Free Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) by Oliver Tidy Page B

whatever it is.’ I smiled at her and she gave me a very grim look back. ‘I’m serious. If anything of you turns up on that we’re both finished.’
    I got the message and sat on the edge of the outfall wall to wait for her. My legs were stiffening up and the sweat on my T-shirt was sticking cold against my skin.
    She hurried back over the lip of the sea wall as if she was afraid of what I might have been tempted to do in her absence.
    She handed me the evidence bag and a final reminder. ‘Please be careful not to touch it. It’s probably nothing, but it could be something.’
    I took the torch, the bag and her warning and dropped down into the water. It was bitterly cold. My body’s reaction was to suck in air. I was hit by the putrid smell of what existed down there, trapped in the confinement, heavier than air, a combination of the brackish water and the years of Nature’s deposits left to cling to and build up on the exposed surfaces: crustaceans and slimy green plant life. I shone the torch ahead of me into the greyness. I had about twenty feet of channel and murk to navigate. The last bit of it would be under the sea wall and in almost total darkness. This was not something I would have done for fun. Confined dark spaces, even those not prone to flooding, have never appealed to me as places for recreation. Just the idea of pot-holing made my mouth dry.
    I lumbered forward in the water that ran around my shins. My feet and lower legs were already numb. I was treading gingerly. With nothing on my feet, I didn’t want to step on broken glass, discarded fish hooks, rusting metal, dead animal carcasses and other things I tried to stop myself dwelling on. As I progressed I was aware of the crackling of the thousands of barnacles that clung to every available surface as they shrank to close at my approach – an alien in their environment, a possible threat.
    Either the torch had an electrical fault or the batteries were on the way out. The beam became weaker and more watery by the second. I was three-quarters of the way there when it died and then, after a swift bang from me, resumed its pathetic efforts.
    Cash called down to me. ‘Well?’
    I shouted back at her to hang on. To my own ears my voice betrayed my unease at the situation and apprehension at what I might find.
    The torch died again and I stopped. There was only the thinnest of grey light filtering through the slits in the woodwork several feet above me. It wasn’t pitch darkness but it wasn’t far off it. I hit the torch with the heel of my hand. Nothing. The cold of the water, my sweat-drenched clothes and my phobia had chilled me to the marrow.
    ‘Mr Booker?’
    ‘Your bloody torch has packed up.’ I sounded cross.
    ‘Come out then. Don’t fumble about in the dark.’ She sounded cross.
    And then in a dreadful moment of panic that dropped my core temperature another few degrees and redirected all my remaining energy to my flight mode preparations, I heard a noise and I realised I was not alone down there.
    Ahead of me in the blackness something animal and substantial was approaching. It splashed quickly through the shallow water towards me. Its laboured distressed breathing rose above the gentle gurgling of the water.
    I hit the torch again hard enough to make me wince. The bulb flickered and gained in intensity. I aimed the fragile beam ahead of me, expecting to be attacked by some beast that lived down there – a freak product of radioactive waste from the adjacent atomic power station interfering with Nature.
    With the light the sound of movement ceased abruptly. And it left me wondering whether it had been a figment of my imagination conjured up by my claustrophobia. Five feet in front of me, the torchlight came to rest on a splash of red. I had myself and my fears back under control.
    I just wanted to get it and get out of there. In two big strides I was at the grille. I stuffed the torch under my armpit and using the plastic bag like a