The Fault Read online

  Contents

  Also by Kitty Sewell

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  1. Prologue

  2. London

  3. The Rock Hotel, Gibraltar

  4. Mimi

  5. Sebastian

  6. Eva

  7. Mimi

  8. Eva

  9. Mimi

  10. Sebastian

  11. Mimi

  12. Eva

  13. Sebastian

  14. Eva

  15. Mimi

  16. Eva

  17. Mimi

  18. Eva

  19. Sebastian

  20. Mimi

  21. Eva

  22. Sebastian

  23. Mimi

  24. Sebastian

  25. Mimi

  26. Eva

  27. Sebastian

  28. Eva

  29. Sebastian

  30. Mimi

  31. Sebastian

  32. Eva

  33. Sebastian

  34. Mimi

  35. Sebastian

  36. Mimi

  37. Eva

  38. Mimi

  39. Sebastian

  40. Mimi

  41. Sebastian

  42. Eva

  43. Mimi

  44. Eva

  45. Mimi

  46. Eva

  47. Sebastian

  48. Eva

  49. Sebastian

  50. Mimi

  51. Eva

  52. Mimi

  53. Sebastian

  54. Mimi

  55. Eva

  56. Mimi

  57. Eva

  58. Mimi

  59. Sebastian

  60. Eva

  61. Mimi

  62. Sebastian

  63. Eva

  64. Sebastian

  65. Mimi

  66. Sebastian

  67. Mimi

  68. Eva

  69. Mimi

  70. Eva

  71. Mimi

  Epilogue

  About Kitty Sewell

  ABOUT HONNO

  Copyright

  Also by Kitty Sewell

  Ice Trap

  Bloodprint

  Cloud Fever

  The Fault

  Kitty Sewell

  Honno Modern Fiction

  For Ellis,

  another "rock"

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to Tito Vallejo who provided me with a private tour of the vast tunnel system of Gibraltar, including the fascinating out-of-bounds MOD areas.

  Raymond Bellido for taking me ‘pot-holing’ into the Lower St. Michael’s caves in the bowels of The Rock – an unforgettable experience.

  David Carr for the excursion through ‘The Jungle’.

  Civil engineer Stuart Dunn for checking the technical credibility of my story.

  Tony Watkins, who told me all about the scuba diving paradise of Gibraltar.

  Big thanks – and sorry – to the unsuspecting estate agent who I duped into showing me ‘the apartment’.

  My gratitude to Dr. Diane Sloma, a long-time resident and expert on all things Gibraltarian.

  Most of all, thank you Tim Turner for your support and generosity, and for introducing me to everyone I needed to know in Gibraltar, and to Honno Press for believing in The Fault.

  Prologue

  Holding tightly to his hand she allowed herself to be led into the darkness. The floor was littered with debris that crunched under her sandals. Every few steps she turned her head and saw the sunlit opening through which they had entered become smaller and smaller.

  ‘Don’t keep looking back,’ he said to her. ‘You want your eyes to adapt.’

  ‘Damn it, I don’t want to adapt. Switch on my torch, will you? I can’t see a thing in here.’

  He fiddled with her head set and a strong beam of light shot out from her forehead. She swung her head from side to side and laughed, pointing the beam in all directions. It had a magical quality, this ability to light up any space with a toss of her head.

  ‘Watch out,’ she yelled. ‘I’ve got power-vision.’ Her cry was sucked down the tunnel; silence abruptly restored.

  Step by step, moment by moment she became aware that they were heading straight into a mountain, down a duct compressed by millions of tons of rock. Daylight was now a mere luminous dot in the distance behind them, but she reminded herself that one could still turn around and walk back out. At any moment she could change her mind and get out.

  She clung to his arm, yet felt vaguely angry. Men talked her into things, that was her everlasting problem. She was crap at saying no.

  The tunnel seemed totally straight for a good twenty minutes of walking, then turned forty-five degrees to the left. She glanced behind her and the pinprick of daylight was no more. Solid rock enclosed them. They moved on, past openings and passages as black and endless as gateways to the underworld.

  At an arched six-way intersection, he took a right into a much narrower tunnel and though she resisted, he pulled her firmly along. They hunched their shoulders and ducked to protect their heads from jutting rock edges.

  ‘Oh, God, I think that’s enough now.’ A small rivulet of sweat ran down the small of her back. She shivered and tried to steady her voice. ‘Let’s turn back.’

  ‘I said I would show you something amazing.’

  She was no chicken; at least she refused to show it. Confronting one’s fear – that was her personal motto.

  They turned left into a hole in the wall and descended a long set of circular stairs hacked out of the stone. Down and down they went. She felt almost relieved. With some luck, he’d have her out of this mountain and into open air at sea level, maybe right into Casemates Square. She’d seen strange vaults and openings all over the town: all seemed to lead into the Rock.

  The stairs ended and they were in another tunnel.

  ‘Enough now,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m not exactly enjoying this.’

  ‘This one was dug out during the siege in 1713. Further down there are even older tunnels. They say one of them runs under the strait all the way to Morocco. Can you believe it?’ He was trying to be chatty but his voice was flat and muted in the narrow space. She didn’t want any more damned history, but even so, preferred him talking.

  It seemed to her they’d roamed the tunnels for well over an hour, but time could be warped by the lack of indicators. She rarely wore her watch so how could she tell? Maybe it had grown dark outside, maybe it was night. She opened her mouth to ask him, but changed her mind.

  She remembered how a guy she’d dated had recounted a pot-holing expedition in France. The group had carried a spool of white string. One end had been tied to a rock at the entrance of the cave and they’d unravelled the spool as they descended along crevasses, crawled on their stomachs through passages and abseiled down chasms, so that it would guide them back out. He’d felt as if his whole existence had been hanging by a thread – ha, ha – but the possibility of losing the white string and getting trapped in the bowels of the Earth had convinced him never to go caving again as long as he lived.

  She pulled at his sleeve. ‘How the hell can you remember which way to go?’

  ‘I know these tunnels like the back of my hand.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘And to get back out?’

  ‘You’ve asked me that already.’

  He seemed preoccupied and was no longer in the mood for reassuring her. Another droplet of moisture ran down her back, yet her skin felt cold and there was a lump in her throat. She swallowed quickly several times, but the lump persisted.

  ‘You said it’d take an hour,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes, well, it will if you actually walked.
You’re so slow I might as well carry you.’

  ‘Lay off! I’m not slow.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  He grabbed her wrist again and she stumbled along behind him. They were almost running but it seemed somehow effortless.

  ‘Aren’t we going downhill?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It feels like it. God, I hate this.’

  He was quiet for a long while. Too quiet. Then he spoke into the silence. ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’

  She stopped short and yanked her wrist from his grasp. The words seemed so out of place down here, so untimely. She glared at him. ‘Now what the fuck’s that all about?’

  ‘I know you know it, but I just wanted to say it out loud. It’s important.’

  A rush of rage came over her, but instinctively she tried to subdue it. He’d tricked her. Not just to come with him on this hideous venture but in some other obscure, more sinister way, and now she was stuck with him, totally dependent on him. The thought of it was unbearable. She couldn’t stand it for another second.

  ‘You know what? I don’t know why the hell I let myself get talked into this. Take me out of here. Right now!’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Well, I’m getting out, with or without you,’ she cried.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  She hesitated for a second then turned her back to him and began sprinting in the direction they’d come.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he called after her. ‘You’ll get lost.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Watch what you say to me! If you leave, you’re on your own.’ He raised his voice and shouted, ‘It won’t feel nice.’

  She ignored him and dashed up the narrow tunnel. If anything conquered her fear, it was anger. When she was really livid (or drunk – preferably both) she was scared of nothing. Her memory was pretty good and pure adrenaline would carry her out of this place. The junctions and turnings they’d taken were still quite fresh in her mind; there were only about three or four, maybe five. If she ran, in no time she’d be out of here.

  In fact, as soon as she got back to the apartment she’d pack a bag, grab her passport and money and get the hell out of Gibraltar. She should have done it weeks ago before everything started going wrong.

  Within minutes her energy had fizzled out. Her legs were trembling as she ran and she was breathing so hard it hurt. He’d lied; the tunnel was definitely now sloping quite steeply uphill, reminding her of dreams in which you run and run to get away from evil but your body is sluggish and your feet feel like lead. She stopped to catch her breath, her heart drumming wildly against her chest. The tunnel veered to the left in a vaguely circular fashion, something she’d not noticed on the way down. Visibility was a mere twenty metres or so. Or was it the torch? The beam of light seemed to be fading. She stood motionless for a minute, trying to capture sound – any sound. Behind her she saw no distant glow from his torch beam. It seemed he’d not followed her. She was alone.

  At an intersection of tunnels she stopped again to take her bearings. To her left, rolls of barbed wire were stacked almost to the ceiling. She’d not seen those on the way down. She turned her head this way and that. With a dull pain in her gut she realised she had no idea from which tunnel they’d come. She ran forward and snagged her jeans on barbs, tearing the fabric. Frantically she tried to disentangle herself and scored the back of her hand. She didn’t want to look at the injury but she could smell blood. It occurred to her that perhaps someone else could smell it too. She had no idea what or who lived down here. No, don’t do this, she said to herself. Don’t lose it.

  But wild panic took hold of her. ‘Hey,’ she screamed. ‘Please. Where are you?’

  She screamed some more, even though the ghostly echoes of her voice fuelled her terror. She understood now what being truly alone meant. It was no less terrifying than the prospect of death.

  An eternity passed before he appeared out of nowhere, but seeing him brought no relief. He looked so strange she hardly recognised him. All her strength ebbed out of her and she sank to her knees. ‘I… didn’t mean it, okay?’

  ‘Say you’re sorry.’

  Her teeth clattered so uncontrollably it was hard to form words. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘Come on, girl,’ he said, coming forward and lifting her into his arms. ‘Shhh, come on. Let’s forget it.’

  She buried her face in his neck. ‘I got so scared.’

  ‘Not of me, surely?’

  When she didn’t answer, he held her closer. He smelled of something. She knew the smell from somewhere but couldn’t place it. It stung in her nostrils.

  ‘Be sensible now. I need you to be a little bit brave,’ he said in a soft monotone. ‘There is absolutely nothing dangerous down here. There are no rats, no snakes, no ghosts or murderers or rapists. There’re so many tunnels and so many openings in the Rock, there’s always air flowing freely. There’s even food and water.’

  Her breath caught. ‘Food and water?’

  He held her at arm’s length and peered into her face. His eyes shone with excitement. ‘Yes, food and water to last for years. Seven years, more or less exactly. This is what I want to show you. A secret chamber.’ He pointed downwards, towards the depths. ‘Someone has made a home deep in here. A real home.’

  She swallowed repeatedly and shook her head. ‘No. I don’t want to see it. I’m not interested.’

  ‘We’ve come this far. We’re not going back without seeing it.’

  Her fear transmuted a thousand times. So many scenarios traded places in her mind, one more terrifying than the next. Why had she not suspected something like this?

  ‘Please,’ she begged, pushing away from him. ‘Please don’t make me go down there.’

  ‘Just trust me,’ he said. ‘I am doing this out of love.’

  She fought with all the strength she possessed, but he held her easily by one shoulder. A balled-up towel appeared in his other hand. Don’t breathe, she thought, don’t…

  Through a fog of distorted images she remembered where that smell came from…clothes…plastic bags…the dry-cleaners.

  London

  Sebastian Luna stood at the head of the conference table, his hands held slightly outwards from his body, palms up. To one or two of the delegates, a picture of Jesus Christ had already come to mind. He’d been speaking for more than an hour without pause, fluently, assuredly, his gaze intense yet floating benevolently from face to face.

  A long silence ensued and everyone’s eyes and ears were tuned to him, waiting for some dramatic summing up.

  ‘Out of the sea, I create land,’ he concluded, tilting his face up towards the ceiling. ‘You can already see my work from outer space. It’s the closest thing to being God.’

  The men and women around the table stared at him in stunned silence, some amused, some unnerved, most of them bowled over by his audacity. Someone tittered. Sebastian Luna looked only slightly embarrassed and his face split into a boyish grin. There was a collective sigh of relief and everyone joined him in laughter. They glanced at each other as they guffawed. He was just kidding, of course he was, yet wasn’t that exactly what he was proposing? They all knew that it had never been done before. So, if Luna were not God, to accomplish it he would have to be in cahoots with Him.

  As the laughter died down Luna leaned forward and put both hands on the table.

  ‘Any questions? Please, tear me to shreds.’

  Friendly and open as the invitation sounded, an awkward silence grew as though each felt too intimidated to challenge this smooth-talking powerhouse with some trivia. Instead, they studied him covertly. While on the short side, his physique had the muscular compactness of a boxer. His face was broad; handsome in a workaday kind of way. With his unruly black hair and dark eyes, he did not look wholly English but his skin was whiter than white, as if it had never known sunlight.

  ‘Thank you, Sebastian, you’ve clearly cove
red your material to everyone’s satisfaction,’ said Henry Saunders, standing up. ‘You’re the last of our three contenders but – shall we say – not the least. As you well know by now, I – for one – am frankly stunned by your proposal. Our engineering team has scrutinised your plans and the model, and it is – what can I say – groundbreaking stuff.’ Everyone laughed anew at the pun.

  ‘If you’d like to step outside, Miss Norton has this mean cappuccino machine in her office. She’ll look after you.’

  When the door had closed on Sebastian Luna, a silence hung in the boardroom. The thirteen men and women around the table flicked questioning glances at each other. They’d already discussed Luna’s submission for weeks; their people had tested and re-tested the concept, calculated the costs, conferred with the powers that be in Gibraltar. They could certainly choose to go with a conventional land reclamation, and they probably would have, had Sebastian Luna’s mesmerising presentation not painted his concept right onto their eyeballs.

  Bethan Williams opened a capacious handbag and rifled in it for her inhaler. Ian Shearer leaned across the table to grab the pitcher and pour himself a glass of water, drinking it down.

  ‘He’s a bit peculiar,’ Fred Weston reflected. ‘But if he can do what he claims, just imagine where this could take us in the international arena.’

  James Downing, the oldest member on the board, was shaking his head. His pained, incredulous expression spoke for itself.

  Saunders noted it and spoke up. ‘All right, all right. So Mr. Luna is a bit eccentric and he works strictly freelance, but you’ve got to admit his proposal is remarkable, and not just remarkable, it’s faultless.’