House of the Dead, page 21
She wasn’t confident in those explanations, and she’d seen the same doubt in Tony’s face when they’d been offered by the dive team.
If Jason Graves was still out there somewhere, would he leave her alone? After all, he’d proved his point, that the police couldn’t save everyone. She’d failed to save Elliot, and the whole world had seen the events unfold.
Jason had also destroyed her life in another way. Charlie was no longer speaking to her. After spending a day in hospital, her daughter had returned to Birmingham. Her last words to her mother had been, “Don’t bother calling me.”
Dani had tried to explain that there was no way she could have dragged Charlie and Elliot through the flooding tunnel. That she had intended to go back for her daughter’s boyfriend. But it was all to no avail. Charlie blamed her for Elliot’s death.
It felt like the cruellest punishment the GameMaster could possibly have inflicted on her. Perhaps he’d planned it that way.
After her experience on the island, she’d been told to take a couple of days off by Battle. She was back at work tomorrow. Hopefully, some case or other would turn up that would take her mind off recent events.
And hopefully, Charlie would come around in time. Until then, Dani would give her daughter the space she needed, no matter how hard that was going to be.
“Come on, boys,” she called to the dogs. They wheeled around and trotted through the heather to her side as she headed back to her cottage.
When she was in sight of her home, she saw a car parked on the road outside the cottage. She couldn’t discern any details. The vehicle was nothing more than a dark shape, almost ethereal in the lifting fog. Her throat tightened and she stopped in her tracks, unable to move.
Had the GameMaster come for her? Had he escaped Horseshoe Island while she’d been busy on the shoreline and Battle and Tony had been searching the house for people that were never there?
Her phone rang. She took it out of her pocket and inspected the screen. It was Ryan.
“Ryan,” she said. “I think there’s someone—“
“It’s me, guv. I can see you and the dogs on the moors. At least I think it’s you. Hard to tell with all this fog. I’m fairly sure there’s no one else around here with two big dogs that run around like lunatics, though.”
“It’s me,” she said, relieved. She started walking again, the dogs following.
When she reached the road, Ryan was leaning against his Aston Martin. A full shopping bag sat on the bonnet.
“I thought I’d make you a proper breakfast. Thank you for the meal the other day.”
“That was a microwaveable ready meal. Is that what you’ve got in the bag? A selection of ready meals?”
He shook his head. “I make a mean breakfast. This is all fresh ingredients. And a couple of treats for the dogs.”
“How can I say no, then? Come in.” She opened the cottage door. Barney and Jack barged inside. She and Ryan followed.
Ryan went to the kitchen and unpacked the contents of the bag onto the counter. Dani smiled. She knew why he was here. He’d seen how distressed she’d been in the Coastguard helicopter, seen the rift between her and Charlie. Despite his gruff exterior, he seemed to be sensitive to such things and the fact that he was here now, offering to cook her a meal, meant he had come to offer moral support.
She felt the edginess of the last two days fade into the background as she helped him find what he needed in the kitchen cupboards.
And when he shooed her out of the kitchen to let him get on with it, she sat on the window seat, watching the fog lift from the moors.
For a moment, she allowed herself to believe that everything was going to be okay.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Tony sat in Sam’s Café with a plate of beans on toast and a mug of tea on the table in front of him. His appetite, which had been growing before the GameMaster case, seemed to have vanished.
For the past couple of days, he’d sustained himself on little more than toast and an occasional coffee. He’d come here—to his old haunt—to try and rekindle his love for food.
But it hadn’t worked. He hadn’t even touched the beans on toast.
He couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. He suspected that Jason Graves—aka the GameMaster—was still at large, in hiding somewhere, but that shouldn’t affect his appetite like this.
He just felt as if something was missing from his life.
The obvious answer, of course, was Alina. She’d returned to the dig in Sussex, and Tony had realised for the first time that he didn’t like returning to an empty flat after work. He missed her conversation, her presence.
He took a sip of the tea and set the mug back down, deciding he couldn’t face the beans on toast. He’d go to work on an empty stomach and perhaps grab a sandwich from the canteen for lunch. Perhaps.
The bell above the door jangled. Tony was about to take a final sip of tea and leave when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
For a split second, he froze. Had the GameMaster somehow followed him here? Was Jason Graves about to begin another game, with Tony as a victim?
“I thought I’d find you here.”
He turned in his seat. Alina stood there, smiling at him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, bewildered. “You’re supposed to be in Sussex.”
She slipped into the seat opposite him. “You sounded so down, so I thought I’d come back and see you.”
He didn’t know what to say. She’d travelled over four hundred miles just because he sounded down. He felt tears well in his eyes.
She looked at him, concerned. “I did the right thing, yes?”
He nodded. “Yes.” Reaching across the table, he took her hands in his. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “So, do you think you can get the day off work?”
“I’m sure I can.” Battle wouldn’t object. Tony’s last holiday had been cut short, after all.
“Good. I thought we might visit the Jorvik Viking Centre, since we didn’t get a chance last time.”
“Yes, great idea. You must be hungry after your journey. What would you like?”
“A salad sandwich will be fine.”
He stood up and went to the counter to order the food. When he returned to the table, he took his phone out of his pocket. “I’d best call Battle and request the time off.”
“You should eat your breakfast first, before it goes cold.”
“Yes, I should.” He began to tuck into the beans on toast. Nothing had ever tasted so good.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Lakeside Institution. Ontario, Canada
Jerry Bickerson parked his Ford Escape in the parking lot of the Lakeside Institution and got out, taking his suit jacket from the back seat and shrugging it on before grabbing his briefcase.
The night was cold, and he wished to God he was back in the bed he’d left an hour ago. He needed to tell his client that he didn’t appreciate being called in the middle of the night. His wife, Betty, hadn’t appreciated being woken up either, and had told Jerry to ignore the phone.
He wished he had. Then he wouldn’t be at this God-forsaken place at this ungodly hour.
Telling himself he was going to take tomorrow off work and make it up to Betty somehow, he entered the Lakeside Institution—a place he’d visited many times before—and showed his ID to the guard behind the Plexiglass screen before signing in.
“Wait here,” the guard said. “Someone will be along shortly to escort you.”
Jerry nodded and took a seat on the scarred wooden bench that ran along the corridor wall, rubbing his eyes. The light in here was too bright for a man who had been tucked up in bed only an hour ago.
A buzz sounded and the door at the far end of the corridor opened. Charlie Lapointe, a guard Jerry knew well, popped his head around the door and said, “You want to come through, Jerry?”
Jerry didn’t really want to, but now that he was here, he guessed he might as well get on with it. He stood, stretching his back which was sore from the long drive over here, and went through the door that led to the interior of the prison.
“He’s got you running around late tonight, eh?” Charlie said as they walked together to an identical door which Charlie opened with a key card.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
They stepped through and Charlie indicated a door on the left. “He’s in there. Grumpy as always.”
“No change there, then,” Jerry said, opening the door and stepping into the room.
The room contained a single table and two chairs, on opposite sides. On one of the chairs sat Solomon Gantz. He was handcuffed to a steel bar that ran the length of the table.
Jerry was always surprised by Gantz’s size. On the day of his arrest, Gantz had been burly but now, he was massive. The orange, short-sleeved shirt he wore was stretched so tightly across his biceps and chest that Jerry wouldn’t be surprised if the seams ripped and the muscles burst out, like when Bruce Banner transformed into the Incredible Hulk.
“Hi, Solomon,” he said, taking a seat across from his client. “What can I do for you?”
Gantz regarded him with dark eyes that made Jerry think of a crow observing a piece of meat it was about to grab with its beak.
“I’m going to tell them what they want to know.”
Jerry wasn’t sure what Gantz was talking about. “Come again? What do they want to know?”
“Where the bodies are.”
That took Jerry aback. The bodies of some of Gantz’s victim had never been recovered. Gantz had steadfastly refused to give up their locations, revelling in the distress it caused the families of the missing girls.
So why had he changed his mind now? Jerry had never known Gantz to do anything for anyone. The man was motivated by two forces: personal gain, and destruction of others. He didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body.
“Why do you want to do that?” Jerry asked.
“It’s time,” Gantz said enigmatically.
Jerry didn’t know what to say to that. He was sure that the man sitting across the table—the man the paper had called the Lake Erie Ripper—was planning something dangerous.
“You’re just going to tell them? You don’t want anything in return?”
There is something I want. And as my lawyer, you’re going to make sure I get it.”
Jerry pursed his lips. He didn’t like Gantz’s tone, but he thought of the families who might get some kind of closure if their loved ones’ remains were found.
“What do you want?” he said.
“I can’t just tell them where the bodies are. My memory isn’t that good. I need to show them where they are.”
Jerry, who was sure that Gantz’s memory was just fine, said, “Uh huh.” So, this was all about getting out of the prison. He couldn’t blame Gantz for wanting to get some fresh air. This place was stifling.
But if his client thought he was going to succeed in some sort of half-assed escape attempt, he hadn’t reckoned on the might of the Ontario Police Department. They wouldn’t let Gantz take a piss without at least five officers surrounding him.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Gantz nodded. “There’s one more thing.”
“Okay.”
Gantz reached down and took something from his lap. He placed it on the table between them.
Jerry looked at it. A copy of the Toronto Star. The headline on the front page read, RIPPER PSYCHOLOGIST SAVES KIDNAPPED BOY IN BRITAIN.
A grainy black and white photo showed the British psychologist, Tony Sheridan, pulling a young boy out of what looked like a hole in the ground.
Gantz pressed his finger against the photo, pressing it against the psychologist’s head. “I’ll show them where the bodies are on one condition. He has to be there too.”
He looked up with those dark crow eyes and said, “I want to see Tony Sheridan.”
THE END
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Adam J. Wright, House of the Dead
