CHAPTER 15
Sometimes when in a crisis, Simone finds comfort in things that are precise and useful. What Three Words is just that; it tells her exactly where the bag is.
The sun is momentarily behind a rare cloud, the light matt and milky, and Simone is glad of the break from the searing heat as she stares at the run-down premises she’s about to enter.
It looks like a garage, one storey. Plants creep slowly around the building, strangling the roof. Plants she doesn’t recognize, hardy leaves, dry, that remind her of where she is.
Apparently, the bag sits towards the back of this building.
The only way in is a roller shutter door, which is open about a foot at the bottom. Simone stares at it like it is a spider she is afraid to catch. It’s so dark inside the garage that nothing is revealed to her by looking, even when she ducks down and peers in at the complete obsidian blackness.
She can’t go in there. That is what she thinks, looking at it.
Who knows what could be waiting in there for her?
These are criminals. Professional kidnappers.
They could be setting her up. They could be undercover police.
She could be killed. If she went inside, the shutter door could drop, trapping her.
She kneels down again on the street and gets the torch out on her phone, but it seems only to illuminate objects she can’t make out and swirling dust. She tries to wrench up the roller shutter to reveal more, but it won’t move.
She sits back on her heels and wonders if she will look back on this moment, the beat before she headed on in there, in trauma. She wonders if she will ever talk about it to Damien, to a therapist. To the police.
Simone doesn’t usually put things off, but she does right now, her whole body alert. She can’t go in there. It is as claustrophobic to her as a coffin.
She walks a little loop around the garage.
There’s a brick section to the side, which she runs a hand along.
It comes away grubby, the surface already hot in the morning sun.
A small green door forms the entrance to the adjoining garage, and she peers in the window at the top of it, but it’s too dirty to see anything.
She wipes it and reveals a lean-to full of gardening equipment.
A lawn mower, a pair of shears, two containers full of some sort of mulch. She steps back after several moments.
She’s got to go in. She’s come this far; she has to complete her task. She tries the shutter door again, but it won’t move, even when she uses both hands and all her body weight, and rages at that horrible kidnapper who chose two small women as his targets.
She checks behind her, looking for any clue, anything, but there’s nothing, only cracked, uncared-for pavements, cat’s cradles of overhead power cables, a steel trash can down the street and houses with satellite dishes next to their front doors.
She’s got to do it. She takes a breath, starts crawling in, leaving the sunlight behind and heading straight into the darkness, and it is as though somebody has turned her eyes off but has dialled up her other senses.
The distant sound of traffic. A smell: metallic, fresh.
A dripping. Simone stands up in the darkness, waiting for her sight to adjust, alone.