by Mark Morris
Looking around, what immediately struck Liz was that the refuge was dying on its feet. The blankets on the beds were rough and full of holes, the toilets stank, the taps dripped, and the walls of the shower room were running with condensation and thick with mold. Indeed, the facilities throughout were minimal. The games room contained nothing but a rickety table-tennis table, a few secondhand board games, and an ancient black-and-white TV, which was attached to the wall by brackets and a chain.
Huddled next to Duggie in the dining room, waiting for supper to arrive, Liz asked how long the refuge had been up and running.
“About six years, I think,” Duggie said.
“And how is it funded?”
He shrugged, a gesture which Liz had come to recognize as an autonomic response to virtually every question he was asked, even those to which he knew the answer.
“I think the Hipkisses sunk a lot of their own money into the place when they set it up,” he said, “but I think they find it hard to keep it going. I suppose they rely on charitable donations and the occasional pissy government handout.” He gave her a sidelong look. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m just trying to work out their part in all this,” Liz murmured. “Either they’re philanthropists, who have no idea what’s going on under their noses, in which case one of the staff- — and most likely one of the kitchen staff — is in league with the Eye. Or they’re so desperate for funds that they’re accepting payment in return for turning a blind eye to kidnapping and murder. Or they’re in it up to their hippie hairdos, which probably means they’ve been working towards this day for years, and set this place up purely to provide the Eye with victims when the time came.”
Duggie looked shocked. “You really believe they’ve been planning this for as long as that?”
“I’m keeping my options open,” said Liz, “but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility. Believe me, Duggie, plans of this kind are frequently set in motion decades, sometimes millennia, before.” She nudged him. “Here comes the food.”
Liz kept her head down as the food was served, but watched the servers closely. As well as Alex and Jess Hipkiss, both of whom seemed infinitely cheerful, there was a hefty, sweating woman with pasty skin and stringy hair and a tough-looking man with grizzled, close-cropped hair and fuzzy blue tattoos on his sinewy arms.
The food consisted of two dollops of fish pie with a potato-and-grilled-cheese topping, and a spoonful of mixed vegetables which had been bleached almost colorless by overboiling. As each portion of food was slopped unceremoniously onto a resident’s plate, the recipient attacked it without preamble. Liz noted that almost all the residents ate ravenously, hunched over their plates and shoveling food into their mouths, as if they expected their meals to be snatched away at any moment.
It was the tough-looking man who served Liz. She kept her head down and muttered, “Cheers,” but he didn’t respond.
Liz was concerned that her and Duggie’s reluctance to eat would be noted, perhaps even commented upon, but she needn’t have worried. As soon as everyone had been served, the hefty woman and the tough-looking man exited the dining room, pushing trolleys stacked with now-empty serving dishes. Alex and Jess Hipkiss hung around to chat to residents, but they were on the far side of the room, laughing with a big guy in beat-up biker’s leathers and a bandanna, whom they seemed to know well. All the same, Liz kept a forkful of food ready, just in case, and even put it in her mouth at one point when Alex glanced in her direction. As soon as he had turned away, she took it out again.
Eventually the old man on her left tapped her arm. “You gonna eat that, darlin’?”
“Er ... no,” said Liz.
“Pass it over here then.”
She hesitated a moment. If the food was drugged, she wouldn’t want to be responsible for providing the old guy with a double dose of whatever it had been laced with. Then again, if the worst that had happened on the previous occasions was that people had woken up the next morning feeling groggy, she guessed the dosage couldn’t have been too high. And what couldn’t be denied was that swapping plates with the old man would prevent her having to answer awkward questions as to why she hadn’t eaten her meal. She pushed her plate across to him.
“Share it,” she said in the closest thing to an English accent she could muster. “I’m sure some of the others will want some too.”
As the old man shared out her portion of food with his immediate neighbors, she glanced at the clock on the wall. Almost eight thirty. If all was well, Hellboy and Abe would be moving into position soon. It reassured her to think of them outside, watching over the place, but she couldn’t help feeling a little anxious about the overall situation. She hoped the three of them had made the right decision in staking out the refuge. She had the sense that time was running out, and knew that an error of judgment at this stage could result in the loss of countless lives.
“How can you be so freakin’ calm?” Hellboy asked.
He and Abe were sitting in a darkened car across the road from the refuge. They had been here for over an hour now and Hellboy was ready to explode. Since receiving the phone call from Cassie’s kidnapper, he had felt torn apart with rage, anxiety, and guilt. The creatures he had battled since the call had been no match for his blistering fury, and even Abe had been subjected to the sharp edge of his tongue on several occasions.
Not that Abe minded. He understood Hellboy’s anguish. He sympathized with his desire to be doing something, rather than just sitting around, waiting. Even though Hellboy knew their current course of action (or inaction) was their best shot at tracking the Eye members to their lair and recovering Cassie, it didn’t help. Hellboy was a doer, and sometimes, for him, the logical choice was also the most excruciating.
His latest outburst had come after he had said, for approximately the tenth time, “This is pointless. We should be in there, breaking heads.”
Abe had known he was just letting off steam. Hellboy was to the point and often hotheaded, but one thing he was not was reckless, particularly when lives were at stake. Even so, Abe felt duty bound to give a variation on his standard reply:
“Our target is the big fish, not the minnows. You know that. Be patient and the minnows will lead us to the main catch. Disturb the water now, and the minnows will scatter.”
Hellboy glared at him. “Is that some kind of amphibian philosophy?”
“No,” said Abe mildly, “it’s just an observation.”
It was at this point that Hellboy asked Abe how he could be so calm.
Abe said, “It’s just my way of staying focused. If I get angry or upset, I make mistakes. And in our job, if we make mistakes, people die.”
Hellboy was silent for a moment, glowering at the closed door across the street, which stood in a cone of light from the lamp affixed to the wall above. Slowly his brow unknitted and he sighed.
“Yeah, you’re right, buddy. I’m sorry.”
“No problem,” said Abe.
“It’s just ...” Hellboy’s face contorted with anguish “...if Cassie hadn’t met me this morning she’d be home now, watching TV or eating dinner or listening to some music. Instead of which, she’s ...” He waved his hand to indicate he had no idea where she was or what was happening to her, but that he was sure it was nothing good. “Why do these creeps have to go after my friends all the time?” he said. “If they want a fight, I’ll give them one.”
“But that’s the point, isn’t it?” said Abe. “They don’t want a fight. They go after your friends in the hope you’ll go away. They do it because they’re scared of you — which means they’re vulnerable.”
“If I ever get my hands on them, they’ll be scared, all right,” Hellboy said.
Abe nodded. “Aggression is good — but it needs to be channeled positively.”
“What are you, my guru?”
The fins on Abe’s neck undulated in what might have been the equivalent of a smirk. “Frequently, yes.”
They lapsed in
to silence again, watching the door, waiting for something to happen.
“Wonder what Liz is doing now,” Hellboy said eventually.
“Probably wishing she were sitting here, sharing the merry banter,” said Abe.
Hellboy grunted.
———
Liz, in fact, was hot and uncomfortable, and desperate to rid herself of the overcoat and balaclava. The coat was an encumbrance, but the balaclava was worse. It was itching like hell, and the trapped heat was giving her a headache. Lying on a makeshift bed of lumpy matting, surrounded by the snores, grunts, and coughs of fellow residents, the air thick with the smell of unwashed bodies, she felt as if she were suffocating.
She consoled herself with the thought that it surely wouldn’t be much longer now before something happened — if it was going to at all. She had no way of telling the time, but she guessed it must be somewhere around eleven. If all had gone to plan, Hellboy and Abe would be outside now, keeping watch. Liz’s job was simply to make sure that nothing occurred here which might result in their prey giving them the slip. She had already ascertained that the only likely entry and exit point from the building was the street door. There was a back door, but it led into a small yard which had no vehicular access and was surrounded by high walls on all sides. There was little chance that the Eye members would choose to enter or leave that way — particularly if they were transporting heavily drugged kidnap victims.
One thing Liz hadn’t been able to check was the kitchen, and that worried her. She kept thinking about how the Eye had infiltrated the buildings in which they had planted the bodies — from below, via the city’s ancient sewage system — and wondering whether they would do the same here. Maybe the building had a cellar, and maybe it was accessible from the kitchen. She had asked Duggie about it, and he had told her that he was pretty sure the building didn’t have a cellar. He also said he had been in the kitchen several times (as a frequent and nonviolent resident, he occasionally helped set the tables for dinner) and that there were no doors or trapdoors in there which might lead down to one.
But what if he was wrong? What if the cellar entrance was hidden? What if the Eye managed to slip in, unseen and unheard, and snatch away their victims from right under Liz’s nose?
In fact, what if they were here right now? What if they had already been? Liz went cold at the thought. She had reasoned that if the Eye were going to turn up, they would leave it until midnight at least, or maybe even the early hours, to be sure that the place was at its quietest.
But they might not. They might risk coming earlier — particularly if they were desperate to push ahead with their plan, and were worried about the police making the connection between the victims and the refuge. Since lights out, Liz had been straining for the slightest sound from outside the room, but unless any intruders started clomping about like a herd of elephants, she doubted she would hear much through the thick material of the balaclava and the surrounding chorus of sleep sounds.
She finally decided, therefore, that for the sake of her sanity she was going to have to make a move now. She couldn’t wait any longer and risk missing all the action. If she was spotted outside the room she’d just say she was going to the toilet. That might not wash, of course — if the food had been drugged, the Hipkisses would question why she wasn’t zonked out like everyone else — but she’d try it and see what happened. Judging by the evidence, she was inclined to believe that a drug of some kind had indeed been used. Despite the cacophony of snorts and snuffles and groans from all around her, she was pretty sure that everyone in the room except for her and Duggie was asleep.
She could tell he wasn’t by the tension in his body. He was lying on his back, hands meshed together over his flat belly. Now and again he would clear his throat nervously; it was the kind of sound only a conscious person would make. She rolled over and put her mouth close to his ear.
“Duggie,” she whispered, “I’m going to check things out.”
His face was a pale blurred oval in the darkness. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, you wait here. You’ve risked enough just by getting me in. If the kidnappers turn up, I’m planning on following them, in which case I may not see you again.”
“Okay, well ... good luck.”
“Thanks, buddy. You too.”
She rose from the floor, stifled by the clothes she was wearing. Carefully she picked her way across to the door, stepping over and around sleeping bodies in the grainy darkness. No one raised their head to look at her, or ask where she was going. Even when she accidentally stepped on someone’s leg they did nothing more than grunt and turn over.
At the door she turned back for a last look at Duggie. But in the darkness it was impossible to identify his individual form among the lumpy mass of sleeping humanity. She raised a hand regardless, then opened the door a crack and peered out. The dimly lit corridor was deserted, though from the main office down near the entrance she could hear a murmur of voices.
She slipped out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her. Her instinct was to move quickly, and to keep to what few shadows there were, but if someone stepped out of the office and saw her sneaking about, or came down the stairs to the left of the kitchen at the opposite end of the corridor, their suspicions would be instantly aroused.
Mindful of this, she moved like a lost old woman, shuffling along and making no attempt at concealment. Even so, she had a definite plan in mind. First she wanted to check out the kitchen. If the door to the room was still locked, then all well and good. Then she wanted to recce the dormitories upstairs. She had no idea whether the Eye would take their victims from there or from the closer and more convenient dining room, but with the dining room only in use today because of the unusually large influx of residents, she thought it more likely the Eye would stick to their tried-and-tested plan and access the less heavily populated dormitories.
Of course, Liz was aware that if she were found upstairs she would have little chance of bluffing it out, but that was a risk she would have to take. Hopefully she’d be able to subdue any opposition without attracting unwarranted attention, but just in case ...
She slipped across to the female toilet on the opposite side of the corridor and pushed the door open. Beyond was a grotty, smelly little room, its taps, cracked sink, and toilet bowl coated with a grime-encrusted layer of lime scale that no amount of scrubbing with disinfectant would ever shift. The wall tiles had long faded from gleaming white to a dull ivory-yellow, and the grout between them was black with damp and dirt.
Liz closed the door behind her and reached beneath her coat for the satellite phone in the pouch on her waist. Like Hellboy and Abe, she rarely had her phone switched on, for the simple reason that she didn’t want to forget about it and have the damn thing go off at inappropriate times. Of course, their tendency to go incommunicado drove Tom Manning crazy, but he wasn’t the one who frequently had to sneak about in the most inhospitable of environments, facing off against supervillains with magical powers and big bad nasties from hellish realms.
She turned the phone on now, and fast-dialed Hellboy. He answered immediately, as if he had been waiting for her call.
“What’s happening?” he said.
“Nothing so far. Just thought I’d let you know where I’m at.” Quickly she filled him in on what she had learned, and of her intentions. “So where are you and Abe?”
“Sitting right outside, staring at a closed door. It’s a thrilling pastime. You should try it.”
She smiled at his dry humor, but she could hear the frustration in his voice. “Hang in there, big guy. If I find out anything more I’ll call you.”
She expected him to say okay and end the call, but he hesitated. Before she could ask him what was wrong, he said, “It won’t change how we do things, but I guess you should know — they’ve got Cassie.”
“Damn,” Liz said quietly. “I’m sorry, HB. What happened?”
Briefly he told her about
the phone call.
“Okay,” said Liz, “well, I guess that makes it doubly important that we get these bastards. Talk to you later.”
She put her phone away, listened for a moment, then opened the door of the toilet. The corridor was still deserted. She could hear nothing but the same murmur of voices she had heard before and the occasional extra-loud snort or groan from behind the door of the dining room. She walked boldly up the corridor towards the kitchen door, thinking that if anyone challenged her now she would claim she was hungry. She reached the door and tried it. It was still locked. Good. She put her ear to it and listened for a moment. Silence. Okay, now to check on the dormitories upstairs.
She ascended to the second floor, gritting her teeth at each creak of the wooden staircase. She reached the top and was making her way along the corridor towards the dormitories when a door beyond them — the door that led into the games room — abruptly opened and the tough-looking guy who had served her supper stepped out.
Liz could only assume that he had heard the stairs creaking and had come out to investigate. He was holding a copy of the Racing Post and from the expression on his face it was clear that he had expected to see someone he knew. This again supported the notion that the food had been drugged. Otherwise, why would the guy have been so surprised to encounter a resident?
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, his expression changing from shock to aggression.
Liz thought quickly. She allowed her head to droop and shambled towards the man, weaving from side to side, as if she was indeed heavily drugged and fighting desperately to keep awake.
“Oi,” the man said, “where do you think you’re going?”
He marched up to Liz and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. She felt his strong thumbs digging into the muscle below her shoulder bones, but she forced her face to remain slack. She mumbled incoherently, and rolled her head loosely forward as if she were finding it too heavy to keep upright.
