Looking Good Dead

reflective warning triangle that he presumed came with the car. Finally, he crawled underneath; there was no mud, nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary.
    He hauled himself back to his feet, told the Traffic constable that he could lock it up and reset the alarm, and walked along to his car,anxious to get back to Sussex House. Hoping desperately the stroppy but brilliant Joe Tindall was going to produce a result with those prints.
    And that the surveillance team did not lose the VW.
    Bringing Brighton to a halt for no result was hardly going to improve Alison Vosper’s opinion of him. Or his chances of avoiding relegation to Newcastle. Cassian Pewe or no Cassian Pewe.
    Then, suddenly, he thought of Cleo. It was twelve twenty. She hadn’t returned his call.

80
    Tom threw himself down onto the floor and frantically scrabbled across the hard stone surface with his hands, trying to find the cords. A torch beam stabbed the darkness; it briefly fell on Kellie, then on his face, then jigged against the wall, lighting up a row of chemical drums.
    Including the one with its lid removed.
    Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
    He lay on his side, very still, holding-his-breath still, hands rigidly to his side, legs clamped together, dripping perspiration. He heard the clack, clack, clack of footsteps approaching. His heart was thudding, the roar in his ears of his blood coursing through his veins. The bitter bile of terror rose in his throat.
    This was going to be the moment. As soon as he was discovered. Christ, maybe he had been stupid all over again? Stupid to have left the house, stupid to have let them into his car. And now, stupid, unbelievably stupid to have tried to escape.
    Kellie was right, what she had said earlier. Calling him a failure.
    For an instant he shut his eyes, praying, fighting down vomit. Was this how it was going to finish? All the dreams? Never seeing the children again? Never—
    There was a loud clatter. He heard something rolling across the floor. Whatever it was, it hit him on the side of the head. A hard object, but light.
    He turned, remembering to stay in his trussed-up position. The beam shone directly into his eyes for a moment, blinding him. Then he heard the same broken-English voice he’d heard a short while ago.
    ‘For urinate. No shit.’
    The beam moved away from his face and onto an object lying on its side just a few feet away. It was an orange plastic bucket.
    The footsteps receded. Tom turned to watch; he saw the flashlight beam swinging across the floor until the man reached the rectangle of light in the distance. He thought, fleetingly, that it did not seem to haveoccurred to the man how he was going to use the bucket with his hands trussed to his sides.
    He heard the slam of a heavy-sounding metal door.
    And then, once again, there was total darkness.

81
    ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ Carl Venner shouted, his face puce like his shirt with its buttons straining against his gut. Veins bulged at his temples. The scratch the young girl had made during his visitor’s last call was still very visible. ‘What do you think you are doing, coming here? I told you never, ever, ever to come here unless you are told. What part of don’t ever, ever come here unless you are told do you not fucking understand, John?’
    Andy Gidney stared down at the cheap beige carpet, his eyes fixed on one tuft; he was trying to calculate how many strands of fibre might be in the tuft.
    Venner brought his index finger to his mouth and began to tear at the skin around the nail. A cigar smouldered in the ashtray on his metal desk on the top floor of the warehouse. ‘And anyhow, just where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you for the past hour.’
    ‘Ummm, I’ve been on my way here.’
    ‘So why didn’t you answer your fucking phone?’
    ‘Because you told me never to bring it here.’
    To the Weatherman’s quiet satisfaction, that temporarily silenced Venner, who continued working on his finger for some moments, examined it, then worked on it some more. ‘We have a major disaster on our hands, that’s why I was calling you.’
    Actually you have two, the Weatherman thought. One you don’t know about – yet. Not that he cared. Carl Venner could have a thousand disasters and he wouldn’t care. He continued counting the fibres.
    Venner picked up his cigar, stabbed it between his lips, and puffed it back into life, blowing the smoke out of the corner of his mouth. ‘A