by Peter James
‘Do we know Whiteley’s vehicle?’
‘He’s got a Nissan Micra, but it’s still in the garage. It’s possible he rented something bigger – he wouldn’t be able to conceal a person in a Micra very easily.’
He was staring at a small sign just by the rear window of the bedroom. EMERGENCY EXIT.
He had to walk around the far side of the bed to reach it, and then he saw the handle in a raised, unlocked position, as if the door had recently been opened – and not properly closed from the outside.
He ended the call with Kille, pushed the door open and looked out and around the rear of the vehicle. Two other smaller motor-homes were parked directly behind, blocking the view of this exit from anyone more than a few yards away. No windows overlooked them. This seemed the likely route that Whiteley would have taken her, but they would have had to come into open view within ten yards or so, surely?
Then, looking down, he noticed the jagged, uneven dark rectangle in the grass, as if it had been made with a very thin trail of weed killer.
He knelt down, and the rectangle wobbled beneath him, just a fraction. He clambered back into the vehicle, checked that the two officers were making progress on freeing the victims, then rummaged in the kitchen drawers, and took out a heavy-duty knife and a metal spatula.
Then he got down on his hands and knees behind the motor-home, and using the two implements as a lever, prised open an ancient, heavy metal cover, the top of it turfed, which he lifted aside. He could see steep stone steps leading down into darkness. He’d often heard rumours of secret passages under the Pavilion, and wondered if this was one of them.
He went back into the motorhome and asked if either of the officers had a torch on them. One produced a small, sturdy-looking one and handed it to him. He switched it on, went out again, then began to descend the steps, breathing in dank air. After about twenty feet he found himself in a tunnel just high enough to stand in. It had faded whitewashed walls and a whitewashed brick floor, and stretched away into the distance toward the main building of the Pavilion. Lagged pipes, copper tubes and bare power cables, clipped to the top of the walls on both sides, appeared to run its full length, and every few yards there were unlit lights mounted on the walls.
He began walking along the tunnel, as quickly as he could, being careful not to trip on the uneven floor, shadows jigging ahead of him from the throw of the beam, his nerves jigging inside him. He passed an old wooden door lying on its side, then a large dusty pane of glass, and a short distance further along, a busted wicker chair. Two tiny pinpricks of red momentarily froze in the darkness, then vanished. A rat. He passed an orange and white traffic cone, incongruously placed on the floor, then reached an old, grimy white door, with a shiny new chrome handle on it. He hesitated for a moment and glanced down at his phone. There was no signal. Which meant no chance of calling back-up if he needed it. If Whiteley came at him, he would have to cope on his own.
He gripped the handle, switched the torch off, not wanting to make himself a target just in case. Then he jerked the door open and snapped on the beam again.
It shone on a fire hose attached to a brick wall. He stepped forward and swung the beam down another corridor, much wider and higher, angled off to the right, with some dim lights on further along it. All the cables and piping were bunched together in this section, running along the ceiling. The brick floor was uneven and unpainted, repaired in places with ugly concrete patches. He passed a row of plastic chemical drums, then saw a decrepit green door, sagging on its hinges, with a yellow and black DANGER – HIGH VOLTAGE sign on it, to his left. A broken cobweb across the top left corner of the door showed it had been opened recently. Bracing himself, and stepping aside as he did so, he pulled it open. The hinges shrieked, the bottom scraping noisily on the bricks. Then he stabbed the beam inside. It lit up a wall of fuses and electrical switchgear, and pipework lagged in asbestos, but otherwise it was bare.
He walked on and saw a pool of light ahead of him now. Then he heard voices, and froze.
They sounded directly above him. Then footsteps. Clumping down steps. Now his nerves were really jangling. He took several deep breaths, firmly gripped the torch – the only weapon he had – and eased himself forward, keeping as flat against the wall as he could. He saw a shadow, growing larger. Then suddenly the ex-Sergeant-Major security guard loomed into view. The old soldier jumped with shock when he saw him, shouted something, and dropped his torch, which hit the ground with a loud crack and went out.
‘Blimey, you gave me a fright, sir!’
‘That makes two of us,’ Grace said. ‘What’s happening? Has anyone found anything here?’
The guard knelt down, bending his stiff frame with some difficulty, and picked up his torch. ‘Nothing, sir, not so far. But it’s a bloody big place to search and you have to know your way around to do it. So many corridors – it was designed as a sort of a double skin, so that staff could move all around the ground floors without going into any of the main rooms unless needed. I’ve been here seven years and even I keep finding new spaces all the time. Be easy for someone who knows it well to avoid being seen.’
‘What’s up there?’ Grace pointed to the steps he had just come down.
‘Takes you up to the main hallway, just inside the front entrance, and the toilets.’
‘I’m certain Gaia’s abductor must have brought her along here, sometime in the past couple of hours. Where could he have taken her from here?’
‘Well, he couldn’t go any further along this passage. If you shine your beam along there you’ll see.’ He pointed along the continuation of the tunnel and it was bricked off a short distance along. ‘He’d either have to have taken her back the way he came or up these stairs.’
Grace suddenly recalled the smell of fresh chocolate. The abandoned Crunchie wrapper with a trace of lipstick on it.
Anna Galicia’s lipstick?
‘Follow me, will you?’ Grace said, and sprinted up the stairs, through the open half-gate, then across the hall to the half-concealed door on the far side, where he had been taken by the Curator yesterday. He pulled it open, then began to lope up the spiral stairs.
Some way behind him, he heard the panting voice of the elderly security guard. ‘Don’t touch the handrail, sir, it’s dangerously rickety!’
He reached the top and entered the old, abandoned apartment beneath the dome, with its unpleasant musty smell and dust sheets over the uneven, angular shapes. But he didn’t even notice the smell. Or the dust sheets. Or the Crunchie wrapper still lying on the ground.
He was staring, transfixed at the bizarre and horrific tableau facing him. It could have been two actors rehearsing a scene in a play. Except neither of them was acting. They were both standing on a dangerously rotten trapdoor, and one had a noose around her neck.
118
Gaia, in jeans and a sweat-darkened white T-shirt, her face glistening with the perspiration of fear, stood on tiptoe, a noose of razor wire around her neck pulled tight and looped around the pulley system high above the trapdoor. Blood trickled down parts of her neck where the wire had dug into her skin. A small strip of duct tape lay, curled, on the floor. The skin around her mouth looked red and raw, probably from that bit of tape that had been ripped away, Grace thought, feeling fury at what he saw, tinged with relief that she was still, at this moment, alive.
Her hands were tied behind her back. Inches from her sparkly trainers was the sign on the trapdoor that read in bold letters, DANGER – STEEP DROP BELOW. DO NOT STAND ON DOOR.
Her eyes, filled with stark terror, locked on to his. He tried to flash back reassurance. His heart went out to her, she looked so vulnerable and helpless.
Crouched beside her was an apparition, caked in make-up, dressed in female Regency clothing and wearing a huge, lopsided wig, staring at him with a strangely triumphant smile. One hand was on each of the two rusty bolts that secured the trapdoor from opening downwards – and taking them both with it, plunging through the h
atch, down the forty-foot drop straight to the store room above the kitchens. On the floor beside this creature was a vicious-looking open-bladed hunting knife and a mobile phone.
There was a sudden, sharp crack, like a gunshot.
Gaia yammered in terror. The apparition’s eyes darted momentarily down.
Grace realized what it was. The trapdoor was starting to give way. His mind was racing, spinning, trying to get traction and figure what to do. The two of them were about ten feet in front of him. Three fast paces, he assessed. The bolts could be slid long before he even got close. He couldn’t take the risk, not at this moment.
There was another crack. This time the trapdoor visibly sagged a fraction, tightening the razor wire even more. The door was going to cave in at any moment.
‘Detective Superintendent Roy Grace,’ the apparition smiled, speaking through gleaming white teeth in a seductive, gravelly voice that mimicked Gaia’s. ‘I recognize you from the Argus. How nice of you to join our little private party!’
Gaia was pleading with her eyes for him to do something.
His heart was hammering so hard he could feel pulsing in his ears. ‘Eric Whiteley?’ he said. ‘Or should I call you Anna Galicia?’
He heard footsteps behind him, then heavy panting.
‘Get rid of your fat friend with the tash, hon, he’s so ugly,’ the apparition continued in her Gaia voice. ‘I’ll talk to you, but I’m not talking to any bullying thug.’
Grace hesitated.
The creature slid the bolts back a good half inch. The panic in Gaia’s eyes deepened into wild terror. There was another, smaller crack, and the apparition jolted, but seemed not to care. ‘Get rid of your fat friend or the bitch and I go. You have five seconds, Detective Superintendent.’ He tightened his grip on the bolts.
Grace turned and said urgently to the security guard, ‘Do what she said!’
The guard gave him a look, as if questioning his sanity.
‘GET OUT OF HERE! GO!’ Grace yelled at him.
It had the desired effect. The security guard turned in shock and lumbered out of the room. Grace turned back to the transvestite, thinking fast. He was trying to remember all he had been told by the indexer Annalise Vineer, who’d had researchers delving back as far as they could into Whiteley’s past. As well as all the insights he’d had from the psychologist Dr Tara Lester. But the first stage was to get a rapport going, to try to bond with Whiteley. And at the same time to make his Plan B.
‘Tell me what you would like me to call you,’ he said. ‘Anna Galicia or Eric Whiteley?’ He looked up at the wire above Gaia for an instant.
‘Very funny,’ Whiteley snapped back. It came out as a male snarl. ‘I’m not afraid to kill her.’
‘You’ve killed before haven’t you, Anna? Shall we stick with Anna?’
‘Anna will be very happy with that.’ Now she sounded like Gaia again.
A chill wave swept through Grace. It felt as if he were dealing with two totally different people in one. ‘And how about Eric? Will he be happy?’
‘Eric will do what Anna tells him,’ Whiteley said in his Anna voice.
‘You killed Myles Royce, didn’t you. Why did you kill him?’
‘Because he was richer than me. He kept outbidding me on things I really wanted. I couldn’t let that go on. I invited him round to see my collection and then I killed him. I collected him! He was a nice trophy to have. Eric approved!’
Grace was conscious of Gaia desperately staring at him, but at this moment he didn’t want to break eye contact with Whiteley. He needed to try to find some common ground, some way to start to bond with him. And he knew he didn’t have much time. Maybe only seconds.
There was another splintering crack.
‘You’d better be quick, Detective Superintendent, we’re going down!’ Whiteley said, again in Anna’s seductive Gaia voice.
Whiteley had been clever. The wire had been wound several times around the winch in large loops, then he had bent it several times just above Gaia’s head, to take up the slack and force her on to her toes. There was about six feet of slack in those loops. If the hatch collapsed, Gaia would fall that distance, and even if her neck wasn’t broken instantly, or her head severed completely by the wire, it would be impossible to reach her. It would be equally impossible to haul her weight up by that single strand of sharp wire.
Suddenly he heard the wakka-wakka-wakka-wakka thrashing of a helicopter, roaring overhead. He saw Whiteley’s eyes dart apprehensively towards one of the dusty oval windows, and realized to his dismay he had missed a split-second chance of jumping him while he was distracted.
The sound faded away.
‘I don’t think a helicopter’s going to do you much good in here, Detective Superintendent Grace, do you?’ Anna said, then looked up at Gaia. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, know what I’m saying? About someone coming to save you? It’s not going to happen.’ Then he raised his right hand, pressed his thumb, middle finger and ring finger together and raised the other two fingers in the air. ‘Secret fox!’ He winked at her.
She stared back at him, icily and terrified.
Grace’s phone rang. He ignored it.
‘Eric says you can answer it,’ Anna said sweetly.
It carried on ringing.
‘Eric says you can answer it,’ Anna repeated.
Grace continued to ignore it. He wanted to keep both his hands free. It stopped ringing.
‘It might have been an important call!’ Anna Galicia said. ‘You are a very important man, aren’t you?’
‘Aren’t you important too, Anna?’ he replied.
‘Eric thinks so!’
Grace shot another quick glance at Gaia. Her eyes were still locked on him. He wondered what the security guard was going to do. But short of putting a sniper on the roof to take a shot through the window at Whiteley, and he did not have the time, there wasn’t anything he could think of. Down below he heard the wail of sirens, followed by a series of deep honks, then more sirens. It sounded like fire engines on their way. But that wasn’t going to help. There wasn’t time to get any back-up. The shadow of a seagull flitted past one of the windows behind Whiteley, and was gone.
Whiteley looked up at the icon. ‘How’s it feeling, Gaia? Is it nice to be with your number one fan? Is it nice to be adored? Hey?’
She tried to respond but only a gurgling croak came out.
‘Did you ever think what you would be if it wasn’t for me, and all the others? Hey?’
‘Why don’t you give her some slack, or take the noose off, so she can answer you?’ Grace said calmly.
‘Haha! Very funny, Detective Superintendent!’ Anna retorted.
‘What is it you want from Gaia, Anna?’
Grace was poised, ready, like a coiled spring. Listening. Waiting for the next crack. He didn’t know if his plan would save her but at this moment he was totally out of alternatives, except to try negotiation with the man. With only minutes, maybe only seconds, left to do it.
After some moments’ silence, Whiteley responded, staring directly back at him. ‘I want her to say sorry.’
Grace felt a tiny ping of hope. ‘Sorry for what, Anna?’
Whiteley looked up at her. ‘You know, don’t you, Gaia?’ Then he looked back at Grace.
‘Take the noose off,’ Grace said firmly but pleasantly. ‘Let her speak to you.’
Suddenly, in a very masculine voice, Whiteley snapped at him, baring his teeth in an animal snarl. ‘Anna won’t take the noose off. Stop bullying her!’
Grace stared back at him. ‘Bullying, did you say?’
Whiteley looked up at Gaia again. Anna spoke. ‘All you had to do in the lobby of The Grand Hotel was smile and say hello. Instead you humiliated me. You snubbed me in front of everyone. You made me look a fool. You made me a Ubu, didn’t you. Useless, Boring, Ugly. You pretend to love everyone, but you’re just a greedy bully, really, aren’t you, Gaia? So how does this feel now? I bet you wish you’d bee
n nicer to me in The Grand, don’t you?’
‘Give her a chance to talk to you, Anna.’
Whiteley snapped his head round and glared at Grace. ‘Anna’s not talking to you,’ he said in his Eric Whiteley voice.
Then he turned back to Gaia and it was Anna speaking again. ‘You see, Gaia, you’re not as special as you think. Anyone can be you if they have enough make-up on. They all thought I was you! I could have done the rest of the film and they’d never have known! You’re not very special at all really. You’re just lucky and very cruel and very ungrateful.’
Grace was looking at the wire again. And trying very subtly to signal to Gaia. He looked pointedly down at the trapdoor, at the warning sign, then jerked his eyes over to the right. She clocked him, in a fleeting, puzzled glance before his eyes went back to Whiteley.
‘You know what they say, don’t you?’ Anna Galicia’s voice asked her. ‘Be careful how you treat people on the way up, because you never know who you’re going to need when you’re on the way down.’ Whiteley lifted a hand from a bolt, and pointed at the trapdoor. ‘On the way down! Gettit?’ Anna’s voice suddenly cackled with laughter. ‘Gettit?’ he repeated to Gaia. ‘How will that feel for you in your last few seconds? Dying with your number one fan! But we won’t tell anyone, will we?’ Again he raised his hand and formed his fingers into the symbol. ‘Secret fox!’
‘Anna,’ Grace said, ‘I have an idea. If you gave Gaia your phone, she could call anyone you wanted and tell them whatever you would like her to say. She could apologize to the newspapers, the radio, television, her Twitter followers, her Facebook fans – she could tell the whole world that you really are her number one fan. That all she had been doing was testing you. Because she has so many imposters claiming to be her number one fan, she had to make sure you were the real one. And she is sure now. No one else would be willing to die with her. That is real love, Anna, and she knows that now. You can film her telling you that with the camera – put it on YouTube!’
He saw the sudden change of expression in Whiteley’s eyes. Like a cloud moving away from the sun. They shone briefly and he smiled, like a child who had just been given a new toy.