by Tim Weaver
‘What was it East said?’ Healy whispered.
I looked at him. ‘Huh?’
‘He said he was put into a children’s home in Chingford.’
I looked back at the building.
Healy nodded, his eyes returning to the sign at the front, rinsed of colour but the letters still visible.
St David’s Children’s Home.
‘This is where Korman and Grankin grew up,’ he said.
63
We waited, rain continuing to beat against the trees, drumming against the leaves, against the canopy. There were four huge windows on the front of the shell that had once been St David’s Children’s Home, all boarded up. What I was more interested in was an extension on the side of the building – a little newer, although still decades old – built in brick, with a slanted red-tile roof: it was half submerged behind a bank of big fir trees, but I could make out a set of grey double doors at one end.
One was slightly ajar.
I gestured for Healy to follow me, and we arced around, using the trees as cover. Forty feet short of the double doors, I stopped for a second time, taking in the view on this side of the building, waiting for Healy to fall in. As the wind picked up, the open door wafted out from its frame.
‘Are you coming in with me?’ I said to him quietly.
He frowned. ‘What sort of question is that?’
He was weary, his shoulders rising and falling, and I thought I could see him shivering slightly.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to find in there.’
He shrugged, his breathing slowly settling into a rhythm, and then looked at me, a shimmer in his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘All that matters is them.’
He didn’t mean Korman and Grankin.
He meant Gail and the girls.
Before I had a chance to say anything else, Healy was moving past me and along the edges of the treeline, in the direction of the extension on the side of the building. ‘Healy!’ I hissed, but he didn’t stop. He broke from cover very briefly as he crossed to where the extension jutted out, and then found a spot, out of view, in front of the fir trees.
He looked back at me, focused, defiant.
I scanned the boarded windows, trying to see if anything had changed, if there was any indication that his movements had been detected, but there was nothing. Every window remained hidden behind slabs of wood. Out in the forest beyond, however, changes were harder to spot: leaves moved, branches swayed, rain drifted out of the sky in grey lines. I started to worry that the door might be a trap, left open in order to draw us in, while Grankin waited somewhere else.
Maybe alone, maybe with Korman.
Had he seen us approaching his house and made a run for it? I thought of how the TV was still on, the extractor fan going, as if Grankin had left in a hurry. And then I looked at Healy, still short of breath, my coat swallowing him up, even the gun big in his hands now, and had a moment of clarity: I’m going to get us both killed. I could look after myself, account for my actions, justify them, push the fear down and do what was necessary – but I couldn’t do the same for him. I couldn’t lead him in there, frail and vulnerable, incapable of defending himself.
I’d be leading him to his execution.
I couldn’t do that with a clear conscience.
Getting out my phone, I checked the signal, then looked at Healy again, our eyes lingering on one another.
Then I dialled Craw’s number.
Healy was still looking at me, almost enclosed by the fir trees, a frown forming on his face. He mouthed, What are you doing? I held up a finger to him, trying to tell him that he needed to trust me here.
Craw answered. ‘Raker?’
‘Craw,’ I said. ‘I need you to listen.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Just listen to me. Please.’ I glanced up at Healy. He’d stepped away from the fir trees, the gun at his side. ‘There’s a guy called Victor Grankin. He lives at 3 Poland Gardens in Whitehall Woods. You have to tell whoever needs to know that this guy – and another man, possibly called Paul Korman, possibly Benjamin Gray – are responsible for the death of that family. They murdered the Clarks, they probably murdered a couple called Neil and Ana Yost too. You getting this?’
A pause. ‘Let me get a pen.’
I waited, watching Healy.
Then she was back on: ‘Okay. What was the name?’
‘Victor Grankin, 3 Poland Gardens. I was in his house –’
‘You broke in?’
‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘You need to send a team down.’
‘Raker, it’s not my borou–’
‘Then find out whose borough it is, and call them. Please, Craw. I’ve got …’ I stopped, eyeing Healy. I’ve got Healy here, but not the Healy we knew. Not that version of him. Not any more. This version I can’t protect. I can’t protect him from Korman and Grankin. ‘Just send a team to that address, and to the former site of St David’s Children’s Home. That’s literally next door to the place Grankin is in.’
‘Why?’ she said. ‘What’s at the children’s home?’
‘I think that’s where these men are hiding out.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they grew up here.’
‘ “Here”? You mean you’re there already?’
I glanced across what used to be the front lawn, to where we’d come from. The thick forest. Grankin’s house, invisible, hidden.
‘Yes,’ I said to her. ‘I’m here.’
A sigh, but no response.
‘Just trust me, okay?’
‘Are you in danger?’
‘Not if you send a team down …’
I stopped.
‘Raker?’
Shit. ‘I’ve got to go, Craw.’
‘Why?’
I looked across the front lawn.
Healy had disappeared.
64
Slowly, I pulled the grey door open.
Immediately inside the extension was a reception area, a wooden counter with a sliding glass window on the right, green linoleum on the floor, posters and notices still on a corkboard to the left. It had the vibe of a hospital ward, closed in and musty. Straight ahead were two security gates, one after the other, with a number pad embedded in the wall beside the first. Both gates were wide open.
I slipped inside and let the door fall softly back against the frame, the light dwindling. On the other side of the reception desk there was a small skylight, but most of what lay ahead remained in shadow, the corridor continuing beyond the security gates, both sides lined with identical grey doors, apart from a single red one on the left. That had been chained shut.
At the end was a staircase.
I hadn’t brought a torch, because I hadn’t been expecting to need one, so as I inched forward, I took out my phone, accessed the torch function and held it up in front of me. On the floor, I could see footprints, a mix of mud and leaves from the forest. Healy. They headed straight along the centre of the corridor, through the gates, in the direction of the stairs. As I followed them, I felt a mixture of anger and panic at his stupidity for trying to do this all by himself, alone and underpowered; at the idea of what may be awaiting him.
Midway along, I realized one of the doors to my left was slightly open, revealing an office. A desk had been turned over, as if toppled, chairs scattered too. A high window behind them looked over the long grass and knots of bushes on the lawn out front. Like a puddle of spilt paint, a little of the light from the room leaked out into the corridor, and I could see a series of signs hanging from the roof in front of me, pointing in different directions, to different parts of the building. Reception. Administrative offices. The North Wing. Something called the JJC Block.
Quickly, lightly, I headed up the stairs.
Another set of doors connected this newer part of the extension with what must have been the second floor of the original building. It was Victorian, polished marble floors, high ceilings, rooms and w
indows on either side. It was old, musty, airless, but it wasn’t in a state of decay, and it made me wonder how long the home had been shut. Did it close around the time that Grankin moved here? Was that another reason for him choosing to buy the house in Poland Gardens?
I refocused, passing the rooms.
They each appeared to have catered to different age groups, the remains of their previous life still evident: in the first few, big foam shapes, toys, pens, drawings that had fallen away from pinboards; then bookshelves, DVD boxes and old board games in the ones further down. At the end, another staircase wound back down to ground level, but not before I spotted something in the last room on the left: an old table-football game, uneven on its legs, its levers rusted, the glass cracked. It was just like the one East and Grankin had played on as kids – or maybe was the same one.
My attention drifted back to the stairs in front of me, and I took a couple of steps forward, peering over the side of the banister.
Darkness below.
But then distantly, almost beyond range, I started hearing something. Inching down to the second step, I looked again, still unable to see anything, but hearing it more clearly than ever. What was that? I continued my descent until, halfway down, I stopped again, staring into the shadows – and, like an explosion of fireworks, goosebumps scattered across my skin, along my back, the edges of my shoulder blades.
Because I knew what it was now.
I knew that noise.
It was someone crying.
65
At the bottom of the stairs, the building cleaved off in two separate directions: to a dining hall, out of reach beyond doors that had been chained shut; and then the other way, into a long, straight corridor that ploughed even deeper into the bowels of the building. Midway down, on the left, there was an open door, light flickering on and off inside, its glow spilling out into the hallway. As it did, shadows shifted and twisted all the way along, making it look like the whole corridor was moving, its walls alive, doorways changing shape and appearance. There was no mains electric – which meant it must have been a torch.
The crying was coming from that direction.
I switched off the light on my phone and looked behind me, through the glass panels in the dining-hall doors, knowing – logically – that there was no way anyone could come at me from there. The doors were chained, and there was no one else on the stairs. Any trouble was going to be in front of me. But I still felt hesitant, panicked.
As I stared along the corridor, at the light moving, at the gentle sound of sobbing, I closed my eyes again, trying to gather myself. I could feel the cut on my face throbbing, the pain of even older scars too, beneath my shirt. My head was hurting, my heart drumming in my ears. It was an orchestra, a wall of sound and doubt, and it felt like I was drowning in it. Before long, I started to worry that I was about to drop to the floor again, just like I’d done at the museum.
Not here. Not now.
Please not now.
I took a long, controlled breath, then opened my eyes again, searching the immediate area for something I could arm myself with. A voice played out in my head on repeat, warning me that I’d been drawn into this way too fast, but I ignored it and kept looking. Finally, tucked away out of sight, in a space next to the dining-hall doors, was an old broom. I grabbed it, removed the bristles and managed to break the damp wood of the handle in two. Shorter was going to be better: it wasn’t the best weapon, but it was heavy enough – and now it had a sharp, splintered end.
I turned back, looking along the hallway.
Quickly, something seemed to shift in the darkness further down, beyond the open door, beyond the light and the sound of crying. Was someone there?
Was someone watching me?
If I’d been spotted, it was too late to back out, so I started moving forward, quicker than before, heart hammering against my chest. The corridor kept on going, a tunnel of doors, one after the other like a film rerunning, the same scene being played over and over again. Two or three were open, the vague shapes of bunks still inside, stripped of their mattresses. These were all bedrooms. This was where Korman and Grankin had slept, where Calvin East had tried to fit in. The further I got, the deeper I was drawn, the more the smell seemed to change. It became more ingrained, a blight, settling as I got to the building’s core: old wood, mould, the tangy stench of iron.
I reached the room.
Inside were two sets of bunks against opposite walls, long since stripped of their mattresses, leaving just the frames and the wire springs. The room was small, windowless; a cupboard was at the back, open with nothing in it. A torch lay on the floor between the bunks, its light fanning out in a cone to reveal a cassette recorder like the one Healy and I had found on the pier. A tape was gently whirring inside.
The sound of crying was a recording.
It was a woman.
Automatically, I took a couple of steps closer, drawn to the noises she was making, hypnotized by the awful, guttural moans catching in her throat. My hands balled into fists, my muscles calcified.
It was Gail.
Gail’s on the tape.
As she tried to speak, her accent clear even in the few words she was able to get out, I realized it wasn’t the tears that were halting her voice in her throat.
It was her injuries.
Korman had recorded her as she lay there dying on the sofa in her flat, bleeding out over her dressing gown, over the furniture, the floor. In the background, in the spaces beyond her last, whispered cries for help, I could hear the television.
Stomach tightening, I found myself inching further inside before I even noticed what I was doing, my boots hitting a pool of water, leaking out of pipes in the corner of the room. I picked the torch up off the floor and went to switch the tape off.
Then I saw a flash of movement.
It was behind me, right on the periphery of my vision, coming out of the darkness of the corridor. I turned, trying to see what it was – and my movement saved me. A knife was driven straight across the back of my jacket, where my ribs had been a moment before. The material snicked and tore and I felt knuckles brush against my spine, the momentum of the thrust carrying the fist, the blade, the person, into the space beside me.
I shifted further around, the jagged broom handle in one hand, the torch in the other. Flipping the torch on its head, so the lamp and the rubberized casing were facing up, I retreated towards the back wall, water parting beneath my feet.
As I kept going, I hit the bottom edges of the bunk on the left, stumbling slightly, accidentally kicking the cassette deck across the floor, into the water. It turned on to its side, the lid of the tape deck flipping up, water running into it, into the machine itself, the recorder making a soft, fizzing sound as the electrics fused. I stopped as my boots hit the wall, watching as my attacker inched forward himself, into the dead centre of the room.
Victor Grankin.
He was wearing a grey mask.
It was the mask, the one he’d worn the night he’d waited for Korman outside Searle House – right down to the crack on the left-hand side. He stood there, tall, thin, blinking inside the eyeholes, dressed in black tracksuit trousers and a black T-shirt, mud-streaked canvas shoes on his feet.
In his fist was a hunting knife.
He adjusted the mask, pushing it harder against his face, as if trying to fuse himself with it, his eyes glinting in the low light, and then inched towards me. His feet hit the pool of water, knife in front of him, swiping it through the air right to left, its serrated edge making a whipping sound; a thick, brutal noise.
He must have heard us approaching, seen me out in the forest around his house, then made a break for this place. Why?
The recording of Gail.
He’d used it to draw me in, trying to distract me long enough to put a knife between my ribs. And the only reason to do that was because there was something else hidden here that he didn’t want me to find.
He looked around him.
‘We used to sleep in this room,’ he said, seven inconsequential words that seemed to carry so much threat. His accent was heavy, even all these years on, deadened slightly by the mask. A few more steps, the hem of his trousers soaking up the water. ‘Did you like the tape?’
He was trying to force a mistake out of me.
I said nothing, gripping the broom harder.
‘I thought you might like it. I knew you’d be drawn to it, like a – how do you say? – moth to a flame.’
When I gave him nothing, he started making a grotesque noise, a gurgling sound: Gail struggling, choking to death, her last moments, every lost word.
‘You’d better get used to that sound,’ I said.
‘Yes?’ He stopped, eyes fixed on me. The mask gave him a weird, alien look: only a faint hint of moulded lips, of definition in the cheeks. ‘Yes?’ His gaze flicked from me to the remnants of the broom handle, then to the torch. ‘You are going to end my life with those things?’
‘I’m going to try.’
‘I never realized you were a killer.’
‘It’s over,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘For you maybe.’
‘The police are on their way.’
A flicker of panic in his eyes. I didn’t actually know if the police were coming or not. I didn’t know whether I’d given Craw enough to work with. I’d had to hang up on her when I saw Healy had already come inside. But she had Grankin’s home address now. I’d told her about St David’s. She’d said she believed me.
And then I thought: Healy.
Where the hell is Healy?
Grankin pulled me back into the moment, another step closer, swiping the knife from side to side, just a blur in his hands. There was ten feet between us. ‘The police are not coming,’ Grankin said.
‘They are.’
‘You wouldn’t call them.’
‘I would.’
‘You would expose your lies?’
‘To expose yours?’ I nodded. ‘Absolutely.’
His eyes narrowed, the knife dropping away slightly. For a second, it was like he was standing down, finally cognizant of the fact that the end was coming.