Whispers of the Dead (28 page)

up ahead, running up an overgrown path along the side of the building.
Chest burning, I made an extra effort and hauled him back
before he reached the end of it.
'Get off of me!'
A flailing elbow triggered a starburst of light in my eye, but I didn't
let go. 'Just think, will you! What if he's got a gun?'
He tried to throw me off. 'I don't care!'
I struggled to hold on to him. 'If Sam's still alive we're her only
chance! You want to waste it?'
That reached him. The frenzy died in his eyes, and I felt the
resistance ebb from him. Still wary, I let him go.
'I'm not waiting till Gardner gets here,' he breathed.
'I know, but we can't just go charging in. If York's in there let's
not make it any easier for him.'
I could see that everything in him wanted to tear down the walls
until he found Sam, but he knew I was right. Even though York must
know we were there by now, he might not realize there were only
two of us. God knew, we didn't have much of an advantage, but
announcing our approach would lose what little we had.
Moving more cautiously, we went to the end of the path.
We'd obviously come at the building from the back; now we
found ourselves at the front. The spring sun was too low to creep
above the high roof, casting a deep shadow. Walking into it was like
stepping into cold water. Even the trees on this side seemed darker;
towering pines and maples rather than the ornamental varieties at the
back. Woodland had reclaimed whatever gardens there used to be,
branches meeting over the muddy driveway to form a dark, claustrophobic
tunnel that disappeared out of sight.
At one side stood a warped timber sign. The lettering had faded
to a ghostly blue that hinted at a long-ago optimism: Breathe Deep!
You're at Cedar Heights Spa and Sanitarium! It looked to date from the
1950s, and judging by its dilapidation it might have been forgotten
ever since.
Though not by York.
Several cars were parked haphazardly on the driveway, stolen along
with their owners' lives. Most had obviously not been moved in ages,
their roofs and windscreens covered with leaf mould and bird
droppings, but two were cleaner than the rest. One was a huge black
pick-up truck with darkly tinted windows.
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. Adrenalin 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.
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 foundYork,' 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'TYOU,YOU BASTARD?' he bellowed. 'YOUHEAR 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 Wood.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.
A brass sign on it bore the legend Spa Rooms.
Paul had already started towards it when a sudden noise cut
through the silence. It was like air escaping from a valve, a high
pitched keening that sounded both inhuman and agonized. It cut off
as quickly as it started, but there was no doubt about its source.
It came from the spa.
'SAM!' Paul bellowed, and charged for the door.
I couldn't have held him back even if I'd wanted to. Gripping the
length of wood so tightly my hand hurt, I was right behind him as
he burst through. There was just time to register a large room with
white-tiled walls before a figure dashed through another doorway
right in front of me.
My heart stuttered until I realized it was my own reflection.
A huge mirror was fixed to the opposite wall, its surface mottled
and leprous. A row of drinking fountains stood in front of it, their
spigots dusty and dry. A murky light filtered in through a row of
high, cobwebbed windows, revealing cracked white tiles from floor
to ceiling. Signs proclaiming Treatment Rooms, Sauna, and Turkish
Bath pointed off towards the warren of shadowed chambers that led
from the room in which we stood. But we barely noticed.
York had left his victims in here as well.
A sunken plunge pool, perhaps six feet square, stood in one corner
by a darkened archway. York had turned it into a charnel pit. The
bodies nearly filled it. From what I could make out, they were in
varying stages of decomposition, but none so far gone as those
outside.
The smell was indescribable.
The sight checked Paul, but only briefly. He quickly crossed to the
doors marked Treatment Rooms and tore open the nearest one. Inside
was a small chamber that must once have been used for massage.
Now it was York's darkroom. A reek of chemicals greeted us.
Developing trays and containers of photographic chemicals cluttered
an old desk, and more photographs had been clipped to a length of
cord suspended above it.
Pushing past me, Paul ran to the next chamber. The smell told me
what was inside, overwhelming even the darkrooms pungent
chemicals. I was overcome by a reluctance to look, a sudden fear of
what we were going to find. Paul, too, seemed to feel it. He hesitated,
his face deathly.
Then he opened the door.
More of York's victims lay on the tiled floor, stacked one on top of
another like so much firewood. They were fully clothed, apparently
just dragged in here and left, as though he'd simply lost interest and
dumped them in the nearest space to hand.
The body lying on the very top might have been asleep. In the
dim light from the doorway, the outflung hand and spill of blond hair
looked pitifully vulnerable.
I heard Paul give a sound halfway between a sob and a cry.
We'd found Sam.
It was as though all the breath had been sucked out of me. Even
though I'd told myself Sam was probably already dead, that York had
no reason to let her live, I'd not fully accepted it.
I grabbed hold of Paul as he flung himself forward. 'Don't. . .'
I'd seen the photographs of York's victims. Paul didn't need to see
Sam like that. He strained against me, but then his legs gave way. He
took a faltering step backward and slid down the wall.
'Sam ... Oh, Christ. . .'
Move, I told myself. Get him out of here. He was slumped on the
floor like a broken toy. I tried to get him to his feet.
'Come on. We need to go.'
'She was pregnant. She wanted a boy. Oh no, God . . .'
My throat ached. But we couldn't stay there, not when we didn't
know where York was.
'Get up, Paul. You can't help her now.'
But he was past listening. I would have tried again, but the tiny
chamber suddenly darkened. I jerked round, only to find that the door
had swung shut behind us. I quickly pushed it open again, half expecting
to see York standing outside. No one was there, but as the grey light
from the doorway reached Sam's body, I saw something else.
A glint of silver beneath the tangled blond hair.
There was a clenched feeling in my chest as I stepped nearer to the
piled bodies. It grew tighter as I gently moved the hair aside. I felt
myself sway when I looked down at the familiar face. Oh, God.
Behind me I could hear Paul starting to weep.
'Paul. . .'
'I let her down. I should have--'
I gripped his shoulders.'Listen to me, it isn't Sam!'
He lifted his tearstained face.
'It isn't Sam,' I repeated, letting him go. My chest hurt at what I
was about to say. 'It's Summer.'
'Summer . . . ?'
I stood back as he climbed to his feet. He approached the body
fearfully, as though not quite believing it even now.
But the steel ear and nose studs were enough to convince him it
wasn't his wife. He stood with the knife held limply by his side,
taking in the bleached blond hair that had tricked us. The student
was lying face down, her head turned to one side. Her face was
horribly congested, the single bloodshot eye that was visible dull and
staring.
I'd assumed Summer hadn't come to the morgue because she was
upset over Tom's death. And instead York had been claiming yet
another victim.
A tremor ran through Paul. 'Oh, Jesus . . .'
Tears were streaming down his face. I could guess at the turmoil
he was feeling: relief, but also guilt. I felt it myself.
He pushed past me out of the chamber.
'SAM! SAM, WHERE ARE YOU?'
His shout reverberated off the tiled walls of the spa. I went after
him. 'Paul--'
But he was past restraint. He stood in the centre of the spa, the
knife clenched in his fist.
'WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER, YORK?' he yelled,
his face contorted. 'COME OUT, YOU FUCKING COWARD!'
There was no answer. Once the echoes had died, the silence
seemed to condense around us. The slow drip, drip of an unseen tap
counted away the moments like a distant pulse.
Then we heard something. It was faint, the merest suggestion of a
sound, but unmistakable.
A muffled whimper.
It came from one of the other treatment chambers. Paul ran and
flung the door open. Battery-powered storm lanterns had been
arranged around the walls, though none were switched on now. But
enough light fell through the doorway to see the unmoving figure in
its centre.
Paul's knife clattered to the floor. 'Sam!'
I groped for the nearest lamp and turned it on, blinking in the
sudden brightness. Sam was tied to an old massage table. A camera
had been positioned on a tripod by her head, its lens pointing
directly down at her face. A wooden chair stood next to it, echoing
the arrangement we'd found in the mountain cabin. Her wrists and
ankles had been secured by broad leather straps, and a thinner one
had been fastened round her throat, tight enough now to dig into the
soft flesh. It was connected to a complicated arrangement of steel
cogs from which a wooden winding handle protruded.
York's Spanish windlass.
All that registered in the first seconds of reaching the small
chamber. You're too late, I thought, seeing the tautness of the strap
circling her neck.Then Paul shifted to one side, and I saw that Sams
eyes were wide and terrified, but alive.
Her swollen belly looked impossibly big as she lay bound to the
table. Her face was red and tear-streaked, and a thick rubber gag had
been forced into her mouth. She sucked in a gasping breath as Paul
took it out, but the strap round her throat restricted her breathing.