by Sarah Rayne
He said, ‘You used your charity work, didn’t you? That was where you found your victims.’ Keep talking, Thalia, because the more I can find out before I jump on you, the better.
‘That’s intelligent of you, Dan. Yes, it was almost all through the charity work, although I never saw them as victims, you know. They were sacrifices. Libations. But yes, they all came from the boring endless charity work. Committees to help drop-outs, misfits, homeless. Everyone thought I was so good, so selfless. And perhaps at the beginning I was. But after Edmund died . . .
‘You killed the most suitable,’ said Dan with mounting horror.
‘Yes. But I’ve only taken four, no more than that. Counting Quincy, there will only be four.’ There was a note almost of placation, as if she was saying, only that small number. Nobody could blame me for so few.
‘Quincy?’ said Dan.
‘Imogen’s friend. I need her hands. Artist’s hands,’ said Thalia. ‘And I could easily have taken more. You would be surprised how many of the homeless or the drug addicts or the drunks were once young people of great promise.’
‘I wouldn’t.’ This had to be the maddest conversation anyone had ever had. ‘It’s often the truly gifted people who crack.’
Thalia said, ‘I took only the best. Only those in Edmund’s image. The first was a young man who was a student of law, but a keen athlete in his spare time. He was lean and lissom.’ A pause, and a small, secret smile. ‘He took to drugs though, that young man. I found him through one of my very early committees – a counselling service for one of the student bodies. The heroin was already starting to destroy him by then, and he was easily lured,’ said Thalia, and again there was the travesty of a smile. A lady remembering a past and pleasant lover. Dan wondered if she would remember him like that. No, she would not, because he was not going to die.
He said, with cold politeness, ‘I hope he wasn’t HIV positive, Thalia.’
She laughed. ‘Of course he was not, Dan. None of them were. Do you think I wouldn’t have checked that? The counselling service was very particular about its records.’
‘Who else?’
‘Oh, next was a young French boy who had been studying dancing with the Ballet Rambert. His ankle was badly broken in a car crash, and he had to give up dancing. He became clinically depressed as a result. Again that was the student counselling service.’
‘A useful source,’ said Dan, politely.
‘Very.’ She paused, and then said, ‘The last was a young Irishman, a Roman Catholic ordinand struggling with the vow of celibacy.’ This time the smile was wolfish and Dan thought: she enjoyed that one! ‘Ironically he came to talk to the French boy,’ said Thalia. ‘We met over discussions about the boy’s rehabilitation.’ A quick gesture with one hand. ‘You see? Only the very, very best. Strength and beauty and music and philosophy. And art.’
Dan said, ‘Quincy?’
‘Yes. Edmund must be given every gift and every grace, exactly as the bitch-creature Imogen was given. And Quincy is immensely talented. Edmund will have artist’s hands, sensitive and gifted.’
So Quincy, whoever she is, is not yet dead, thought Dan. ‘Yes, I see,’ he said. His mind was still racing, but he asked, very softly, ‘And what about the heart, Thalia?’
Thalia took a moment to reply, but when she did, Dan felt as if he had been plunged neck deep into a freezing cold lake of black water.
‘The heart,’ she said, softly. ‘The final ingredient. A fresh, warm, living heart. Tomorrow night I shall extract the sweetest revenge of all on Imogen, who lived when she should have died in Edmund’s place. Tomorrow at midnight Imogen will be brought here and as dawn breaks I shall remove her beating heart so that Edmund can live.’
‘You’re mad,’ said Dan, staring at her in horror. ‘You’re absolutely mad. You do know that?’
‘Tomorrow, Dan, we shall see which of us is mad and which is sane,’ said Thalia, and nodded to the hunchback. ‘Knock him out,’ she said. ‘And then tie him up and leave him down here.’ She paused, and the smile lifted her lips again, but now it was the cruel, thin smile of the ogress. Margot, thought Dan. ‘Because since we have him,’ said the ogress, in her attractive, slightly husky voice, ‘it would be a pity not to make use of him.’
It had afforded Thalia a degree of pleasure to relive, however briefly, those weeks before she left London, searching for the young men who would make fitting sacrifices. There had been such dark, sensuous pleasure in luring them to bed. She thought that no one had guessed and even if anyone had, there was nothing criminal about ladies of a certain age lusting after the sweet young bodies of boys.
She had loved all three of the young men who had died. The young lawyer so hungry for heroin that he would do anything to get it, hiring his body to women – or men – who would pay enough. He had been easy to lure to the London flat, and easy to kill while he was fathoms down in the drug-induced visions.
The dancer had been easy as well. He had been embittered and sunk deep in self-pity, but he had possessed sufficient vanity to be flattered at the half-shy, half-voracious suggestion. Thalia had known that he had been framing in his mind how he would tell this story to his contemporaries: the lonely older woman, greedy for satisfaction, but I satisfied her. Thalia had been proud of her performance with that one. He had never once guessed what lay behind the invitation, and he had died still not knowing.
The young priest had been the sweetest conquest of all. He had come to bed with a kind of helpless anger. He had been inexperienced but violently passionate, as if he had banked down his body’s needs for many years and could not keep them banked down any longer. He had wept in her arms afterwards, praying for forgiveness, and Thalia had held him to her while she pushed the glinting point of the skewer into the base of his skull. His God would probably deal harshly with him for dying in what he himself had considered mortal sin.
After she had done what there was to be done to each of them – after she had taken what she had to take and laid it lovingly in its place in the deepfreeze – she had simply bundled the remains in black plastic bin liners and taken them down in the lift of the Great Portland Street block, using a small wheeled trolley, the kind that airport and railway staff used for transporting large suitcases and cabin trunks. The car park was in the basement, and she had been careful to park in a deserted corner, and to make this trip not at dead of night, which might have been noticed, but in the middle of the afternoon, three o’clock, when practically everyone in the block was out at work. It had been easy to deposit the bags in the boot of her car, lock it, and go innocently back to the flat. If anyone had chanced to see her, they would have assumed she was disposing of some unwanted household rubbish.
That night, or the next, she would drive her car to one of the deserted quayside areas of London, where she could tip the bags into the Thames. That part she had done at dead of night, keeping a careful eye out for watchers. She had weighted the grisly sacks so that nothing would rise to the surface, using large bags of garden compost bought innocently and openly at garden centres. Nobody had suspected anything, and nobody ever would suspect anything because she was invincible.
And Edmund had been with her all along; guarding her from inquisitive eyes and awkward questions. It was nearly unbearable by this time to look on the thing that Edmund was becoming: the once-smooth skin blotched and mould-spotted, the body leaking decay, but Thalia did look, because it was better by far to have even this of Edmund than to have nothing of him at all. He brought the aura of death with him a little more strongly each time, and it was an aura of oozing putrescence and wormy filth and rotting flesh. She could not escape him, but she did not want to escape him.
She would manage to dispose of Dan Tudor’s body as easily as she had disposed of all the others. She locked and bolted the cellar, and went back upstairs, considering how she would use him. Tomorrow she would order the Harris creature to fire the potter’s kiln for the disposal of the remains. Dan. Quincy. Imogen .
. .
Imogen.
Her mind leapt ahead to tomorrow, to the hour when Harris would bring Imogen out of Thornacre and down to the cellars of October House.
It was going to be rather tedious to get through all the hours of daylight before that could happen.
Chapter Thirty
Leo found it difficult to gather up the threads of Thornacre’s everyday life again.
His reaction when Imogen finally opened her eyes and looked up at him had been so fierce that for a moment it had nearly overwhelmed him. But he quenched the soaring emotion at once, and called the duty nurse in to make up a mild sedative. ‘To make you sleep, Imogen.’
She said, in the same far-away voice, ‘More sleeping?’ and Leo smiled because even like this there was a faint irony in her voice.
‘Yes, but this time it’ll be real sleep.’
‘No dreams?’
‘Not this time. I promise you, Imogen. And someone will be here with you all the time.’
She managed a smile, and Leo touched her cheek for a moment and then turned away, forcing himself to make notes on her chart. Only when he was satisfied that the sedative had sent her into drifting dreamless sleep did he go out, leaving the nurse seated by the bed. Because if he left now he might be able to master his feelings. But as he went to his own rooms his mind was singing with such wild emotion that it almost blotted out everything else. I brought you out, Imogen, and I know hardly anything about you, but I’m beginning to suspect that you’ve spoiled me for any other female . . .
His own sleep was filled with darting disturbing glimpses of Imogen’s silent secret woodland, and when he woke the next morning, Thornacre seemed unreal and blurred.
He went along to her room, to find her eating breakfast. ‘A huge breakfast,’ she said, smiling. ‘They think I’ve got a lot of time to make up. It’s rather a drastic method of slimming, isn’t it?’ She gave him a cup of coffee from the tray and Leo sipped it and watched her eating scrambled eggs and toast. There were dark smudges under her eyes, but she ate with the hungry appetite of a starving wood-nymph. The image formed in his mind unprompted.
They would arrange for a CT scan later in the day, but Leo did not think it would reveal anything sinister. Imogen was not quite back in the real world, not wholly, but she almost was. The lingering aura of other-worldliness would dissolve quite naturally.
The medical side of Leo scoffed at the concept of other worlds and of the unconscious wandering through them like wraiths, but the mystical side of him was fascinated. Imogen had dwelled for a time in one of the strange lands closed to most people; she had visited some distant, probably chimerical realm, but whether it was the Aegia with its fire-streaked skies or the perfumed fields of Elysium, or Dante’s ironstone hell or Milton’s dungeon-encircled furnace, or even the enchanted forests of darkly romantic fables, there was no way of telling. At her age she was more likely to have dreamed about pop stars anyway. This was a supremely depressing thought.
Once during his carefully casual questionings, she said, ‘I dreamed some odd things—’ and then stopped abruptly.
‘Go on.’
‘I’m not sure which was dreaming and which wasn’t.’ She frowned.
‘Your memory will probably be a bit fragmented for a while,’ said Leo at once. ‘A slight degree of amnesia is almost inevitable. Your memory will come back although probably not at an even pace. You’ll get pieces all in a rush and then nothing for a while, and then more pieces.’
‘I feel a bit distant. As if I’m seeing things through a glass wall or under water.’
‘That’s to be expected as well.’ He studied her. ‘You said you dreamed some odd things.’
‘Yes, but telling dreams is the last word in egotism.’
‘Not to me.’
Imogen stared at him. ‘One day I will tell you,’ she said, after a moment. ‘But not yet.’
‘Is it that you fear talking about it might spoil it? The dream-world?’
‘Not to you.’
The silence lengthened, and Leo thought: at least it doesn’t sound as if it was pop stars. I believe I could force her to tell me. I believe I could reach out to her mind again and compel her. Would that be Svengali or Baron Frankenstein? jeered his mind. You’re really crossing the line now! If you haven’t crossed it already.
He was about to speak – although he had no idea what he was going to say – when there was a timid knock on the door and a scared-looking nurse put her head round.
‘Sorry for interrupting, Dr Sterne,’ she said, ‘but please could you come to Matron’s office on account of one of the patient’s gone wandering off again.’
Leo said, ‘Harris?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Curse him. All right, I’ll come.’ Leo turned back to Imogen. ‘I’ll hold you to the promise,’ he said. ‘About the dreams.’
‘All right.’ The grin showed. ‘In the meantime,’ said the wood nymph, ‘do you think they’d bring me some more toast?’
The news that Snatcher Harris had awarded himself a night out again and only returned in time for breakfast looking slyly pleased dragged Leo nearer to reality. He forced himself to concentrate on this problem, because if the Snatcher had really been out all night it was likely to be connected with Quincy’s disappearance. It was possible, as well, that he might have inflicted harm somewhere, and it was devoutly to be hoped that it was nothing more than slight harm. Leo felt the beginnings of anger. Could these wretched nurses not keep a better watch?
He entered Freda Porter’s office, banging the door impatiently back against the wall and demanding to know what had happened in such abrupt tones that Freda was thrown into quite a flutter.
‘Well, I’m afraid our Llewellyn had been out all night, Dr Sterne.’
‘I know that already. What happened?’
‘It was my evening off, you know.’
‘Yes?’
‘I shall make a full inquiry, naturally. These girls don’t realise the importance of—’
‘What about Harris?’
‘He was left to his own devices for a little too long, Dr Sterne. He returned,’ said Freda, plainly unaware of black humour, ‘with the milk.’ She thinned her lips disapprovingly and Leo’s anger was tinged with amusement for a moment. He repressed the urge to say, ‘We’ve all done that at times, Matron.’
‘And now he’s bragging about females again.’ There was no need to describe the obscene gestures Harris had been making. Freda said, primly, ‘In his own fashion, you understand.’
‘Revolting little tomcat,’ said Leo. ‘But we’ll hope it’s no worse than an attack of flashing. Flashing’s about all he’s capable of anyway, poor little sod. There’s no news of Quincy, is there? No, I thought not. Well, you’d better tell them to bring Harris to my room, Matron. I’ll see if I can get anything out of him.’
Freda told him that nothing of any value had been elicited from the Snatcher, even though several of them had tried to talk to him. Freda had actually tried herself, approaching Harris with calm, sensible questions, which had had the unfortunate result of provoking what had been really a most unpleasant incident. She had managed to get herself out of the room without calling one of the nurses, because it would have been very embarrassing indeed if the disturbance – really very trivial – had become known. Freda could very well imagine the nurses saying to one another, ‘And then he got Matron down on the bed and there she was yelling for help, all sprawled out, her skirt round her waist . . .’
This was not an image Freda wanted conveyed to Dr Sterne, and anyway Dr Sterne knew all about Harris. Quite fierce he’d looked earlier on. Freda was glad to have been able to exonerate herself from blame so early on.
‘If Harris has had anything to do with Quincy’s disappearance I’ll get it out of him if I have to beat him!’ said Leo, and saw Freda’s start of surprise. He grinned inwardly, and with a half-mischievous idea of testing the woman, said, ‘Didn’t you think I was capable of viol
ence, Matron?’ And waited, curious to see her response. Anyone with a genuine interest in this job, or with any kind of imagination at all, would have said something like, ‘It’s generally held that we’re all capable of violence under certain circumstances.’
Freda said, ‘Oh dear me no, Dr Sterne! Everyone knows how dedicated you are. My word, violence from you, my word, what an idea!’ She gave a light, deprecatory laugh.
She’ll have to go, thought Leo, making his way to his own office.
Snatcher Harris was not going to tell any of them where he had been last night. It was a secret. Secrets were not things you could have very easily inside Thornacre, but they were good to have if you could get them; they made you feel warm and excited and sometimes they gave you power over other people. He collected secrets, storing them up inside his mind.
They all asked a lot of questions about where he had been all night and what he had been doing but he was not letting on about any of it, not him! He knew exactly how to deal with them when they kept on at him like this, and he grunted and blubbered his lips and made obscene gestures. When it came to Matron asking him, primming up her lips and putting on a silly voice, he enjoyed himself very much, pushing the stupid old bitch on to his bed and upping her skirts over her face. She had let out a screech, and he had pretended to lunge between her legs, although really he would not have touched her with a barge pole, ugly old thing. But it had done him a lot of good to see her sprogged out like that, with her fat thighs and knickers all on display. Snatcher would laugh like anything at the memory when he was on his own. He would enjoy reminding her about it when they met. She would hate that. You could do a lot with a few gestures.
Dr Sterne was not so easy to trick, of course, and he was better than most of the others. He usually tried to understand the gruntings, but he did not try this morning because he was angry. There was a policeman there as well, who pretended to understand what was said and wrote a lot of things down in a book, which was silly because he, Snatcher, was deliberately grunting nothings. He knew all about policemen, stupid creatures, and he was not going to tell any policeman anything. He was certainly not going to tell Matron anything, even though she stood there frowning at him, and he was not going to tell Dr Sterne anything either. He gave them all his lopsided idiot grin and lurched around the room making rude waggling motions with his hips and clenching his fist and thrusting his bent arm upwards, until Dr Sterne said furiously, ‘Oh, stop it, Harris!’ And then, to Matron, ‘Take him back to the dayroom. No, I don’t want to see him again. I don’t care what you do with him. You can drop him over the side of the cliff, for all I care!’