Lucy sensed the thinning of the trees and the open space just ahead, and so veered off the drive, forging the last twenty yards through deep and heavy rhododendrons, switching her Maglite off. It was so late now that she couldn’t imagine anyone seeing her emerge from the woods on the drive, but she was determined to do all she could to minimise the chance. As the undergrowth lightened, she slowed, finally stopping with only a thin wall of greenery in front of her.
Beyond that, moonlight speckled by blots of cloud-shadow lay across a compelling vista.
The drive, still covered in weeds, bent left as it emerged from the woods, swerving past the spot where she now stood, and curving around what looked like an immense ornamental pond, before halting in front of a row of several large buildings. The pond, which was probably large enough to be classified as a mini lake – oval, at least a couple of hundred yards long by a hundred wide and bordered by a low brick wall – was black, flat and, in the parts where it wasn’t thick with bulrushes or dotted by lily-pads, glimmering with lunar light. The buildings were visible in great detail, the central and largest one, presumably the care home itself, a towering gothic structure with rows of ecclesiastically arched windows, a central spire and what might be gargoyles leaning down from its parapets.
It boasted a huge pair of central doors, heavily and untidily nailed over with planks, as if some frantic, terror-stricken person had hammered them there in a desperate rush to be done with the place. Above the doors, there was a colossal stone pediment, on which a grimy clockface was visible.
The buildings to left and right were more functional. Admin sections perhaps, or kitchens. One thing was certain, though; the site was still officially disused. It wasn’t just the front door. Most windows were boarded too, and there was no sign of any vehicles parked out front.
Despite the urgency of the situation, Lucy hesitated to advance further.
She had never believed in the supernatural, but she wasn’t a hard-headed rationalist either, and this was just about the eeriest-looking group of buildings she’d ever seen, particularly the main one. It would be difficult, if not impossible, wandering through the gloomy, web-shrouded halls inside, not to think about the generations of unwanted youngsters who’d passed through there, in who knew what state of sadness and depression. There’d be a lot of melancholy shadows gathered in its dingy corners.
Not that it mattered now. All that mattered at present was locating Tessa Payne.
At which point she saw the light.
Lucy squinted through the leaves.
It was difficult to see exactly where the light was coming from, and at first it appeared to be on the ground floor of the central building. However, as her vision slowly adjusted to the dimness, it looked more and more as if it was issuing from a passage between the central structure and the one on its left.
She waited tensely, at any moment expecting someone to emerge from that passage carrying a torch. Hoping it would be Payne.
But that didn’t happen, and the seconds ticked by.
Perhaps that light was nothing to do with the trainee detective? Maybe it had come on inside and was shining out through an aperture of some sort? It wasn’t necessarily sinister, of course. If the lights were working, the building was obviously still hooked to the grid, which suggested that whoever was in there had the blessing of the owners. A caretaker or maintenance man possibly. Though if that was the case, wouldn’t some kind of vehicle be parked?
And what about the damaged gate?
However, the main mystery was still where Tessa Payne had gone. And that was now a serious conundrum, because though Lucy increasingly felt that she ought to call for some cavalry here, she still lacked the means, and going looking for a pay-phone would only take time, during which Payne could be in all sorts of trouble.
She continued to watch, but still nothing moved.
Finally, as warily as possible, she stepped onto the drive and commenced following it around the lake, walking slowly, all the way hanging close to the wall of vegetation. The night’s silence was broken only by the occasional plop from the water, most likely frogs. Meanwhile, the great baroque pile that was Santa Magdalena ballooned towards her. The closer she drew, the grimmer and more neglected it looked. Fallen roof tiles scattered the driveway; pipework hung loose; thick tufts of weed grew from its gutters.
As she reached the first building, there was a loud splash, this time from the edge of the water. She stopped and stared, but nothing moved out there, not even ripples on the surface. The trees along the far shore were visible but motionless, the spaces beneath them utterly black. She proceeded on, undecided whether to stay close to the building to shield herself from prying eyes, or to keep a safe distance in case someone reached out from a hidden recess. Eventually, she opted to stay close but not too close.
The second building was something like a low-rise office block made from pebble-dashed concrete. It looked very modern compared to everything else, but no less bleak. Lucy didn’t pay it much attention, because the main building – the care home itself – was just ahead. Its frontage had been impressive enough, but she could now see that it went back a significant way, a hundred yards or more, and was a huge, dense block of a structure, which, for all its cornicing and traceried stone, must have been a gloomy and austere place to spend your formative years.
Directly in front of her now, the stripe of light lay across the drive from the passage entrance. She slowed, treading as lightly as possible. When she reached the corner, she halted and peeked around it.
The passage was wider than she’d expected. It was more an alley, wide enough to take a vehicle. Where it eventually led, presumably the rear of the property, was hidden in darkness. But about thirty yards along, on the wall of the care home itself, stood a pair of double-doors made from timber, with frosted glass panels in their upper sections. A garage, by the looks of it. The doors stood open about half a yard, and yellow light spilled out.
Lucy walked down there, slowly, tentatively. When she reached the door, she flattened herself against the wall and listened. Still nothing, though she was certain someone was here. She’d seen this light be switched on. More to the point, the garage doors had been forced open, the area around the central lock having splintered outward.
Surely Tessa Payne hadn’t done that?
Lucy sidled forward and glanced inside, seeing a large space where several vehicles could have been installed. Its floor was asphalt, its walls and pillars concrete, its ceiling made from wood, but none of the usual accoutrements of a garage were on show. There were no tools, no spare tyres, no shelves loaded with oily, grubby equipment. There was a vehicle, though. Only one, but it told its own story – because it was a green transit van.
Lucy slid inside so that she could look more closely. It was a nondescript vehicle, bearing no distinguishing features. But she was in no doubt that if she picked up a stone and scraped its flank, she’d expose evidence of earlier spray-jobs: blue beneath the green most likely, and beneath that black. She circled it, trying its rear doors, but they were locked. She tried the driver’s door and then the passenger door, but they were locked too. On the other side of the van, a portable electric light hung from a hook on a pillar, fed by an insulated cable, which snaked across the floor and vanished through an internal door standing open a couple of inches.
Lucy moved to this second door and listened. Again, silence.
She retreated to the van, wondering if she could disable it in some way, to prevent the bastards making a quick getaway; perhaps get under its front end and rip some wiring out, or maybe just let the air from its tyres, anything that would maroon them here while she nipped off and called for back-up – though she still wasn’t prepared to do that until she knew where that wretched Tessa Payne was. She returned to the internal door, ear cocked, again hearing nothing. For several seconds she was torn. On one hand, she ought to keep investigating for the sake of her colleague, even if that meant penetrating deeper into the building. But on the other, it went against the cardinal rule of street-policing, that you never entered a suspicious premises alone.
And then she heard the moan.
Incredulous, she leaned against the internal door.
Another moan sounded. It came distinctly from what sounded like an adult female.
Lucy yanked the door open.
A brick stairway overhung with cobwebs led down into a basement area. There was no light on the stairs, but the door at the bottom stood half open, and a weak, reddish glow shone past it. She hurried down, half tripping on the cable, which descended alongside her.
Another moan sounded, more protracted this time, laden with pain.
She reached the bottom, opened the door and found herself facing a bare corridor with numerous doorways leading off it. Unlike the subterranean passage in the Torgau house, it was dank and filthy, the dull, reddish glow filling it. When she heard the fourth moan, it was louder and led her straight to a turn on the left.
Around it, lying splayed on the passage floor, head resting in a semi-congealed crimson pool, was Tessa Payne.
‘Christ!’ Lucy slid to her knees alongside her.
The young detective mumbled something inaudible, her eyes not completely closed, their lids fluttering. Lucy flicked her Maglite on and saw that the casualty’s crinkly hair was clotted with freshly shed blood.
‘Lucy …’ Payne muttered.
‘Lie still, don’t try to move.’ Lucy laid her torch on the floor alongside them, then dug the last pair of disposable gloves from her pocket, and pulled them on, before carefully working her way along Payne’s scalp, foraging gently through the lush but sticky locks.
‘Tried to … call you back. But, your mobile …’
‘Yeah, my mobile’s knackered,’ Lucy said, distracted. ‘I told you that. What the hell, Tessa … who did this?’
‘Din’ … see them.’ Payne’s voice became a whimper as Lucy probed the wounded flesh, searching for signs of a fracture. ‘They came … from behind.’
‘Tessa, what are you doing here?’
‘You said … said something … about … nuns.’
‘And?’
‘Couple of days back, saw … saw van … dark-blue …’
‘You saw a dark-blue van?’ Lucy glanced down at her, trying to work out what she meant, but then remembered the screen-grab print-outs in the back of the CID car. She quickly realised what had happened, picturing the diligent young copper working on her CCTV footage over the last few days, latching onto various suspect vehicles as they threaded their way through Crowley, plotting their routes as she followed them from one camera to the next … ‘And this one led you here?’
Payne tried to focus up at her, but her eyes were rolling in their sockets. ‘Lost it … last junction …’
‘And so you, being a conscientious copper, checked the area to see where it might have disappeared to. And you found Santa Magdalena?’
‘Yeah, but …’ Payne’s eyes fluttered closed again, though she appeared to retain consciousness. ‘Didn’t think anything …’
Now Lucy understood. ‘You didn’t think anything of it until I mentioned nuns earlier this evening? Having already mentioned them to you once before – as well as talking vaguely about a Catholic care home.’
‘Thought … thought you might need … some … help …’
Lucy resumed picking through the gore-matted hair. ‘So why come here alone?’
‘Seemed … a long shot. Plus …’ Payne’s eyes flickered opened again, her red-tinged gaze strained with agony, ‘… knew you were supposed … off sick. Didn’t want … drop you in it.’
Lucy now found what she was looking for: two deep lacerations running side by side through the follicles, inches long each, both still oozing with blood. The results of at least two savage blows with a blunt instrument.
Even at first glance, the wounds were maybe a centimetre deep.
‘Sodding hell … have you got your priorities wrong, Tessa.’
‘Sorry, Lucy …’
Lucy knelt back, ripping her bloodied gloves off and tossing them away, before searching the casualty’s jacket pockets. She found only a handkerchief, which she wadded into a compress, and then pushed against Payne’s scalp. ‘Where’s your phone?’
‘Not there?’ Payne sounded vaguely surprised. ‘Don’t … know.’
Lucy grabbed the Maglite with her free hand and shone it along the passage, wondering if the phone had simply fallen from the girl’s pocket when she’d been attacked. If it had, there was no sign of it now. Which meant that the assailants had taken it.
There was nothing for it. Under normal circs, she wouldn’t want to move a head injury victim without medical supervision, especially when she had no clue how serious the injury was – the girl could be about to die for all Lucy knew – but she had to find a way to call assistance, and there was no possibility she could leave Payne here alone.
‘Do you think you can stand?’ she asked.
But Payne’s eyes had closed again. ‘Dunno,’ she mumbled.
Lucy placed Payne’s own hand on the compress, telling her to hold it in place, and then manoeuvred herself around, thinking to hook the girl under the armpits and lift her from behind. ‘What the hell made you come inside on your own, Tessa? You were three years in uniform, you ought to have known better.’
‘Didn’t … want to.’
Lucy glanced down at her again, puzzled.
‘But I heard … heard …’
Somewhere nearby, in one of the connecting rooms in this dismal basement, a child started crying. A very young child.
Lucy spun around, startled.
‘A baby …’ she breathed. Then, louder, ‘Dear God, have they grabbed a baby?’
She straightened up, still scarcely able to believe what she was hearing. It wasn’t especially muffled, and in fact was loud enough for the child, which sounded distressed to the point of hysteria, to be very close by.
She now completely understood why Payne had disregarded her own safety and gone running into the old building alone – because if there was one thing no police officer could ever ignore, it was a child that might be in danger.
Meanwhile, the mite was still crying, loudly, frantically. It was a terrible sound. Even in a public place, like a supermarket or park, you might’ve felt motivated to go and see what the problem was.
‘Just stay here,’ Lucy said quietly. ‘I’ve got to check this out.’
Payne muttered something about hardly being in a position to move, while Lucy edged away from her with torch in hand, advancing along the corridor.
Just ahead, the insulated cable from the garage divided into two, one part snaking through a side doorway from which the red light appeared to shine, the other leading off into darkness, from which direction she heard the low rumble of what sounded like a generator.
So much for Santa Magdalena being hooked to the mains, Lucy thought, taking the route that led to the light. It was another short corridor leading to yet another half-open, red-lit doorway. She went forward again and opened the door, the groan of its aged hinges drowned by the bawling of the child. The red light, now much stronger, showed her a traditional old-fashioned cellar divided into various sections by vaulted brick arches, and filled with age-old rubbish: stacks of rickety, worm-eaten furniture swathed in cobwebs, boxes brimming with bric-a-brac so furred with dust that it was impossible to identify.
She switched her torch off, no longer needing it. Because another of those portable bulbs, this one bright scarlet, hung from a hook in the middle of the central arch. At the far side of the cellar, it showed her a further door standing open, and a few yards beyond that what looked like a cradle draped with dirty but semi-transparent cloth; not just down its sides, but over its top too, the material suspended from a kind of peaked framework, making it look like one of those tented cribs in fairy stories. By the increased volume, the crying child was in there.
Lucy advanced, glancing left and right. There were many niches and nooks down here where someone could hide. Frightened as well as bewildered, but focused on the cradle, she pressed on through the open door and immediately was assailed by a grotesque stench, both organic and chemical in its content. Immediately, it got into her nose and throat, and made her want to retch. She resisted, crossing to the cradle, trying not to look at the greasy black soot that caked the brickwork above and around her.
Below the dingy, gauze-like cloth, she saw the outline of a diminutive human form. No bigger than a new-born child, it wailed with anguish – and yet it didn’t move. Lucy reached out a trembling hand. As she pulled the cloth away, she thought she sensed someone behind her, but it was too late, and she was too fixated on the child.
With a rustle, the material slid free – and she saw the eyeless, dirt-encrusted doll that had hung in those dead branches out on the landfill. Next to its head, there was an iPhone, and alongside that, as though to keep it snug, a boombox, out of which an unknown child continued to bawl.
Sensing the movement behind her again, Lucy tried to duck away, but not quickly enough.
The wire loop slipped over her head and tightened, encircling her neck. The next thing, it was biting into her, chewing through flesh and sinew as two tight-muscled arms began to twist and twist and twist.
‘Benny’s back, boss … he’s on his way up,’ Spicer, one of Bill Pentecost’s thicker-necked, more bull-headed goons, said from the doorway connecting the Head Office to the boardroom.
The Chairman looked up from the Manchester Evening News. ‘Is he alone?’
‘Nah. Got company.’
Pentecost tossed his newspaper on the desk before turning to his laptop, hitting the keyboard and bringing his screen to life. He hit another key to access the security feeds. There were nine in total, each one a live image delivered by a different camera somewhere inside the Astarte. The one on the top left showed the interior of the express elevator from the private car park. It depicted several men. Four of Benny B’s heavies were ranged across the back. Their hands were out of sight, but they were clearly training firearms on the two men in front of them: Frank McCracken and Mick Shallicker. Briefly, the twosome looked ridiculous, the enormous minder standing side-on to his infinitely shorter, leaner employer, who appeared unusually dishevelled. McCracken’s left arm was still in a sling, and his jacket was draped over his shoulders; he wore no tie and his collar was open.
In front of those two, almost the same height as McCracken, but the same breadth as McCracken and Shallicker put together, was Benny B, grim-faced and silent as they rode.
Pentecost turned to Spicer. ‘You know what to do.’
Spicer nodded and disappeared.
Pentecost got up from his chair and walked slowly into the boardroom, where he stopped and waited – with his own tie loose, his hands in his trouser pockets. It was not his normal look, either. But then these were not normal times.
Outside in the penthouse lobby, Spicer and two assistants stood by the lift doors. All non-security staff – barmen, waitresses, chambermaids and the like – had been given a half-day, so the threesome were alone. They waited loose-limbed and with pistols drawn, watching the red light above the doors, as the car ascended from floor to floor. In truth, they weren’t expecting that Benny B would need any additional muscle, as he seemed to have things well in hand. But just in case, here they were.
With a ping, the lift arrived.
The double doors slid open – and Benny B was in their faces, features white, glasses askew, head crooked to one side by the Walther P22 jammed into his right ear.
‘Drop ’em!’ McCracken ordered, coming out behind him, pushing Benny’s bulk forward as a human shield. ‘Do it now or Benny gets it. You know I’m not kidding.’
Spicer and his oppos were stumped. Especially when they saw that Shallicker was carrying an Uzi submachine gun and levelling it at them over the security chief’s shoulder. One burst and he’d take them all down. Of the four men left behind in the lift, it seemed that only two, the two in the middle, were Benny B’s. The two on the outside, who now that they weren’t being viewed through a grainy TV monitor, were clearly McCracken’s, clutched pistols against their guts.
‘You can live or die, Spicer,’ McCracken said in a voice that brooked no discussion. ‘Your call. But if it’s the latter, Benny dies first.’
Spicer and his sidekicks gazed past the great, quivering lump of uselessness that was Benny Bartholomew into Frank McCracken’s cold eye and they didn’t need to hear what had happened at the safehouse to know that no further assistance was coming.
Later on, they’d be told how it went down. Namely, that as Benny and his boys, who’d been led to the isolated cottage with remarkable ease by Mick Shallicker, went smashing through its front door, other doors – stable blocks, barns and the like – had opened behind them, and Frank’s men had come out blazing. The ones at the back had fallen immediately, leaving those not caught in that first fusillade to unhesitatingly surrender. As for Benny, who’d now entered the cottage, he’d barely had time to react to the shooting behind him when he’d found two pump shotguns levelled on him by a pair of likely lads on the nearby staircase. When McCracken had casually emerged from the living room, he was unarmed. But it didn’t matter – it was already over.
‘What sickens me to the pit of my stomach,’ McCracken now said, as the stand-off in the penthouse continued, ‘is that our inner sanctum has been penetrated so easily. What do you think Bill’s going to say, Spicer, that we got this far? And it’s not just us. There’s another seven or eight of my lads waiting to come up.’
As he spoke, the lift doors closed, and the elevator commenced its descent.
Spicer and his men backed away, dumbstruck. Spicer’s eyes were drawn constantly to the black hole at the end of the Uzi. In truth, he didn’t care about Benny B. The guy was ballast, a makeweight, a passenger from Wild Bill’s early days. But that bloody submachine gun would tear all three of them apart, and the bloke on the other end of it, Mick Shallicker, who was grinning like an overlarge devil, looked like he couldn’t wait to pull the trigger.
‘But I’m actually prepared to make a deal with you, Spicey, old mate,’ McCracken said, now stepping around Benny’s bulk, still keeping the pistol in his ear but, perhaps to show trust, presenting himself as a clear target. ‘I want to start from scratch. I want to make everything right again with minimum trouble. That’s why I’ve been talking on the phone all the way here from Cheshire. That’s why I’ve called another emergency meeting. That’s why the entire board of directors are on their way here as we speak. And I want you to be at that meeting too, Spicer.’
Spicer’s face registered surprise.
‘Yeah, I know,’ McCracken said. ‘You’re just a grunt, aren’t you? Your job is to keep your mouth shut and to soldier. Well, not any more … maybe. You guys hand your pieces over, and everything won’t just be okay, it could actually be better than okay.’
It wasn’t a difficult decision. One by one, Spicer and his men offered their firearms. McCracken took them, passing them to his own men.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Where’s Bill?’
‘In the boardroom,’ Spicer replied. ‘Waiting for you.’
‘Excellent.’ McCracken slid his Walther back into his shoulder-holster and straightened his jacket. ‘All the rest of you … go through into the bar. Relax, get yourself a drink, make friends again. Just like me and Wild Bill are going to.’