by Sophie Green
Chapter 13
The Brave Dr Lankin
The last death they found was the most recent, that of Balthazar Minos. As far as Lil could tell it was the only one that occurred outside the Secure Wing, but then Minos was a victim not a perpetrator. There was a picture of the steel-hearted former governor standing at the foot of the Needle during the press conference he gave after the apparent suicide of Dr Hans Carvel. Minos had a white buzz cut and a thick moustache that obscured his top lip. He was squat and solid and someone, or something, had crushed him to a pulp.
Nedly looked sadly at the photograph. ‘Do you think he was killed because he found out what Gallows was up to, that the epidemic was a fake?’
Lil shrugged. ‘Maybe he was about to spill the beans?’ The caption below the photograph read ‘Governor Minos welcomes Carvel’s replacement, Dr Alector Lankin’.
Lankin was standing well behind Minos, modestly shying away from the limelight. ‘Those prisoners were all safely locked up in the Secure Wing, but Gallows still managed to get at them. Do you think we should warn Dr Lankin? He’s trapped in there too.’
‘I’m surprised he’s still around.’ Nedly frowned. ‘I would have thought he would have been on Gallows’ list too. He used to work with Carvel at Rorschach. It was Lankin’s observations that Carvel recorded in Gallows’ psychiatric report, remember?’ He leant over to study the photograph.
Lil grasped the edge of the table excitedly. ‘Maybe he’s in league with Gallows, maybe that’s how he’s getting to the prisoners. Maybe they’ve always been in league with each other? It would explain a lot.
‘I mean, it can’t be easy for Gallows to get into the prison without some reason for visiting and now that the epidemic has been declared it must be almost impossible. He must have someone on the inside!’
‘He does,’ said Nedly, his eyes hardening.
‘Exactly!’ Lil exclaimed and then she added, ‘What do you mean?’
Nedly pursed his lips. ‘Look up Lankin on the cards.’
‘He’s right there.’ She prodded the photograph.
‘No, find an earlier one. See if there’s one from before the asylum burnt down.’
Lil found Lankin’s name in the files and then rolled back the stack to retrieve a copy of the Chronicle from fifteen years earlier, it had been taken when the young doctor, Alector Lankin, had first started work at Rorschach. In the picture he was standing with his colleague, Hans Carvel, both were wearing bow ties and grins with their lab coats. Lankin’s coat was undone and a generous belly swelled over the cinch of his trousers. In between his curly hair and his beard he wore thick framed glasses and had rosy apple cheeks.
‘Spot the difference,’ said Nedly.
Lil held the pictures up against each other. Even at a distance she could see that the Dr Lankin in the later photograph was older, naturally, and he was a lot thinner too; the years hadn’t been kind and his once amiable face was gaunt and sallow-looking. But there was something else … It was difficult to tell with the differences of scale, but if she had to guess, Lil would also have said he had grown about fifteen centimetres taller.
‘They’re not the same man.’
She took the magnifying glass out of her rucksack and used it to peer more closely at the later picture. The image spread out beneath the lens, until it was just a pattern of dots, but something about the formation was familiar. Lil drew back, dropping the glass as finally she saw what Nedly had seen. Between Lankin’s dark curly hair and full beard his eyes were sunken and colourless. Eyes they had seen before.
Nedly nodded grimly. ‘The first photograph is Alector Lankin, former psychiatrist at Rorschach Asylum and the second photograph is Cornelius Gallows, former patient, pretending to be Lankin.’
Lil flumped back in her chair, exclaiming, ‘So that’s where he went!’ Then she sat forward again. ‘So, if he’s in there, where’s Lankin?’
Nedly gave an open-handed shrug. ‘Maybe he didn’t survive the original fire? Gallows said he stole a dead doctor’s lab coat to make his escape. Maybe it was Lankin’s?’
‘Good point.’ Lil rubbed her fingertips against her temples in small circles, thinking hard. ‘So we know how Gallows got in. How is he getting out, past the quarantine?’
‘He doesn’t need to; he can send the ghosts out from there. What’s more, as long as he’s behind bars and the epidemic is going on, no one can touch him. He’s completely safe.’
Lil gave her pencil a thoughtful twirl. ‘So, if our theory is correct and, as Monbatsu said, the cases are connected, then, unlike the Firebug, there were witnesses to these spook attacks – lots of them, only none of them lived to tell the tale; they all ended up in the Fright File!’
Lil switched on the photocopier and waited while it shunted to life. ‘Even without the ghosts, what we have here is an evil genius back from the dead masquerading as a prison doctor and then faking an epidemic so he can murder the prisoners in his care. Nedly, this is going to be bigger than the exposé on City Hall. This is going to be the scoop of the year.’
She began haphazardly photocopying the newspaper articles, throwing the pages face-down onto the glass top while the green scanning light paced back and forth across the surface. Discarded papers piled up as the copier spewed out duplicates on the other side.
Lil and Nedly stood together, looking down at the pile of evidence at their feet. The grim mugshots and court drawings stared back up at them. After the last two copied articles had landed on the floor, revealing their images of the younger Lankin at Rorschach and the fake Lankin in the background at the Carvel press conference, Nedly raised his eyebrows expectantly.
‘So, what do we do now?’
‘I was thinking maybe it’s time to get a hot dog,’ said Lil.
Chapter 14
How Do You Like Those Onions?
The corner of Fig Street was banked up with piles of snow that looked like dirty fleece.
Lil and Nedly loitered a short distance away from the hot dog cart, pretending to browse the magazines at the newsstand on the other side of the road.
Minnie the hot dog seller was wearing two hats. Around her neck was a woollen snood, and beneath the brown apron that was tied round her waist she wore a padded jacket under a tatty sheepskin body warmer. Her snow boots were too big but three thick layers of socks made up the difference. Even so, her freckled cheeks were dull and chapped-looking and the tip of her nose was so red it was almost glowing.
‘She’s not going to talk to you without Abe.’
Lil gave Nedly a ye-of-little-faith type look. ‘Watch this.’
She slipped her way across the road but got held up climbing over the shovelled snow and by the time she had neared the cart a spry man in a black-leather bomber jacket and a Russian fur hat had beaten them to it.
Lil waited behind him, twiddling her pencil impatiently. Warm steam blew off Minnie’s cart carrying with it the sweet smell of frying onions on the hotplate. Nedly drew up alongside and the man, who was still deciding on what to order, started shifting and looking warily over his shoulder. By the time Nedly realised what he had done, the man had scarpered, slipping over in the ice in his hurry to get away.
Nedly was mortified. Lil gave him a sympathetic shrug that quickly morphed into to a look that meant, On the bright side, we are at the front of the queue now, and turned to the hot dog seller with what she hoped was a charming grin.
‘What’s up, Minnie?’ With a wink Lil flicked her pencil onto the hot plate. Minnie expertly retrieved it with her tongs and offered it back to her.
‘Sorry,’ said Lil, reclaiming the greasy pencil. ‘So –’ she thinned her lips out and murmured stiffly through the side of them – ‘What do you hear?’
Minnie narrowed her eyes at Lil. ‘Me? Nothing.’
‘It’s all right, Minnie.’ Lil dropped a second wink. ‘We met a few months ago – I’m an associate of Abe Mandrel. The name’s Potkin. Lil,’ she added.
Recognition d
awned on Minnie’s face. ‘Potkin? Say, maybe you do look familiar. ‘So, what can I get you Potkin Lil?’
‘It’s the other way round,’ Lil said, her ear tips going red.
Minnie looked confused. ‘What can you get me?’
‘No, I meant –’
‘It’s all right, kid. I was just ribbing you. Sure, I remember. You’re Mandrel’s sidekick.’
‘Associate,’ Lil corrected her, ‘and what I’m looking for is information.’
Minnie shook her head. ‘Is that right? Well, this here is a hot dog stand so …’
Lil realised her mistake immediately. She had forgotten she needed to buy a hot dog for cover. ‘Oh, um, right. Sorry.’ Her ears burnt painfully in the cold. ‘I’ll take one with the works,’ she said loud enough for anyone who was listening to hear, winking again as she said the word ‘works’, and then, more quietly, ‘and hold everything but the onion and ketchup.’ She dug her hands into her pocket and pulled out a fistful of small change. There wasn’t much to it.
‘Actually, maybe I’ll just take a bun. How much would that be?’
‘Just one bun on its own is seventy.’
Nedly looked appraisingly at the hotplate. ‘Maybe get some onions?’
Lil counted up the money in her palm. ‘How much for the onions?’
Minnie sighed. ‘That would be ninety all together.’
Lil beamed. ‘Great – chuck a couple of those on too.’
‘You want a bun with some onions in it?’
‘Yeah, is that OK?’ Minnie shrugged. ‘And a thick slice of whatever else you’ve got.’ Lil raised her eyebrows meaningfully and spoke out of the corner of her mouth again. ‘By which I mean information.’
‘You’re a real piece of work, kid. All right – because you’re a friend of Abe’s I’ll play ball. What is it you want to know?’ She set to work on the bun – sawing it in half and flipping over some onions to get them good and brown, while Lil pretended to read the label of the bottle of mustard.
‘What do you know about the Needle?’
Minnie frowned at the hotplate. ‘The word on the street is that the former prison governor Minos was being blackmailed and on the night he was killed, he had arranged to meet a reporter from the Klaxon, over at the multi-storey. He was ready to sing, only someone got to him first, and silenced him for good.’
‘Anyone know who did it?’
‘No one who’s talking to me.’
‘How about the epidemic?’
Minnie handed Lil the hot dog bun. It was soft and warm. ‘The Secure Wing for the Criminally Insane is officially in lockdown. No one can get in; no one can get out. The epidemic was declared by the egghead in charge there, Dr Lankin. He used to work up at Rorschach.’ She piled onions inside the bun. ‘Not that anyone has reason to doubt him; by all accounts he’s a stand-up guy.’
Lil and Nedly exchanged glances.
Lil squirted a careful line of ketchup across the onion bun and said, ‘Rorschach burnt down years ago and Lankin only took up his post at the Needle after that other doctor, Carvel, got iced – I mean, burnt to death. So, anyone know where he was in between times?’ She took a big bite that threatened to pull all of the onions out of the bun with it.
Minnie took a gulp of tea out of an ‘I heart Peligan City’ mug that must have been older than Lil was, and took a guess. ‘Abroad?’
‘Murmph.’ Lil shrugged, chomping away, trying to disengage the onions.
Minnie looked thoughtful. ‘Do you think he brought something back with him? Some kind of exotic germ?’
Lil shook her head vigorously. ‘Mo,’ she said, gulping away the half-chewed onions. ‘I don’t think he left town. I think he was here the whole time.’ She levered up the Cryptic Eyebrow but Minnie didn’t catch it.
‘Whatever that epidemic is, it won’t stay in there for ever,’ Minnie murmured, drawing her body warmer closer, and looking uneasily in the direction of Nedly, who froze.
Very slowly he took a step to one side but the direction of Minnie’s gaze didn’t alter. She wasn’t looking at him; she was looking into the distance where the Needle pierced the sky, its tip vanishing into snow clouds.
‘I heard that quarantine has been breached,’ she told them. ‘Someone has another way in and they’re using it.’ Lil was poised to take another bite but decided against it, just in case. ‘And Minos, and Ping, and all those big shots aside, I’ve heard that plenty of ordinary people have gone missing lately too, and then wound up dead and no one knows what they died from.’
Lil hesitated. ‘You think it’s connected?’
Minnie shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
Lil wrapped a serviette round the remainder of her onion bun, stowing it away in her mac pocket for later. ‘Have you heard if anyone is investigating? Like the police?’
Minnie smirked. ‘Generally cops aren’t interested in cases they can’t solve, and no one cares about prisoners getting iced so long as whatever is in there doesn’t get out.’
Lil gave Nedly a cynical look.
Minnie continued, ‘But a couple of beat cops I know, Mucklehammer and Dingus, took an interest in following it up, trying to find out about some of the people round here who disappeared, but they were warned off by City Hall. They were told that there’s a crack team working on the crimes and everyone else is locked out.’
‘Is that true?’
‘I wish I knew! Gordian isn’t sloppy. She’s got herself walled up in the Mayor’s Office and no one between her and those shiny walls knows what’s going on.’
‘And the Klaxon?’
‘They’re on the case of the epidemic, so my guess is they have someone on the inside, just like they did with City Hall.’
‘Randall Collar,’ Lil breathed admiringly. ‘So, do you think there will be someone like him in the prison? An undercover reporter?’
Minnie took a sip of the now cold tea, winced and chucked it on the snow. ‘I’d bet on it.’
Lil chewed the end of the greasy pencil thoughtfully. ‘Do you think anyone knows who it is?’
Minnie looked at Lil for a moment, like she was about to say something and then changed her mind. ‘If they’re any good, no one will know who they are.’
Lil spat a few crumbs of chewed wood out and gave Minnie the Penetrating Squint. ‘Are you one of those people?’
Minnie turned back to her hotplate and rolled the dogs over with the tongs. Her fingers were red at the ends of her fingerless gloves and the nails were bitten close. ‘Me?’ She snorted a quick chuckle and flipped the onions a couple of times. ‘I just sell hot dogs.’
Chapter 15
Scooped
The Klaxon wasn’t delivered that morning, and neither was the flyer for the Black Pug Eatery.
Standing on the front-door mat Lil rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and flicked through the pile of junk mail once again.
Nedly stared anxiously at the papers. ‘Is it there?’
Lil gave him a tired look. ‘No, it hasn’t materialised since I last looked in this same pile a minute ago.’ She unleashed a massive yawn. ‘Sorry! I pulled an all-nighter to get my report typed up.’ She tapped her rucksack happily. ‘All ready for delivery.’ The report was addressed to PO Box 777, Peligan City, where all submissions and tip-offs to the Klaxon newsdesk were sent. Although no such post office box really exisited; Lil had checked.
Nedly wasn’t comforted. ‘If this morning’s edition hasn’t come, maybe something is wrong at the Klaxon HQ? Maybe something has happened!’ He gasped. ‘Did you remember to put the index file boxes back in the reading room?’
Lil gritted her teeth. ‘No, I forgot, but it can’t be that. It’s probably just been delivered to the wrong house.’ They exchanged a look of dread. Suddenly feeling more awake Lil searched through the junk mail again, more thoroughly and with a hint of panic. ‘Maybe there’s been a bust?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Do you think we were followed there? I mean, I’m usually so careful, but I was really foc
used on getting the background on the spooks for my report – maybe I wasn’t careful enough?
‘We should get to the library, see if something is going down. Maybe we can get a lift.’ She yelled up the stairs: ‘Mum? Mum? MUM?’ But Naomi wasn’t there.
The bus into town didn’t show up either. Lil and Nedly waited on the corner for thirty minutes and then started walking. The snow on the streets was so thick that it looked like a puffy reflection of the sky, the whiteness only broken up by the familiar grey of the buildings in between. Lil trudged doggedly onwards, dreading what they would find at the library but determined to see it anyway.
It wasn’t until they reached the small row of shops a couple of blocks away that Lil realised they hadn’t seen another person the whole morning. The compacted snow on the previously well-trodden paths was now mysteriously empty. She stopped and looked around. A face briefly appeared at a window only to be replaced by the swing of a curtain. Shop signs were unanimously turned to ‘closed’.
And then suddenly there was a lot of people. A crowd was gathered on the corner of Spooner Row, all looking dumbstruck and shaking their heads. Around them it looked like there had been a paper explosion: reams of newsprint bleeding grey ink were plastered onto windows and lamp posts; pages cartwheeled in the wind and became lodged in the snow.
Outside the newsagents a dispenser hung open, its glass-and-metal jaw dropping aghast, the lock jemmied off. Lil ran over to it and reached inside; a few papers remained, but it wasn’t the advert-padded Herald. This paper was smaller and thinner, a folded news pamphlet. Lil knew before she laid her hands on it that it was the Klaxon. For the first time in their history, they had done a bumper print run – a big story, hot off the press. Too important to just reach their handful of subscribers, this was a story they thought everyone should know and they had gone all out to tell them.
The headline yelled a single bold word into the silence.
HAUNTED?
An exposé by Marsha Quake
For weeks a dark cloud has hung over Peligan City. This is not the rain cloud we’re so familiar with. This is a cloud of menace and fear. Ordinary citizens have been kept in the dark while the city is held in the grip of a terrible foe. Within these pages we lay out the evidence highlighting the extent of the cover-up and an expert opinion from the man who helped us break the story, paranormal investigator Irving Starkey.