Ash (26 page)

‘Everything is as it should be,’ she answered curtly, as if to Ash alone.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Derriman stammered, as if realizing he might have made a mistake in questioning the nurse’s ability to run a tight ship. ‘We-we’re just showing Mr Ash the different levels of Comraich.’

Krantz looked alarmed, as did Babbage, Ash noticed. Derriman looked terrified, and Ash wondered who he was more scared of, Haelstrom or Krantz?

‘We’re taking Mr Ash to Douglas Hoyle’s room,’ Babbage intervened. ‘Seems it’s important to him.’ The last comment sounded like a rebuke. Ash had come to expect hostility from the chief of security by now. He expected nothing less of a man who must have felt this parapsychological investigation was a waste of everyone’s time and money, even though Babbage could offer no feasible explanation for the bizarre events himself. On the other hand, Krantz’s obvious dislike of him remained a mystery. Unless she, like many other ‘normal’ people, thought he was a crackpot who shouldn’t be allowed near her patients.

‘I haven’t had time to get Mr Hoyle’s room cleaned up yet,’ Krantz said discourteously.

‘All the better,’ Ash responded. ‘I need to see the scene as it was.’

With a cold stare, she stepped aside to let them pass, but she never took her eyes off Ash as he went by.

Outside the room messily vacated by the unfortunate Douglas Hoyle, opposite the lift, the three men paused.

‘If neither of you minds, I’d like to go in alone to begin with. Just to get the feel of the place. What I don’t want is your own emotions interfering with whatever psychic field or subliminal intimation has been left in there.’

Babbage stared at him as if he were crazy and Derriman started fidgeting with his fingers.

Ash grinned, but it was a hard expression, for he could already feel some kind of presence beyond this closed door. Years ago he might have ignored it, but for him, life –
and
death – had changed.

He pulled himself together, looked at Derriman, and waited.

‘W-what?’ the general manager stuttered.

Ash pointed at the keypad fixed to the door. He’d already peeked through the small observation panel.

‘Of course. I’m sorry.’ Derriman reached into his inside breast pocket and drew out a small plastic-covered notebook and quickly scanned through the pages, his hands now trembling instead of fidgeting. ‘Ah.’ He stopped at a page. ‘Sub-room 3a,’ he murmured. To Ash, he said, ‘Four numbers. Two, six, four and eight.’

The investigator tapped them in, mindful of his own hand trembling slightly. Something clicked and the door shifted a fraction as if freed from its surrounding frame. Ash pushed the door open wide and walked through.

He cried out as he was immediately thrown back into the corridor by some fierce, invisible force.

Babbage caught him before he went down.

‘Jesus, feller . . .’ the security boss spluttered.

Derriman had backed away from the room, the expression of alarm on his face almost comical.

But Ash wasn’t laughing. Still held by Babbage, he struggled to regain his balance.

‘Somebody – some
thing
– doesn’t want me in there.’

The chief of security muttered another blasphemy ‘That wasn’t you? You didn’t throw yourself backwards?’ he growled in disbelief.

‘Believe me,’ said a shaken Ash, ‘something
really
doesn’t want me in there.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘We try again.’

But this time the investigator entered more cautiously. Although he still felt pressure pushing against him, it had weakened considerably, as though whatever unseen psychic force was present had become depleted.

Vapour escaped his mouth and he shivered against the deep, frigid atmosphere inside the room. Babbage waited on the threshold while Derriman peered fearfully over the thickset man’s shoulder.

‘It’s here,’ Ash announced calmly. ‘But it’s fading, taking the chill with it.’

‘You gotta be kidding,’ rasped Babbage. ‘There’s no one else in the room.’

‘Feel it,’ Ash told him. ‘Feel it draining away. Come on in, it can’t hurt you any more. I think all its energy was used up when it tossed me out.’

The security chief walked in, but Derriman remained by the door.

The room contained one large bed, at the foot of which were its rumpled bedclothes. As it was an underground bedroom, there were no windows to the outside world, but there were paintings, all of them peaceful landscapes, presumably to take away the starkness of the walls. Some were tilted, while others had fallen to the floor. Across the room was an upturned armchair, and a sofa leaning almost upright in a corner, cushions scattered around it. A bedside cabinet had been turned over, its contents strewn across the carpet.

And on one wall, to the investigator’s right, was the definite imprint of a man’s figure, formed by hundreds of dark red spots and smears. Bigger patches of blood shone dully.

The silhouette of gore ended at least two feet from the floor, although rivulets of blood had run down to the skirting board, and Ash imagined the helpless man transfixed there, crucified without nails.

The room also reeked of the coppery scent of blood that mingled with the nauseating stink of excrement. Fortunately, this too, was swiftly fading.

‘Was Hoyle conscious when he was taken away?’ Ash asked the security chief, taking a thermometer from his shoulder bag.

‘Nurse Krantz said he was delirious,’ replied Babbage, ‘mumbling words she could only just hear, but couldn’t understand.’

Still partly shielded by the security chief’s muscled body, Derriman, his voice querulous, spoke up. ‘B-by the time they reached the surgery above us, he w-was making no sound whatsoever. Nurse Krantz said his eyes were open and there was a look of sheer terror in them. He never woke from his catatonic state.’

‘Caused by loss of blood?’

It was Babbage who answered Ash. ‘We’ll know more after the post-mortem, but our pathologist’s initial opinion was that it wasn’t his wounds or loss of blood that killed him, but myocardial infarction. Heart attack.’

‘Like the medium, Moira Glennon.’

‘Yeah, like her. Scared to death.’

Breathless, Twigg stood back to survey his work. He leaned on his shovel to steady himself.

The six-foot-long trench he’d dug in the peaceful woods should easily be deep enough to accommodate what was left of Nelson’s corpse. When Twigg backfilled it, the dead apprentice would easily be covered. A scattering of fallen leaves over the patted-down bump should conceal the grave from any warden or rambling guest.

Now to move the body. It was a good thing he wasn’t squeamish, Twigg told himself, because just the sight of the eviscerated body when it was dragged out of the heap of dead leaves and forest ferns he’d partially hidden it under would be enough to turn a normal person’s stomach. Most people wouldn’t go near the wreck of a corpse, let alone touch it.

He straightened, wiping drool from his chin as he did so. But once he took his hand off the embedded shovel’s handle his fingers began to shake again. He tried to hold them still, but could only do so by pressing his hand against his upper thigh.

The assassin drew in deep breaths, slowly letting go of them until he felt well enough to finish the chore. Twigg cursed. He used to be so much stronger than he looked – which on some occasions seemed to surprise his victims – but he knew his age as much as his illness contributed to his breathlessness. Even so, despite his years, he would have remained a valuable asset to the organization, because killing someone these days rarely depended on strength. There were more subtle methods, such as poison or even the garrotte, which no mark could fight against so long as the wire was sharp and the positioning around the throat swift and accurate. Blades were good, providing they went in deep and cut the correct arteries or destroyed the right organs.

The reason he’d decided to hide Nelson’s mutilated corpse would seem crazy to most. It was because he felt in league with the wildcats. Of course, no love would ever exist between himself and the vicious felines, but he felt an indefinable affinity with them, and he somehow knew that he was their protector. Otherwise, the woods would be swept by gun-toting guards until the problem had been eradicated. Maybe his affiliation was fanciful, illusory, but it felt real.

The assassin went over to the body secreted beneath the woodland detritus of crispy leaves and damp ferns and reached for its one shod foot – the other was bare, although the caked blood resembled a red sock (not at all to Nelson’s taste, but then it didn’t really matter any more). Twigg pulled both feet towards him and the now-loosely constructed body slithered from its hiding place.

Oddly, the body looked in an even worse state than before; either that or the time spent bringing quicklime and water, not forgetting the shovel, back to the spot had deadened the shock of its image slightly. He pulled again and, the covering leaves disturbed, Twigg saw and felt the still-soft body stretching, only strands of skin and the spine managing to keep it in one piece. With less force, Twigg eased the pieces towards the shallow hole in the ground, and when grave and corpse were more or less adjacent he knelt and rolled the body in. Jawless head and torso first, then the hips and legs, still joined tenuously to the whole by the spine, skin, and some flesh.

Twigg found it difficult to rise to his feet again, for it had been a long and difficult day so far, and he comforted himself that any man would have been near exhaustion by now. But he made it, smacking the palms of his hands together to dislodge dirt and bits of bloody debris.

He surveyed his work for a moment or two before dragging the sack of lumpy quicklime over to the grave. He pondered on the stupidity of some murderers, those who simply poured ordinary garden or chlorinated lime over the victim, expecting to hide the smell of putrefaction. Smugly, he picked up the quicklime sack and spread the white powder over the body in the grave, then quickly used the water in the bucket to slake the lime. This method would keep the flesh dry and firm, avoiding the worst of the corruption and hence creating little stench once the earth was replaced. If Eddy Nelson’s cadaver were to be discovered in, say, six months’ time, then, apart from the foulness of his shredded parts, it would be in good condition: the flesh would be dry and firm, if a little shrunken, and there’d be no further rupturing of skin beyond that caused by the malicious ferocity of the wildcats.

With his grin drooling more saliva, the assassin picked up the standing shovel and covered his dead apprentice with dirt, remembering to scatter more fallen leaves and forest ferns over the low bump in the ground before he returned to his own sanctuary, the little cottage lost in the heart of the woodland paradise.

The breeze coming off the darkened sea was icy, but at least the air was fresh and cleansing. Which was how David Ash wanted to feel – cleansed from the dank mustiness and dirt in so many neglected regions of the huge castle.

He sat on a bench that was thoughtfully situated on the long walkway leading from Comraich overlooking the great Scottish waters. The red sun was low on the horizon, helping to warm the greyness of the land mass in the far distance, this just visible through a soft sanguine mist. The peaceful view at least helped Ash shed some of the tension he’d felt during his searches, a tension he knew was shared with Derriman, while Babbage seemed oblivious to the unease of his companions, as well as to the gloomy tenseness in the atmosphere. Ash, of course, was seasoned enough to differentiate imagination from sensing, and he was sufficiently attuned to know paranormal activity was present in this place. With the nature of Hoyle’s death, how could it be otherwise?

And it was not just the coldness of certain corridors and stairways, not even the draughts that swept or drifted through the old refurbished chambers. At times, when Ash had asked the others to pause so that he could consider whether a ‘mood’ was either static or transient through a location, Babbage would stand there, thick legs braced apart, arms folded, as if challenging any hint of spectral presence in the room or hallway. Ash knew that such stubborn scepticism was not conducive to supernatural revelation, but he couldn’t forget that a few years ago he would probably have adopted the same negative stance.

From his shoulder bag, he took out a journalist’s notebook and began to read through the brief observations he’d made during the tour of the castle’s lower floors. He also studied rough sketches he’d made of certain locations. Later, in the privacy of his own room, he would transfer the notes into his laptop, perhaps making more sense of them to gain an overview.

Although there hadn’t been time to assess the upper floors, he and the two guides, with Babbage acting as a resentful malcontent, had scoured several levels of the ancient building, including the kitchens, drawing rooms, libraries and armouries (including the one that had given Ash a fright earlier that day), as well as stairs, hallways and corridors. The investigator had marked a few locations that warranted further research, places where he would later instal cameras and sensors. More complicated equipment might be brought in after this initial search, but that was for another day – or night.

Ash had been both frustrated and angered by Babbage’s refusal to grant full access to the levels beneath Douglas Hoyle’s wrecked apartment. The security chief had been adamant that the lowest reaches were out of bounds to the investigator, and Derriman had apologetically concurred. Strict orders from Sir Victor Haelstrom had already vetoed any request to descend further than the second lower level, and neither Babbage nor Derriman was prepared to overrule him, even after witnessing Ash’s startling ejection into the corridor.

Ash was convinced that the haunting, and he had no doubts it was a haunting, emanated from the depths of Comraich, and during his meeting with Haelstrom in – he consulted his wristwatch – just over forty minutes, he would insist he be allowed down there. If not, then the deal was off: he would leave and return to London, even if it meant getting there under his own steam.