Chapter Thirty-One
The tunnel opened up into an enormous cavern.
The centre of the cavern was a dark pit of nothingness.
If there was a bottom to that pit, it was far too deep for her to make out.
Directly in front of her, before the floor fell away, there was a narrow ledge.
The ledge formed a path that led away to the left, clinging, it seemed, to the cavern wall and leading around the gaping pit and upwards to the other side of the cavern.
Ruth Hall stood on the other side, on a stone platform.
She had a gun in her hand and a lantern at her feet.
Beside the lantern, Cameron Miller was on his knees, his hands folded behind his head, the expression on his face a mute plea for help.
It was as if Judith had entered a theatre with an elevated stage, except that where the seating should be, there was nothing at all, just an endless drop.
The only way to reach where Ruth was standing was that narrow exposed path to the left.
‘Hello,’ Ruth said. ‘I like your knife.’
Adrenaline flooded through Judith’s body. It was like someone had reached inside her and turned up the dial on every one of her senses. She could taste the sea on the air, smell seaweed and her own sweat, hear the drip-drip of water falling from stalactites.
‘You look different,’ Judith said, trying for a steady tone of voice and not quite managing it.
‘When I met you in the police station your hair was dark. You had the goth make-up. The piercings.’ The woman standing in front of her was Celine without the accent.
Blonde and pretty and looking like butter wouldn’t melt—if you ignored the gun in her hand and the boy at her feet. ‘Which version is the real you?’
‘Drop the knife in the pit, please,’ Ruth said.
‘It’s not like I can hurt you with it,’ Judith said. ‘You’re ten metres away from me, and it’s a bloody kitchen knife, for god’s sake.’
‘Well, then. Why don’t you do it just to please me.’ Ruth raised Steve Gifford’s gun and pointed it at Cameron’s head.
Judith threw the knife into the pit. Seconds passed before she heard a splash.
‘And that’s the end of that,’ said Ruth.
She lowered her gun hand. ‘It’s deep down there, you know.
My father told me it goes down at least forty metres.
I’m not sure he got that right, but it’s deep enough, I’m sure.
This is where he brought them. He filled their heads with stories of the Dreamtime.
He liked to pretend that he had Aboriginal heritage, but that was all bullshit.
And then he told them he was going to bring them to see cave paintings.
A private tour.’ She laughed. It was a polite laugh.
As if they were both at a dinner party and the host had just told them an anecdote that had run a little too long.
‘He killed them here, of course. And then he threw their bodies in there.’ She gestured with the gun towards the darkness.
Judith could not look away from Cameron. His eyes were on hers, fierce and frightened and, she thought, trying to communicate. What was he trying to tell her?
‘Ruth, can you let Cameron go, please? I followed your rules. I came alone. I told no one.’
Ruth smiled. ‘That’s very true. Well done you. The only problem is, you’re late.’ She paused, then continued, still in that conversational tone. ‘And also, you bitch, you are the worst of them.’
‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘I found out all about you, you know. It wasn’t hard. I’m a very good researcher. I found out what you did. You killed your stepfather. You beat him to death. I don’t blame you for that. It was the right thing to do. You had to protect your mother, and yourself.’
Oh Christ. Judith couldn’t think straight. She was still looking at Cameron, couldn’t look away from him.
‘You were just like us!’ Ruth shouted, her face twisting in sudden fury. ‘You were one of us! And then my sister came to you for help and you failed her!’
Ruth was breathing hard, her face was contorted and her teeth were bared. And then, just as quickly as it had come, the fury disappeared. The contorted expression relaxed. She smoothed her hair from her face with her free hand, and checked her watch.
‘And as I said, you’re late. I’m so sorry, but the rules are the rules.’
Ruth raised her gun hand, connecting with the back of Cam’s head, and Judith took a few stumbling steps along the ledge towards her.
‘Wait! Just wait.’
Ruth’s smile widened. Maybe this was how she’d always pictured the end: Judith, stumbling towards her, pleading, forced to watch Cam die, knowing that she was next.
But before Ruth could pull the trigger, Cam shot his right knee forward, connecting hard with the lantern.
It fell, end over end and light flashing, into the pit.
A half-second later, Cam pitched himself forward, over the edge of the ledge, and followed the lantern down.
There was the sound of a distant splash and then the light was extinguished completely.
‘Cameron!’ Judith stopped moving. She couldn’t see a goddamn thing.
If she made the wrong move she’d end up in the water with him.
But fuck it. There was no time for caution.
He’d given her a chance and she had to take it.
She swapped her torch into her right hand, switched it on and shone it towards Ruth, trying to blind the other woman while at the same time she took off running, pumping her legs and pushing herself into an all-out sprint up that narrow ledge.
She tried to point the torch, with all of its twenty-six hundred lumens, directly into Ruth’s eyes, but her movement meant that the light danced all over the place.
It didn’t matter. Pace was everything now.
Ruth pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot echoed in the cavern.
Judith felt no pain. The second time she wasn’t as lucky.
She heard the shot, and felt a thumping pressure and burning pain as she took a bullet to her outer left thigh.
She stumbled, almost fell, but kept moving forward.
She raised the torch above her head and as she reached Ruth, she brought it down as hard as she could.
Ruth moved at the last moment. The torch made contact, but it wasn’t enough—a glancing blow.
Both women went to the ground, Ruth underneath, Judith on top.
Judith didn’t hesitate. She brought the torch down again, this time harder, and she didn’t miss.
It cracked into Ruth’s temple with a horrible, dull thud.
Ruth groaned, but still she tried to bring the gun to bear, tried to press it upwards to Judith’s ribs.
Judith used her left hand to grab Ruth’s wrist, to force the gun down and away, and then she brought the torch down a third time, as hard as she could.
It was enough. All the fight went out of Ruth’s body.
The hand that had been fighting to push the gun upwards went limp.
There was no part of Judith that wanted to hit her again, to try to take her life.
Because they were not the same, in the end.
Judith stayed in place a moment longer, keeping her hand on the gun, but there was no movement from Ruth, and she couldn’t afford to wait.
She pulled the gun from Ruth’s hands and pushed it so that it skittered across the stone floor, away from them.
Then she flipped Ruth over and handcuffed her.
Judith left her there. She stumbled to the edge of the ledge, shining her torch into the darkness below.
‘Cameron! Cam, are you down there?’
There was a moment when it was just her voice, echoing around the cavern. Then he answered.
‘I’m here! In the water. There . . . there’s something in here with me . . . floating . . .’ He sounded terrified.
Judith swore. It was a release of tension, an expression of gratitude, and a recognition of the problem. He was ten or fifteen metres below her, in water that was god knows how deep. How the hell was she going to get him out of there?
‘I’m coming. I’m coming, Cameron. Are you okay? Are you hurt?’
‘I’m okay. It’s . . . it’s very cold.’
Judith swept her torch back and forth in a wide arc, trying to find the limits, the edges of the pit, trying to find him. The light passed over him, and he cried out.
‘I’ve got you,’ she said. ‘I’ve got you.
’ Limping heavily, she started back down the ledge she’d come up, trying to keep the light of the torch on him, trying to reassure him that he wasn’t alone.
Jesus Christ. He was ten years old. She kept moving downwards.
‘I’m coming, Cam. I’m just trying to find a way down.
You keep moving, okay? You keep moving to stay warm. ’
She heard splashing. ‘I’m going to take the light off you now, okay? But I’m not going anywhere. I’m just trying to find my way down to you.’
‘Okay!’ he shouted back.
And slowly, slipping on rocks and banging both hip and head twice, she managed to find a route that took her down to the water’s edge.
‘Here, Cam, swim towards me.’ She shone the light to show him the way.
She would have gone into the water herself, but she wasn’t sure that they’d both be able to make it out.
There was still a drop from the edge she’d found into the water, and it was black and as slippery as glass.
But he swam to her, and then he reached for her, and she was able to hook her right foot under a rock and to lean over the edge, to grasp his wrists, and to pull him out.
She hugged him tight as soon as she had him, and he hugged her back, shivering, and they held on to each other for a long moment, both of them glad to be alive.
‘Why did you do it?’ Judith asked.
‘She would have killed me,’ he said, his voice muffled as it was pressed against her shoulder. ‘She wanted to kill me. She told me that. I think she only waited because she wanted you to watch.’
Judith hugged him tighter. Her leg throbbed. With the fear and the adrenaline, the pain from the bullet wound had receded. Now it was back. She took off her jacket and wrapped it around him.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she said. She let Cameron go. She got to her feet, and he did too. ‘It’s a tricky climb back up,’ she said. ‘But we can do it.’
‘I know we can.’ Cameron was shivering, but he sounded eager.
‘I’ll shine the torch for you, you climb a section. Then I’ll hand it up to you and you do the same for me. We do one small section at a time. That way we don’t make any mistakes. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
They started to climb. As blood soaked through the leg of Judith’s pants, they made their way carefully upwards. It was much slower going up than it had been going down.
‘My dad,’ Cameron said. ‘He’s going to be okay now, isn’t he? Celine did it all. Right? She was the one. So now they really will have to let him go. Everything’s going to be okay.’ He sounded giddy.
‘That’s right, Cam. That’s exactly right. Everything’s going to be okay.’
They reached the top, the ledge that lay at the beginning of the tunnel that led the way out.
Judith hesitated. The tunnel had a sand floor and might very well flood when the tide rose, but that elevated ledge should be safe.
She’d hit Ruth Hall very hard. Ruth needed medical attention.
Could she survive here, on that ledge, until the tide receded again and paramedics and cops could reach her, if they couldn’t get there quickly?
‘Just give me one second,’ Judith said. She didn’t think she could carry Ruth out.
She definitely couldn’t carry her up those steps, but she would check on her, make sure she was breathing, put her in the recovery position, and then they would go.
That was the right thing to do, which meant it was the only thing to do.
She hurried back up the narrow ledge path, to where she had left Ruth handcuffed. But Ruth was gone. There was no body, Just a small pool of dark blood.
Quickly Judith shone her torch to where she’d slid Steve Gifford’s gun, and felt a lurch of relief when she located it.
She picked it up. One last time, she shone the torch around.
In the corner, deep in the shadows, she saw a small pile of rucksacks and a backpack, damp and rotting.
She froze for a moment, the horror of what she was seeing striking her hard, the realisation of what had happened here truly hitting her for the first time.
She forced herself to move. Wondered briefly if there was another, easier way out that Ruth had taken.
She couldn’t take the risk of looking for it.
There were too many little nooks and crannies.
Too many tunnels to be investigated. They could get lost here, or get caught by the rising tide.
And she had a boy to get home safely to his father.
It was time to go.
She made her way back to Cameron. He grabbed her arm as soon as she got close enough, clutched it and held on tight. She shouldn’t have left him. He had no light, no weapon and he was ten years old. She handed him the torch.
‘You hold on to that with your left hand,’ she said. ’And you hold on to me with your right. Got it?’
He took the torch and nodded seriously. Judith took his hand. With her right, she still held the gun. Just in case.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ she said.
As she limped from the cave, hand in hand with Cameron Miller, the tears for Katy finally came.