by Stav Sherez
The nurse nodded. ‘Yes. She’s very good at that. She can keep it up for several days at a time and we encourage her to do so but, after a while, she begins to break down – she loses the thread of her conversation and lapses into a catatonic state. A few times she’s tried to injure herself and we’ve had to put her under observation.’
Geneva wondered what horrors hid behind that euphemism as she wrote down the details in her small, cramped handwriting. ‘She thinks the drugs are still in her system. Is that possible?’
‘We’ve run several tests and there’s nothing there. But the drugs may have rearranged parts of her brain and who knows if that kind of damage is repairable? Her short-term memory’s only good for a few hours. It’s such a shame because when she’s okay, she’s very bright and extremely personable as you’ve seen. But then something sweeps her up and it’s like she disappears from the world. It’s even worse for her boyfriend. I can’t imagine the—’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘Yes. At least I assume that’s what he is. I never actually asked but he comes in quite regularly. He seems lovely too, very patient and devoted, unlike a lot of the visitors we get here. Some days he reads to her for hours at a time. She’s very lucky to have someone like him.’
‘What does he look like?’
The nurse paused to think. ‘Skinny with long black hair. Otherwise unremarkable. Young people all start looking the same after you get to—’
‘Do you know his name?’
‘No. But it’ll be in the visitors’ book. Everyone has to show ID to get in.’
The nurse retreated behind her desk and retrieved a large visitors’ book bound in spill-proof plastic. Geneva sat down on a nearby bench. She flicked through the crinkly, yellowed pages. The entries were organised by date. In the next column was the name of the visitor and, beside it, the patient they were visiting. Geneva ignored her phone and the pervasive smell of urine and started going backwards through the entries. She felt herself falling into that familiar spell that always overtook her when she plunged into paper lives, the persistent buzz of the present giving way to the silent words on the page.
The name of Katrina’s visitor snapped her back to the room.
Katrina had only one visitor during the past six months but they had been conscientious and reliable, appearing twice a week, every week, since she’d been admitted.
Geneva looked at the name in the small white box. She ran through the investigation in her head and checked her notes but couldn’t recall where she’d heard it before, yet it was naggingly familiar.
She thanked the nurse and walked out into a dark cleansing storm, the rain splashing the pavements and jewelling the surface of the road into glassy drizzle. She stood under the NO SMOKING sign and lit a cigarette, trying to remember where she’d come across that name. She needed to go back to the station, plug it into the HOLMES system and see what it would spit out. The cigarette fizzled and died and Geneva headed for her car.
As she opened the door and slid into the seat, the name came bouncing like a bomb, exploding in her brain with all it meant and she pulled the door tight against the rain and took out her phone to tell Carrigan the news. Her breath fogged the windows and the outer world disappeared. Rain streaked the glass, turning it opaque. Geneva lit another cigarette, the flame hot against her thumb and dialled the number. It went straight to voicemail. She was about to leave a message when the figure rose from the backseat.
Geneva felt a shift of light and then his hand was clamped across her mouth as he plunged the needle softly into her neck.
51
It was raining. A steady soothing rhythm that lulled her back and forth. It felt good to be indoors, lazing in bed, the world dissolving beyond the windows, nothing to do but listen to the rain and gently drift. She swayed in and out of drowsy sleep, the rain marking time, drip, drip, drip, a constant and irritating punctuation that held her back from surrendering completely to the dark.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Geneva’s eyes blinked open. The sound was sharper now, tiny percussive footsteps. It couldn’t be raining inside her bedroom and yet it was. She blinked away motes of dreamstay and sleep gunk.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
She tried to suppress all the stray thoughts and hectoring panics trying to make themselves real on her tongue and focused instead on the rain, listening out for the soft detonation as it kissed the floor.
It was raining inside her bedroom but it couldn’t be raining inside her bedroom which meant this wasn’t her bedroom.
A burst of palpitations rumbled through her chest. Geneva opened her eyes and saw a cracked, unpainted ceiling. A pipe running a few inches below it. Water sliding along its surface. A single drop forming around an imperfection in the metal, so close she could see the room reflected in miniature across its surface. She watched the drop bulge and strain, pregnant with run-off. She thought she’d been watching it for hours but she couldn’t be sure. And then it was gone. Her brain registered the sound as it collided with the floor and it came to her all at once – the complete where she was and what was about to happen.
She couldn’t put the bits in the right order no matter how hard she tried. It was like that puzzle. What puzzle? It didn’t matter. She was here and the how she got here wouldn’t help her.
The room tilted abruptly as if it were a ship hit by a massive swell. Closing her eyes only made it worse. Images from her past shot out at random like bingo balls. Her stomach cramped and spat up a hot stream of bile. She counted to five and the room was back on its axis. The air tasted sweet and dry but there was no telling when the next wave would hit.
She’d had a boyfriend, a few months out of university, who’d been obsessed with survival documentaries. They’d watched countless ordeals, men with broken legs dragging themselves down impossible mountain moraines, men freezing to death in snow caves, men forced to amputate their own limbs in gloomy canyons. She’d always thought there was something a little silly about it. How it was always men. Men trying to prove themselves against God and nature. They were idiots for getting into those situations in the first place was what she’d always thought – but here she was.
A damp brick basement. Strapped to a chair. Her arms were pulled back behind the chair and held to it by some form of restraint. She shuffled her wrists, the cold roughness of the metal immediately familiar as the encirclement of handcuffs. Her feet were tied to the chair’s legs but the ligature was soft, a fabric of some sort, and the knots felt looser.
She was surprised to find that her primary emotion wasn’t fear or panic but a hot raw anger at herself for getting into this situation. All the rationalisations in the world didn’t help. With everything she’d seen and read in the past few days, how could she have been so stupid? Those grizzled survivors hovered like disappointed ghosts. Art Davidson trapped in a snow cave high on Mount McKinley. Krakauer on Everest. Shackleton seesawing through the Drake Passage. Scott’s final foray into endless white.
The spinning returned and Geneva gripped the chair for support. She thought about Hoffmann’s breakdown of the various drugs the killer had used and then she tried not to think about it. She hoped this was merely a concussion. She wanted to find any other explanation but the one that logic kept insisting on. Were these the first signs of what was to come or was it just her mind playing tricks on her? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting out of here or, failing that, into another position so as to add a small element of surprise when he came back.
Opposite her was a door made of dark wood, the handle and keyhole glinting in the meagre light. Geneva focused on it and tugged as hard as she could at the handcuffs. She bit down the hot spasm of pain that ran through her elbows and rattled her collarbone. It was no use. She had no leverage from this position and she would only succeed in tiring herself out or dislocating a shoulder. The drugs made her feel alternately hot and cold. Sweat stung her eyeballs. She stared at the door, so tantalisingly within reach.
She needed to get her arms over the back of the chair. She could then work at the knots on her legs. Geneva relaxed her diaphragm and took several deep breaths, letting her muscles unwind. She began to rock – slowly at first, finding her rhythm, correcting any divergences, then using the tips of her shoes to push down and accelerate. She felt the momentum building and the slow hiccup of gravity the split second before the chair reached its tipping point. Geneva exhaled slowly as it tumbled over and she hit the cement, taking the full force of the fall in her shoulder, jaw and hip.
She kept her eyes closed and waited for the worst of the pain to subside. She was lying on the floor, her face against the wet cement. She could see the door, the handle glinting like a promise, and she began to work herself up the chair, pushing her feet against its legs, the knots around her ankles sliding up bit by bit. After what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes, she kicked one final time and her wrists cleared the top of the chair.
A spider crawled next to her face, its legs huge and endless from this vantage. Her arms were free of the chair but she was still cuffed and her legs were still tied. She slammed the handcuffs against the cement in frustration. The shock juddered through her wrists but when she heard the cuffs rattle she ignored the pain and raised her arms and struck them once more against the floor. She felt a muscle tear in her back, electric arrows torqueing her spine, and the unmistakable crack of metal as a fleeting weightlessness jumped into her wrist.
Geneva cried out in surprise. Her heart beat thickly in her neck. She hadn’t thought for one moment she’d be able to break the handcuffs, she’d been certain her chance would come later, in those final moments when he took off his clothes and made her stand up next to him as she knew he would – but there was no time for congratulation or relief. The door could open at any moment.
She pulled her arms to her chest and rubbed the blood back into her wrists. She examined the handcuffs and saw the ridge where they’d been previously broken and inexpertly welded back together. She didn’t want to think about that so she left them on the floor and reached down and undid the leather straps that bound her feet to the chair. She remembered something Milan had said and pocketed one of the straps.
The door was only five feet away.
Either it was locked or it wasn’t.
The room began to spin again and she knew she hadn’t been imagining it. She’d taken enough drugs back at university to recognise the distinctive sensation of coming up. Her knees trembled, not an altogether unpleasant feeling, warmth coursing up and down her thighs like a million tiny fingers. There was no point fighting the drugs. The more you resisted, the more your mind broke against their will. The room span to the left but she knew its tricks now and continued unabated. She focused only on the handle, the silvery lock beneath it, this small part of the door that would render it gift or curse.
She let her hand rest on the handle and caught her breath. It felt warm as if another’s touch had only recently departed it. Geneva pushed down, waiting for the inevitable click that would signal the lock engaging, but it never came.
The door swung open and, when Geneva saw what lay behind it, she collapsed to her knees.
52
She was staring at a brick wall. She could see the zigzag pattern of scratch marks left on the bricks by the room’s previous occupants. A door that opens onto a brick wall. She should have expected something like this when she’d seen the weakened handcuffs. She should have known this would be his style.
‘You’ve done well.’
Geneva turned suddenly. The voice came from somewhere behind her. She could just make out the mere suggestion of a figure in the fuzzy distance.
‘It took Madison eight hours to get out of the chair. She never did get the handcuffs off.’
Geneva blinked the hallucination away but it refused to disperse. ‘You’re lying. I spoke to Madison. She’s safe on the other side of the world.’
She heard him laugh, a small strangled choke of sound coming from the centre of the room. ‘You “spoke” to her? It’s funny we still say that when we mean texts. About to get on a plane. Sorry. Don’t feel safe. Thank you for listening to me and keep me informed. Please find Anna.’
Geneva resisted the urge to curse, cry or betray any hint of feeling in front of him. She knew it would only make him stronger. ‘That was you?’
He took out his mobile and tilted it so she could see the screen.
Madison stared back at Geneva. Madison tethered to a chair in this same basement. Madison screaming and fighting her restraints.
‘I couldn’t let her go home. I didn’t know what she’d remember when the drugs wore off, or what she’d told you.’
‘You bastard.’ Geneva tried to push herself up from the floor but it felt like her arms were made of sand.
‘Don’t bother.’ His voice bounced against the low ceiling and brick walls, making it sound as if there were a multitude of him encircling her. ‘It won’t make a difference. You should save your energy. It’s only just beginning.’
‘What the fuck did you give me?’
‘A mixture of things. Knowing their names won’t help you, though. It’s in their combination where the magic happens. You’ll see. What you’re feeling now is only the first of many rungs. I designed it so each drug will kick in sequentially.’ He flicked his head to the side and swept back his hair. ‘You’re going to be spending a long time down here. The DMT will make it seem like you’re on that floor for ten years. What are you going to do? How are you going to keep your mind occupied so you don’t go mad? And the things I’ll do to you? They’ll feel like they’re taking for ever.’
His voice was so calm he could have been talking about the football results or a movie he’d watched the night before. He moved closer to her and she began to discern the shape of his body, the details of his face but, at first, her brain refused to accept what she was seeing. She blinked and rubbed her eyes.
‘You?’
His hair was no longer in a ponytail but hung down either side of his shoulders. She’d seen him sitting in Eleanor Harper’s office three days ago. She’d been only a couple of feet away. ‘You were at Sparta when I interviewed that woman?’
He reached out and stroked a wayward strand of hair from Geneva’s forehead, tucking it neatly behind her ear. ‘My name’s Bob, not You, and that woman happens to be my mother.’
Geneva pulled away and tried to speak but the words got stuck in her throat. Memories, images and facts spun through her brain. A page from Carrigan’s report on the hostel. Something Eleanor had said. ‘I don’t understand? If she’s your mother . . . You led us right to her? You told us about the man harassing Anna.’
‘You would have found out about Anna’s job soon enough.’ Bob flicked his hair back and Geneva was struck by how young he was, only a few years older than his victims. No wonder he’d been able to blend in so effortlessly. ‘By telling you about a client who tried it on with her, I knew you’d waste valuable resources pursuing that particular line of inquiry.’
He was right. They’d been so eager to see a pattern, they’d accepted the first one that had come along. It meant everything they’d thought and profiled was wrong. The last few hours came back in a kaleidoscopic rush – Katrina on the floor picking up puzzle pieces, the visitors’ book, the shadow in the back of her car. ‘Why did you follow me to the hospital?’
‘Why would I need to follow you? Your phone tells me where you are. No, as it happens, I was on my way to visit someone. Imagine my surprise when I saw you go in.’
‘You were there to see Katrina?’
‘Someone has to. Poor girl has no one since her parents died.’
Geneva clamped her jaw tight, a spike of adrenaline momentarily clearing the drug from her brain. ‘You went to the hospital to gloat.’
‘Got me there.’ Bob held up his hands. ‘I like to check in on her every so often, see how she’s doing.’
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‘You never intended to kill her,’ Geneva said, only realising this as she spoke. ‘You fucked her brain with drugs so you could come and watch the results, knowing she would never remember your visits?’
‘See? You could have worked it out by yourself all along.’
Geneva heard the soles of his shoes scrape against the floor as he moved closer, the sharp metallic tang of his sweat flooding her nostrils. She used the flat of her hand to prop herself up. ‘Who’s the next girl? There’s four other girls in that photo. Which one are you currently stalking?’ It took all her effort to force the words out in their rightful form, her jaw chattering as if she were bivouacked in deep ice, but there were also fleeting moments of clarity, the first for a while, and she understood her body was fighting the drugs.
‘The next girl?’ Bob grinned. ‘You haven’t worked it out yet? You’re the next girl. You always were.’ He took out a palm-sized digital camera and flicked it on. A rectangle of white light shot out the front. He fast-forwarded through a collection of clips. Geneva saw footage of herself over the last few days – at home, on the job, in front of her computer. Bob aimed the device at her and switched from playback to record. ‘A little souvenir for your partner. It’ll prove you once existed.’
She tried to ignore the camera and meaning behind the words and concentrated instead on his every movement, following the curve of his arms, anchoring herself to the moment and its geometry. She knew how easy it would be to slip away. The drugs came in ebbs and massive rushes that felt as if a hundred light bulbs had been switched on inside her skull. Time had stopped its ticking. It could have been minutes and it could have been days. Memories and facts reasserted themselves. The gravity of consciousness and guilt took over.
‘We’re in the hostel, aren’t we?’
‘In the basement, yes.’
Geneva scanned the room. ‘But we checked the entire building?’