.’

James flinched and the policeman finally spoke.

‘Sorry to be so crude, sir, but may I just say that your son hasn’t been missing long enough for him to…for his body to…to begin to… Well if some harm had come to him down there it would take more than fifteen or so hours for it to smell really bad is what I’m trying to say.’

James felt deflated. He knew that he was only trying to help, but a picture of his son’s cold, dead body flashed before his eyes and he wanted to collapse on the floor and never get back up.

‘I understand, officer, and thank you. Mitchell, are you sure there was no sign of Joe – no clothes or shoes?’

‘No, sir, as far as I can tell your son hasn’t been in that tunnel and whatever it was that Mrs Beckett saw last night wasn’t down there either.’

James bent down to drag the cover over, and this time it was the police officer who helped him to do it. They went back upstairs and James went into the kitchen, closing the door behind him.

‘I’m sorry, Eleanor. Mitchell has been the full length of the tunnel and there is nothing there.’

She didn’t need to know about the dead animal. She would have nightmares imagining it was their son down there on his own in the dark. Christ, he was going to have nightmares thinking about it. He wished he knew what to do, but he didn’t. Their fate was in the hands of God now and he had a feeling that even God had nothing to do with what had happened to Joe.

Buried deep in the tunnels it sat on its nest of bones. It hadn’t survived this long without knowing when to show itself and when to hide. The people had come close but they couldn’t slither or crawl like it could, or see in the dark. It sat and played with the small, black, lace-up shoe until it was bored, slicing it in half with its razor-sharp claws then throwing it to one side like a child discards a toy when it’s finished playing with it. It didn’t know how many more humans would come looking, but it didn’t matter because soon it would be time to go to sleep for a very long time.

They could look all they wanted but you had to want to see something in order to find it, and you also needed to believe that things existed in this world that were beyond all human comprehension. The world was full of legends and tales of monsters that lived in the dark. The truth was that sometimes these monsters and humans collided and sometimes the humans lived to tell the tale.

When it had awoken in the dark and taken cover in the drains it had been so very hungry. The animals had satisfied it at first but it soon became aware of the much bigger things, which it had learnt were the humans who lived upstairs in the light. They were much harder to trap and kill but they were much tastier and more filling. It would watch the humans on their boats from the blackened shores of the lake when it was dark, too dark to see it crouched down under a bush or tree watching them. It would get a whiff of their scent and its mouth would fill with water at the thought of something so tasty to nibble on. On a few occasions it had watched lone sailors on the lake topple off their boats, and had swum out to drag them back to its nest. It was easier to drown them in the water than try and get their semi-conscious bodies through the narrow tunnels, but they would fight.

It was a rare thing for them to come without a fight. It didn’t care about them. They meant nothing and it didn’t have a conscience, because to exist you must eat, and if eating animals or humans was the only thing to keep it alive then so be it. There were no feelings of empathy or sympathy, just an ache in a belly that had been empty for too long and needed filling until it could eat no more, then it would sleep for a very long time.

Chapter Eighteen

The journey to work had been pretty standard for Jake, who insisted on driving Annie’s car. She had been too tired to argue with him. Even though she’d slept all night she still felt like she could go back to bed for another few hours. He parked outside the station and then made her wait in the car while he got out and had a look around. All she could see from her window was a lot of walkers and tourists. There was no shifty-looking man bundled up under layers of clothes waiting on the corner.