Anna screamed back at Dawes.

‘She’s here!’ She turned back and yelled into the room. ‘Beth! Beth!’

No movement. No acknowledgement. Anna looked at the window. It wasn’t big. A two-foot square. Too small for Dawes, but not for her.

‘I need a leg-up,’ Anna said when Dawes was next to her. ‘Keep this bloody flap open.’

Dawes leaned against it.

She turned, stepped on Dawes’ knee, reached up and grabbed for the roof of the adjacent storage shed, hiked herself up and reached back with her foot until her shin slid backwards over the rim of the window and down into the dark wet interior of the amusement arcade. Dawes handed her the torch and Anna waded across. There were things in the water. Some solid, some softer. Some that didn’t move when she touched them. She dared not think what they might be. She was shivering from cold and filled with terrifying disgust at the dark and the squalor of this terrible place.

‘Beth,’ she called out. ‘Beth.’

The taped-up head was just above the water. The torch beam picked out silver duct tape across her mouth and her nose and her eyes. Anna reached for the skin at her throat.

‘Be there. Be there,’ she muttered, and her trembling wet fingers searched for a pulse.

She pressed and then pressed again. She felt nothing, but then, the face moved slightly and, astonishingly, Beth moaned. Anna stared wildly at the tape. Someone had tried to cover her face, smother it. But there was a section, just over the corner of her mouth, that was not covered. A half-inch slit through which, somehow, Beth had managed to breathe.

‘She’s alive!’ Anna screamed towards Dawes. She ripped at the tape to make the slit bigger and then felt for the chair under the dark water and the tape strapping Beth to it. She started to drag the chair back towards the window. As she moved she made waves, and on those waves bobbed Norcott’s golems. Hundreds of them, dancing and weaving in the room.

‘Phil!’ Anna shouted. ‘We need to get her out now.’

There was no reply. Dawes wasn’t there.

‘Phil? Where the hell are you?’ She heard the little girl in her own voice. Pleading, terrified. ‘Phil!’

Light filled the dark space of the window. Two new faces. Lambton’s, she knew. The other she didn’t. But it had a big yellow fireman’s helmet above it and she had never felt so pleased in all her life to see that iconic shape.

‘Can she stand?’ the fireman asked.

‘She’s on a chair. Tied… or maybe taped,’ Anna replied, her voice stuttering from the cold.

‘Right,’ the fireman said. ‘I’ll reach in and lift her up; you’ll have to cut the ties from your side.’

‘I’ll try,’ she said, teeth chattering.

‘I’m not going to be able to put my head through, just my arms.’ He handed through a knife. ‘Wrap the wrist strap around your arm. You need to lift the chair and I’ll grab the back and hoist it.’

The water helped, providing a degree of welcome buoyancy. But the higher she lifted, the heavier Beth got. She could feel her muscles shaking, the cold sapping her energy. The fireman’s fingers were scrabbling for purchase but then his elbows flexed and the chair came up as forearms were levered against the window frame in an exaggerated bicep curl. Anna grabbed the knife.

There was no cord to cut. Only tape. Despite Anna’s numb and trembling fingers, the black blade sliced through it with slick ease.

‘I’ve got her,’ the fireman said, lifting the body. ‘I’ve got her.’

The chair splashed into the water and the fireman pulled Beth out through the gap, leaving Anna alone in the arcade. Lambton’s face appeared. ‘Ambulance is here. Just reach through, ma’am. We’ll pull you out.’

Hands plucked her out of the water, up through the window and out into the compound. It wasn’t dark there anymore. The fire engine had pulled up and its headlights and Lambton’s searchlights lit up the sorry little square. There were blue lights flashing everywhere. She turned towards the bowed metal where they’d scrambled through, but Dawes and Lambton pulled her back and pointed straight ahead.

The fire brigade had cut a hole in the fence behind the bus stop. No need for any more climbing. Just as well because she didn’t think she could manage it. Energy seemed to be leeching from her. She didn’t even argue when someone put an arm round her waist as she stumbled and splashed out through the rising tide.