Whispers of the Dead - Страница 52

The other was a blue Chrysler SUV.

The realization of how York had fooled us rose like bile in my throat. He must have been almost back here when he’d had the accident. So rather than risk the inevitable search coming too close to Cedar Heights, he’d driven miles out of his way before abandoning the ambulance.

Then he’d stolen a car and doubled back.

The SUV was parked at the bottom of crazy-paved stone steps that led to a roofed veranda. At the top was a pair of tall double doors that had once been grand, but were now as dilapidated as everything else.

One of them stood open.

Paul bent and picked up a wooden strut that had come loose from the veranda as we went up the steps. Through the open door at the top I could make out a large, shadowed foyer and the bottom of a wide staircase. Paul reached out to push the door all the way open.

And my phone rang.

It sounded shockingly loud. I grabbed it from my pocket and saw Gardner’s name in the caller display. Jesus, not now! I fumbled to answer it but it took agonizing seconds before the piercing trill was silenced.

Gardner’s voice crackled unevenly ‘Hunter? Where the hell are you?’

But there was no time to answer. No time for anything, because at that moment there was a cry from deep inside the house. It quickly cut off, but Paul’s restraint slipped.

‘SAM! HOLD ON, I’M COMING!’ he yelled, and barged through the doors.

Oh, Christ. But there was no longer any choice. Ignoring Gardner’s angry questions, I ran after Paul into the sanitarium.

* * *

You cock your head, listening. They’ll be here soon; you only have a few minutes. Adrenaline is tingling through you, but you’re over the worst of the shock now, able to function again. When you heard them at the French doors the disbelief was paralysing. You’d thought that leaving the ambulance miles away would’ve thrown them off, allowed yourself to relax.

You should have known better.

Your first instinct was to run, but that wasn’t an option. You forced yourself to calm down, to think! And gradually the panic subsided enough to let you see what you had to do. You’re better than them, remember that. Better than anyone.

You can still turn this round.

You have to hurry, though. The eyes stare at you from the bound figure, wide and terrified, as you make sure the gag won’t come out again. You don’t want any more screams to tell them where you are, not yet. A sense of waste rises up in you as you start. This isn’t how it was meant to be, not when you’d come so close… But there’s no time for regrets. No time for anything.

Only what has to be done.

When it’s over you regard your handiwork with distaste. The eyes are no longer staring at you, or at anything else. Your breath comes in ragged bursts as you listen to the sounds of the intruders getting closer. Well, let them. You’re almost through. Only one more thing left to do, and then your surprise’ll be ready.

Wiping the sweat from your face, you reach for the knife.

CHAPTER 23

PAUL RAN ACROSS the foyer. ‘SAM? SAM!’

His shout bounced off the bare walls. The interior of the sanitarium was dark and empty, stripped of furniture and fittings. The windows were shuttered, letting in only slats and cracks of light. I had an impression of space, of dilapidation and dust, as I plunged after him, the phone clutched to my ear.

‘Talk to me, Hunter! What’s going on?’ Gardner demanded, his words fading in and out as the reception wavered.

‘We’ve found York,’ I panted. ‘It’s an old sanitarium in the foothills, about fifteen, twenty miles from where he left the ambulance. There’s…’ But I didn’t know how to describe the nightmare of the garden. I started giving directions to where we’d left the car until his silence checked me. ‘Gardner? Gardner!’

The connection had failed. I’d no idea how much he’d heard, or even if he’d heard anything at all, but there was no time to call him back. Paul had stopped in the centre of the foyer.

‘SAM! WHERE ARE YOU? SAM!’

‘Paul!’ I seized hold of him. He shook me off.

‘He already knows we’re here! DON’T YOU, YOU BASTARD?’ he bellowed. ‘YOU HEAR ME? I’M COMING FOR YOU, YORK!’

His challenge went unanswered. Our breathing sounded hollow in the cavernous foyer. Either termites or subsidence had undermined the foundations, causing the entire floor to cant drunkenly to one side like a fairground funhouse. Dust coated every surface like dirty felt. Faded wallpaper hung down in swags, and the banisters had been ripped from the once grand staircase in the centre of the room so that its railings stuck up into empty air like loose teeth. Next to it was an old-fashioned lift that had made its last journey decades before, its metal cage rusted and full of debris. There was a smell of age and damp, of mould and rotting wood. And something else.

Although it was faint, the sweetly foul odour of decomposition was here too.

Paul ran to the staircase, footsteps clomping on the wooden floor. The flight leading to the lower floor had caved in, leaving gaping blackness and rubble. He started to go up, but I stopped him, pointing. While one side of the building looked ready to collapse, on the other was a service door marked Private. The dusty parquet tiles between it and the entrance were crisscrossed with footprints and thin tyre tracks that could have been from a bike.

Or a wheelchair.

Clutching the wooden spar in his fist, Paul ran across and threw it open. A dark service corridor stretched in front of us, the only daylight coming from a small window at the far end.

‘SAM!’ he yelled.

The shout died to silence. Several doors ran along the corridor’s length. Paul ran down it, flinging them back one by one. They banged against the wall with a sound like gunshots, revealing bare cupboards and storage rooms that held only cobwebs. I followed behind him, until we’d reached the last doorway. He yanked it open, and I blinked at the sudden brightness.

An empty kitchen greeted us.

Afternoon sun slanted through filthy windows, giving the room the murky green light of an aquarium. A camp bed stood in one corner, a sleeping bag rumpled on top of it. By its head were shelves made from breezeblocks and raw planks, bowed under the weight of old books. Congealed pans cluttered a huge wood-burning stove, and two huge sinks overflowed with dirty crockery. Standing in the centre of the room was a scarred pine table. The plates on it had been pushed aside to make way for a first aid kit, from which a length of leftover bandage still trailed. Remembering the buckled steering wheel in the ambulance, I felt a savage satisfaction.

It was only when I looked away from the table that I realized one entire wall was covered in photographs.

York had created a montage of his victims; black and white images of agonized faces, just like those I’d seen at his house. There were too many to take in at once, men and women of all ages and ethnicities, pinned up on the wall like some sick gallery. Some of the photographs had started to curl and yellow with age. Wallets, purses and jewellery had been heaped in an untidy pile on a shelf below them, tossed aside as casually as the lives of their owners.

I felt a sudden, feathery vibration as something sticky brushed against my face. I recoiled, almost knocking over a chair before I realized it was only a strip of flypaper. A swamp darner was caught on it, still alive but hopelessly entangled, its fitful struggles only trapping it more. Other strips hung all over the kitchen, I saw, their surfaces crusted with dead flies and insects. York hadn’t bothered to take them down, just hung fresh strips until there was hardly any space left.

Paul crossed to where a long-bladed knife lay by the stove. Picking it up, he wordlessly passed me the strut he’d been carrying. It felt flimsy and rotten, but I still took it.

Two doors led off from the kitchen. Paul tried to open the first, but it had warped in its frame. He threw his shoulder against it and it gave with a splintering crack. Off balance, he staggered inside and collided with the pale body hanging from the ceiling.

‘Jesus!’

He stumbled back. But it was only the carcass of a pig, split in half lengthways and suspended by its hind leg from a meat hook. The small cupboard-sized room was an old-fashioned cold locker, but the rank smell and buzzing flies told that it wasn’t cold enough. Cuts of meat lay bagged and parcelled on the shelves, and a pig’s head sat on a bloodstained platter like a sacrificial offering.

Pig’s teeth and blood. York didn’t like to waste anything.

Paul stared for a moment, chest rising and falling, then went to the remaining door. This one opened smoothly, and I let out my breath when I saw it only led to a small staircase that descended into shadows.

Then I saw the wheelchair pushed to one side at the top.

It was scuffed and battered, and in the half-light I could make out wet smears on the seat. Remembering what Jacobsen had told me about the bloodstains in the ambulance, I glanced at Paul, hoping he hadn’t noticed. But he had.

He took the stairs three at a time.

I went after him, conscious of the creak and sway of the rickety staircase. At the bottom was a dark and narrow corridor. Chinks of light seeped through boarded-up windows and a set of French doors; the same ones we’d tried from the outside, I realized. The sanitarium had been built on the hillside, and now we were on the lower ground floor. The smell of decomposition was stronger down here, even stronger than outside. But the corridor was empty, except for a single door at the far end.