Creed (38 page)

For twenty minutes at least he waited, listening to the creaking of the building, the faint strains of chamber music and muffled voices. Mercifully he did not hear that empty, manic laughter again, but this sombre cubby-hole, with its smell of dirt and dinginess, had an eeriness all its own. Twice he opened the door a fraction, not so much to investigate the ill-lit corridor beyond, but more to disperse his own rising claustrophobia. It didn’t really work, for as soon as he closed the door again, the shadows and the walls crept in a few more inches. It was funny (funny in the
peculiar
sense) how some of those shadows, when he looked away and then quickly back, seemed much darker than before and somehow took on slightly (you’d only notice if you concentrated hard) different shapes. And the shifts in air inside there were surely unnatural; the coldness that regularly brushed by his legs was more like the ephemeral touch of icy fingers than the passing of draughts from the window or the crack beneath the skirting. He should have gone with her, taken his chances, found a friendly broom closet in a bright hallway to hide in until she got the information he needed; this was bloody daft, waiting here in the dark, scrutinizing the shadows, his own imagination taking the piss. Creed felt the wall next to the door for a switch, the palm of his hand sweeping wider and with more urgency when he failed to make contact with anything.

For the third time he inched open the door to allow in a lick of light from the corridor. He leapt back, jolting his spine against the stone sink behind him and almost twisting his ankle on a carelessly discarded boot, when fingers curled through the gap and pushed from the other side.

‘What are you doing, Joe?’ Cally whispered. ‘You should have kept this door shut. My God, we’d both be in terrible trouble if you were discovered inside the house.’

She came in breathlessly, closing the door for safety. Her scent was stronger within the confines of the room, but hardly a match for the other smells present. She carried the jackal mask in one hand.

‘Cally, can you give me a warning before you creep up on me again? You know, whistle a tune or something.’ Creed held a hand against his chest to pacify his wildly beating heart.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘It’s something you’re becoming very good at. Did you find out where the old boy is?’

‘Yes. All the residents have their own labelled pigeon-holes in the main office. I suppose they’re for mail and messages. They also have hooks with individual keys.’

‘This place is more like a hotel than a nuthouse.’

‘I think the keys are to lock them in.’

‘Not Pink, surely? As far as I know, he’s not mentally ill, just ancient.’

‘Perhaps so. But there was no key with his name on it. Just these . . .’ She held up a metal ring on which hung two large keys. ‘They were on a hook marked “Basement”.’

‘You think he’s down there?’

‘Room 8. I checked it with a register they keep in the office.’

‘Clever girl. You’re sure one of these will open Pink’s room?’

‘There were no others. One might open the basement itself, the other his room.’ She handed the keyring to Creed.

‘Maybe that’s where they keep the poor folk. Listen, I’ve been reconsidering our position. I think it might be better if we get out of here and bring in—’

‘
We’ve been through all that.
’

He flinched from her anger.

‘Let’s just get on with it, Joe.’

His hands dropped from her shoulders. ‘Did you manage to find out where Sammy is?’ he asked sullenly.

‘Not yet. But I will. I’ll take you downstairs first, then I’ll start hunting. Don’t worry, I’ll find him.’

Cally turned away and peeped out into the corridor. ‘All clear,’ she whispered. She squeezed through the narrow gap as though that were the discreet thing to do; Creed followed suit.

The corridor joined a wider hallway, and this was much better lit. Conversations and laughter could be heard from the far end, all perfectly natural, sane and sociable.

‘There’s a reception room near the front of the house. That’s where all the guests are gathered at the moment. Fortunately for us, most of the Retreat’s staff are being kept busy because of tonight’s celebration.’

‘Don’t they have nurses or wardens patrolling?’ asked Creed, taking a furtive look into the hallway.

‘There are only ever two on duty at night, and they’ll be upstairs somewhere. They tend to keep the worst cases sedated once it gets dark.’

‘You seem to know a lot about the place.’

‘I should. My mother has been a patient for a long time. You could say it’s almost a second home to me.’

‘That’s rough. You didn’t try to forget her?’

‘I could never do that.’ Although she spoke quietly, Cally said this with passion.

She suddenly grabbed him and pushed him further back into the corridor. He looked at her in surprise and she put a finger to her lips. He heard footsteps in the hallway, but they were walking in the opposite direction.

‘Somebody came out of a door halfway down,’ Cally whispered. She peeked round the corner and Creed jerked her back.

‘How do we get to Pink?’ he demanded to know. ‘I don’t want to stay in this place one second longer than necessary, so let’s get on with it.’

‘I think there’s a way down over there.’ She pointed to a door almost opposite them.

‘Why didn’t you say?’ He gritted his teeth, exasperated.

‘Because I’m not sure. There’s a proper staircase near the front of the house, but on my way back to you I looked in some of the doors in this corridor. I knew there had to be another way down, and I think that’s it. There’s an old iron staircase, and it should take you to the main basement area.’

‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ He really didn’t feel like investigating alone.

‘I have to get back to the reception for a while. I’ll get away again as soon as I can.’

‘Then we find Sammy and leave, right?’

‘Mother, too. I’m not leaving without her.’

‘Okay. Mother, too. But don’t leave me on my own in the crypt too long.’

‘It’s a basement, that’s all. And it was your idea to see the hangman in the first place. You don’t believe me about Mallik.’

‘Let’s not argue over it now. Just come and get me soon as you can.’

He went over to the door and gripped the handle. Before he opened it, he looked back over his shoulder at Cally.

But Cally had already gone.

It was dusty and even more smelly down there, obviously the neglected part of the mansion (unless the upper floors were in a similar state). At the bottom of the creaky stairway, he found a passageway whose walls were of crumbly brickwork and where cobwebs draped from cracks and rafters. The lightswitch had been at the top of the stairs, but the two bare lightbulbs along the passageway’s length cast scant light, probably because they were covered in thick dust. The concrete floor was damp, as though water freely flowed through on occasion. Here and there were clods of mud where dust had collected and congealed. In all probability there was an underground spring beneath the foundations that swelled and flooded when rainfall was particularly heavy. Creed half expected a rat or two to scurry by; fortunately, that didn’t happen, although he did hear scraping and scratching noises from behind the walls at certain points.

It was a relief when he finally came to the end of the passage, even though the next one was only a minor improvement. This was wider, paralleling the one above, but when he found a lightswitch, it was almost as dingy as the one behind. A heavy, dull thrumming meant there was a boiler room nearby. There were doorless doorways on either side of the passageway and when he poked his head into one or two he saw rooms filled with bric-à-brac – odd bits of furniture, stacked pictures, some with frames, others without, as well as unidentifiable pieces of machinery. A veritable basement junkyard.

He noticed there were other doorways leading off to other rooms, but had no inclination to explore them. Instead he moved on, coming next to a chamber with a padlocked iron door. The family vault? he wondered. Was this where they kept heirlooms and treasures? But no, this was a ‘rest’ home, not a family mansion.

He tried both keys on the ring, but neither one fitted the lock. He moved onwards, choosing one of the few corridors that led off from the chamber, hurrying his steps now. He couldn’t deny it: the whole place gave him the creeps. Even the fat receptionist, with her piggy little eyes set deep in rolls of swollen flesh and her tinkly, child’s voice, gave him the creeps. And skulking down here in this dirty inner sanctum definitely gave him the creeps, not to mention that lonely loony laughter he’d heard outside. That gave him the creeps in abundance.

He spotted a rough, but strong-looking door ahead. Maybe that would lead to a more sanitized area. He would expect so, if they kept patients there. He went to the door and found a sturdy bar across it that fitted into an equally sturdy slot mounted on the surrounding frame. Below this was a lock. Creed pulled back the bar, then used one of the keys. It turned stiffly at first, but soon yielded under pressure. The door moaned open.

The stink that wafted through was of a different kind: it was of things gone bad, cream that had curdled, meat that had moulded. He wrinkled his nose. He shivered. He wasn’t happy at all.

Dim, caged lights lit the passage ahead, the kind of lights you get in prisons (and asylums, of course), themselves incarcerated behind metal grilles to prevent human incarcerates from getting at the glass. There were narrow, shadowy doors on either side, low doors, the kind that, if you were just over normal height, you’d have to stoop to enter. They were shadowy because they were deep-set into the walls. From where he stood, he could see that the first few were numbered.

‘Ready or not,’ he muttered to himself, ‘here I come.’ He entered the passage of cells.

Number 8 was about a third of the way down and he stopped and listened outside the door before trying the keys. There were no sounds from within. There had been no sounds from any of the other rooms he’d passed either. He wasn’t sure if he should knock, but then thought, what the hell, let’s surprise him. The second key did the trick. He took a breath and pushed the door open.

‘Hello?’ he said, peering in.

He withdrew his head quickly. The air outside was nasty, but this was
foul
. The geriatric must have messed himself and nobody had bothered to clean him up. Or there was a slop bucket in there which hadn’t been emptied for some time.

Creed stiffened his resolve, narrowed his nostrils.

‘Hello?’ he said again.

There was no answer. And there was no light either. Swinging the door wide, Creed used what light there was from the passage behind to search for a switch, which he found all right, but which didn’t work. Standing to one side so that more light might come through, he studied what he could of the room. Which wasn’t much: one narrow bed, no more than a cot, and that was all; apart from the figure beneath the sheet on the bed.

Creed went in and was surprised it wasn’t colder inside. It wasn’t terrifically warm, either, but he’d expected it to be as chilly as the rest of the basement area. He saw that there was a cast-iron radiator behind the door and surmised that although this Parmount character obviously wasn’t concerned about the unhygienic conditions his subterranean patients lived in, he at least wasn’t going to let them die from hypothermia. Handkerchief to his nose, Creed approached the bed.

A withered head, the only part of the body under the sheet that was visible, considered him.

‘Get away,’ a quavery voice.

Creed raised what he hoped would be taken as a reassuring hand. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve just come to see how you are.’

‘Nay, I don’t know you. You’re a stranger t’me.’ Feeble though the voice was, neither its feistiness nor its Yorkshire accent was entirely lost.

‘It is Mr Pink, isn’t it? Your niece . . .’ what the fuck
was
her name? ‘. . . sent me to see how you were getting along. She worries about you . . .’

‘Sheila? Worries about me? Don’t make me laff, lad.’ His snort of disgust was more like a throaty hiccup. ‘Who are yer? What d’yer want with me?’ Shakily, he raised his head and strands of white hair still touched the pillowless mattress beneath him. ‘Is it time for m’feed?’

‘Uh not yet. Soon.’ Creed ventured closer and even in that poor light he could see the sheet covering the frail old man was stained and soiled. ‘Are you all right, Mr Pink?’

The figure was silent for a while, the face still towards Creed, studying him. With a rasping sigh, the shrivelled head settled back, the eyes closed as if claimed by sleep.

‘Sir . . .?’ Creed said after a moment or two, for he thought the old man really had gone to sleep.

‘Am I all right?’ the old man asked himself. ‘Am I
all right
?’ What started as a tiny snigger finished as a body-racking cough.

Creed waited for him to settle. ‘Your daughter . . . Sheila . . . wants you to know she can’t get down to see you so often nowadays because—’

‘Daughter-in-
law
,’ came the correction. ‘She’s no blood-kin of mine. If my lad were alive today he’d never ’ave seen me put away in this cesspit. He’d never let those bastids torment me the way they do.’ The last word was punctuated by a half-suppressed sob.