That girl in the hidden image was Ellie. He knew it.
The film was made a hundred years ago. Ellie’s dead.
“A secret?” Charlie said. He looked at the letter, then up at Whitman in amazement. “Like what? A treasure?”
“I want to try something else,” Whitman said. He typed the braille code from the dominoes of the second hidden frame.
A set of nonsensical words ran across the lines of the paper.
“It’s gibberish.”
“Of course it is,” Charlie said. “Don’t you see? It’s a sequence of codes.”
Whitman nodded.
“I’ll transcribe the whole thing; but we’ll need the code word for the next riddle in order to make sense of it.” Charlie took the paper. “Why do you think he did this? What’s the secret?”
“Maybe our mysterious friend will have more answers. I’m meeting him in twenty minutes.”
26
The rendezvous point Whitman had chosen was outside the McEwan Hall in Bristo Square. Making contact near his flat could have proved dangerous; the police were probably watching, and there was always the question of the caller’s intentions. The mystery man had called asking about the possibility of striking a deal involving the missing frames. It was unclear how he fit into all this.
Whitman turned around and looked at the building behind him. McEwan Hall, Whitman thought, with its decorative Italian Renaissance style, was much more beautiful than the flat-topped, copper-clad, domed Usher Hall. The intricate structure was a grandiose creation, extravagant in both its internal and external finishes. It was now a venue for graduation ceremonies and other academic events. Kate’s graduation had taken place in there.
Students passed him on their way to the medical school, Teviot Place, and Potterrow. A homeless man sat on the other side of the street, reading a Metro. A young girl his daughter’s age was missing, the headline said. A kidnapper was on the loose. Whitman tried not to think about it: one foot into the big four-oh and at the end all one had to show was a busted marriage and a missing—or dead—daughter.
At the foot of the lofty building, he lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall, watching the traffic go by and listening to the soft drizzle tap on the pavement.
His contact didn’t keep him waiting. At the designated time, a white Chrysler limousine veered out of the traffic coming from Teviot Place and slowed to a halt at the curbside. The uniformed driver looked at him, wondering if he was the right person. Whitman opened the rear door and got in.
“Mister Whitman?” the driver asked. He had a unibrow on his pointed forehead. Whitman nodded.
The car accelerated along Lauriston Place and turned into Lothian Road, heading north. Whitman watched the city center flash by. The weather had started to clear by the time they reached the outlying area of the city. Roadside pubs flew by, mirrored on his glasses, followed by Victorian buildings, until there was just the wood and shrub of Dean Village.
Whitman retreated into his thoughts. His business was chasing facts, not dreams. Yet somehow, a malevolent force from the cupboard of nightmares had sneaked into the world and into his life and his daughter’s disappearance. The hidden frames worried him; logic dictated that this girl was not Ellie, but to him it felt as if she was.
He thought about his mysterious caller: Kasper Gutman. Whitman knew Kasper Gutman. But it couldn’t be the same guy. The Kasper Gutman he knew was from The Maltese Falcon. Sydney Greenstreet; Kasper Gutman was the villain’s name. Whitman knew Kasper Gutman. How ridiculous. And why did he live in Dean Village? Who the hell lives in Dean Village, anyway?
The caller had asked for Whitman to bring the memory stick with his copy of the film so that he could be satisfied there had been “no omissions.” How did he know Valdano had contracted Whitman to find it? All he would have to do was to help decipher some codes. Not a bad way to make an extra six figures. But something didn’t feel right; that sensation in his gut was growing stronger.
He had taken precautions. If this was a diversion, they wouldn’t know where to find Charlie, who had an extra copy of the film on him. They could target the house, but they would find nothing. They could have followed Charlie…but no plan was foolproof. Maybe he was just paranoid.
The limousine slowed down. Perhaps they’d arrived. A single house sat in front of them, surrounded by trees and thick bushes.
The car paused in front of a garage and the door opened. The driver eased the car slowly in.
Whitman was reaching for his backpack when the driver pressed a button on the overhead control panel. The central locking system clunked to engage. There was a whirring noise, and a thick glass partition glided up, blocking Whitman off from the driver.
“Hey,” he said, rapping the glass. “Are we here? I’m talking to you.”
The driver switched off the ignition and the headlights went out. The garage door rolled back down, rendering the place pitch-black. The driver opened the door and a light came on inside the car. Whitman glanced at the partition between them: it looked like reinforced steel panes embedded within the glass.
“Hey!”
The driver quietly got out and slammed the door shut, and the interior was sunk again in darkness. A quivering beam of flashlight jiggled as the man rummaged through the garage, searching for something in the tool rack.
Whitman pounded on the glass partition. The only thing he could see was the glimmer of the beam of light, bouncing from side to side. The driver found what he was looking for. Whitman couldn’t see what the object was, but it looked long, like a rope.
He fumbled about in his compartment for a way out. The man drew closer to the car. Whitman tried the locks again; he knew it was pointless. He knew the door would soon fly open, revealing the driver with a gun in his hand.
To his surprise, the man walked past and around to the back of the car. Still carrying the object, he bent down, the back of the vehicle obscuring him from Whitman’s view.
There was a noise and the man rose again, heading back toward the driver’s seat. He opened the door and reached inside, snaking the black object into a hole connected to Whitman’s backseat compartment. In the internal light of the car, Whitman saw it was a rubber hose.
Then the man reached for the keys. As he worked them into the ignition, the tense silence was interrupted by the loud, shuddering sound of the car’s exhaust. With a cough and the splutter of the exhaust pipes, the engine started.
No way out.
Death within minutes.
The man waved goodbye to Whitman with a grim smile and closed the door, dipping him again into darkness. He left through another door in the garage, leading into the main house.
Whitman’s eyes were adjusted to the dark by now. As the carbon monoxide filled the car, his eyes and throat started to feel irritated. He glanced at the window beside him; it was blurring from condensation.
His head ached, throbbing to the beat of his racing heart. He looked down at the hole connecting to the rubber hose.
When a man is about to die a senseless death, common sense will often desert him. Whitman took out a pen and tried to detach the hose from the hole. No luck. He even tried one of his shoes—a shoe, for Christ’s sake.
It took him another minute to figure out that even if he could move the hose, it would still remain inside the locked vehicle, pumping carbon monoxide all over the place.
He was a dead man.
His lungs felt as though they were condensing.
Water drops the size of queen bees were forming on the glass windows.
There had to be a way out.
The daze was overtaking him. He hesitated, then started beating on the glass again, then punching it, punching it until his palms were red and his knuckles were bloody.
He looked out the window, as if the answers lay in the darkness beyond. But no answers came. There were boxes and tools sprawled on the floor: a hammer, a blowtorch, things that could get him out if only he could get to them.
/> He thought of Ellie and his wife, and for some reason he thought of the hidden frames. Only now, in the grip of imminent death, did he realize the girl in the hidden picture—an almost spitting image of his daughter—was none other than Zoe Sekuler, the mysterious inventor’s daughter, who had also disappeared. It was a coincidence of some obscure significance he couldn’t put his finger on, but it was there, and it had to mean something.
The oxygen in the compartment was so depleted that he could feel the pressure on his temples. He could breathe only through his mouth.
His eyelids became heavy. He tried to force them open; were he to succumb, there would be no coming back from that kind of sleep.
There was the thunderclap sound of collision.
He cringed and moved away from the left window.
The car shook once more.
Another collision. Something was out there.
Another crash. The car’s pane began to give way toward the inside. He crouched down. He could barely keep his eyelids open.
The voice from outside was muffled, unfamiliar.
“Whitman? You in there?”
“Get me out of here,” he whispered. Ellie was the last thing he saw.
—
The woman had found the steel hammer in the tool rack. She brought it up and swung with all her might at the window.
The reinforced glass spiderwebbed but did not give.
Inside, the atmosphere was stifling. Water started pouring out of the hose.
Frustrated, McBride threw the hammer to the back of the garage.
She tried the driver’s door.
“Way to go, Detective Sergeant,” she said to herself with a snort. “Open the whole time.” She climbed inside.
She banged on the glass partition dividing her from Whitman. There was no response. He must have lost consciousness. There was no way to tell; the glass was ridden with soot and she couldn’t see him anymore.
She looked around the driver’s compartment. She began pressing buttons frantically, hoping something would happen. Nothing did.
She found another button and pressed it.
The lock shifted to disengage.
She rushed out of the car and opened the back door. Whitman was unconscious.
She grabbed him by the arms and carried him onto the garage floor.
He was breathing. She reached down to perform CPR. Her lips were an inch away from his mouth when his eyes opened.
He tried to sit up. Halfway up, he realized the pain was excruciating and leaned back down again. He rubbed his aching head. “Who the fuck are you?”
She threw him a look. “You’re welcome.”
He gave no reply. His eyes were watery and he was shaking.
“Let’s take you out of here,” she said.
—
The wind whistled at Whitman through the crack in the car window. McBride’s Volvo was accelerating along Queensferry Road, out of Dean Village.
“My name’s Georgina McBride,” she said in the silence. Whitman didn’t answer. He just wanted to get to the city and find Charlie, find a place for the night.
Without looking at him, McBride reached into her coat with one hand and produced her badge. “I’m a detective sergeant with the Lothian and Borders Police.” She could sense him fiddling in his seat.
“And what were you doing back there?”
She snorted. “Apart from saving your arse?”
He was silent.
“We’ll talk about this later. I’ll chum ya to the Royal Infirmary first. You need to see a doctor.”
“No hospitals. Just drop me off anywhere. Here should be good,” he said, gesturing to nowhere in particular and reaching for the door. McBride pressed a button and the doors locked into place. “What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll pinch you?”
He laughed it off. “I don’t know what you thought you saw back there…”
“I know what I saw, Alex,” she said.
She knew his name.
She put the car in third gear, taking advantage of the green lights—a rare blessing at this time of day—and made the turn into Lothian Road.
Whitman took out a packet of Rizlas, slid out a paper, and tore off part of the packet, twisting and rolling it into a roach. His hands were trembling. “Okay, I’ll bite: What’s your story?”
“In case you haven’t heard, we’ve got a perp out there who’s kidnapping little girls.”
Whitman plucked some tobacco from his pouch. McBride glanced at him spreading it, pinching it all the while across the paper. The smell reached her nostrils and she had to look away.
“And what do you want me to do?” Whitman said. “Castrate him?”
“I want you to help me find him.”
He shook his head. “How would I do that? I find films, memorabilia, posters—you know, those kinds of things. Not children.”
“There’s some connection between my case and yours.” She eyed Whitman. His tongue darted out, licking the gum, sealing the paper with the air of a job well done; he had wound a perfect tube. He ran two fingers across the roll-up, top to bottom, in a swishing motion.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Why did you come back here, Alex?”
“The sunny weather?”
“You haven’t been back here in ten years.”
“You’ve been checking up on me. What a treat.”
“You don’t seem to have any friends left here. And I’ve spoken to people who know you; they say you’re a vulture.”
He placed the cigarette between his lips. “If I had a penny for every time I heard that.”
She turned and glanced at him. “It has to do with that film, doesn’t it? That’s why that guy was trying to kill you.”
Whitman blinked, Zippo frozen in one hand, cigarette dangling unlit from his lower lip.
“Yes, I know about the film,” McBride said. “We managed to recover a fraction of it from the hard drive of the computer at the Archive.” She eyed the cigarette. “You think you should be doing that after almost dying of asphyxiation?”
He laughed. “We’re great lovers, me and nicotine. I take her in sweetly; she kills me slowly.” He sighed. “I found it. This is my film. Someone tried to take it. Don’t ask me why; I have no idea.”
“What’s in the film, Alex?”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Fragments. And our perp has paid homage to one of the hidden sections.”
“When was this?”
“Long before the business at the Archive.”
He frowned, eyes widening with every word. “It can’t be. I have—had—the only copy.”
“Apparently not.”
He sat staring at the license plate of the car in front of them.
“We’re going to have to trust each other,” McBride said. “I could have brought you in the moment I had you on the floor back there.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“But then I saw your daughter’s name. She’s one of the girls who disappeared. And then it hit me: You’re still looking; you’ve been looking this whole time.”
“My daughter’s dead. I came here to find a film.”
“You found the film, Alex.”
“Some films refuse to stay on the screen where they belong, Serpico.”
“Unless you help me out, I have no other option but to take you in.”
“Blackmail: a great way to start a new collaboration.” He sighed and his expression changed to one of resignation. “Okay. You got me. Let’s get a coffee and talk this whole thing over.”
She nodded, satisfied with herself.
“I just need to do something first,” he said. He gestured at an ATM booth coming up on their left.
“I can’t park here.”
“Next one up, Chuckles.”
Earl Grey Street’s wide boulevard was packed with shops, beginning to recover from a long period of decline. Goldbergs had built their new store there, with its merry-go-round, b
ut that was now gone, as was Jenny’s Wardrobe and the imposing St. Cuthbert’s complex. The latter had been replaced by a five-star hotel with majestic corridors and luxury interior decor, not far from St. Cuthbert’s Co-op where Sean Connery used to work as a milkman. But times had changed; the Palais de Dance was now Bingo, and there was no doorman outside.
She turned the car left into Lauriston Place and brought it to a stop. He got out.
She thought for a minute, then opened her own door.
He gave her a glance.
“Thought you might need some company. Three minutes,” she said, right before he entered the booth. She tapped a finger below her left eye. “I’m watching you.”
Whitman grinned. He was holding his sarcastic comeback for his own pleasure.
Cars were halted at the traffic light on the main road. She hesitated, then got out and searched in her pockets for a lighter. She had quit many times in the past. Every time she gave in, it felt worse.
She exhaled the smoke, reveling in the pleasure of nicotine hitting the receptors in her brain.
She looked back at the booth. Whitman had his back to her.
Students waited for the bus on the way to classes. A shabby man in his wheelchair, obviously homeless, cowered on the side of the walkway, half-asleep. A few people headed up the street to catch a concert at the cap-domed Usher Hall. A man with a large beard led a group of tourists on a ghost tour.
The tourists enjoyed the macabre spirit of the city, the hundreds-of-years-old murders and body snatching. It was concise and effective; it shifted their attention from the true horrors in life. Had they heard of the stabbings in Royston or the gang vandalism in Niddrie? How about the prossies in Leith or the junkies in West Pilton? Major Weir and Deacon Brodie made sure these people didn’t get wind of anything more up to date.
A man stopped next to her and asked her for a light. She obliged. He thanked her and continued on his way.
She turned toward the booth.
It was empty.
She saw Whitman running down Lothian Road and turning into East Fountainbridge.
“Oh, sod it,” she said, throwing the cigarette to the ground.
Séance Infernale Page 16