You Are Dead

by Peter James

“It was just standing in the kitchen when we entered,” Martin said. “It was looking bewildered—and distressed—as if it’s been abandoned, I’d say.”

  “OK, how do I get to the basement?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  He followed the inspector along a corridor and through into a vast, modern and well-equipped kitchen, with an island unit, a large American-style fridge, and a refectory table. It looked spotless. Martin pointed to an open door, with a weak light beyond illuminating steps down.

  “There, Roy. Want me to come down with you? We have checked it already.”

  “No, get a full search team up here to start taking the place apart, get a CSI crew, and meantime join the others in checking the grounds, Anthony. If he’s not in the house, he has to be in the garden somewhere—the pool house, a shed, garages, or even up on the roof. He’s bloody here! Just make sure he doesn’t give us the slip in any direction.” Outside, above the steady thwock-thwock-thwock roar of the helicopter, he heard the police dog barking again, louder now. A deep, steady woof-woof-woof, and he felt a burst of excitement and hope. Had the dog found something?

  On the radio a crackly voice relayed from the team outside, “Only a sodding fox!”

  His thoughts in turmoil, Roy Grace, gripping his small torch in one hand and the handrail in the other, hurried down the steep, bare wooden treads. The bastard had to be here. Had to be. At the bottom he entered a cavernous, icy-cold, low-ceilinged junk room that looked as if it had once been the children’s playroom. Dusty, bare bulbs hung from the ceiling, only three of them working, throwing a dim light across the whole area. There was a thin, dark green carpet on the floor and some of the paper was peeling off the walls. It smelled musty, with a hint of damp, as if no one ever came down here. A complete contrast to the floor above, Grace thought.

  Stacked against the far wall was a trampoline. In front of it was an old ping-pong table and a rocking horse. Grace saw a large, Victorian-looking oil painting of marigolds in a vase, in an ugly, ornate frame, propped against one arm of a busted sofa.

  At the other end of the room, past several lumpy shapes beneath dust sheets, was an open door, with a feeble light shining beyond. Grace walked over to the dust sheets and raised one. Beneath were two old armchairs, one with a fringed lampshade perched on the seat, and an old pinball machine with a spider’s web crack in its glass top. Then he crossed to the open doorway. Ahead was a narrow passageway with bare brick walls and a concrete floor, lit by another low-wattage bulb. A cluster of very old-looking electrical wires, taped together, ran along the wall just above head height.

  He switched on his torch again, for the beam to supplement the light, directing it at the floor. He was looking for any signs of possible recent work, but it did not look as if it had been touched in years. He stood still for some moments listening for any sounds beyond. He could hear the muffled rumble of a boiler, and he detected a faint but distinct reek of sour wine. He continued, warily, along the passage for about ten feet, heading toward the dark space ahead, the vinous smell getting stronger with every step, then stopped in amazement as he reached the end and flashed his beam around.

  He was in a brick-walled wine cellar. But not like any cellar he had ever seen in a domestic house before. On either side of him and stretching away thirty or forty feet into the distance were wooden wine racks, floor to ceiling, stacked with dusty bottles. There must be thousands, he guessed. With his gloved hand he carefully gripped the neck of one bottle, at random, and lifted it out. It was covered in decades of dust, and he had to peer closely to read the printing on the label.

  In outlined red letters was the word, PETRUS. Above, even more faint, was the date, 1961. Above that was a black and white drawing of a bearded man that looked to Grace like St. Peter.

  He was no expert on wine, but there were a few famous names that he recognized, because they had been in the news at some point or other, and Petrus was one of them. He had the sense the bottle he was holding was very valuable, and replaced it carefully. He stood still, listening again, then walked on between the racks, shining the torch beam down at the floor, checking it carefully.

  Then he stopped and frowned.

  The bottles on the fully stacked wine rack to his right looked cleaner than the rest down here—their necks at least. Were they a recent purchase?

  He lifted one out, and it was much lighter than he had expected. The label read, GEVREY CHAMBERTIN 2002. It felt too light. He shone the beam of his torch directly on it. The bottle was empty. Puzzled, he pulled out the one directly below it. That was empty, too. He tried more on the same rack, and they were all empty as well. Each had its cork pushed right in and the seal intact. The rack took six bottles lying across. There were forty-eight bottles on the entire rack.

  Were they showcase samples? Like in some restaurants where you saw all kinds of different-size bottles upright, on display?

  Why the hell would anyone have an entire rack full of dummy bottles? To show off? Were other parts of this cellar filled with dummy bottles, also?

  His phone rang. It was Pete Darby. Reception was bad down here, the surveillance officer’s voice crackly and breaking up.

  “I’ve double checked with the previous shift, and no one has been in or out of there.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Yes—we were keeping an eye on the street, but our focus as briefed was on the target’s house.” Then the voice became too crackly for Grace to decipher the words. He heard, “Fair … traffic … through…” Then silence.

  He looked down at his phone and saw the words no service on the display.

  Grace put his phone back in his pocket, staring at the rack again. Something was wrong about it. He studied it carefully, playing the beam of his torch along each row. Then a faint glint caught his eye. It glinted again as he moved his torch. Hastily he removed several bottles from the rack, and then could see what it was. A hinge.

  He felt a sudden beat of excitement. Gripping the wine rack firmly with both hands he gave a gentle pull and, taken by surprise, stumbled backward as the entire section of the rack swung out easily and silently, on well-oiled hinges. Yet all that was behind it was just a continuation of the solid brick wall.

  He played the torch beam across it, then noticed that the bricks directly behind the rack seemed newer and more even than those on either side. Frowning, he ran the torch beam up and down the join on the right. And saw the faint, vertical hairline crack. Then a horizontal one, about five feet high. And another vertical crack joining it and running down to the ground. Holding the torch in his mouth he pushed hard, first on one side then the other, and suddenly a whole section swung forward, inward. He was right, he realized with a chill. It was a concealed wooden door, clad on the outside with brick tiles.

  Crisp had gone to a great deal of trouble to keep something hidden, Grace thought, crouching and shining the light through the opening. It was a short, rough-hewn tunnel, with crude wooden uprights and crossbeams every few feet along, holding back the walls and supporting the roof. Hessian matting covered the floor. It was like something out of a World War Two movie about prisoners escaping from German prisoner of war camps, he thought.

  Then he remembered the particular section of books on the shelves up in Crisp’s library. Had the idea come from those? Or the technique?

  He pulled his phone out and tried to call for backup. The display showed no signal. He knew he should get backup but his adrenaline rush was pushing him forward. He jammed it back into his pocket, then shone the torch warily all around the cellar behind him, watching the shadows jumping. His nerves were jangling. What the hell was at the far end of the tunnel?

  He shone the beam along it again, and a tiny pair of eyes sparkled like rubies, ten feet or so in the distance. He’d always been claustrophobic, and right back as a child had felt uncomfortable playing hide and seek, when he’d had to conceal himself in a closet, or one time in an old trunk in his parents’ loft. He remembered a case when h
e’d had to crawl along a storm drain to see a body that had been discovered there, and it had taken all his courage.

  Gripping the torch in his teeth again, and ignoring his fear, he entered the tunnel, keeping his head as low as he could. Ahead of him the beam fell away into darkness for some moments, then he saw the tiny rubies sparkling again. The rat scurried off as he approached.

  He should go back, he knew, get Martin’s team down here, but curiosity and determination kept him moving forward. Something that felt like a spider’s web brushed his hair and he shuddered, swiping at it with his right hand, and continued. Thoughts were flashing through his mind. They had moved house—home—yesterday. And he was in this sodding tunnel. With what at the end of it?

  The air was cold, but intermittently there were strange eddies of warmth. The ground was rough and stony beneath the matting. Each time he tried to raise his head it bashed against the tunnel roof. Part of him wanted to retrace his steps, go back and send in a search team. But another part, the voice of resolve and determination inside his head that had always driven him, told him to keep going.

  Keep going.

  Logan Somerville might be at the end of this. Could she still be alive?

  And suddenly, the tunnel gave way to a vast, pitch-dark space. He shone the beam of his torch up and saw a high, vaulted brick ceiling. He straightened up, held the torch in his hand and flashed the beam around, striking more bare brick wall in every direction.

  Then a voice rang out of the cavernous darkness. It was crystal clear, a posh public school accent, slightly condescending, accompanied by a faint echo.

  “Detective Superintendent Grace, I presume? How very nice to see you. We’ve been expecting you.”

  96

  Saturday 20 December

  It felt for an instant as if all the warmth had been drained from his body. Roy Grace dropped the torch in shock. The beam jigged as it rolled a short distance along the concrete floor, and he ducked down, grabbed it, swinging it in a wide arc. Disorienting reflections from shiny objects glared back at him. There was a dank smell.

  Then he saw three glinting pairs of eyes staring straight at him.

  For an instant he froze in shock.

  Moments later the entire chamber was illuminated by weak, green-hued wall lights. Grace saw what had glinted in his torch beam. Three cylindrical glass tubes hanging from the ceiling by metal chains. Each was filled to the capped top with a liquid that looked faintly murky, like pond water, in the green light.

  Inside each cylinder was a pale pink creature, held upright in suspension by a wire around its neck. At first he thought there was an animal inside each one. A pig?

  Jesus, was Crisp conducting secret experiments on animals down here?

  But as his eyes sprang from one cylinder to the next and then the next he realized, with a chill that rippled deep inside him, that these were not animals. They were human beings. It was their eyes staring at him.

  Naked adult males, in their late twenties, or early thirties, their eyes wide open, staring sightlessly. Without arms or legs. One was almost bald, two of them had ragged hair, and each had several days’ growth of stubble.

  His skin crawled. For an instant, he felt as if he had walked onto the film set of a modern Alice In Wonderland. Were these holograms? Some trick of projection? What in God’s name was he looking at?

  Then, suddenly, a huge screen lit up a short distance to his left. On it was a video of Edward Crisp, seated in a leather chair in front of a desk, in the office Grace recognized from upstairs in the house. He was immaculately dressed in a suit and tie, and wearing a very smug grin. The doctor leaned forward, raising his arms, animatedly. The same posh public school voice boomed out all around Grace. “Really, Detective Superintendent, it is quite a privilege to welcome you to my little secret abode! I’d like to introduce you to my colleagues who have helped me so much in my planning for my projects. These are my dead friends! I don’t think you’ve had the opportunity to meet Marcus, Harrison and Felix? We really have become very dear friends, although it wasn’t always that way.”

  Grace glanced again, in revulsion, at the limbless bodies, then back at the screen. Crisp’s eyes gleamed with pure joy behind his glasses.

  “Marcus Gossage, Felix Gore-Parker and Harrison Chaffinch—although I think you might know him as Harrison Hunter—a much classier name, I thought. Marcus is the one without much hair!”

  Grace looked back at the man in the glass cylinder on the left. He had a prematurely balding dome and wispy hair on either side, piggy eyes and a pouting expression, like a beached trout.

  “Next to him,” Crisp continued, “is Felix Gore-Parker, a rather mean-looking fellow, I think you’d have to agree?”

  The body in the middle cylinder had a long, equine face, with lank fair hair and a sour expression. Roy Grace realized he had not noticed before that he was wearing, bizarrely, a pair of round, wire-rimmed spectacles.

  “And lastly we have Harrison. He was very overweight, I don’t think he would have ever made old bones. But, hey, he doesn’t have to worry about that now, does he?”

  The hairs on the back of Grace’s neck stood up.

  “These were the three school bullies who made my life hell, Detective Superintendent. They called me Mole, because they didn’t like my interest in tunnels and potholing. Well, to be truthful, they didn’t like anything about me. But they all loved me in the end. I got each of them to say those words to me before I killed them. Although actually, it had never been my intention to kill them, I’d planned to keep them alive long enough to teach them a lesson they would never forget. And I sure succeeded!”

  Grace stared around him, warily. Where was crazy Dr. Crisp? Lurking in the shadows while he was distracted by the video?

  He swung the torch beam into the darkness behind him, then all around. Was the doctor out there, waiting to pounce? He wished he had brought a more powerful torch. And backup. He stared at his phone, but it still showed there was no signal.

  “They say revenge is a dish best served cold, I’m sure you are familiar with that, Detective Superintendent? I waited for a good length of time after leaving The Cloisters school before taking my first project, Marcus Gossage, the one on the left. I sent him a wedding invite. Told him as a special school friend I’d be sending a chauffeured car to pick him up. Of course, he got that, a lovely Mercedes. I was the driver. Knocked him out with a gas spray and brought him down here. Then I had fun amputating his arms and legs, but keeping him alive, and suspending him from the ceiling in a muslin sack, in nappies, and with a drip feed. You really cannot imagine how sweet that was!”

  Roy Grace turned back to the three bodies in the glass tanks. Another shudder rippled through him. He was feeling sick. For an instant he wondered if his mind was playing tricks. Could this be real? Could any human being have done this to another human being?

  “With Felix Gore-Parker—I invited him to an old school house reunion. Told him I would give him a lift as I wasn’t drinking. Harrison was a doddle—told him I wanted to pop round to see him to talk about helping to save the school! Of course, there were police en-quiries at the time. But I’m no fool, Detective Superintendent. I left a good couple of years’ gap between each of them. Felix had been living in Edinburgh at the time, Marcus in Manchester and Harrison in Bath. The police had no reason to link their disappearances.”

  Grace stared at them all in disbelief. Was this possible? Had Crisp really done this—and kept these bodies down here for so long?

  “I know what you are thinking, Detective Superintendent, you are wondering where is Logan Somerville. And of course my latest project, the policewoman. Don’t forget her. I’m particularly proud of sneaking this one in at the very last minute—after my last project went pear-shaped when the bloody dog bit me—and I have to admit she was a bit of a challenge! But I needed to distract you and remain in control. It really is so nice to finally meet you—I’m only sorry it is not in person. But I figured that
meeting you in person wouldn’t result in a very happy ending. And I’m a bit of a sentimental old fool, really, I like happy endings! Don’t we all? So I’ve good news—my three boys are finally free! Have fun, Harrison, Marcus and Felix. Hope you’ve enjoyed your time down here with me. I wish I could have kept you alive, in the original sacks I had for you—they were rather appropriate containers for you, since you are three bags of shit! Your bullying at school gave me a life sentence, but I’m not a monster. You’ve done your time. So now, hey, enjoy your release!”

  He gave a broad beam.

  Transfixed, Grace studied the doctor’s body language. His eyes were all over the place. His face was twitching. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. He was giving out all the signals of someone who had totally lost the plot.

  “You didn’t come here expecting to find these, did you, Detective Grace? This is a little bonus for you. What you want are the girls. But I thought you should know that initially I planned to keep these three alive, hanging here in muslin bags, for the rest of their natural lives, just like Catherine the Great did—I’ll tell you more about her anon. But with my family life and my work as a doctor, and all the tunnelling stuff that’s my hobby, it all got just a little too inconvenient. They needed too much maintenance, and I’m pretty much a low-maintenance guy. So I found a solution. Formaldehyde—or formalin as some call it. I wanted them around to remind me of how sweet revenge can be, which it did every day I saw them. They’ve been hugely helpful in all of my escapades, never disagreeing once with any of my plans! But enough about these, they’re history now. You need to find little Logan Somerville and little Louise Masters. Ask the boys, they know everything. They’re my accomplices. I could never have done any of this without them!” He raised an arm in the air and wiggled his immaculately manicured hand. “Bye for now, boys!”

  Crisp folded his arms and sat back for some moments. Then he opened his arms again, expansively. “Oh dear, I forgot, Felix, Marcus and Harrison have very limited conversational skills these days. The ladies you are looking for are in the room next door, behind this screen. Bye for now!”