by Caro Ramsay
They watched in macabre fascination as Wyngate’s marionette walked up to Tania’s. The faces came together. Arms flew out, heads spun. Knees lifted off the ground. A shoulder moved too far from the chest wall. Dislocated.
Their heads locked.
It would be laughable if it wasn’t so awful.
Anderson was trying to count the wires that ran high into the darkness above the stage. More than one set, more than two … there had to be more than one puppeteer then.
Costello pressed the alert on her phone. She’d had enough, no matter what Batten said. Now was the time for back-up to arrive.
‘Wyngate’ had his arm pulled back, elbow first and he threw a wild comedy punch that went all round the houses. Tania crumpled, dropping as if her strings had been cut, and lay on the stage, folded, limbs lying at strange angles. Then Anderson noticed the shadow of the other puppet rising, the dark outline first. Then the actual form of a human being, a ghastly creation with a blonde wig and a terrible blood-smeared face.
‘Oh my God,’ Costello muttered.
Anderson felt her recoil. This shadow marionette had had its face removed. The mask it wore had a fine wire of its own, barely visible. The puppet tried to step over the body of Tania but didn’t manage to lift its foot clear and the body dangled, lurching back and forth, the knee held high and the lunar trainer swinging loose. And its further progress was blocked. Anderson looked at the shoes, the misshapen shoulders and the height of this marionette next to that of his colleague. This puppet was a man.
The marionette stayed where it was, swaying slightly, elbows high. The skin of the face slid loose and floated away like a bird, suspended on a fine wire that fluttered it heavenward.
‘Call for back-up,’ whispered Anderson.
‘Already have.’
He heard Costello click her baton to full length.
Kirkton was on his feet, screaming, the music got louder; all three at once now, Madame Butterfly and Prince made up a rabble that was deafening. Then Anderson heard, or felt, a gasp from Costello, as the shadow marionette lifted his hand and swung for Wyngate’s marionette which promptly collapsed as well. His body hit the floor with a resounding thud that echoed over the blaring racket. Then it quietened. A waif in the air, dropping down on gossamer wings was flying towards the bloody-faced marionette. It outstretched one thin, fragile arm and the stage was obscured by a star shower in gold and silver. The shadow marionette rose from the ground, slowly up and up into a cloud of dry ice that billowed from the ceiling somewhere.
The music stopped dead.
Everything stopped.
They could hear the rain batter on the roof, the sound of footsteps outside somewhere. Quiet.
Then gentle words floated round the theatre.
‘Bravo, bravo.’ The Duchess gave a slow handclap.
The curtain fell and a single spotlight highlighted central stage. A lone figure taking a bow. A blonde with a bob cut, dressed in a black and grey baggy boiler suit, silvery striped. It distorted her outline. It covered every part of her body apart from her face, her blonde bob was in place, and her make-up was immaculate.
She had her arms out, absorbing her applause, then she curtsied.
‘Bella, bella.’
She slithered off the stage towards Kirkton who retreated quickly. Costello stepped forward, baton raised, calculating how quick she could get there but two steps took the Blonde to the Duchess, an embrace. The doors opened and the back-up flooded the room with light. Nobody moved. For a minute everybody was standing still, caught in a snapshot.
Blondie was quick. She jumped back on the stage and out of sight. Then reappeared, climbing like a monkey. Anderson reacted first and bounded onto the stage, after her. He climbed, trying to keep clear of the maze of tight wires, looking up into the swirling darkness, seeing the small skylight, the forest above. The animals on the tree branches danced and quivered in the draft from the open door. Anderson was climbing high on an internal steel stairway, getting a better view of the gantry as he gained height. Blondie had stepped onto a giant metal grid, like a huge weaving loom. She wormed her way through, keeping clear of the taut strong wires that could hold a man’s weight and would probably slice off a limb if it caught it. She clipped herself onto a wire, and used that to pull herself up; she was an alien, the alien, attached to her wires, just as Amy had said. It allowed her to climb. She was getting away.
Anderson looked down, and held on. Thinking what he was going to do now. She had nowhere to go. What use was this? He was near the top of the garage, right at the ceiling two floors up. It was a long way down. He leaned over to see what was happening below. The stairway squeaked clear of its bolts on the wall and swung out alarmingly. He leaned in quickly, keeping his body weight close to the wall. He could taste fear but he saw torch beams on the ground below him, moving slowly, no panic. The tactical team were in recovery mode.
It was over.
He allowed himself a long slow breath and decided that somebody else could be a hero today. He was too old and for this particular stairway, he was too heavy.
Anderson heard the hammering of heavy rain on the flat roof. He could see the little paper animals that Amy had seen, quivering with the vibrations of the thunderstorm. Below, the beams of torch light played over the floor. He saw a patch of red, ever increasing, from under the Duchess’s wheelchair. Somebody was shouting. He could hear sirens approach through the battering of the downpour. Kirkton was on the stage cradling his daughter’s head. Costello was kneeling beside a pair of gossamer wings, her baton discarded.
He followed a torch beam as it highlighted the audience. All stuffed people, false heads, big puppets, small puppets, misshapen, every one of them dressed up. He heard somebody shout for the ambulance to ‘bloody hurry up’. He closed his eyes at the thought of Wyngate. Or David. Then heard the words, ‘It’s the Riley girl.’
‘Paige?’
He looked down at the swarm around Wyngate, somebody was telling him not to move. Anderson tried to find a foothold to steady himself, when he flinched at a bright spotlight. The spotlight whirled and went back to centre stage.
Everybody fell silent.
Nobody moved.
She was beautiful, her blonde hair, her pale, pale skin and ruby red lips against the black backdrop. Dali’s ‘Christ of St John’ high above the stage.
Then slowly, imperceptibly, she took a step forward. She hung for a moment in the bright light and then joined the glitter flakes falling.
Falling.
Falling.
By the time Anderson had climbed gingerly down the stairway, Costello was already helping Wyngate onto a stretcher. One of the response team had found some wire cutters, but even he was having difficulty cutting them free. At the secure points, the wire had cut into the skin, bleeding and blistered. Another scar he would have for life.
Costello was busy unwinding the wire that ran under Wyngate’s jacket, another cop pulling on it to give some slack. She repeated his name over and over, telling him that he would be all right and that his wife would meet him at the Queen Elizabeth. The paramedics were already here, prioritizing.
‘We think he might have been given something called Paracurarium,’ she said.
Anderson now stood in the middle of it all. Blondie was lying in her silvery black outfit that shimmered every time the light hit her. Her mouth was open slightly, a single trickle of blood ran from the corner of her lips but her body seemed to melt into the stage. Some kind of backstage material necessary for a puppeteer. It blurred their outline, making them invisible. The silver alien, just as Amy had said.
An older paramedic had his fingers at the Duchess’s throat, leaning over to avoid standing in the pool of her blood. He straightened up and closed her eyelids, wrapping her shawl round the narrow shoulders, as if he was closing a book. He turned round and walked away.
Costello came over, blood smeared down her cheek. ‘Not an opera singer then, she was a puppet master. Sh
e did that thing with her hand all the time at the care home. God, what a mess.’
‘How’s Wyngate?’
‘God knows, they are getting him to hospital.’ She pointed to the puppet lying on the floor of the stage, hands up over his bloodied face. ‘David, he is conscious, still crying for her to leave him alone; Christ knows what she had been doing to him. They are getting him out of here. His face has been butchered. What the hell has been going on here?’
‘Did I hear somebody say Paige Riley?’
‘Yes. That was her in the clouds, the damage from those wires is very deep, and infected. She’s emaciated. And not conscious.’
Anderson stepped over the commotion on the stage. ‘Mr Kirkton, you may accompany Tania to the hospital and stay there for as long as you wish. Then come to the station and tell me exactly what happened that night in 1999. Somebody has to make sense of all this.’
The politician was kneeling on the ground beside Tania, sobbing. She was bleeding a little. Her hair pulled back in a white skull cap, the make-up made her look like a clown.
‘But right now, in front of these witnesses, admit that you killed Pietro Girasole.’
He was crying, he nodded, sniffling. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’ He dissolved into tears, shoulders shaking.
‘Didn’t know what?’
But the answer was interrupted by a paramedic with a stretcher. ‘What the hell has been going on here?’
‘Long story,’ answered Anderson backing off and picking his way over wires, limbs and medical equipment to Blondie, lying on her back. A young male paramedic was feeling the movement of the bones in her neck.
‘Is she dead?’ he asked, not knowing what he wanted the answer to be.
‘Who?’
‘Her?’ He pointed to the Blonde.
‘Him,’ he corrected. ‘No, he’s alive.’
‘Sir? You might want to see this?’ A voice shouted, a few faces turned to look at him. Four of them. One response team member, one crime scene and two paramedics were looking at the ground. The paramedic was pointing backstage, to a pale pink fold of damp paper … or was it?
‘I think that’s somebody’s face.’ The paramedic swallowed hard. ‘So if we have a face there, then there is somebody missing a face …’ Her voice tailed off. She went very pale in the harsh glare of a spotlight.
‘Would somebody survive that?’ asked Anderson.
‘I bloody hope so.’ The paramedic replied as she paled further.
‘Come on, Colin,’ said Costello, ‘we need to search this place. There is somebody else here. This lot are getting the help they need.’ Then she relented. ‘Do you want to phone Irene first? David will be next in the ambulance.’
‘She can wait.’ He turned to the paramedic. ‘Can I borrow your torch?’
They walked away from the mayhem, back into the hall and looked in the cupboards just as Wyngate had done. They came to the big wooden cupboard, the crèche for the marionettes, the little numbers on the side.
‘Measurements for the puppets, their clothes? What kind of fascination is this?’ she answered herself. ‘Tragic.’
They moved on in silence, keeping together. Costello reunited with her baton, Anderson wielding a torch. They found the futon, the clothes, evidence of food, a small burner, water bottles. Somebody had been living here, alone. Surviving.
Then under the big mirror was a bin bag, they could recognise the smooth curves of a hip, the point of a flexed elbow. Costello held the torch in one hand, the baton ready in the other. Anderson tucked his torch under his arm and opened the bag and looked in, and quickly pulled back.
‘Jesus, get one of those ambulances here now.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Don’t know. They don’t have a face.’
Anderson walked up to the whiteboard and looked at the smiling face of David Kerr. He was safe now and he would recover. He had his whole life ahead of him which was looking unlikely for Sandra Ryme; she was fighting hard though.
Tomorrow the boys would start looking into her background although there was information coming up on the system already; some blackmail, some theft; a highly suspicious death of an old woman she was looking after.
Sandra Ryme.
People had liked her. She wasn’t the brightest and had made a lot of bad choices. Going to work at Athole House was one of them. She had met Paul McEwan there, Paolo as he called himself. He looked at his watch. Batten was going to interview Paolo at the hospital. Anderson was going to have a chat with Kirkton. At some point.
Tania and her mother had been very quickly debriefed and had flown off to a special clinic in London to get her shoulder operated on. And to keep out of the eye of the media. The police czar was in the headlines now for all the wrong reasons, and he was keeping Archie Walker busy, listing the charges the politician would face. Murder was at the top of that list.
Two incidents tragically linked. One on Christmas Eve 1989 when a nine-year-old boy had set fire to his parents’ house. The second when a married rising star of politics succumbed to the charms of a beautiful young blonde in the Auditorium nightclub. She was celebrating the millennium. He was celebrating the birth of his son. He was pretending to be single.
She was pretending to be a she.
This time Costello walked confidently up the worn steps of Athole House Secure Living Facility for the retired stars of stage and screen. As she waited for Mulholland to drag his bad leg up behind him, she rang the bell and didn’t resist the temptation to look through the letterbox. She saw Piero the cat sitting on the bottom step of the carpeted stairs, tail jerking back and forth. The cat hair. The black and white long cat hair. Piero’s expression said, ‘You should have asked me, I’ve known all along.’
‘My leg hurts,’ Mulholland moaned.
‘Well it’ll stop once you see this matron, she graduated from the Lucretia Borgia school of nursing.’
‘Matron? Christ!’
Eventually, they heard the rattle of the door opening.
‘Hello. Matron Nicholson. Elizabeth, isn’t it?’ asked Costello.
‘Hello.’ She looked past Costello to the two men behind her, one with a bad limp and the other a uniformed police officer. ‘I’m not sure that this is the best time, you know. We are a care facility.’
‘Well, this time, it doesn’t really matter what you think. We are coming in to look around.’ Costello stepped into the hall. ‘It’s all on official business. Ours, not yours.’
The matron looked at Costello in her navy blue suit, the flat black boots. She thought for a moment, then straightened herself up. ‘I think you need a warrant.’
Costello gestured to the uniform who handed over the papers.
She looked them over briefly. ‘OK, I’ll go and speak to Dr Pearcy.’
‘Yes, of course. But you are taking PC Graham here with you. Just so nothing happens to you. You no longer have Kirkton to protect you with his Safer Society.’
That got a reaction. Matron looked at the young constable in horror. He smiled obligingly.
As they walked away along the carpeted corridor to the main office, Costello took Mulholland down the stairs to the green door. ‘I really want to know what is behind here. Archie is convinced this is where the Paracurarium might come from.’
‘It’s locked,’ said Mulholland, trying the door.
‘Yes. I can see that, Sherlock. But can you get it open?’
‘Nope, it’s an electronic lock. We need the code.’
Matron found them ten minutes later, her hands were shaking.
Costello was very helpful. ‘Under the terms of the search warrant you have to open the door and show us what’s behind it.’
‘I don’t think I have to do anything of the kind.’ The words held more defiance than her voice.
Costello sensed victory. The woman was caught between a rock and a very hard place. Cooperation was her only way out.
The matron swallowed hard and for a minute her eyes d
rifted to the keypad.
‘Look,’ said Costello, ‘you’ve got yourself involved in something here. You probably had no idea what it would lead to. People have died and you are an accessory before and after the—’
The matron was already shaking her head. ‘No, no, no. It was nothing like that, not at all.’ Her perfect little hat fell to one side.
On a roll, Costello could lie with the best of them. ‘Why do you think the fiscal got his wife in here? She’s never been an actress, never set foot on the stage in her life. But Mr Walker was very insistent. And why do you think I’ve been here pretending to visit Mrs Walker? We know all about it so open the door.’
The matron’s hands were trembling that much she couldn’t have pressed the buttons if her life depended on it. She gave the detectives her six-figured code quietly in one breath and then held her hands over her face and slid down the wall into a sobbing heap on the floor. Mulholland was already entering the buttons on the pad. There was a click. Both of them hesitated before they pushed the green door open. Mulholland walked in first, getting one step inside the room. Then he stopped so abruptly that Costello walked into the back of him.
Mulholland spoke three short words, but took his time over every syllable. ‘Oh. My. God.’
Twelve people lay in beds, jammed packed, the air fetid and stale. It was a basic dormitory ward, nothing more. Nothing less. Leading off it were two of three other rooms, each full of five or six beds, each bed had an occupant. Then it struck Costello that nobody had turned when they came in, nobody had batted an eyelid. These residents were zombies.
‘OK,’ said Costello, turning to the matron. ‘We are going to get our own medical team down here. Do you want to save us the time and money and tell us about the Paracurarium?’
Matron Elizabeth Nicolson nodded in resignation and pulled another key from her belt. She handed it to Mulholland and pointed to a door in the far corner. ‘It’s all in there.’
