by S W Kane
‘Did you recognise the woman?’ asked Kirby.
Simmons looked genuinely shocked at this. ‘Course not. Why would I?’
‘Did you touch anything?’
‘You gotta be joking. I legged it, called you lot.’
‘Have you seen anyone hanging around the perimeter recently, near the front gate, perhaps, when you arrive and leave?’
‘No. No one.’ He squeezed Carpworld into an even tighter roll.
‘How about young kids, or vandals – any trouble with them trying to get in?’
Simmons shook his head again.
‘So you’ve never seen anyone on the site who shouldn’t be there?’
‘No, I ain’t. No one came or went last night. I checked the cameras while I was waiting for you lot to show up. We’ve only got the two, one at the main gate and one on Daylesford Road.’
‘The Daylesford Road entrance is still used?’ Kirby remembered it as a small, gated affair, rusted and overgrown the last time he’d passed it.
‘Uh, yes. It’s the one Mr Sweet uses.’
Kirby looked up from his Moleskine. ‘Who’s Mr Sweet?’
‘You mean you don’t know? He lives here, down near the river.’ He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. ‘In the Old Lodge. Been there ever since the place shut.’
Kirby glanced at Anderson, who had now straightened himself up, phone at the ready.
‘That was over twenty years ago,’ said Kirby. ‘Surely there can’t be any staff left after all this time?’
‘Oh, he ain’t staff,’ said Simmons, looking from one detective to the other. ‘He was a patient.’
CHAPTER 3
It was the snow, its muffled silence creeping into his dreams, that had caused Raymond to wake with a start. He lay in bed, his heart pounding, trying to figure out what was different. Then he realised there were no sirens, no birds, no exhausts backfiring; even the aircraft making their early flyovers were a dim rumble. The light seeping into the room also had a different quality to it, so propping himself up on his elbow he peered out of the window and could hardly believe his eyes. He’d seen a few flakes fall last night, but never in a million years did he think it would snow this heavily. A feeling of relief swept over him – the timing couldn’t be better – and he sank back on to his pillow, a smile on his face.
Raymond had lived in the grounds of Blackwater Asylum for nearly twenty-three years, and before that had lived in the hospital itself as a patient. He’d been admitted shortly after his mother died in a house fire when he was seventeen, and when Blackwater closed some twenty-seven years later, Raymond had never left. Officially he had, like everyone else, except he kept coming back: again and again. He’d found it impossible to stay away and had eventually set up home in the old caretaker’s lodge, on a small corner of the site, down by the river. No one knew he was there to begin with; or if they did, they didn’t care. He never bothered anyone and kept himself to himself, generally avoiding any kind of confrontation. And then they had come, a whole succession of them. ‘They’ were developers, and he hated every single one. Naturally, they all wanted shot of him, but it wasn’t that easy. The truth was that Blackwater wasn’t just his home, it was his entire world; to leave Blackwater would be tantamount to destroying himself. He’d lost count of the various schemes he’d seen fall through over the years. The pattern had repeated itself so many times that he had genuinely come to believe that Blackwater had a life of its own. It had a way of sucking you in and, if it didn’t like you, spitting you out. It would take more than a sharp-suited property developer with pound signs in his eyes to destroy it. Or, that’s what he’d thought until Patrick Calder had come along.
At first he’d seemed like the rest of them, and Raymond didn’t pay him too much attention, but after a few months it became clear that Patrick Calder was different. When the realisation hit him that Calder wasn’t going to make the same mistakes as those who’d gone before him, Raymond became convinced – for the first time in more than two decades – that it really might be the end. On the brink of giving up hope, he took the advice of his friend, Mrs Muir, at the Lavender B&B, where he was supposed to have lived when Blackwater closed, and sought legal help. To his amazement it turned out that he had squatter’s rights – he’d lived there for over twenty years, after all – and, as a result, the small pocket of land on which the Old Lodge stood was now legally his. He still found it hard to believe that he’d won, that he’d actually beaten a man like Patrick Calder. Calder had been furious, making it very clear that should Raymond be found wandering the grounds outside his designated boundary, the consequences would be severe. It was a small price to pay, and the reality was that Raymond did what he liked; he just had to be careful he didn’t get caught.
After a few minutes, he heaved himself out of bed and began looking for a match to light the gas stove so that he could make some tea, and pondered his situation. His home was safe, that was guaranteed; but other elements of his existence at Blackwater were now under threat. Not only were the contractors due to start work that very day, which presented certain logistical problems, but also in recent months someone else had been poking around Blackwater – someone he’d dubbed the Creeper. The snow would scupper the contractors for a few days, he was sure, but not the Creeper. The Creeper was a law unto itself.
He grabbed a mug off the draining board and reached up for the tea caddy, his fingers brushing the urn that was nestled between it and the sugar jar, and smiled. He popped a teabag into the mug and returned the caddy to the shelf. ‘I wish you were here,’ he murmured.
Climbing back into bed, he pulled the duvet up to his chin – it was ruddy freezing – and waited for the kettle to boil. Over the years, Raymond had developed a strong sixth sense: trespassers, unwanted visitors, urban explorers, vandals, whatever you wanted to call them – he always knew when they were here. Over the past few months, however, someone else had been visiting regularly, and he’d seen them again last night. After the first couple of sightings he’d assumed that it was just another trespasser or vandal, or even one of the explorers, but as the months had gone by, doubt began to set in. Those visitors rarely, if ever, came alone, and for the most part they didn’t know their way around; they also didn’t come on a weekly basis. Whoever this was, they did all those things; or rather whatever this was, because Raymond had recently come to the conclusion that the Creeper was a ghost. It was the only logical conclusion, and once he’d embraced the idea he felt vaguely comforted by it.
The kettle started to boil – he could see it from his bed misting up the windows of the small front room – and he got up and poured hot water into his mug. He watched the teabag float in the water, bleeding out into the rapidly darkening liquid, until the tea was almost black. Then he fished out the bag and dropped it into the sink with a moist thud, where it lay steaming like fresh cat prey. He managed to extract a few dribbles of milk from a frozen carton and then reached up for the sugar, his fingers again brushing the urn next to the jar. He added two teaspoons of sugar and hurriedly took a slurp, instantly burning his mouth.
He lit the paraffin heater and quickly got dressed while his tea cooled to a more manageable temperature. He needed some new shoes – the ones he had had developed a leak – and he wondered whether there might be a bring-and-buy at the church. Perhaps he could prevail upon Mrs Muir at the B&B for a bath afterwards, and, if he played his cards right, maybe even some supper; that’s if she hadn’t started on the sherry. Once he was dressed, he opened the front door and stood on the porch, sniffing the cold, deliciously fresh air, and he was about to take a sip of tea when the sudden feeling he wasn’t alone ran through him. He paused, straining his ears for the slightest sound, and scanned the woodland around the lodge. There was nothing but silence – or Blackwater Silence, as he called it. It couldn’t be the Creeper at this hour, surely?
As he turned to go back inside, a noise made him stop in his tracks: a voice, somewhere in the distance. He’d been r
ight, there was someone out there; the contractors must have arrived early, despite the snow. He downed the tea, leaving the mug in the sink, quickly made the bed, and turned off the paraffin heater. He put on his coat, wound his scarf around his head turban-style and locked up. As he made his way to a pathway through the trees, he felt a blister forming on the roof of his mouth where he’d scalded it. His mother had always told him off for drinking his tea too fast. You’ll burn your tongue, Ray, love. He smiled at the memory, as banal as it was. God he missed her.
CHAPTER 4
‘Why the fuck didn’t anyone mention this Sweet character earlier?’ Anderson growled, as they made their way towards the Old Lodge.
Kirby wondered the same, but fumed quietly.
The lodge was concealed in a small clearing, completely surrounded by trees and tangled undergrowth. A path had been beaten through, but to the untrained eye it was all but invisible. What he’d been expecting, he wasn’t quite sure, but the small house in front of him came as a surprise. All the buildings he’d seen so far reeked of neglect and decay, but the Old Lodge was the converse. It was a raised one-storey building, with a small flight of steps leading up to a wooden porch and gabled entrance. The paintwork was well maintained, albeit in a variety of colours, and the fabric of the building looked to be in good nick. Window boxes, empty at the moment, hung from the two front windows. A lean-to had been erected on the left-hand side of the property, made up of sheet metal and what looked like the side of an old shed. Even that had a rustic charm about it. If nothing else, Sweet was house-proud, and Kirby wondered how much the land was worth if Simmons’s claim that he had squatter’s rights was correct.
Anderson was peering through one of the lodge windows in an attempt to see if Raymond Sweet was at home. No one had answered the door when he’d knocked, and the place was locked up. Fresh footprints in the snow led from the porch off into the trees, and Kirby was willing to bet that they led to the entrance on Daylesford Road.
‘He’s not here,’ said Anderson, unhelpfully, as he moved around the property.
Kirby followed the fresh prints in the snow, being careful not to disturb them. They disappeared beneath the trees, but a clear path trailed through, and sure enough the footprints began again at the other end, where Kirby tracked them to the side entrance that opened on to Daylesford Road. The entrance consisted of large wrought-iron double gates and a smaller gate to one side. The large gates had been blocked off with sheet metal and had security spikes along the top. The smaller side gate was also spiked, but unlike the larger gate it hadn’t been blocked off, so he could see through to the road outside. A new closed shackle padlock gleamed against the rust-flecked metal chain that secured it. The footprints led to the small side gate, and the snow had been pushed to one side in a quarter-circle where the gate had recently been opened and closed. Kirby headed back to the lodge, his mood darkening.
‘Anything?’ asked Anderson, when Kirby arrived back at the small clearing.
He shook his head. ‘He’s gone.’ He pulled out his phone and punched in the number for the office, where Mark Drayton picked up.
‘Lew, what’s up?’
‘Run a check on a Raymond Sweet for me, will you? Apparently he’s an ex-patient of Blackwater Asylum and lives on the site. I want to know everything about him.’ Kirby’s eyes roamed over the lodge, and the Heath Robinson-esque lean-to, as he hung up.
Anderson’s phone pinged. ‘The ME’s arrived,’ he said, reading the message. ‘You coming?’
‘I’ll follow you in a minute,’ said Kirby. He wanted a few moments to himself to get a sense of the place – and of Sweet. As Anderson’s muffled footsteps receded into the distance, silence engulfed the small clearing. Kirby would never have guessed how near he was to an inner-city road, let alone flats and houses where people had left for work that morning or were now cosy in their beds after the night shift. Life went on all around, but the clearing felt like a world apart. Snow clung to the tree branches like thick icing – a good few inches had fallen overnight – and the ground was smooth with unspoilt snow. He wondered what it was like to live here all alone – and not only that, but in the grounds of the very institution that had once removed you from society.
He moved around the lodge and peered in through the windows, images of the dead woman flashing through his mind. It was hard to see much inside, as the interior was dark and his eyes had to adjust from the brightness of the snow. The main areas looked tidy enough – the draining board and small kitchen table were clear, even the bed was made – but every other available space was crammed with objects. He went back round to the window nearest the bed and looked in again. On the bedside table were an alarm clock and a framed photo. He was about to move away when something caught his eye, half hidden in the shadows. He cupped his hands around his eyes in a bid to see better and at first thought it was Sweet, watching from inside. As his eyes accustomed themselves to the dark interior he soon realised that it wasn’t Sweet at all, but some kind of dummy. What was it, a dressmaking model? He moved along the window, his breath steaming up the glass, and peered in again, holding his breath. Although he could see more clearly, it was still too dark to make out much detail. One thing was clear though, the dummy was wearing a coat; and, as far as Kirby could discern, it was a woman’s coat.
CHAPTER 5
‘Ed, it’s me. Where are you? Call me. Let me know you’re okay.’ Connie ended the call and slipped the phone back into her pocket and pulled out her keys. Where the hell was he? She pushed open the heavy wooden door and manoeuvred herself and a large roll of drawings into the building, letting the door slam shut behind her. Her friend Ed worked in a local school, which was shut today due to the weather, so there really wasn’t any good reason for him not to have called – especially after last night.
Propping the roll of drawings against the wall, Connie went over to the small cupboard where the alarm was kept, and was about to open the door when she realised it wasn’t bleeping. She’d been so preoccupied coming in that she hadn’t noticed. The alarm pad looked normal, and the error light wasn’t flashing; perhaps her boss, Richard Bonaro, had forgotten to switch it on last night when he’d left. It hadn’t been her, she knew that much. She’d been on her way back from Oxford with the blasted drawings she’d just lugged in through the snow, on a train that had crawled along. She could feel the frustration returning just thinking about it: no buffet, no heating and no information. Fucking nightmare. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if she hadn’t been meeting Ed.
Heaving the roll of drawings under her arm, she began making her way up the stairs to the main reading room.
Connie’s official job at RADE, the Repository for Architectural Drawings and Ephemera, was archivist, but in reality she did a bit of everything – she’d even given the odd tour of the place, not that many people knew it existed. Somehow, RADE had ended up as a ‘hidden gem’ on a trendy culture website, and every now and then some intrepid Japanese students would ask for a guided tour. This had actually given her an idea, which so far she hadn’t confided to anyone, not even Ed and their good friend Mole.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Connie paused. The door to the offices was ajar. Perhaps that’s why the alarm hadn’t been set properly; all the main internal doors had to be closed properly before it would engage. Bonaro must have had one of his wealthy buddies over, pumping them for cash, and forgotten to close up properly – not realising the alarm hadn’t kicked in. Nudging the door open, she stepped into the small reception room. Off this was the main reading room, where she unceremoniously dumped the roll of drawings. She went over to her desk and shrugged off her coat before rolling up the blinds, revealing large French windows that overlooked the small square outside. Today, the square looked picture-postcard pretty, the trees covered in snow and hardly a soul in sight. With natural light restored, Connie began to make her way through to the small kitchen at the back of the building – she was gasping for a coffee, as her usual pit
stop had been closed due to the snow. As she passed Bonaro’s office, to her right, she paused; she could have sworn that she’d heard a noise. The wooden floor in his office had a characteristic creak that Connie would recognise anywhere. Except Bonaro wasn’t due in that day. Who else could it be, though?
She stopped by the door and hesitated, before knocking gently. ‘Hello, Richard?’ Another creak. Someone was moving around inside. It had to be Bonaro, surely? No one else had the access code to the alarm apart from the trustees of the collection, and none of them would be here; they lived in a massive pile in Wimbledon and rarely set foot in the place, much to her and Bonaro’s relief.
Now she couldn’t hear anything and realised that she was holding her breath. This was ridiculous; no one could get in without disabling the alarm, and who would want to break into a place like RADE anyhow? She was just about to reach out for the doorknob when she heard another, louder creak. Whoever was in there was now standing right beside the door.
She knocked again, this time more forcefully, and grabbed the doorknob, giving it a good twist, only to find it was locked. She let go quickly and backed away, unsure what was going on. Why would Bonaro lock himself in his own office? Then she heard the key being turned in the lock and saw the doorknob moving. The door opened a few inches towards her, and she took another step back, wondering whether to make a run for it. Before she could decide what to do, the door was pushed open entirely and Bonaro’s startled face appeared.
‘Connie? What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘Dropping off the drawings that I collected from Oxford yesterday. Jesus effing Christ, you gave me a scare. Didn’t you hear me knocking?’
Bonaro shook his head. ‘Sorry, no . . .’
‘I didn’t think you were coming in today, I thought you were a burglar.’
Bonaro looked slightly confused. ‘I was on the phone – I didn’t hear you.’