The Child Read Free Page B

ankle-deep in stagnant water.
    Incredible of the boy to venture into this industrial swamp of his own free will
.
    Stern opted for the left-hand passage because the other was obstructed by an overturned fuse box.
    ‘Where are you?’ he called. The water closed around his ankles like an icy hand.
    Simon still didn’t answer, but at least he made a sign of life: he coughed. The sound came from not far away but beyond the range of Stern’s torch.
    I’m going to catch my death
, he thought. He could feel his trouser legs absorbing the moisture like blotting paper. Just as he made out a wooden partition some ten metres away, his mobile rang.
    ‘Where’s he got to?’ Carina called. She sounded almost hysterical.
    ‘Not sure. He’s in the next passage, I think.’
    ‘What’s he been saying?’
    ‘Nothing. He’s coughing.’
    ‘Oh my God, get him out of there!’ Her voice broke with agitation.
    ‘What do you think I’m trying to do?’
    ‘You don’t understand. The tumour. That’s what happens!’
    ‘What do you mean? What happens?’
    He heard Simon cough again. Closer at hand this time.
    ‘Bronchial spasms are a prelude to unconsciousness. He could pass out at any minute!’ Carina was shouting so loudly, her voice reached him direct as well as over the phone.
    And he’ll fall face down in the water and suffocate. Like …
    Stern set off at a run. In his mounting panic he failed to see the beam sagging down from the ceiling, so black and charred as to be almost invisible. He hit his head on it, but the shock was even worse than the pain. Thinking he’d been attacked, he threw up his arms defensively. By the time he realized his mistake it was too late. The torch flickered underwater for another two seconds, then died where he’d dropped it.
    ‘Damnation!’ He felt for the wall with his right hand and groped his way along step by step, trying not to lose his bearings in the darkness. That was the least of his worries, however, because he hadn’t changed direction. What concerned him far more was that Simon had not made another sound, not even a cough.
    ‘Hey, are you still there?’ he shouted. His ears clicked suddenly, and he had to ease the pressure on his eardrums by swallowing several times, like an airline passenger coming in to land. Then he heard another faint cough. Ahead of him. Beyond the wooden partition and around the corner. He had to get there – had to get to Simon in the side passage. Although slowed by the water, he was still going fast enough to trigger a disastrous chain reaction.
    ‘Simon? Can you hear … Heeelp!’
    The last word was uttered as he fell. His foot had caught in an old telephone cable that had formed a sort of poacher’s snare in the stinking, stagnant water. He clutched at the wall beside him in an attempt to stop himself falling, only to break two fingernails on the damp mortar as he pitched forwards.
    He must have reached the end of the underground passage, he realized, because he didn’t fall headlong into water. Instead, his outstretched hands were brought up short by an expanse of plywood or a door. With a groan – like, but far louder than the one caused by his foot on the first stair – it gave way beneath him. Panic-stricken, he saw himself plummeting down an old mine shaft or bottomless pit. Then his fall was brutally checked by solid, hard-packed mud. The only favourable part of this new situation was that the water hadn’t reached this corner of the cellar. On the other hand, unidentifiable objects dislodged from the ceiling and walls were falling on him.
    Oh my God …
Stern hardly dared touch the sizeable, roundish object that had just landed in his lap. His initial, nightmarish certainty was that, if he did run his hands over it, they would touch blue lips and a bloated face: the face of his dead son Felix.
    But then, gradually, the darkness began to lift. He blinked, and it took him a moment or two to realize where the light was coming from. Not