Cooper wiped the rain from his face. ‘Like now, you mean?’

Massey seemed to consider the rain, as if he hadn’t noticed the continuing deluge until now.

‘Aye. Could be.’

With a sense of despair, Cooper looked at Fry, and she began making calls. While she did it, Massey stared at the sky, as if watching for better weather to come riding over the hills to the north.

‘I shut my memories away,’ he said. ‘They’re down there in the dark, with the hatch locked tight.’

Then Cooper had a terrible thought. He’d been here at Rough Side Farm himself on Wednesday, around the same time that Michael Clay’s phone had gone off the network. While he’d been talking to Peter Massey that first time, he’d noticed the raised area of ground, but hadn’t recognized it for what it was. And he’d been here yesterday, too. Had Clay already been shut inside the flooding bunker then? Had he been calling for help, his shouts going completely unheard as Cooper stood around and chatted to Massey about horses and foxes?

He seemed to hear his brother Matt’s voice again inside his head: ‘I can tell you, Dad would never have done that. He would never have hung back if he thought he might save someone’s life.’

Urgently, Cooper took hold of Massey’s arm.

‘Quick – have you got the key with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Get that damned hatch open, then.’

Cooper was pulling off his jacket, unlacing his boots, shivering in anticipation as the rain began to soak his shirt.

‘Ben, what on earth are you doing?’ said Fry in horror.

‘Going down.’

‘We have to wait. This is a specialist job.’

‘Saving a man’s life?’

‘We don’t know he’s still alive.’

‘We don’t know he’s dead, either. The water might not be up to the top yet. He could have found an air pocket. We can’t just stand here while he drowns.’

When they pulled the hatch open, the water was halfway up the ladder. The stink of foul air and dank concrete rose to meet them – a true miasma, so thick that they could almost touch it and feel it. Rain splattered the surface of the water, shattering their own reflections as they stared down into the bunker. For a moment, Cooper experienced that curious illusion of looking at something twice as far away as it really was, because he was looking at his own reflection. And not just looking at himself, but at the grey sky far above his head. It was like staring into the infinite depths, dark clouds like blind sea creatures lurking on the ocean bottom.

Cooper remembered Peter Massey’s description of his friend’s eyes, looking back up at him like dark pebbles under water, in the last moment before he died. But beyond the surface reflection there were no eyes, no floating body, nothing visible at all in the dark, oily liquid filling the bottom half of the shaft.