Flakes of old paint crunched underfoot. I was in a corridor. The paint was coming off the walls. Pieces of it all over the floor. Walls and ceiling were bared; wires hung down from above. In places the wooden tiling had come away from the concrete floor. The room doors gaped, ajar. Inside one was a naked bed frame.
Bare, wretched; like her room at Shackleton Street. Some of Walsh’s clients had liked tying her up. But you didn’t need that to feel helpless. No, helpless wasn’t the word. Powerless was better. Choiceless was best of all: left only with the options of spreading your legs with or without a slapping to compel you.
Allen walked, hands in his pockets, occasionally running fingertips along the walls, looking solemn, sensitive and slightly puzzled. Presentation, Allen, presentation. It looked posed, faked. If only. None of this would be real; there’d be nowt to keep them here, nowt to have brought them to begin with.
Nothing, not nowt. Nowt is Lancashire dialect. Nowt is the bastard North. Nowt is everything you wanted to get away from. Not nowt. Nothing.
What if they were angry, the dead, about the lies he’d told, the times he’d faked it? She was as much in the firing line as him, then; she was the one who’d got him giving ‘readings’ to friends and neighbours, then doing ‘psychic nights’ in pubs. Who’d turned him, in the end, into a performer who didn’t know if he was lying or telling the truth anymore.
Well fuck you if you’re judging us. After what we’d been through, we had no rights? The Sight was all we had – so yes, we used it. We gave something back. Charities – NSPCC, Barnardo’s. Not enough? Well fuck you twice. We did what we had to. You fuckers didn’t help, we got nothing we didn’t fight for, so fuck you.
Had she expected an answer? None came. Only the black, hungry silence of the place. Hungry, yes. Expectant. It was waiting. Walking down the corridor, Vera looked straight ahead; if she looked into the rooms she might see people standing in the doorways. Except they wouldn’t be people anymore. And she couldn’t bear that.
THERE WAS A day room here, too, at the centre of the Block. It seemed inevitable they’d find something there. Tables and chairs were stacked neatly against the walls; in the empty room’s centre the Black Sun was etched on the floor in something dark – Blood? Shit? – with a pewter ring in the shape of a skull at its centre.
“It’s engraved,” McAdams said.
“To Ben from Dani 4 Ever,” Allen said, staring at the far wall. McAdams looked at him, then Renwick. Allen turned. “Yes?”
“Well?” asked Renwick.
McAdams nodded, dropped the ring into an evidence bag. “Ben Rawlinson.”
OUTSIDE, ANNA STOOD hugging herself; Martyn stared off into the woods.
Vera touched Allen’s arm, drifted over to Anna’s side. “You OK?”
Anna nodded. “Just... this place. Funny, spent so long trying to get to see it–”
“Yeah.”
They looked at each other. Vera’s hand stole out; her gloved fingers brushed Anna’s. Perhaps after this, Vera wanted to say. But there wouldn’t be time. Anna looked down. Vera took her hand away.
“Alright,” Renwick said. “C Block.”
THE TESTAMENT OF LANCE-CORPORAL MELVYN STOKES CONTINUED o the rage that churns within me when i think how our blood was wasted how we fought germany again and yet should not have for see what they had built and they were right about the jews i say it clearly right about the jews i would have fought alongside mosley and his blackshirts to save this country while there was still time but instead i rotted slowly here without a face no face faceless i was here being fed through a tube a tube a fucking cunting bastarding fucking bastard tube rule britannia britannia rules the waves britons never never never shall be slaves but so they have become the niggers the pakis the yids the chinkies and filthy disgusting queers sodomites and perverts sticking their dicks up one anothers arses where all the stinking shit comes from and sucking one anothers dicks loathsome creatures loathsome hitler was right about those too oh yes i heard all about him even in here
INSIDE, STAKOWSKI SAW, C Block was much the same as A Block. Paint flaked from bare walls, ceilings and the crumbling wooden doors of individual rooms that stood ajar to show emptiness within. Barred windows that opened no more than an inch so you couldn’t jump out. You couldn’t stop the truly determined, but you could litter their way with obstacles, buy them time to think better of it.
This time they went straight to the day room. Another Black Sun was etched on the dusty floor, a purse containing Danielle Morton’s driver’s licence in its centre.
After that they searched the rest of the block: operating theatres, steel tables, cracked glass cabinets. Bottles with faded labels, half-full of murky fluid.
Crosbie pushed open a door, shouted: “Sarge!”
Stakowski jogged over. Renwick was already there. Inside–
On the walls, hung with skeins of cobwebs: crumbling plaster-casts of broken faces. Gueules cassÉes. Below them, on a work-bench, were a dozen masks, the paint flaked off, the metal beneath gone to rust and verdigris.
On the floor: three women. Dead maybe a couple of days.
“Christ.”
Martyn Griffiths stood in the doorway. Anna caught at his arm. “Martyn–”
“Get him out of here,” Renwick said.
“Get back behind my men,” snapped Skelton.
“I know her.” Martyn pointed.
Renwick raised a hand. “What?”
He came in. “Friend of Eva’s, from the class. Dunno her name. That one, though–” pointing again “–she’s called Alison. Dunno the other one at all. Sorry.”
Griffiths’ face was pale. His sister hugged him about the shoulders, but he hardly seemed to notice. He’d gone like stone. Stakowski had to look away; he’d been there, with Laney, knew all too well what it was like.
Stakowski went to him. “Look, Mr Griffiths, maybe you coming with us weren’t the best idea. What we might find here... you don’t want to see it.”
“Martyn,” said Anna, “Sergeant Stakowski’s right.”
Martyn’s lips parted wetly, gulped air. “I’m going on.”
“We don’t know what we’ll find here, sir–”
“I’m going on,” said Martyn.
Stakowski nodded. “Alright.”
“Can I?” said a voice.
Renwick nodded.
Cowell skirted the bodies, went to the table. He reached for one of the masks, looked askance at Renwick.
“Go on,” she said.
Cowell picked a mask up with his fingertips. It was brittle and fragile as an autumn leaf. He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath.
“Anger,” he said after a moment. “I’m getting... A terrible anger. But someone else... someone else needed the masks.”
“Who?”
“But these were rotten. So they had to make more.”
“Why?” said Renwick. “Are they disfigured too?”
Cowell didn’t answer. He stared ahead, mouth open.
“Allen?” Vera reached out to touch his arm, but didn’t.
Cowell released a long breath, sagged against her. For a moment, he looked wearier than anyone Stakowski had seen. “I don’t know what they are.” He blinked, straightened. “Not yet. We have to keep going. There’s no other way.”
The women were laid out side by side; they draped a tattered swatch of old curtain across their faces. They’d come back later, see the bodies dealt with properly. As it was, they had the living to worry about. Stakowski felt the Glock’s weight at his hip. Let the bastards come into his sights; he’d pay them back, for this if nothing else.
THE TESTAMENT OF LANCE-CORPORAL MELVYN STOKES CONTINUED never blamed master st john no it was that gideon yideon more like a jew name some changeling some jewish cuckoo in the nest turned this place into his freakshow so i lived out the years here o the rage they put me in e block in the end transferred me over because even as i was i lived on and raged against him against them all the english lion roaring the s
pirit of the race the power of britain the simple british soldier i killed my germans without a thought pointed my rifle pulled the trigger and down they fell like coats falling off pegs another i slew with bayonet another still beat to death with my rifle battering his square head till the bone collapsed and felt nothing cared not a jot but now they walk beside me all my dead
D BLOCK’S BRICKS were damp with morning mist. For a moment Martyn thought the walls themselves were weeping, bleeding out the sorrow of the years. You could feel it somehow, here, the pain and the misery the place had known. Fuck. And he was supposed to be the unimaginative one. Dad had said so often enough.
Enough of that. The enemies here you could catch hold of. Dad’s disapproval, the endless, hopeless hunt for work, the crushing weight of the depression – all of them had been like trying to fight half-set jelly. Nowt to grasp, nowt to fight or catch hold of. Not like this. Here, he’d grab the bastards and choke the life out of them if he could.
They’d checked the chapel and the Home Farm before coming here. The chapel had seemed alone and desolate in its field of tall, waving grass; Martyn hadn’t seen the stubby brown headstones filling the field until they reached its door. He’d made out the inscriptions on two or three: name, dates of birth and death. Nothing else; no rank or decorations.
The chapel had been empty, pews and altar long since stripped out, a bent sapling writhing from a crack in the concrete floor, seeking the light from the glassless windows.
There was little left to search at the Home Farm: farmhouse, dairy, bakery and mill were all burned out, the roofs fallen in. The greenhouse was a naked, rotted framework, the silo a hollow, rusted shell. Only D and E Blocks remained; those, and Warbeck.
The doors to D Block opened; the air blowing out was cold and rank.
I’d have been in one of these if I’d been around back then. Signed up, taken the King’s Shilling. Get shot to shit or blown to bits, gassed, drowned in a shell-hole, that or ended up somewhere like this. If I were lucky I’d get out one day, with a missing arm or a permanent twitch or a fucked-up face. If not I’d be here, or staring at the wall in E Block.
But this was the worst, for him. How much could you strip away from someone, before they fell apart? Not much, in his case – a fucking job. He’d been going even then, after months of fruitless searching. And then Eva–
No. He wouldn’t think on that.
But if you took away their fucking face? No job, though you’d be fed at least; you’d not starve. But what wife would stick with you in that state? He would have lost everything he’d lost already, if that’d been him, but not even the faint glimmer of hope of getting it back – and without even a face, the one thing above all else that told you who you were.
They filed past a dust-covered desk, then down the corridors. The wooden doors hanging open; each little room beyond a well to collect the wept-out misery. If you still had eyes to weep with.
“You OK?” Anna whispered.
“I’m f–”
They were near the end of the corridor when the crash sounded. Anna cried out, clutched at his arm; Martyn pushed her behind him as he turned. Bloody near soiled himself as well, not that he’d ever admit to it. Stakowski’s pistol was already in his hands, so fast Martyn couldn’t believe it had ever been in the holster; Renwick and the other detectives drew theirs. Skelton’s men were already aiming their rifles and sub-machine guns down the empty corridor.
Empty, yes, but clouds of dust swirled in it. And something else was different; the corridor was darker. It took Martyn a moment to realise what; the doors to the rooms had all slammed closed and shut out the light from the windows. All together.
“Jesus,” said Wayland. Laughter rippled through the group; a whistle in the dark. Wayland grinned, flushing.
“We’re not alone,” said Allen. God, he was an annoying bugger. Reckoned he was on TV all the time, even when there weren’t a camera in sight–
A slow, soft creaking, and a door swung slowly open, then another. And then they were all opening, sending fresh swirls of dust across the littered floor.
The corridor brightened. Martyn wished it hadn’t; the light coming in through the windows seemed too bright, like a floodlight outside the block, and it cast shadows across the corridor floor, stretching out of each doorway. They looked like people. Sort of. But very long and thin, too long and thin to be alive.
Pale fingers groped around the edges of the doors. There was no sound, no sound at all. Martyn couldn’t even hear his own breathing now. But puffs and coils of dust rose up off the floor to roll into the corridor as the rooms’ occupants came out into view. Not much better than silhouettes at first, but then his eyes began to adjust and he could see the ragged, dirty remnants of khaki uniforms and white patient’s smocks they wore. Those, and the dully glinting masks that covered all their faces. And the worn and withered flesh they unmercifully failed to hide.
Stakowski stepped past him, shouting, but there was nothing, no sound, as he swept the pistol back and forth over the gaunt, silent ranks.
The masks wholly covered their faces. Or where their faces should have been. Because this had been the home of the worst ones – not men with broken faces but men with no faces at all, men who’d never again eat a meal not poured down their throats by a tube. Dust swirled from another door as an old-fashioned wheelchair rolled out into the corridor. Something was huddled in it. No legs hung down over the edge of the seat. In place of a left arm a sort of flattened paddle beat weakly at the air. A right hand lacking all but its thumb and forefinger clutched the doorframe and levered the chairbound thing out into the light.
Its head jerked round; it stared straight at him. The face the mask depicted was stolid, unexceptional. He might have been a decent-looking lad; no movie star, but he’d have had his share of girls back when Nan was a toddler. But not now, and never again. The pincer-like right hand rose towards the mask.
Simultaneously, in the same dead silence, the other masked figures raised their slow hands. The one closest to Martyn, in full uniform, had a mask that reached down from his scarred forehead to his chin. His face was thin and gentle-looking, or would have been had it been real.
The thing in the wheelchair began lifting its mask away; Martyn glimpsed a wet, lipless hole that might once have been a part of a mouth, gaping and wetly sucking at the dank, dusty air.
The uniformed man lifted his mask too. Martyn caught the dimmest impression of a black gaping hole beneath it, a nothingness that should’ve been a face, and he drew breath to cry out, even if it would never be heard.
The corridor dimmed again suddenly; the doors didn’t close, but it was as if the floodlights beyond the window had gone out, plunging the corridor into darkness. Stakowski crouching, gun aimed. Torches flashed into the dark and seemed to fade out within inches, illuminating nothing, and then the sound returned.
“–your hands in the air, do not move, or I will have no alternative but to open fire–” Stakowski stopped as the dull natural light they’d had before returned, and the corridor was lit again. Dimly still, but not the near-dark of seconds earlier. The doors to the rooms stood open; the dust settled and stayed undisturbed. But beside one door near the corridor’s end, empty, cobwebs trailing from its arms and handles, sat an old, moth-eaten wheelchair.
“Jesus,” Crosbie said. The big Asian copper – Ashraf – held his pistol out ahead of him, muttering what sounded like a prayer.
“Did anyone else see that?” Anna’s voice shook. Martyn put an arm round her. “Did you?” she asked.
“Aye, sis. Saw it.”
“Did you?” She looked at Renwick.
“Let’s all stay calm, Ms Mason. Everybody.”
“Oh god.” Anna was shaking. Martyn held her up. Vera put a hand out to her, then let it drop. “Oh god.”
“OK,” Skelton said. “Bishop, Desai, Larson, you stay here, cover us. Rest of you, with me. We’re checking the cells.”
ALL THE ROOMS were em
pty, of course. No sign of hidden trap-doors or ceiling hatches could be found. Stakowski holstered his pistol, wiped a thin sheen of sweat from his forehead. “Nothing, ma’am.”
“I told you,” said Allen. “We’re not dealing with a flesh and blood enemy.”
Skelton glanced at him, then back to Renwick. “What next, ma’am?”
“We carry on,” Renwick said. “We search this building, the same as the rest. Keep your eyes open, and remember why we’re here. You’re all serving police officers. I expect you to handle a damn sight more than a few party tricks.”
“Party tricks?”
Renwick didn’t look at Allen. “Party tricks, Mr Cowell.”
“Chief Inspector, if I’ve ever encountered a genuine supernatural phenomenon–”
“Party tricks,” Renwick stared him down. “Someone is here, and someone’s playing silly buggers. Whatever that was, we have a job to do. So let’s do it.”
Cowell opened his mouth to speak; Vera caught his arm, murmured in his ear. She got it, even if he didn’t. Renwick didn’t believe the ‘party tricks’ crap any more than Martyn, but she was doing what she had to, to stop a panic in the ranks. That’s what Cowell didn’t get. There were people who needed their help.
She was right, they had a job to do. Martyn understood that; so did he. He was here to find Eva, and if the coppers all ran away they’d drag him off with them, and he wouldn’t get to do it.
Thin fingers squeezed his arm. He turned. Anna. He managed a smile. She managed one back. She was white; the lines at her mouth and corners of her eyes showed stark against her skin.
“Come on,” he said.
They searched the rest of D Block, and all they found was what they’d come to expect: the Black Sun painted on the day room floor, and in its centre–
“Aw Christ,” Wayland said.
“Bastards,” said Ashraf.
Stakowski turned to Renwick. “Ma’am–”
The Faceless Page 21