Thorn (43 page)

After she had done what there was to be done to each of them – after she had taken what she had to take and laid it lovingly in its place in the deepfreeze – she had simply bundled the remains in black plastic bin liners and taken them down in the lift of the Great Portland Street block, using a small wheeled trolley, the kind that airport and railway staff used for transporting large suitcases and cabin trunks. The car park was in the basement, and she had been careful to park in a deserted corner, and to make this trip not at dead of night, which might have been noticed, but in the middle of the afternoon, three o'clock, when practically everyone in the block was out at work. It had been easy to deposit the bags in the boot of her car, lock it, and go innocently back to the flat. If anyone had chanced to see her, they would have assumed she was disposing of some unwanted household rubbish.

That night, or the next, she would drive her car to one of the deserted quayside areas of London, where she could tip the bags into the Thames. That part she had done at dead of night, keeping a careful eye out for watchers. She had weighted the grisly sacks so that nothing would rise to the surface, using large bags of garden compost bought innocently and openly at garden centres. Nobody had suspected anything, and nobody ever would suspect anything because she was invincible.

And Edmund had been with her all along; guarding her from inquisitive eyes and awkward questions. It was nearly unbearable by this time to look on the thing that Edmund was becoming: the once-smooth skin blotched and mould-spotted, the body leaking decay, but Thalia did look, because it was better by far to have even this of Edmund than to have nothing of him at all. He brought the aura of death with him a little more strongly each time, and it was an aura of oozing putrescence and wormy filth and rotting flesh. She could not escape him, but she did not want to escape him.

She would manage to dispose of Dan Tudor's body as easily as she had disposed of all the others. She locked and bolted the cellar, and went back upstairs, considering how she would use him. Tomorrow she would order the Harris creature to fire the potter's kiln for the disposal of the remains. Dan. Quincy. Imogen . . .

Imogen.

Her mind leapt ahead to tomorrow, to the hour when Harris would bring Imogen out of Thornacre and down to the cellars of October House.

It was going to be rather tedious to get through all the hours of daylight before that could happen.

L
eo found it difficult to gather up the threads of Thornacre's everyday life again.

His reaction when Imogen finally opened her eyes and looked up at him had been so fierce that for a moment it had nearly overwhelmed him. But he quenched the soaring emotion at once, and called the duty nurse in to make up a mild sedative. ‘To make you sleep, Imogen.'

She said, in the same far-away voice, ‘More sleeping?' and Leo smiled because even like this there was a faint irony in her voice.

‘Yes, but this time it'll be real sleep.'

‘No dreams?'

‘Not this time. I promise you, Imogen. And someone will be here with you all the time.'

She managed a smile, and Leo touched her cheek for a moment and then turned away, forcing himself to make notes on her chart. Only when he was satisfied that the sedative had sent her into drifting dreamless sleep did he go out, leaving the nurse seated by the bed. Because if he left now he might be able to master his feelings. But as he went to his own rooms his mind was singing with such wild emotion that it almost blotted out everything else. I brought you out, Imogen, and I know hardly anything about you, but I'm beginning to suspect that you've spoiled me for any other female . . .

His own sleep was filled with darting disturbing glimpses of Imogen's silent secret woodland, and when he woke the next morning, Thornacre seemed unreal and blurred.

He went along to her room, to find her eating breakfast. ‘A huge breakfast,' she said, smiling. ‘They think I've got a lot of time to make up. It's rather a drastic method of slimming, isn't it?' She gave him a cup of coffee from the tray and Leo sipped it and watched her eating scrambled eggs and toast. There were dark smudges under her eyes, but she ate with the hungry appetite of a starving wood-nymph. The image formed in his mind unprompted.

They would arrange for a CT scan later in the day, but Leo did not think it would reveal anything sinister. Imogen was not quite back in the real world, not wholly, but she almost was. The lingering aura of other-worldliness would dissolve quite naturally.

The medical side of Leo scoffed at the concept of other worlds and of the unconscious wandering through them like wraiths, but the mystical side of him was fascinated. Imogen had dwelled for a time in one of the strange lands closed to most people; she had visited some distant, probably chimerical realm, but whether it was the Aegia with its fire-streaked skies or the perfumed fields of Elysium, or Dante's ironstone hell or Milton's dungeon-encircled furnace, or even the enchanted forests of darkly romantic fables, there was no way of telling. At her age she was more likely to have dreamed about pop stars anyway. This was a supremely depressing thought.

Once during his carefully casual questionings, she said, ‘I dreamed some odd things—' and then stopped abruptly.

‘Go on.'

‘I'm not sure which was dreaming and which wasn't.' She frowned.

‘Your memory will probably be a bit fragmented for a while,' said Leo at once. ‘A slight degree of amnesia is almost inevitable. Your memory will come back although probably not at an even pace. You'll get pieces all in a rush and then nothing for a while, and then more pieces.'

‘I feel a bit distant. As if I'm seeing things through a glass wall or under water.'

‘That's to be expected as well.' He studied her. ‘You said you dreamed some odd things.'

‘Yes, but telling dreams is the last word in egotism.'

‘Not to me.'

Imogen stared at him. ‘One day I will tell you,' she said, after a moment. ‘But not yet.'

‘Is it that you fear talking about it might spoil it? The dream-world?'

‘Not to you.'

The silence lengthened, and Leo thought: at least it doesn't sound as if it was pop stars. I believe I could force her to tell me. I believe I could reach out to her mind again and compel her. Would that be Svengali or Baron Frankenstein? jeered his mind. You're really crossing the line now! If you haven't crossed it already.

He was about to speak – although he had no idea what he was going to say – when there was a timid knock on the door and a scared-looking nurse put her head round.

‘Sorry for interrupting, Dr Sterne,' she said, ‘but please could you come to Matron's office on account of one of the patient's gone wandering off again.'

Leo said, ‘Harris?'

‘Well, yes.'

‘Curse him. All right, I'll come.' Leo turned back to Imogen. ‘I'll hold you to the promise,' he said. ‘About the dreams.'

‘All right.' The grin showed. ‘In the meantime,' said the wood nymph, ‘do you think they'd bring me some more toast?'

The news that Snatcher Harris had awarded himself a night out again and only returned in time for breakfast looking slyly pleased dragged Leo nearer to reality. He forced himself to concentrate on this problem, because if the Snatcher had really been out all night it was likely to be connected with Quincy's disappearance. It was possible, as well, that he might have inflicted harm somewhere, and it was devoutly to be hoped that it was nothing more than slight harm. Leo felt the beginnings of anger. Could these wretched nurses not keep a better watch?

He entered Freda Porter's office, banging the door impatiently back against the wall and demanding to know what had happened in such abrupt tones that Freda was thrown into quite a flutter.

‘Well, I'm afraid our Llewellyn had been out all night, Dr Sterne.'

‘I know that already. What happened?'

‘It was my evening off, you know.'

‘Yes?'

‘I shall make a full inquiry, naturally. These girls don't realise the importance of—'

‘What about Harris?'

‘He was left to his own devices for a little too long, Dr Sterne. He returned,' said Freda, plainly unaware of black humour, ‘with the milk.' She thinned her lips disapprovingly and Leo's anger was tinged with amusement for a moment. He repressed the urge to say, ‘We've all done that at times, Matron.'

‘And now he's bragging about females again.' There was no need to describe the obscene gestures Harris had been making. Freda said, primly, ‘In his own fashion, you understand.'

‘Revolting little tomcat,' said Leo. ‘But we'll hope it's no worse than an attack of flashing. Flashing's about all he's capable of anyway, poor little sod. There's no news of Quincy, is there? No, I thought not. Well, you'd better tell them to bring Harris to my room, Matron. I'll see if I can get anything out of him.'

Freda told him that nothing of any value had been elicited from the Snatcher, even though several of them had tried to talk to him. Freda had actually tried herself, approaching Harris with calm, sensible questions, which had had the unfortunate result of provoking what had been really a most unpleasant incident. She had managed to get herself out of the room without calling one of the nurses, because it would have been very embarrassing indeed if the disturbance – really very trivial – had become known. Freda could very well imagine the nurses saying to one another, ‘And then he got Matron down on the bed and there she was yelling for help, all sprawled out, her skirt round her waist . . .'

This was not an image Freda wanted conveyed to Dr Sterne, and anyway Dr Sterne knew all about Harris. Quite fierce he'd looked earlier on. Freda was glad to have been able to exonerate herself from blame so early on.

‘If Harris has had anything to do with Quincy's disappearance I'll get it out of him if I have to beat him!' said Leo, and saw Freda's start of surprise. He grinned inwardly, and with a half-mischievous idea of testing the woman, said, ‘Didn't you think I was capable of violence, Matron?' And waited, curious to see her response. Anyone with a genuine interest in this job, or with any kind of imagination at all, would have said something like, ‘It's generally held that we're all capable of violence under certain circumstances.'

Freda said, ‘Oh dear me
no,
Dr Sterne! Everyone knows how dedicated you are. My word, violence from you, my word,
what
an idea!' She gave a light, deprecatory laugh.

She'll have to go, thought Leo, making his way to his own office.

Snatcher Harris was not going to tell any of them where he had been last night. It was a secret. Secrets were not things you could have very easily inside Thornacre, but they were good to have if you could get them; they made you feel warm and excited and sometimes they gave you power over other people. He collected secrets, storing them up inside his mind.

They all asked a lot of questions about where he had been all night and what he had been doing but he was not letting on about any of it, not him! He knew exactly how to deal with them when they kept on at him like this, and he grunted and blubbered his lips and made obscene gestures. When it came to Matron asking him, primming up her lips and putting on a silly voice, he enjoyed himself very much, pushing the stupid old bitch on to his bed and upping her skirts over her face. She had let out a screech, and he had pretended to lunge between her legs, although really he would not have touched her with a barge pole, ugly old thing. But it had done him a lot of good to see her sprogged out like that, with her fat thighs and knickers all on display. Snatcher would laugh like anything at the memory when he was on his own. He would enjoy reminding her about it when they met. She would hate that. You could do a lot with a few gestures.

Dr Sterne was not so easy to trick, of course, and he was better than most of the others. He usually tried to understand the gruntings, but he did not try this morning because he was angry. There was a policeman there as well, who pretended to understand what was said and wrote a lot of things down in a book, which was silly because he, Snatcher, was deliberately grunting nothings. He knew all about policemen, stupid creatures, and he was not going to tell any policeman anything. He was certainly not going to tell Matron anything, even though she stood there frowning at him, and he was not going to tell Dr Sterne anything either. He gave them all his lopsided idiot grin and lurched around the room making rude waggling motions with his hips and clenching his fist and thrusting his bent arm upwards, until Dr Sterne said furiously, ‘Oh, stop it, Harris!' And then, to Matron, ‘Take him back to the dayroom. No, I don't want to see him again. I don't care what you do with him. You can drop him over the side of the cliff, for all I care!'

The policeman said something about Harris not being able to understand what was being asked of him, and Dr Sterne said impatiently, ‘Of course he understands! He understands everything very well, don't you, Harris? He's being deliberately awkward!'

Matron said in her silly voice, ‘Now then, Llewellyn, if you don't behave it'll be the locked room with the cardboard furniture for you!'

Harris turned his back on Matron and bent over so that his bum was sticking up, facing her, and made a loud farting sound. It was a pity that they hustled him out of the room before he could hear what happened next.

He was not very worried about the locked-room threat because Dr Sterne, as far as anyone knew, hardly ever used it, but he had not yet weighed up Matron's exact degree of authority. It occurred to him that it might be as well not to do anything that might upset tonight's plans, and so he went out more or less obediently.

The Lady – Harris thought of her like that – had made it all very clear. She had seemed to understand about secret things, because she said the secret they were going to share was the biggest, most important secret anyone could have. She had been looking for the exact right person, she said, someone who could understand properly, and she thought that he was that very person. She called him ‘Mr Harris' which was not a form of address anyone had ever used to him as far as he could recall.