Brice’s left hand rams into the back of Johanssen’s neck, forcing him forward—the right grabs at his jacket and shirt and pulls them up over his head, and rips away the dressing on his back.
One gloved finger probes the wound. The pain jabs into him. His breath catches.
“You see,” Brice whispers, “once you’ve made the first cut, the rest—is—easy—”
The finger probes deeper, working its way under his skin. The pain’s burning now. He locks his jaw against it, squeezes his eyes closed. Lights dance against his eyelids.
“I could open you up,” Brice whispers. “I could open you right up.” His laugh’s soft, close, intimate. “All we need is time.”
Suddenly Brice hauls him upright. The wound slams against the back of the chair. Brice’s hand closes round his throat, squeezing. He can’t breathe. He chokes.
“This is just the start,” Brice says, and he raises his fist.
The blade. He sees the blade first, sees it slicing through the tape, flinches against the cut but it doesn’t come. Cate is beside him, her head bowed as she works on the bindings. His left arm comes free, then his left leg. She looks up, and her face is white.
“Don’t move,” she says as she shifts around to the other side.
The pain in his back is raw and ragged. His head throbs. He can taste blood again.
You walked into it. You thought without proof he’d do nothing? You should have seen it coming.
His right arm comes free, his right leg. He draws a breath, tries to stand. The blood pulses in his head—
“I said don’t move.” Her mouth’s a thin tight line. “What did he do?”
“My back,” he says.
She eases him out of his jacket and pulls up his shirt. For a few seconds she’s silent, then she says, “What about your head?” She hasn’t touched the wound.
“My head’s fine.”
“Crap. He punched you,” she says. “You blacked out.”
She checks his eyes and his skull, then says, “Take your shirt off and lie down.”
When he stands, the room shifts fractionally: he has to hold onto the chair for a second.
He lies facedown on a treatment bed with his head turned away from her, feeling the light cool pressure of her fingertips on the edges of the wound. “You should have had this stitched the first time,” she says. She doesn’t say, This will hurt.
For a few minutes she’s silent as she works. He closes his eyes, waits out the pain. At last she says, “How important is it? For you to be here. How important?”
He doesn’t reply.
She says, “First it was outside the compound, and it was quick. Now it’s in the clinic, and he didn’t hurry, did he? What’s next?”
I could open you right up.
She says, “Brice will come back, and next time it will be worse.”
When she’s finished she moves away, and he sits up on the bed. The wound’s settled into a low raw burn. His head’s still pounding.
She pulls off the gloves, bins them. She doesn’t look at him. “I don’t want you in the clinic tonight,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
She raises her head. Her eyes are bleak. “Don’t make me deal with what he does to you next. Go back to America. Go back to Victorville. Get out before he comes back.”
He lies on his side on the bunk. The wound in his back throbs. When he closes his eyes he can still feel Brice’s fingers digging into his flesh.
Eventually he dozes, but he dreams: the farmhouse again, but this time the scream isn’t Terry Cunliffe’s. It’s his own.
He wakes sweating. Stumbles into the washroom, runs the cold tap into a glass, gulps it down too fast. Stands panting by the sink. The shaving mirror reflects his face back at him, strained and ghostly.
You should run.
He hasn’t run from a job since Terry Cunliffe. Eight years. They said he was unreliable, but they were wrong, he’s proved them wrong. He won’t prove them right now.
The certainty’s almost physical, sitting cold and hard behind the wall of his chest, like a stone heart.
Time to finish it.
DAY 18: SATURDAY–DAY 20: MONDAY
KARLA
An amateur would have waited until the middle of the night. Two in the morning, or three: when the side streets, even in this part of Chelsea, are quiet. But why would a woman be letting herself into an office building at three in the morning?
So it’s eleven fifteen on Saturday night when I walk past the parked cars, heading for Ian Graves’s practice. There’s a taxi pulled up against the curb thirty meters from the front door, and as I pass I can make out Robbie’s heavy profile behind the wheel, but he doesn’t glance at me, and I’m too busy reaching into my bag for a key; except it isn’t the key to this place, and it won’t open the door. But it’s appearances that matter. The street’s largely residential. If a neighbor glances out of their window at the wrong moment, I want to ensure that nothing they see looks remotely criminal.
So here I am, a respectable woman, letting myself into a building with my own key, with no attempt at concealment. See how I appear to fit the key into the lock, and see how the glossy black door swings open for me, and I step inside and close the door quietly behind me. I must work here. I must have left something behind on Friday, and I’ve come back after a night out to pick it up. There’s nothing to worry about.
It’s Louis who opens the door for me as I present my key to the lock. He slipped into the ghost house next door hours ago, and has been carefully, methodically working his way to this point ever since—bypassing the alarm and the motion sensors, easing his way past the window locks, and then pulling the blinds before turning his attention to the front door. When I switch the hall light on—switching a light on is what innocent people do, after all—he flinches and blinks doubtfully at me, but he says nothing. I’m halfway down the corridor when he turns the light off again, plunging me into darkness, but by then I have a torch in my hand.
The file must be here somewhere. All I have to do is find it.
At the end of the passage Graves’s door stands ajar. For a few seconds I wait in the doorway, listening—a siren wails along the King’s Road—then I click the light on.
Paneled walls, armchairs, coffee table, desk. I try the desk drawers first, but more in hope than expectation. They hold pens and pads, a digital recorder for dictation, a spare power cable, a computer mouse. No files.
Across the room the glazed bookcase houses only journals and books.
I go back to the hallway, where Louis is waiting for me, and nod toward the staircase.
On the first-floor landing there are three doors. One opens onto another consulting room; a second hides a lavatory; a third, an office with a window overlooking the back—Louis immediately closes the blind—two desks with computers and phones, a couple of spare chairs, a photocopier, a scanner, and three filing cabinets, all locked. Louis looks at the cabinets and then at me: the look says, Open? It’ll only take him a minute. But I shake my head. Four psychiatrists are registered at this practice. Three filing cabinets aren’t room enough to store the records of one of them, let alone four.
“There’s a file store somewhere else.” Two doors open off the office, but one reveals a coat cupboard and the other a kitchenette.
We move through the upper rooms. We find two more consulting rooms, a bathroom, and a storeroom for spare furniture and stationery. We don’t find any records.
But there was a cardboard file on Graves’s desk, with Catherine Gallagher’s name on it, and he made notes, handwritten notes—
I go back down to the ground floor and Graves’s office.
I look at the furniture again. Then I look at the floor.
It’s good-quality carpet, but it’s been down for a few years, and the wear patterns are starting to show: the pile’s flattened just inside the door, and in front of the armchairs, and behind the heavy desk
where Graves maneuvers his chair. But there’s another faint patch of wear directly in front of a section of the paneling.
I cross to it. Step onto it, and turn. There is no picture, no mirror, no view: nothing that would draw anyone to this point in the room.
I go back to the doorway and switch the overhead light off, then return to the paneled wall. This time I angle the torch beam at forty-five degrees to the paneling.
Above the worn patch a straight one-millimeter gap runs down between two panels from floor to ceiling.
I kneel down and run the beam along the base of the paneling at floor level. There’s a gap of two millimeters between the lower edge of the paneling and the carpet. Then a few feet to the left, another tiny vertical gap in the paneling, floor to ceiling again. A concealed door.
I rise and I press my gloved hands against the panels, one after another. Nothing gives.
I step back. Louis is standing in the doorway, watching. As I move away, he steps forward. I don’t need to ask him to open it.
But it’s another fifteen minutes before Louis clambers off his knees, and the paneling cracks and opens.
My torch beam plays over hundreds of files, suspended on hangers from floor to ceiling in the recess.
There must be an organizing principle here: alphabetical, probably, but with some distinction between current patients and those he no longer sees … G for “Gallagher,” where is she?
Louis’s mobile buzzes softly, and he walks out of the room.
I pull one file out, Madison, and then another—Kirby—
A whisper from the hallway, a single-syllable obscenity: I only catch the tone. Then the insistent beeping of the alarm system.
In one corner of Graves’s office, the motion-sensor light blinks—on-off, on-off—as it starts to reset.
What?
Louis’s dark outline appears in the doorway. I flash the torch toward him. His eyes are wide and desperate.
“Turn it off,” he whispers. “Don’t move.”
I click the torch off. The alarm stops beeping. The red light in the corner goes constant.
I am standing in the dark, in Graves’s office, with a torch in my hand and the file store housing Graves’s records open behind me, and no good reason to be here, and I cannot move a fraction of an inch, because if I do, the motion sensor will set off the alarm.
My eyes strain toward the dark doorway where Louis stands. I want to ask him what’s happened, why he’s reset the alarm system, but I can’t even see his face.
Then another noise reaches me: a key, turning in the front door.
As soon as the door opens the alarm begins its warning beep again. The light goes on in the hallway—there are footsteps and then someone giggles and a female voice hisses, “The alarm, the alarm.”
More footsteps. Someone must have keyed in the code: the alarm stops beeping. In the corner of Graves’s office, the red light of the motion sensor blinks off.
I take one big gasping breath, mouth wide to cut the noise. My heart’s racing. Louis’s breathing is hoarse. The dim light filtering down from the hallway catches the sweat beading his dark skin.
I search the room for a hiding place. There’s nowhere.
The woman laughs, high pitched, a little out of control. She’s been drinking. She says: “Fuck me now.”
I know the voice. It’s the butter-wouldn’t-melt receptionist, the cabinet minister’s wife with her shiny hair and her dull clothes and her air of quiet contentment. Robbie, out front, must have seen them coming—recognized the woman from yesterday’s stakeout, realized she could only be coming here, and flashed a warning to Louis. And Louis knew the first thing she’d do would be to deactivate the alarm, so he switched it back on again.
“Fuck … me,” she says again.
“Right here?” A male voice, one I don’t recognize, and nowhere near as drunk: he’s the one in control here.
She giggles. “On the desk.”
Faint sounds that I can’t quite place. Then the scrape of a chair on a wooden floor, and a little surprised gasp from her, and a laugh from the man—warm, encouraging—and she moans.
Louis and I stand frozen. The sounds begin to build.
Suddenly Louis nods at me, then slips noiselessly out of the doorway into the corridor.
Follow him? No. Find the file. Be ready to move.
I click the torch on again. The file in my hand is Eames. I slide it back into its hanger as quietly as I can, then run the torch to the right. Faris. Georghiou.
In the front reception, the sounds are building to a climax.
Gallagher, C. There it is. I pull it out, flick it open. The top sheet’s just a form: her name, address, home phone number. I flick on: pages and pages of notes, in longhand. I have what I came for.
In the front reception, the woman cries out, once, twice, three times, and the man gives a shuddering gasp, and then the noises stop.
Where’s Louis now?
If this goes tits up, we’ll shop you.
Has he made his escape? Is he outside now, moving back toward the ghost house, leaving me to it?
I can’t blame him. He’s got Kyle to think of.
A few more seconds of silence, then, from the front reception, the clearing of throats, the adjustment of clothing.
There’s no reason why they should come in here. I kill the torch beam anyway. Footsteps in the hall: her heels, his leather-soled brogues. No talking now. Maybe they’re sated, comfortable. Or maybe they just have nothing more to say to each other.
The latch rattles. The front door creaks open—thank God—
Then, “Wait,” she says, “I need to do the alarm.”
Eight seconds later, in the top corner of Graves’s study the red light of the motion sensor winks into life, and the alarm starts to beep.
There isn’t time to get out of here. All I can do is sit down, in Graves’s chair, place Catherine Gallagher’s file on the desk and fold my hands over it.
Then the building goes dark, the front door closes, and the red light goes constant again.
I’ve lost all sense of time. I’m wearing a watch, but my sleeve covers it and I can’t move. My mobile’s in my pocket: it buzzes, once, against my hip—is it Robbie, or Sean?—but I can’t answer: all I can do is stare at the motion sensor and try to control my breathing.
Minutes pass. Streets away, another police siren wails and flees.
How long can I stay in this position? How long before muscle fatigue and cramps begin to tell? Or will I sit here all night, and all tomorrow, too? Will the receptionist let herself back in on Monday morning—her clothes fresh, shiny hair perfect, makeup unsmudged—and find me still sitting in this chair?
Robbie won’t let that happen. But Robbie can’t get me out of here either: for that he needs Louis. If Louis has vanished, he’ll have to improvise. Call up support. Call up Craigie.
How long will it take? How long can I hold out?
How many minutes have passed now? Fifteen? Twenty? Some people have the knack of judging time. I don’t. I wish I knew how long it’s been.
My hands are folded over the file in a protective gesture. It reminds me of Ian Graves.
If I had light, and the file open in front of me, at least then I might know what it was he was trying to hide. At least I’d have something to read.
I’m still paralyzed in my chair, hands folded across the file, muscles screaming in my neck, when there’s a faint noise from the hallway and the motion-sensor light winks out.
Louis.
For a moment I just sit there, frozen. Then I lean forward until my forehead rests on my hands, and I close my eyes.
Louis’s voice comes from the doorway, a soft, uncertain “Hello?” I raise my head.
He has a torch in his hand, and he plays it across my face, then lets it drop.
I don’t say, You bastard, I thought you’d left me. I don’t have to. He’s seen my face.
It’s gone 3:00 a.m. on Sunday when I get
back to my apartment. Before I left Graves’s office I used a small hi-res camera to copy the file’s contents, obsessively checking every shot against the original page to make sure I’d missed nothing. Then I returned the file to its hanger. I left first, and alone. Robbie and Sean will stay in position until Louis himself is clear, the doors and windows closed and locked, the alarm reset. We have been careful. Nothing is disarranged. No one will ever know we were there.
I can’t sleep until I’ve read those pages.
I plug the camera into my laptop, transfer the file, press PRINT, then set coffee on to brew.
I never drink it. Within three minutes the pages have claimed me.
Graves and I have something in common. He too is a collector of data.
The form first. Name, address, phone number. Occupation: junior account manager (advertising). The space for a work contact number is blank; so is the section for her GP’s details. Then the notes themselves: every meeting over a fifteen-month period logged and detailed. There’s something remorseless about the marching characters.
It’s all there, exactly as Graves described it. The distant, demanding father, the emotionally absent mother, a childhood of conditional love—conditional on achievement, good school reports, exams passed with flying colors … I picture Catherine as a serious child at the dinner table, still in her school uniform, her blond hair in plaits, fresh from her textbooks or her piano practice, yearning to impress.
Another meeting, and another, and another. The sleepless nights. The sense of worthlessness. The fear of that catastrophic mistake, of being unmasked as simply not good enough … I battle my way through the jargon to the last visit she made before she disappeared, looking for a hint of a confession, the first clue to the fact that she confided in Graves. And then I go back to the beginning and start all over again, this time looking for a gap, an edit, because Graves may have been afraid of a warrant, may have removed all mention of what Catherine did in case Ellis came back.
There’s no clue. There’s no gap. Just a woman’s despair reduced to a set of syndromes; clever names for pain.
The Distance: A Thriller Page 24