by Tim Weaver
But he wasn’t standing down.
Rocking from one foot to the other, he came at me, his sudden change of pace catching me on the hop. He was lithe and he was fast, devious, aggressive. I felt the knife disturb the air in front of me as I moved sideways, arching my body, the tip of the blade slitting open my jacket at the arm. As his momentum took him further towards me, I rolled back on to the balls of my feet and swung the broom handle. It clattered into him somewhere around the waist, knocking him off balance, and he staggered sideways into the frame of the bunk on the opposite side of the room. The metal vibrated, its legs scraping against the tiled floors, water splashing up.
For a second, I thought I had him exposed, his back half-turned to me, the knife in front of his body, incapable of getting to me before I got to him – but as I swung the lump of wood at him, he ducked, the underside of it brushing the top of his head. The force of my swing carried me towards him. Knowing he couldn’t get the knife out from in front of him in time, he used his elbow instead, jabbing the point hard into the base of my throat.
It was like being shot.
I stumbled back, winded, spots in front of my eyes. My head was a mess of static, my legs weak, my sense of perception gone. I reached out for the other bunk bed just beside me, but it wasn’t there. I grabbed air, the bed another foot and a half away from where I expected it to be. With nothing to hold me up, I lurched forward, hitting the floor. Water spattered my face, my mouth, my skin.
I rolled over on to my back.
My vision was blurring in and out, but I could see enough: Grankin moved into view, knife out in front of him, looking down at me. He placed a hand on the mask and lifted it away from his face, perching it on top of his head. It was bound to his skull with a piece of old string. He had the torch in his other hand now, which I’d dropped without even realizing, and was using it to blind me, to toy with me, shining it into my eyes and then away again. I could feel my jacket soaking through to my spine, the back of my trousers too. I tried to shift myself up on to an elbow, but it was like I was paralysed. I was an animal, dying in the headlights of the car that had struck it.
‘Is that it?’ Grankin said.
He shuffled in over me, feet planted hip distance apart, fingers re-establishing their grip on the knife. His neck tilted to one side, almost looking at me with pity, and then he leaned forward, pursed his lips and let his saliva drop into my face.
‘You are pathetic,’ he said.
He drew the knife back, ready to strike.
But he never got the chance.
66
Something clicked.
Freezing exactly where he was, Grankin turned. I followed his eyeline, across the room to the darkness of the hallway – and then Healy stepped into the edges of the torchlight, gun aimed at Grankin. He moved slowly, cautiously.
‘Oh,’ Grankin said calmly, glancing at me. ‘I didn’t know if you’d brought him or not.’ He straightened, looking Healy up and down, then raised his hands above his head, the knife still in his left. ‘You should put on some weight, friend.’
Healy just stared at him.
‘Where did you go?’ I said.
‘I thought I heard a noise.’
‘Ah, look at you two.’ Grankin smiled. ‘Is it love?’
‘Drop the knife,’ Healy told him.
Grankin frowned. ‘Or what? You are going to shoot me? You are going to leave my body here for the police when they come?’
Healy’s eyes flicked to me. ‘You called the police?’
I sat up, my system starting to settle.
‘Raker? You called the police?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I called the police.’
‘Why?’
I looked at him, unsure what to say.
‘Raker?’
‘There’s something wrong with me,’ I said, hauling myself to my feet, wet, aching, unsteady. I thought I was calling them because I couldn’t look after you.
But it wasn’t you I couldn’t look after.
He frowned, stepping towards me.
It was myself.
‘There’s something wrong with you?’ Healy said.
‘I think I might be ill. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now.’
‘What do you mean, “ill”?’
‘Colm,’ Grankin said almost delicately, moving fractionally in Healy’s direction, ‘why don’t you see if that cassette recorder on the floor still works?’
Healy glanced at it.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Ignore him.’
‘See if it still plays,’ Grankin continued.
I tried again: ‘Healy.’
He was frowning now, confused, half an eye on the tape. This was exactly what Grankin wanted: a loss of focus, a lapse, a mistake.
‘Healy,’ I said again, calmly, quietly.
He looked from the tape to Grankin. ‘Why?’ he said, jabbing the gun at Grankin’s face. ‘What’s on the tape?’ He eyed me, looking for the answer. ‘Raker?’
‘He’s baiting you,’ I said.
‘About what?’
I held up a hand. ‘We need to talk to him.’
‘What’s he baiting me about?’
‘He’s trying to force you into a mistake.’
I could see Healy’s jaw tighten, almost contract, as he gritted his teeth. He stepped in closer to Grankin. For the first time, from the angle he was at, he saw the mask on Grankin’s head. It seemed to send a jolt of electricity through him.
‘What’s on the tape?’
‘We need to talk to him,’ I said again.
‘Gail’s on the tape,’ Grankin whispered.
Healy was instantly silenced. Grankin took another step towards him, capable now of reaching up and grabbing the weapon.
‘You …’ Healy said faintly, shell-shocked. ‘You recorded her?’
Grankin inched forward.
‘You recorded her?’
‘Yes.’
‘The night she died?’
‘Yes.’
‘Healy,’ I begged, watching as Grankin tightened his grip on the knife. ‘This is what he wants. Don’t you see that? Focus. We need him. We need his answers.’
‘You recorded her dying?’
‘Healy.’
‘Yes,’ Grankin said. ‘We recorded her dying.’
‘Why?’ Healy muttered. ‘Why did you do that to her?’ Tears softened the words spilling out of his mouth, his eyes filling up, saliva bubbling at his lips.
‘Because.’
‘Because what?’
Grankin shrugged. ‘What does it matter now?’
A tremor seemed to pass across the room, like the floor had shifted beneath us. Grankin glanced at me, as if this were some sort of performance – and then, in a flash, reached up, clamped his hand on to the barrel of the gun and tried to direct it away from his face, jabbing the knife in hard.
‘Healy!’
The roar of the gun going off.
A blink of light.
And then Grankin was staggering backwards, half hitting the bunk on the way, his balance gone, his control. He smashed into the wall and fell forward, dropping to the floor like every bone in his body had turned to liquid. Healy stepped in towards him, gun facing down at him, the front of his clothes torn, traces of blood evident where the blade had nicked his stomach. But if he was in pain – if the wound was deep, if it was serious – he didn’t notice, or didn’t care. He was muttering to himself, sobbing, inconsolable. He leaned over Grankin and pushed the gun into his skull, pressing it into his eye.
‘Why did you kill the girls?’ he said softly.
Grankin’s blood washed out into the centre of the room, the bottom side of his face a mess of gore and bone, his wound slowly being submerged by the lake of spilt water. It ran into his eye, his nose, his mouth, the hole in his head.
‘Why did you kill the girls?’ Healy repeated, but this time he could hardly form the words. ‘Why did you kill the girls?’
I took a ste
p towards him. ‘Are you hurt?’
He looked back at me, surprised, confused, as if he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. In his head, in this room that Grankin had once called home, it was just the two of them – and now a gunshot, an act of self-defence, had robbed Healy of the answer he craved. Looking at me again, he lifted the gun up, away from Grankin, and I glimpsed the wound at his stomach: a cut, a swipe of a blade, but not deep.
‘Why did he have to kill the girls?’ he said.
‘Healy.’ I held up a hand. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Why did he have to kill them?’
‘Healy …’
‘Why did he have to kill them!’ he screamed, his voice carrying out into the corridor of the building – an echo, repeated over and over, in search of an answer. When none came, when I couldn’t offer him anything, his eyes filled with tears and he began sobbing.
Their custodian.
Their avenger.
A man they had never known in life – but who had loved them all the same.
67
We left Grankin’s body where it was and moved back out into the corridor. Healy was completely silent, the tears gone, the gun returned to his jacket, this shell of a man reduced to something even less: a machine, pale and broken, propelled by whatever remained of the power that still held him upright. I’d tried to console him as we stood there between the bunks, but he hadn’t responded, had hardly been able to look at me. When he did, I realized I didn’t know what to say to him.
I’d looked for a phone on Grankin’s body, but he’d had nothing in either pocket. Whatever he’d come here to do, he’d come here to hide it, and he’d come here to do it quickly.
‘Healy, I want to take a look further down.’
He stared at me.
‘Are you coming with me?’ No movement, no reaction; he just continued to look at me, through me, something of him gone. ‘Healy. Listen to me.’
Except I still didn’t know what to say to him.
‘Come on,’ I said, and led us away from the room.
The corridor ran on another sixty feet, but it didn’t seem as closed in now, or as intimidating. I had the torch, which helped, but the further we got, the more daylight seemed to be escaping past the boards at the windows, binding together in the centre of the hallway. Eventually, we reached a set of double doors, one partially open, and through the gap I could see the corridor kinked left, back around towards the reception area and the extension, a sign pointing the way.
In the opposite direction were toilets.
I slipped through the gap, shone the torch left, towards the reception area, and saw another door, this one coloured red. I’d seen the same one when I’d first entered the extension. It had been chained from the other side. That meant there would be no short cut back to the extension this way. We’d have to go out the way we’d come in.
I turned to Healy again. ‘You said you heard a noise earlier?’
He looked at me blankly.
‘Healy,’ I said, trying to rouse him. ‘You said you heard a noise when you were out front?’ I waited. Eventually, he nodded. ‘So you followed the noise in?’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t come inside,’ he said quietly, eyes still wet. He looked from me to the red door. ‘I checked around the back, because I thought the noise had come from out there. But there was nothing. Then I came inside.’
I swung the torch around, lighting up the entrance to the toilets: male and female doors, and some sort of janitor’s cupboard. Edging forward, I saw that the door to the Ladies was ajar, propped open with a chunk of brick. I gestured for Healy to follow me, placed a hand against the door and slowly opened it fully. Using the torch, I could see a row of six cubicles and a set of wash basins. A hand drier was attached to the far wall, and some of the old piping was exposed, plasterboard broken, edges fraying and crumbling.
‘Watch the door,’ I said to Healy.
He stirred, frowned. ‘What?’
‘Someone else might be here.’ Korman. ‘Just watch the door, okay?’
The smell in the room was unpleasant – stale urine, damp, rust – but I kept moving forward. Halfway in, I glanced back at Healy, standing there in the door, swamped by a jacket too big for him. His eyes were focused on the hallway, but his mind was somewhere else: on Grankin, Gail, the girls, on the gravity of a single moment. As I turned, I noticed something for the first time, hidden in shadow beyond the cubicles.
Two oil drums.
The drums were empty, dry, the paint on the inside stripped away. Their lids – two big circular discs – were propped against them, at the side. I reached in and dabbed a finger to the interior, but no trace of anything came back on my skin.
Both drums were spotless.
A memory formed: I was back on the pier, in the moments before Healy and I were forced to make a run for it. I’d found a cassette recorder there, like the one Grankin had left in the bedroom – no tape, no batteries, but the same make.
And I’d found burn marks.
I knelt down in front of one of the drums. These are what left the rings on the floor of the pier. There had been two circles scorched into the wooden slats of the pavilion, their circumference matching the size of the drums. I shifted one of the drums out from the wall, looking at the piece of board it had been placed on. The board had the same ring burned into it: same size, colour, measurements.
Korman and Grankin were still using them.
Just not on the pier.
I turned on my haunches and directed my torch out across the rest of the room. Were they burning bodies in here? There was no smell of seared flesh, no lingering stench of decomposition. But as I continued to breathe in, the faint smell of disinfectant came to me.
Bleach.
‘Wait here,’ I said to Healy, but this time I didn’t have to move fast to avoid an argument. He just nodded and remained there, half lit from one side by a row of four thin windows – all set behind wire – high above the basins in the toilets. There wasn’t much light escaping into this part of the building, but there was enough. I gripped the torch and headed next door, to the men’s toilets. They were set out in the opposite way to the Ladies, cubicles on the right, basins and the high windows on the left. In the same corner as next door, in the shadows beyond the cubicles, my torch picked out a fat plastic tube, on its side. As I got closer, I saw what it was.
A portable pressure washer.
Grankin had been in the middle of using it, the tiles of the bathroom still slick with water. That was why he’d made a break for it when he’d spotted us outside his house. He’d come here to wash down the walls.
I edged closer.
There was blood in the water – not much, but some. It swirled around on the surface of the puddles like coils of red dye, gradually running into a drain beneath the basins. In between some of the tiles, blood had stained the grouting, but it had been rinsed to a very light pink over time, and you had to look hard to see it. There was the smell of bleach here too – even stronger than next door – and when I went to the pressure washer, I found out why: setting it upright, I unscrewed the cap, and the smell hit me instantly. He’d mixed bleach and water.
Then my attention switched again.
I could hear a noise outside: faintly, distantly.
Shit.
It was sirens.
68
Grabbing Healy by the arm, I hauled him out of the toilets and back into the corridor, hurrying past the endless doors in the direction of the staircase. As we passed Grankin, I looked in at him: his legs were visible, one of his hands too, stretched out beside him, like he’d been reaching for something. The water was everywhere, a lake stained pink, his knife like a boat beached in the middle. I’d called Craw and got the police involved because it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Now I didn’t want them here. Not yet. Detectives and forensics would have a field day: not just with Grankin and the knife, but with whatever Healy and I had left behind. Should I go b
ack and wipe it down?
There wasn’t time.
I needed to get Healy out of here.
Moving more quickly now, I led the way back up the stairs, past the playrooms on the first floor, and then descended into the extension. Once I got to the grey doors, I paused, peering through the gap, listening to Healy move in behind me.
Everything looked quiet.
But that still didn’t settle my nerves.
I gestured for Healy to follow me, and we headed out, the cold starting to bite, the rain still coming down. Checking the rear of the building, and finding a series of empty parking spaces, I returned to the front of St David’s, looking off in the vague direction we’d approached it. What had once been the garden, play fields for the kids who had called this home, was now an untidy mess of weeds and long grass. Among the trees on the far side somewhere, hidden from view, was the eight-foot electrified fence, and the hole in the ground that led back to Grankin’s house.
Our only way out.
I glanced at Healy and suppressed a murmur of panic. He was looking at the floor, at the grass around his ankles, adrift, lost. There was no going back the way we’d come, not with the police almost at the house, and – if they’d listened to Craw, if they’d heard the part about the children’s home – they’d be coming through the main gates any moment too, somewhere down at the bottom of wherever the driveway led. We were trapped here, hemmed in. I’d tried to do the right thing – but all I’d ended up doing was boxing us into a corner. We’d left a body behind. Healy was supposed to be dead. Worse, he didn’t even seem to be aware of what was going on, or the scale of our problems. His muscles were still propelling him, but his mind hadn’t moved.
Part of him was still inside the home.
I grabbed his arm to try to rouse him – the kind of physical contact he normally would have hated – and he followed me down the driveway, through the knot of trees that arched around it, and on to a gentle slope. It snaked down the side of a shallow hill, enclosed by the forest, but – beyond the twisted branches and thick canopy – I caught glimpses of something up ahead: a road.
