“Just had a cheery little thought about what lovely sniping positions those towers would make.”
Stakowski nodded. “What d’you reckon, Frank? Keep the marksmen back here for cover, send an advance party to secure the entrance?”
“It’ll do. Nice to know your army years weren’t completely wasted.”
“The odd bit of information did stick in my head.”
T
HE MAIN DOORS
opened easily; inside, B Block was mostly a succession of individual rooms, many still housing stripped, rusty bedframes.
The lifts were beyond use – ancient iron cages hanging from rusted cables – so they climbed the observation towers’ winding staircases to the top, but found only the pigeons’ leavings: feathers, dried excrement, scattered bones.
But there were other rooms, too. In one, artificial limbs hung from hooks, waiting to be attached to stumps. After the last of the officers had filed out, leaving Renwick alone with them, they swayed slightly. No, that was the dim light playing tricks. There was no draught; the dust lay undisturbed. And that arm’s fingers couldn’t have moved; they were metal and terracotta, nothing more. They weren’t curling slowly into fists behind her back when she turned away. Enough. She had work to do.
They found false legs, too, and perished rubber tubes and bags for the colostomised and emasculated. But no masks; not here. And no hostages, alive or dead. Only dust, long undisturbed.
Renwick met Stakowski’s eyes; he bit his lip. The fear, now, that this was all they’d find.
No. Banish emotion. Do your job if you want that child to live
.
“Boss?” Ashraf. “Wayland’s found something.”
She found Wayland in one of the day rooms at the centre of the block, crouched over a familiar pattern etched on its dusty floor; five lightning zig-zag lines, connecting at a central point. The Black Sun, Cowell had called it. In its centre lay a small gold bracelet.
Renwick held a hand out. “Evidence bag.” Stakowski passed her one. “Get a picture first.”
“Ma’am.” Crosbie snapped half a dozen pictures from different angles with a digital camera. When he was done, Wayland picked the bracelet up with a pencil and dropped it in the bag.
“Mr Cowell, can you tell us anything?”
“I think you know as well as I do what that symbol is, Chief Inspector. As for this...” Allen took the evidence bag, held the bracelet through the plastic. “It belonged to...” he closed his eyes. “Tahira Khalid.”
“Considering there’s a bit shaped into the name TAHIRA, I’d say we’re having a good day all round for deductive reasoning,” Stakowski said, and winked.
Renwick stood up. “Let’s finish up here and move out. And stay alert.”
Outside, it was lighter, the sun higher in the pale, clouded sky; it only made Renwick feel more exposed. At least it took her mind off what relic of Roseanne Trevor’s they might find, in the centre of a symbol scrawled on a dusty floor. Or what purpose it served.
THE TESTAMENT OF LANCE-CORPORAL MELVYN STOKES CONTINUED unable to smell taste see even to eat pureed mush poured down my throat in a tube at least i didnt have to look on what they made of my face or the faces of the others here in this place this place this oubliette french word hate the french despise them but oubliette its a good word a place of forgetting an old cell hidden under castles in ancient times where you put folk you wanted forgotten about this place is one vast oubliette for people like me that nobody wants to be reminded of understandable as wars must still be fought and there are always faint hearts cowards communists anarchists and all their lily livered verminous kind seeking to sap our will to fight and what better fodder for their propaganda than such as i who stand mute witness to the sacrifice made and offered willingly for the glory of the nation the empire the race the land
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A B
LOCK STOOD
two storeys high. A curved roof; high windows. From its side, the long connecting corridor snaked off through the woods towards Warbeck.
As before, once the advance party had reached the main entrance, the others crossed the overgrown lawns, ringed by Skelton’s men.
Anna walked ahead of Vera, beside Martyn. She glanced behind her, smiled shyly. Vera smiled back, wished she’d tried harder last night, imagined kissing that thin mouth. Anna looked away.
Renwick tried the double doors; they were locked. “Alright. Ready?” Ashraf nodded. “Then let’s go.”
Ashraf and McAdams swung the ram between them; the doors flew wide with an echoing crash. Inside was only silence and dark. For a moment, Vera thought it would flow out to meet them.
C
OLD DAMP AIR
that smelt of rotten wood, like her old room at Shackleton Street. Moss and char, wet concrete dust, the ammoniac reek of animal piss. Vera imagined spores taking root in her lungs; she covered her nose and mouth with her chiffon scarf.
Flakes of old paint crunched underfoot.
I was in a corridor. The paint was coming off the walls. Pieces of it all over the floor
. Walls and ceiling were bared; wires hung down from above. In places the wooden tiling had come away from the concrete floor. The room doors gaped, ajar. Inside one was a naked bed frame.
Bare, wretched; like her room at Shackleton Street. Some of Walsh’s clients had liked tying her up. But you didn’t need that to feel helpless. No,
helpless
wasn’t the word.
Powerless
was better.
Choiceless
was best of all: left only with the options of spreading your legs with or without a slapping to compel you.
Allen walked, hands in his pockets, occasionally running fingertips along the walls, looking solemn, sensitive and slightly puzzled.
Presentation, Allen, presentation
. It looked posed, faked. If only. None of this would be real; there’d be nowt to keep them here, nowt to have brought them to begin with.
Nothing
, not
nowt. Nowt
is Lancashire dialect
. Nowt
is the bastard North.
Nowt
is everything you wanted to get away from. Not
nowt
.
Nothing.
What if they were angry, the dead, about the lies he’d told, the times he’d faked it? She was as much in the firing line as him, then; she was the one who’d got him giving ‘readings’ to friends and neighbours, then doing ‘psychic nights’ in pubs. Who’d turned him, in the end, into a performer who didn’t know if he was lying or telling the truth anymore.
Well fuck you if you’re judging us. After what we’d been through, we had no rights? The Sight was all we had – so yes, we used it. We gave something back. Charities – NSPCC, Barnardo’s. Not enough? Well fuck you twice. We did what we
had to.
You fuckers didn’t help, we got nothing we didn’t fight for, so fuck you
.
Had she expected an answer? None came. Only the black, hungry silence of the place. Hungry, yes. Expectant. It was
waiting
. Walking down the corridor, Vera looked straight ahead; if she looked into the rooms she might see people standing in the doorways. Except they wouldn’t be people anymore. And she couldn’t bear that.
T
HERE WAS A
day room here, too, at the centre of the Block. It seemed inevitable they’d find something there. Tables and chairs were stacked neatly against the walls; in the empty room’s centre the Black Sun was etched on the floor in something dark – Blood? Shit? – with a pewter ring in the shape of a skull at its centre.
“It’s engraved,” McAdams said.
“
To Ben from Dani 4 Ever
,” Allen said, staring at the far wall. McAdams looked at him, then Renwick. Allen turned. “Yes?”
“Well?” asked Renwick.
McAdams nodded, dropped the ring into an evidence bag. “Ben Rawlinson.”
O
UTSIDE,
A
NNA STOOD
hugging herself; Martyn stared off into the woods.
Vera touched Allen’s arm, drifted over to Anna’s side. “You OK?”
Anna nodded. “Just... this place. Funny, spent so long trying to get to see it–”
“Yeah.”
They looked at each other. Vera’s hand stole out; her gloved fingers brushed Anna’s.
Perhaps after this
, Vera wanted to say. But there wouldn’t be time. Anna looked down. Vera took her hand away.
“Alright,” Renwick said. “C Block.”
THE TESTAMENT OF LANCE-CORPORAL MELVYN STOKES CONTINUED o the rage that churns within me when i think how our blood was wasted how we fought germany again and yet should not have for see what they had built and they were right about the jews i say it clearly right about the jews i would have fought alongside mosley and his blackshirts to save this country while there was still time but instead i rotted slowly here without a face no face faceless i was here being fed through a tube a tube a fucking cunting bastarding fucking bastard tube rule britannia britannia rules the waves britons never never never shall be slaves but so they have become the niggers the pakis the yids the chinkies and filthy disgusting queers sodomites and perverts sticking their dicks up one anothers arses where all the stinking shit comes from and sucking one anothers dicks loathsome creatures loathsome hitler was right about those too oh yes i heard all about him even in here
I
NSIDE,
S
TAKOWSKI SAW,
C Block was much the same as A Block. Paint flaked from bare walls, ceilings and the crumbling wooden doors of individual rooms that stood ajar to show emptiness within. Barred windows that opened no more than an inch so you couldn’t jump out. You couldn’t stop the truly determined, but you could litter their way with obstacles, buy them time to think better of it.
This time they went straight to the day room. Another Black Sun was etched on the dusty floor, a purse containing Danielle Morton’s driver’s licence in its centre.
After that they searched the rest of the block: operating theatres, steel tables, cracked glass cabinets. Bottles with faded labels, half-f of murky fluid.
Crosbie pushed open a door, shouted: “Sarge!”
Stakowski jogged over. Renwick was already there. Inside–
On the walls, hung with skeins of cobwebs: crumbling plaster-casts of broken faces.
Gueules cassÉes
. Below them, on a work-bench, were a dozen masks, the paint flaked off, the metal beneath gone to rust and verdigris.
On the floor: three women. Dead maybe a couple of days.
“Christ.”
Martyn Griffiths stood in the doorway. Anna caught at his arm. “Martyn–”
“Get him out of here,” Renwick said.
“Get back behind my men,” snapped Skelton.
“I know her.” Martyn pointed.
Renwick raised a hand. “What?”
He came in. “Friend of Eva’s, from the class. Dunno her name. That one, though–” pointing again “–she’s called Alison. Dunno the other one at all. Sorry.”
Griffiths’ face was pale. His sister hugged him about the shoulders, but he hardly seemed to notice. He’d gone like stone. Stakowski had to look away; he’d been there, with Laney, knew all too well what it was like.
Stakowski went to him. “Look, Mr Griffiths, maybe you coming with us weren’t the best idea. What we might find here... you don’t want to see it.”
“Martyn,” said Anna, “Sergeant Stakowski’s right.”
Martyn’s lips parted wetly, gulped air. “I’m going on.”
“We don’t know what we’ll find here, sir–”
“I’m going on,” said Martyn.
Stakowski nodded. “Alright.”
“Can I?” said a voice.
Renwick nodded.
Cowell skirted the bodies, went to the table. He reached for one of the masks, looked askance at Renwick.
“Go on,” she said.
Cowell picked a mask up with his fingertips. It was brittle and fragile as an autumn leaf. He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath.
“Anger,” he said after a moment. “I’m getting... A terrible anger. But someone else... someone else needed the masks.”
“Who?”
“But these were rotten. So they had to make more.”
“Why?” said Renwick. “Are they disfigured too?”
Cowell didn’t answer. He stared ahead, mouth open.
“Allen?” Vera reached out to touch his arm, but didn’t.
Cowell released a long breath, sagged against her. For a moment, he looked wearier than anyone Stakowski had seen. “I don’t know what they are.” He blinked, straightened. “Not yet. We have to keep going. There’s no other way.”
The women were laid out side by side; they draped a tattered swatch of old curtain across their faces. They’d come back later, see the bodies dealt with properly. As it was, they had the living to worry about. Stakowski felt the Glock’s weight at his hip. Let the bastards come into his sights; he’d pay them back, for this if nothing else.
THE TESTAMENT OF LANCE-CORPORAL MELVYN STOKES CONTINUED never blamed master st john no it was that gideon yideon more like a jew name some changeling some jewish cuckoo in the nest turned this place into his freakshow so i lived out the years here o the rage they put me in e block in the end transferred me over because even as i was i lived on and raged against him against them all the english lion roaring the spirit of the race the power of britain the simple british soldier i killed my germans without a thought pointed my rifle pulled the trigger and down they fell like coats falling off pegs another i slew with bayonet another still beat to death with my rifle battering his square head till the bone collapsed and felt nothing cared not a jot but now they walk beside me all my dead
D B
LOCK’S BRICKS
were damp with morning mist. For a moment Martyn thought the walls themselves were weeping, bleeding out the sorrow of the years. You could feel it somehow, here, the pain and the misery the place had known. Fuck. And he was supposed to be the unimaginative one. Dad had said so often enough.
Enough of that. The enemies here you could catch hold of. Dad’s disapproval, the endless, hopeless hunt for work, the crushing weight of the depression – all of them had been like trying to fight half-set jelly. Nowt to grasp, nowt to fight or catch hold of. Not like this. Here, he’d grab the bastards and choke the life out of them if he could.