Tombstoning Read online

  ‘You live in a fucking cave?’ David was laughing despite himself. ‘You live as a fucking hermit, in a cave?’

  Even in the torchlight he could see from Neil’s face that this was not something to be laughing about, unless he wanted another taste of Mr Torch. Nevertheless, for some reason he found this incredibly funny. He imagined hermits as mad, old grizzly guys, with matted beards and fishbone necklaces, going slowly insane in the darkness of their hovel, eating whelks and drinking rainwater out of an old hat. Now that he looked at Neil again, he could see him fitting that description in a few years’ time, although he had clearly already done the going insane part. This all fitted together nicely, thought David. Sitting here in a dark cave, brooding over your life and all the mistakes you’d made, with nothing else to occupy you except the odd echoing splosh and the distant sound of the sea, well that would send anyone fucking mental, wouldn’t it? And if you were halfway to being a violent lunatic anyway, as Neil obviously had been, this sort of sensory deprivation environment was pretty much guaranteed to send you tumbling over the edge.

  He looked again at Neil’s face and abruptly stopped laughing. Gazing into the hollow eyes of his former schoolfriend, he felt sorry for him, as if life had dealt him a particularly shitty hand, and even then he hadn’t handled what he’d had dished out to him at all well. Circumstance had been against Neil from the start, thought David, and really he was to be pitied, not feared. Just then Neil produced the knife from his pocket and angled it pointedly towards David. It would probably be easier to feel sympathy for the guy if he wasn’t threatening him at knifepoint, with, presumably, a view to killing him at some point in the not too distant future, he thought. Then he reminded himself Neil had pointlessly killed an old schoolfriend, and – even giving him the benefit of the doubt – he’d been present at the death of another friend, and had been at least partly responsible for that. Fuck sympathy, he thought.

  ‘Get out the fucking boat.’

  They had puttered into the cave and onwards for about five minutes in almost complete darkness, just the beam of the torch guiding them as the damp, stone ceiling above their heads gradually descended until they had to crouch in the boat, making David shudder with claustrophobia. But then the ceiling seemed to disappear and a quick coolness to the air and the echoing of their boat engine heralded a wide-open space, a cavern of a place, although David couldn’t actually glean its dimensions in the dismal light. He noticed that there was some additional light coming in from somewhere, more than there had been when they entered the cave, so presumably there was another way out. David was briefly proud of himself for noting this instinctively, but then was thrown into depression again when he thought of Neil, the knife and his hand ties. Then he thought of the rescue boat coming, and brightened up again. His feelings were all over the fucking place, he realized.

  ‘I said get out the fucking boat.’

  Neil gave him a shove and he stumbled out, splashing up to his knees in the water which was lapping at the edge of a clear area of sloping shingle. He slowly trooped up the incline away from the boat. Behind them David could hear nothing. No boat, no engine, nothing. Maybe the other boat hadn’t seen them come in here, or they hadn’t been able to find the entrance to the cave. He felt the beginnings of a panic attack creeping up on him, so he tried to breathe deeply as he sat down on the shingle.

  ‘Get up. Fucking move.’

  Neil booted him hard in the ribs and, despite the pain and the mounting panic and claustrophobia, David rose and trudged on. Following Neil’s directions they walked on to a smaller sheltered area, like an ante-room off the main cave, which was full of crates covered in tarpaulin. A mattress lay in the corner and a pot sat over a rough fireplace in the middle. It looked as if Neil was set for life here, thought David.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘About a year, on and off.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Neil headed straight for one of the crates and dug about inside. He emerged with something black and shiny in his hand and David felt sick. It was a gun. Neil made a point of showing it to David, hefting it in his hand to show its weight, its deadly reality.

  ‘Understand?’ said Neil. ‘Don’t get any fucking ideas.’

  ‘What happens when that other boat finds us? Are you going to shoot them all? Then me? There will be others, Neil. Don’t you see? This is all over.’

  ‘They might not find us.’

  ‘And if they don’t? What exactly are you going to do?’

  Neil looked exasperated from all the questions, and from having to keep re-evaluating his situation, thinking on his feet. He looked as if he had made up his mind.

  ‘Well, my old school pal, then I kill you and disappear. I’ve done it before, and it’s amazing how things can blow over if you give them a while.’

  ‘So what, you’re just going to shoot me in a cave, is that it? It seems like an awful lot of trouble, when you could’ve just pushed me in the water out at sea.’

  In the dim torchlight, David saw Neil’s face glisten with a mixture of rain and sweat. His own brow was slick with moisture. Neil was quietly grinning at him.

  ‘No, I’m not going to shoot you in a cave,’ he said. ‘I’m going to throw you off a cliff. Now move.’

  With that Neil walked quickly towards David, giving him yet another good belt with the torch across the head, the stars in David’s vision blending with the swirling torchlight. Neil pointed him out of the alcove and towards the back of the cave. David had no option but to walk towards the darkness.

  But just then they heard a sound like a distant lawnmower. Neil stopped. It was the motor of the other boat! David felt elated, but didn’t have too long to think as Neil shoved him over behind a slippery, mossy rock.

  ‘Don’t make a fucking sound,’ said Neil, crouching down next to him and edging a look round the rock. David couldn’t see past the rock, but he could see a beam of light from a torch on the boat, dancing around the space of the cavern like a spotlight raking the sky for enemy bombers. Neil’s torch was off. David thought he should warn the folk in the other boat that Neil was lying in wait, but just as he was about to shout out his ears exploded as the sound of gunshots next to him ricocheted around the cavern, bouncing off the wet rocks in every direction, echoing backwards and forwards and filling his head with torrents of noise. Shit, Neil was firing on them.

  David tried to get up but felt the butt of the gun smash into his temple and stumbled to the ground. Then he felt Neil’s hand pulling at his arms behind his back, dragging him upwards and pushing him deeper into the cave. They stumbled on for a distance over the rough rock in almost pitch darkness until Neil was forced to put his torch on to see where they were going. David quickly looked around, wondering forlornly if an escape route would present itself, but he could see nothing. The torch behind them had gone out – did that mean someone had been shot? Not necessarily – they would obviously put their torches off when the firing started, otherwise they were sitting ducks. Surely they could see Neil’s torch now? With the sound of gunshot still ringing in his ears, he couldn’t hear anything behind them, and couldn’t see anyone either. How the hell did he get everyone into this mess? People shooting at other people in a damp sea cave – how had it come to this? All he did was attend a school reunion, for fuck’s sake.

  ‘This way,’ said Neil, grabbing David and pushing him to the left. David had looked that way but had only seen bare, dripping walls, but as they got closer he saw an opening. As they reached the opening Neil’s torchlight fell upon it briefly, and David couldn’t believe it – it was a spiral staircase, cut out of the rock, which went up as far as he could see. What the hell?

  ‘Smugglers,’ said Neil, as if reading his mind. ‘Now up. And get a fucking move on.’

  David felt the cool violence of the gun poking into his back and stumbled on. The staircase was narrow and cramped and the steps uneven and crumbling, and with his hands still tied behind his back
it was hard going to hoist himself up, but somehow the presence of a gun in the vicinity of his lower back spurred him on. He wondered what was happening back in the cavern. He still hadn’t heard anything. He hoped to hell they would find this staircase and that they would catch up with him and his maniac kidnapper soon. With Neil’s torchlight swinging past his shoulders and around the spiral space it felt fleetingly like he was at a club with a strobe light on. He stumbled on, as if in a weird nightmare, hoping all this would end soon.

  Nicola stayed down in the boat, making sure there were no more bullets heading in her direction. When she poked her head over the prow she couldn’t see anything, the place was virtually total blackness. She had reached the shingle landing area when the shooting started. She was about to get out the boat when she remembered the box. She raked about under the outboard motor and felt her hand slip around the handle of the flare gun. She wasn’t sure what the hell she was going to do with it in a cave, but instinctively felt it could be useful. She inched out over the side of the boat and scuttled up the shore, keeping her head down. As she looked ahead she saw a torch come on. She couldn’t believe her luck. She was stumbling over slippery rocks and ankle-deep pools of stagnant water, but kept her eye firmly on the spotlight of the torch up ahead. In the waving light she was sure she caught a glimpse of two figures. At least David was still alive, then, she thought, although Neil had a gun which obviously put him at an advantage. Where the hell were they headed? As far as she could tell there was nothing but deeper cave back there, and no way out, although she had noticed that a small amount of ambient light was making its way in here from somewhere.

  As she watched the two shadowy figures up ahead, the light from the torch suddenly did something funny, not exactly switching off, but diminishing greatly, as if they had gone behind something. She had been travelling sideways for the last couple of minutes until she found the cave wall. From there she felt her way round, the clammy damp of it against her palms. Up ahead of her the torchlight was becoming a faint glow, like a house light on a dimmer switch, but it was still enough to follow. She made her way as quickly as possible along the slimy cave wall, still not willing to switch her own torch on. The faint glow up ahead was getting dimmer but closer, and then the wall under her hand fell away and she was standing at an opening in the cave wall. The torchlight was spilling down from above, and in the glow she could see a set of spiral steps. Another way out. She wondered what the hell Neil was thinking of now as she started up the stairs, three at a time, her torch in one pocket, the flare gun tightly in the grip of her other hand.

  David was dizzy from the repetitive turning and climbing, as well as the umpteen blows he’d received. He couldn’t think at all. For a while, in the concentration of not falling over or passing out, he was mesmerized by the repeating steps under his feet, and forgot completely where he was and what he was doing. It reminded him of that black monument in Edinburgh’s Princes Street that he’d made the mistake of climbing up once. By the end of it he could hardly squeeze up the cramped space, and then he’d met a large American coming down and had to backtrack dozens and dozens of steps. He came to and almost fell over. How long had they been going up now? It seemed like forever, but in a rare moment of lucidity he realized that his mind was almost certainly playing tricks on him, and that it was probably only a few minutes. As they climbed, the air around them became drier and warmer, and David thought he could smell earth rather than dank dampness all around him. Neil was still coming up close behind him, issuing a reminding prod with the gun in his back every few steps. Just when David again thought he was about to pass out, as a wave of nausea passed over him, the steps stopped abruptly at a landing. He looked up at the low stone ceiling and there was a rough wooden hatch embedded in it. David just stood there exhausted, slouched and panting, his arms still behind his back, the ties cutting into his wrists, his hands numb. He did a quick inventory of how his body felt. His kidneys or liver or whatever it was back there was still aching, and now his thighs burned from the exertion of the climb. His neck and head were throwing out bursting throbs of pain at intermittent intervals, and his jaw felt loose. His forehead was a solid wall of pain, but his brain seemed to be blocking that out. Probably for the best.

  As he stood wondering what the hell was going to happen next, Neil started playing with the hatch, jiggling it backwards and forwards. It was stiff but eventually he jerked it downwards. Above it was a small cavity leading upwards, ending in a rough stone slab roof about the size of a manhole cover. He reached in and pulled out a rope ladder. He gave David a sly look, smugly aware that his captive wasn’t about to go running off or even try to move, then quickly climbed the ladder and pushed at the stone slab for a few moments before it opened out and the grey skies of evening appeared above them. David could see that the slab had a thick covering of earth and grass; small clumps of mud and turf fell from it, tumbling down as rain came pelting in the opening. Neil descended again, his square face glistening and muddy from fallen debris. He motioned for David to climb.

  David tried to indicate his hands tied behind his back, but the motion of lifting his arms sent ripples of pain through his shoulders. ‘I can’t climb up,’ he said. ‘Not with my hands tied.’

  Neil seemed to consider this for a moment, before quickly whipping out his knife and cutting the ties behind David’s back. He immediately stuck the gun in David’s back.

  ‘Just remember I’ve got this,’ he said. ‘So don’t be a clever bastard. Climb.’

  The rain was pouring in through the hole above them as David rubbed his wrists, shaking his hands to get the circulation back, then took hold of the rope ladder. As he did so he heard the distinct sound of footsteps on stone from beneath them. As David stood hesitating, not knowing what to do, the footsteps got louder and louder in only a few seconds. They were being caught up, and fast. Neil punched him in the back of the head and poked the gun into his back.

  ‘Fucking move. Now!’

  David started up the rope ladder, swinging as he went. He was trying to go as slowly as possible, but there was hardly any length of ladder, so he was soon at the top. He pulled himself up through the opening, the rain pounding against his head and the grass around it, the wet earth feeling fresh on his hands. He rolled over onto his side and as he looked back Neil’s hands and head emerged from the hole. As he watched, more of Neil came into view and then, almost without thinking, with a sudden rush of adrenalin he shot his left leg out with all his might towards Neil’s right hand holding the gun. His foot collided with Neil’s wrist, making Neil lose his grip on the grass, and the gun skittered away across the greasy ground. Neil reached for the gun but was too late, then grabbed David’s ankle, hauling him towards him while also using the ballast of his body to pull himself up out the hole completely. David instinctively swung his other leg round and caught Neil on the jaw with an almost perfect connection, something he would’ve been proud of on the football pitch in other circumstances, and Neil swayed from the contact, briefly loosening his grip on David’s ankle. David scrambled towards the gun, which was about five yards away, noticing out of the corner of his eye that they were now on a clifftop and, of course, it dawned on him as he spotted a small memorial stone a few yards away, it was the place where both Colin and Gary had died. As his body scampered and slid across the wet grass his mind whirled with it all – this was Neil’s plan all along, for him to meet the same death as the other two. Was it for neatness’ sake, or something else? All this passed across his mind in a split second, the same length of time it took for Neil to grab hold of his ankle again before lunging forward and falling on top of David just as he reached the gun with his right hand. The force of Neil landing on him just as he was picking up the gun sent the weapon flying out of his grasp again. They both lay in a heap and watched as the gun, seemingly taking forever, arced its way through the rain-sodden air away from them before disappearing over the edge of the cliff ten feet away.

  For a moment th
ey both lay there. Neil came to his senses first, grabbing David with one hand and hauling him up to his feet. With the other hand he pulled the knife out of his pocket and held it to David’s stomach.

  ‘Now, hold on there.’

  The voice came from behind them, heard clearly above the sound of the rain. They both turned, rainwater spraying off their heads, to see Nicola standing next to the opening in the ground, a gun in her hand.

  They stood like that for a second, each of them taking in the situation.

  ‘Was that a gun I saw going over the cliff?’ said Nicola calmly.

  Neil tightened his grip on David and took two steps backwards, hauling David with him. They were standing about a foot away from the edge of the cliff. He angled the handle of the knife down to show the whole length of the blade to Nicola while still keeping the blade pressed into David’s stomach.

  ‘I’ve still got this,’ he said. ‘If you do anything, I’ll kill your boyfriend right here.’

  ‘Technically, he’s not my boyfriend.’

  ‘I don’t think this is quite the time for this,’ said David.

  ‘Well, we’ve never really got around to talking about things in those terms, have we?’