by Nick Moseley
‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked. ‘If Grace finds out you’ve been roaming around the place she’ll have a fit.’
‘What about you?’ said Trev.
‘I’ve been in the library,’ Desai said. ‘It’s just round the corner.’
‘Oh,’ said Trev, his finger stopping in mid-wag. ‘Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?’
‘Same as last night,’ Desai replied. ‘I could hear you snoring in your room, so I left you to it.’
‘Right,’ Trev said. ‘Thanks. I think.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Desai said. She’d risked a cup of the vending machine coffee and was idly moving it in a circle on the tabletop, swirling the contents. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of research.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Trev sat down on one of the sofas. ‘Researching what?’
‘This place,’ said Desai.
‘Following up on what Bookbinder said last night?’
Desai nodded. ‘Yes. I got in touch with Jane Woods in the archives, back in Brum. Asked her to dig out anything they’d got on the construction of Spectre’s Rest. Plans, financial records, lists of building materials, anything.’
‘How did you get in touch with Jane?’ Trev asked. ‘Surely there isn’t a phone in the library?’
‘No,’ said Desai. ‘But there is a computer. A computer with very basic security.’
‘Aha,’ said Trev. ‘So what did you find out?’
‘Well, nothing really,’ said Desai. ‘Though that tells us something in itself. This place was purpose-built by the Custodians. The fact that there’re no records of its construction is a bit suspicious, don’t you think?’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Not in the archives, at least. Jane said that there were records of former wardens, guards and inmates, budget records, inventories, all that sort of thing. But nothing about the place being built, or who the architect was.’
‘I’ve seen enough conspiracy movies to know a cover-up when I hear about one,’ Trev said. ‘But what was being covered up, and who was doing the covering?’
‘Good questions,’ said Desai. ‘Dr. Bookbinder said that there was an “experiment” when they built this place. I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to assume that whatever it was, that’s what’s been covered up.’
‘But what sort of experiment can you do when you’re building a prison?’ Trev said. ‘There’s nothing experimental about the architecture. Pretty standard Victorian institutional. I’m no expert on prisons but the layout and the cell-blocks don’t seem to be particularly radical either.’
‘No,’ agreed Desai. ‘It must be something else. Something they did or put in place at the same time as they were building it.’
‘Like what?’
Desai threw her hands up. ‘I don’t know! I’m just thinking aloud.’
‘So am I,’ said Trev. ‘What about the prisoners or staff?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Maybe they were experimenting on the prisoners?’
It’s possible,’ said Desai. ‘The Custodians had some… morally-flexible members in those days. But experimenting on prisoners on that scale? It seems a bit unlikely to me.’
‘I suppose,’ said Trev. ‘And how would experiments on prisoners back in Victorian times be affecting things now?’
‘Yeah,’ said Desai.
‘Unless,’ Trev said.
‘What?’
‘Well, unless they’re still experimenting on the prisoners here.’
Desai stared at him for a few seconds. ‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘No. Impossible. Things are too well-regulated now.’
‘You had to have a good think about it,’ Trev pointed out.
‘We’re not in a position to dismiss anything out-of-hand,’ Desai said. ‘But I think we can take that one off the list.’
‘Fine. Then I’m all out of ideas.’ Trev sat down on one of the sofas and stretched his arms across the backs of the cushions. ‘Bloody hell, I’ve had enough of this place.’
‘I think everyone in Spectre’s Rest would agree with that sentiment,’ said Desai. ‘Grace has been speaking to Feargal this morning, apparently. I don’t think he’s going to be too happy with how things are going.’
‘Grace’s fault, not ours,’ Trev said. ‘We’re innocent bystanders. She’s the one who’s supposed to be running things.’
Desai tapped her fingers on the table. ‘That doesn’t stop her spreading the blame around.’
‘I don’t think there’s all that much she can credibly blame on us,’ Trev said. ‘If she claims we’ve been running around causing trouble, then she’ll just get asked “Why were you letting them run around and cause trouble”, won’t she?’
‘I think her angle will be more along the lines of us interfering with her investigation and being generally uncooperative,’ Desai said. ‘She’s not going to blame us for causing the events here, but for getting in the way of resolving them.’
‘Hmm,’ said Trev. ‘Yeah, I can see that. If it all goes wrong here she could use our presence as a mitigating factor.’
‘I’m not saying that she will do that,’ Desai qualified, ‘but if she wanted to, she could. It depends whether or not things get sorted out here.’
‘Should we tell her what you’ve found out this morning?’ Trev asked. ‘And about Dr. Bookbinder’s sleep-walking?’
‘I don’t know,’ Desai said. ‘The way things are, I don’t know if she’ll take anything we say seriously. And as strange as all that stuff is, we don’t know for sure whether it’s got any connection to Corbyn’s death. Jerry Phelps being the killer is a much simpler explanation, and that makes me think it’s more likely.’
‘Even if you’re right, and Phelps killed Corbyn, that isn’t the whole story,’ Trev said. ‘What about the wolf-thing that attacked me?’
Desai shifted in her seat but didn’t say anything.
‘Still don’t believe me, do you?’ Trev said, bouncing his fist on the sofa cushion.
‘Let’s not have this argument again,’ Desai replied. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I’m not saying I do either. Until I see this thing for myself I’m keeping an open mind. That’s all I can tell you.’
Trev sucked air through his teeth. ‘It’s not the only thing I’ve seen.’
‘What?’
Trev told Desai about the shadow he’d seen on the common room walls and the moving darkness around the entrance to Cell Block A. Her face remained expressionless throughout.
‘How come you’re seeing these things and nobody else is?’ she said once he’d finished. ‘And why didn’t you mention these other events until now?’
‘To the first question, I’ve no idea,’ Trev said. ‘To the second question, well, I didn’t get a very good reaction when I mentioned the wolf-thing. I decided to quit while I was ahead.’
‘I don’t know what to make of all this.’ Desai rose and tipped the dregs of her coffee down the sink. ‘I agree that there’s something off about Spectre’s Rest. But I can’t just take all these stories of yours at face value. I’ve got to be pragmatic. Can you understand my position?’
Trev gave her a terse nod. ‘Yeah.’
‘Good,’ Desai said. ‘From now on we should stick together. If any of these apparitions appears again I want to be there to see it.’ She tapped the vapour weapon holstered at her hip. ‘And to deal with it, if possible.’
‘All right,’ said Trev. Not being believed was frustrating, but he knew that if their positions had been reversed he’d probably be taking a similar line. Sooner or later one of the phenomena would occur while there was a witness, and then he’d be vindicated, wouldn’t he?
Unless…
Well, unless everyone else was right and he was imagining it all. It would explain why the weird stuff kept happening when he was alone and wasn’t being seen by anyone else. But it wouldn’t explain why he was seeing the things he was seeing.
Unless…
Well, unless he had several screws loose and wasn’t aware of it. Was that possible? The shadows had seemed real. The wolf-thing had seemed extremely real. Yet both had vanished when other people had arrived – the two guards meeting him on the stairs outside Cell Block A and Richie turning up in Block D. Was it all in his head? Had he finally cracked? After all he’d seen in the last couple of months it wouldn’t be a great surprise, but he’d hoped to retain his marbles for a little longer than that.
‘Are you all right?’ said Desai.
‘Just thinking,’ said Trev. Thinking about how I might be gibbering nutcase, his possibly-faulty brain felt compelled to add. ‘What’s the plan for the rest of today, then?’
‘Might as well head back to the library,’ Desai said. ‘Jane’s still looking through the archives for me, so there’s still a chance she might come back to me with something. And I’m wondering whether the library itself might have some information on the prison’s construction knocking about somewhere. It’s not likely, but who knows?’
‘It’s better than sitting in here watching daytime TV,’ Trev said, though he was unable to muster more than a sliver of enthusiasm.
‘I’m as fed up as you are, believe me,’ said Desai. She turned her face to Trev, and he saw a brief hint of the stress and fatigue lurking beneath her outward composure. ‘This situation can’t go on. Grace has to come up with a result soon or Feargal will have no choice but to step in and take things off her hands.’
‘The way things are going, she might even welcome that,’ Trev said. ‘She looked like she hadn’t slept for a week when we last saw her.’
Desai shook her head. ‘If that happens it’s the end of her career, for all intents and purposes. She won’t make that call until she’s got no other options left.’
‘Great,’ said Trev. ‘Come on then. Let’s go and see if I can still remember how the Dewey Decimal System works. Haven’t used it since my school days.’
‘Did you understand it back then?’
‘No.’
‘Somehow I knew you were going to say that.’
Twenty
The library was larger than Trev had expected. It had a high ceiling and a row of tall windows that let in the grey afternoon light. A thin drizzle blew against the glass, turning the view of the grounds outside into a vague green smudge.
Trev and Desai clumped across the scuffed parquet flooring to a desk at the far end of the room, beneath the windows. On it sat a pair of elderly desktop PC’s, arranged back-to-back. Trev looked up at the rows of bookshelves. They were well above head height, with ladders mounted on runners to allow access to the upper shelves. There was a mezzanine level above, in the form of a broad balcony that ran around three sides of the room. Trev could see more bookshelves up there.
‘This looks like it belongs in some stately home, not a prison,’ Trev said.
‘Those Victorian Custodians must’ve believed they could rehabilitate their prisoners by educating them,’ Desai said. ‘Nobody seems to know what’ll happen to all these books once the prison closes. There’s quite a collection here.’
‘No shit,’ said Trev. ‘It’ll take some poor sod an age to log them all and get them on eBay.’
Desai rolled her eyes and seated herself at one of the computers. She logged on and rattled away at the keyboard.
‘No reply from Jane yet,’ she said. ‘She must still be rummaging through the archives. All right, I’m going to pull up the library catalogue and we’ll see whether there are any likely-sounding books that might tell us about the prison’s construction.’
‘You shout them out, I’ll track them down,’ Trev said, glad to have something to do at last.
‘OK,’ said Desai. ‘Here we go.’
She began calling out titles and references for the books she wanted. Trev prowled around the shelves and scrambled up and down ladders in his efforts to locate them. The range of books in the library was broad, with everything from Victorian textbooks to modern romance novels represented. Trev was no expert, but he reckoned that some of the books would be worth decent money to the right collector.
They weren’t worth anything to Trev and Desai, though. Some of the books that Desai identified were interesting, but none of them had any information on Spectre’s Rest. For the most part they were reference works that had been published by the Custodians themselves for their own use, records of significant events, places and people. Some were quite old, including one printed in copperplate script which Trev and Desai flicked through for quite a while, enjoying the flowery prose.
Outside the daylight faded, then disappeared. Trev switched on the lights, which buzzed and flickered before reluctantly coming to life. The drizzle had become a steady rain that pattered against the big windows. The temperature in the library hadn’t been very high to begin with, and it was dropping. Trev sidled over to the nearest radiator, a huge old-fashioned monstrosity which had been covered with so many layers of paint over the years that it produced about the same amount of heat as a lit match. He rubbed his hands together and shuffled his feet.
‘This one next,’ Desai said, highlighting a book record on the computer screen. ‘It’s on the balcony.’
‘OK,’ said Trev. He made a mental note of the book’s location and clanked up the cast-iron spiral staircase that provided access to the mezzanine level. The balcony was sturdily-built, with plenty of room for both the bookshelves and a broad walkway alongside them.
As he ambled along the balcony, the fingers of his left hand tapping on the handrail, Trev noticed a pair of doors set into the wall, either side of one of the bookcases. One had a tarnished brass nameplate that read “LIBRARIAN”. Giving in to curiosity, Trev tried the handle. It was unlocked. He swung the door open and peered inside. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, an office, though it obviously hadn’t been used for some time. It was empty apart from a huge antique writing desk, which Trev guessed had been left behind because it would be almost impossible to get it out of the room and down the stairs. He frowned as he tried to figure out how they’d got it up there in the first place, and had to chalk it up to typical Victorian ingenuity.
‘Any luck?’ called Desai from the lower level.
‘Just nosing in the librarian’s office,’ Trev shouted back. ‘It’s empty.’
‘Right,’ said Desai. ‘Jane’s just come back online, so take a break if you want.’
‘No probs,’ Trev replied.
He decided that he might as well locate the book first and then find somewhere to sit down. The encroaching cold was making him more aware of his general weariness. He checked his watch and realised that they’d worked through lunchtime, although the standard of the food in the staff canteen made it questionable whether this was a negative or a positive.
The book Desai had requested was shelved on the opposite side of the mezzanine. Trev trudged all the way round to fetch it, waving at Desai as she came into view below. She gave him a distracted wave back before returning her attention to the computer screen. Reaching the bookcase, Trev worked his way along the shelves until he found the book. It was another old one, bound in cracked leather. He leafed through it; from what he saw it was a guide to the Custodians’ version of the law, including punishments and sentencing.
He went back the way he’d come, stopping outside the second door he’d seen. This one had no nameplate, but was likewise unlocked. Inside was a cluttered storeroom. Cardboard boxes of books, papers and random odds and ends were stacked untidily against all four walls. In many cases the bottom box of a stack had been crushed by the weight of those above, and the whole thing leaned at a precipitous angle.
The storeroom had a desk, too, though not as big and ornate as the one next door. It was piled with boxes, along with a pair of ancient-looking Anglepoise lamps. Everything was covered in a layer of dust, which allowed Trev to see where Montano’s search teams had been in, moving things about in their hunt for the missing Jerry Phelps. It didn’t seem like a good place to hide
. One false move and you’d be buried under a mountain of cardboard, dust, and dead flies.
Trev opened a couple of boxes, finding nothing of interest. Just old magazines and torn and water-damaged books. He was about to leave and make his way back downstairs when he noticed a door, partially hidden behind some of the boxes. Intrigued, he cleared a path to the door, dragging two stacks of boxes to either side. Both teetered, but stayed upright. The dust on the floor was already disturbed, showing that the search teams had spotted the door as well.
It was narrow, and like the radiators it had been painted over many times. It had been glued into its frame by the paint, and the guards had been forced to break it open so that they could search inside. A large crack ran down the centre of the door where someone had put their shoulder to it, and splinters of wood had been left behind, stuck to the frame.
Trev pushed the door open. Beyond was a dark, windowless space. The light spilling through from the storeroom picked out a couple of very old-looking wooden filing cabinets near the door. Trev fetched one of the Anglepoise lamps from the desk and plugged it into a nearby socket. To his surprise the thing still worked, though it was fitted with a low-wattage bulb. He moved it as near the open door as he could and aimed the light into the little room.
It had been used for filing paperwork, that was clear. Two banks of the wooden filing cabinets faced each other along the walls, leaving a strip of bare floorboards between them. Trev stepped through the door and into the room, preceded by his distorted shadow. The tops of the filing cabinets were thick with dust, as was the floor. Footprints showed where the guards had entered the room, stopping just inside the door. That was as far as they would have needed to go to satisfy themselves that Phelps wasn’t there; it would have been impossible to hide in the cramped space.
Trev squinted at the handwritten labels on the drawers of the nearest cabinet. They were so yellowed and faded as to be illegible. He pulled on the handle and the drawer jerked open with a puff of dust. Inside were dozens of large envelopes, each one stuffed with papers. Trev pried one of them out and examined the contents. The papers were manifests for the receipt of deliveries. The oldest was dated 1879. Trev crammed the papers back into the drawer and opened another in the next cabinet, which was similarly full of ancient paperwork.