Episodul 52 · The Cut Branch

— We fit, Maxim said, his voice turned back toward them. If claustrophobia doesn’t get you, you’ll fit too. If it does, you’ll still fit, you’ll just cry.

Krista went in after him, the photographs tucked under her coat and her phone in her hand for a flashlight. Tesa bent toward the opening and turned to Soles.

— What about you? Staying on guard with your ribs?

— I’m coming.

— Then come behind me. If you pass out, at least you’ll fall on someone soft.

— You’re not soft.

— On Varren, then.

Soles followed Tesa under the arch, lowering himself onto one knee before he bent his head. The pain caught as he tried to bring his other leg through. He waited for it to ease, then went on, keeping Tesa’s boots in view. Behind him, Varren set the paper cups on the edge of the footbridge, one inside another, carefully, as if he would be coming back for them. He climbed down on the stone without touching the earth between the blocks and went in last.

Inside, the warmth was greater than it had seemed from outside. It was not a cellar warmth. It was even, quiet, and came from nowhere in particular. Soles unzipped his jacket after ten steps. After twenty he realized they all had.

The tunnel was made of cut stone, not brick. Long, smooth blocks set without mortar, fitted so well that a knife blade would not have gone between them. Krista stopped twice to put her palm on the wall, then quickly took it away, as if from something that was not hers.

— It isn’t a channel, she said quietly.

— Looks like a channel, Maxim said from the front.

— Look at the joints. Whoever built this fitted the stone better than the walls above it. It may have carried water later. That doesn’t tell us why it was built.

The floor sloped gently down. Down the middle ran a shinier, worn stripe, like a path through a meadow. At the edges, dust had gathered thick and undisturbed.

Then, after the first bend, the dust was no longer undisturbed.

Maxim stopped so suddenly that Krista almost walked into his back. Tesa halted behind her, and Soles stopped short of Tesa’s heels, still bent under the low roof. Ahead of them, the lamp on Maxim’s forehead dipped toward the floor.

Footprints. Many, trodden over one another, going and coming. Boot soles, large, with deep treads. And among them, two long parallel lines left by something heavy being dragged.

— Crates, Tesa said.

— Or a cart, Maxim said. With solid wheels. No, look—those aren’t wheel marks, they’re lines. Something with wooden runners, dragged along the floor.

He crouched and ran a finger through the dust beside one of the lines. He held his finger up to the light.

— Dust over the tracks, he said. But I couldn’t tell you how long that takes down here.

Soles studied the boot prints. Some were clearer than others, their edges still sharp.

— Those boot prints cross the drag marks, he said. Someone came afterward.

Maxim nodded.

They went on, more slowly, following the prints and the two lines down the slope. The tunnel widened into a chamber with bare walls and a vaulted ceiling, low where they entered. Maxim moved clear of the mouth to let the others through. Soles straightened a little, until his ribs told him to stop; Varren remained at the entrance behind him. The dust on the floor was churned up everywhere, like a room someone had moved out of in a hurry. Broken planks, a piece of rotted tarp, a few rusty nails, and a crate lid fallen face down lay in the corners. They had followed the drag marks to a place where there were no crates.

Krista turned the lid over with the toe of her shoe.

On the wood, in black paint, half worn away, a stencil could still be seen. The letters had been brushed over a template, and only a few remained: B... NKS. And below, smaller, something that looked like NORTH B.

— North bank, Krista said. Like on the invoice.

She photographed the stencil and the whole lid. In the flash, the vault rose clearly above them. The low tunnel at their backs was the only entrance; a pale wall faced it across the chamber.

— Banks, Tesa said. They brought something here.

— A lid, at least, Krista said. I want a picture before we move anything else.

— There might be more farther in, Maxim said.

— Not that we can reach, Tesa said, pointing to the far end.

There, the tunnel did not go on. It stopped at a wall.

It was not a wall put up later to close something off. It was a single slab of stone, two men high and three men wide, set at the end of the chamber like a lid on a jar. It was smooth as water. On it, at chest height, someone had carved a tree.

It was not just any tree. Its roots reached down almost to the floor and spread through the stone like fingers. The trunk rose straight, and the branches opened wide at the top until they touched the edges of the slab. Only one was different. A thick branch on the left stopped abruptly halfway, cut clean. And at its end, where the fruit should have been, there was nothing.

Krista approached with her phone light. Soles kept clear of her beam.

— Cut, she said. Not broken. Cut. The way you cut a branch so the tree grows straight.

— Or so it doesn’t grow at all, Tesa said.

Soles’s eyes had stopped on the edge of the slab. There, where the stone met the wall, it was scratched. Long, white, fresh chisel marks. Someone had tried to force a blade into the joint. Lower down, a round drill hole, as wide as a little finger, two centimeters deep, then abandoned. On the floor beneath it, a fine white dust gathered in a small heap that had not yet had time to scatter.

— They tried to open it, he said.

— Who? Maxim asked.

— Someone who could get past the grate. Maybe the person with that new lock.

Maxim bent over the white dust and did not touch it.

— Sharp marks, loose dust, he said. It looks recent.

Krista photographed the drill hole beside the older scratches. She could remember their positions; the investigator would need more than her word.

They all fell silent. Behind Varren, the sloping tunnel was their only way back to the grate. Whoever still used that new padlock could come back along that same route. Soles listened. Somewhere far behind them, the way they had come in, water could be heard dripping. One drop. Then, after a long while, another.