What Remains (45 page)

I reached the room.

Inside were two sets of bunks against opposite walls, long since stripped of their mattresses, leaving just the frames and the wire springs. The room was small, windowless; a cupboard was at the back, open with nothing in it. A torch lay on the floor between the bunks, its light fanning out in a cone to reveal a cassette recorder like the one Healy and I had found on the pier. A tape was gently whirring inside.

The sound of crying was a recording.

It was a woman.

Automatically, I took a couple of steps closer, drawn to the noises she was making, hypnotized by the awful, guttural moans catching in her throat. My hands balled into fists, my muscles calcified.

It was Gail.

Gail’s on the tape
.

As she tried to speak, her accent clear even in the few words she was able to get out, I realized it wasn’t the tears that were halting her voice in her throat.

It was her injuries.

Korman had recorded her as she lay there dying on the sofa in her flat, bleeding out over her dressing gown, over the furniture, the floor. In the background, in the spaces beyond her last, whispered cries for help, I could hear the television.

Stomach tightening, I found myself inching further inside before I even noticed what I was doing, my boots hitting a pool of water, leaking out of pipes in the corner of the room. I picked the torch up off the floor and went to switch the tape off.

Then I saw a flash of movement.

It was behind me, right on the periphery of my vision,
coming out of the darkness of the corridor. I turned, trying to see what it was – and my movement saved me. A knife was driven straight across the back of my jacket, where my ribs had been a moment before. The material snicked and tore and I felt knuckles brush against my spine, the momentum of the thrust carrying the fist, the blade, the person, into the space beside me.

I shifted further around, the jagged broom handle in one hand, the torch in the other. Flipping the torch on its head, so the lamp and the rubberized casing were facing up, I retreated towards the back wall, water parting beneath my feet.

As I kept going, I hit the bottom edges of the bunk on the left, stumbling slightly, accidentally kicking the cassette deck across the floor, into the water. It turned on to its side, the lid of the tape deck flipping up, water running into it, into the machine itself, the recorder making a soft, fizzing sound as the electrics fused. I stopped as my boots hit the wall, watching as my attacker inched forward himself, into the dead centre of the room.

Victor Grankin.

He was wearing a grey mask.

It was
the
mask, the one he’d worn the night he’d waited for Korman outside Searle House – right down to the crack on the left-hand side. He stood there, tall, thin, blinking inside the eyeholes, dressed in black tracksuit trousers and a black T-shirt, mud-streaked canvas shoes on his feet.

In his fist was a hunting knife.

He adjusted the mask, pushing it harder against his face, as if trying to fuse himself with it, his eyes glinting in the low light, and then inched towards me. His feet hit the pool of water, knife in front of him, swiping it through
the air right to left, its serrated edge making a whipping sound; a thick, brutal noise.

He must have heard us approaching, seen me out in the forest around his house, then made a break for this place. Why?

The recording of Gail
.

He’d used it to draw me in, trying to distract me long enough to put a knife between my ribs. And the only reason to do that was because there was something else hidden here that he didn’t want me to find.

He looked around him.

‘We used to sleep in this room,’ he said, seven inconsequential words that seemed to carry so much threat. His accent was heavy, even all these years on, deadened slightly by the mask. A few more steps, the hem of his trousers soaking up the water. ‘Did you like the tape?’

He was trying to force a mistake out of me.

I said nothing, gripping the broom harder.

‘I thought you might like it. I knew you’d be drawn to it, like a – how do you say? – moth to a flame.’

When I gave him nothing, he started making a grotesque noise, a gurgling sound: Gail struggling, choking to death, her last moments, every lost word.

‘You’d better get used to that sound,’ I said.

‘Yes?’ He stopped, eyes fixed on me. The mask gave him a weird, alien look: only a faint hint of moulded lips, of definition in the cheeks. ‘Yes?’ His gaze flicked from me to the remnants of the broom handle, then to the torch. ‘You are going to end my life with those things?’

‘I’m going to try.’

‘I never realized you were a killer.’

‘It’s over,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘For you maybe.’

‘The police are on their way.’

A flicker of panic in his eyes. I didn’t actually know if the police were coming or not. I didn’t know whether I’d given Craw enough to work with. I’d had to hang up on her when I saw Healy had already come inside. But she had Grankin’s home address now. I’d told her about St David’s. She’d said she believed me.

And then I thought:
Healy.

Where the hell is Healy?

Grankin pulled me back into the moment, another step closer, swiping the knife from side to side, just a blur in his hands. There was ten feet between us. ‘The police are not coming,’ Grankin said.

‘They are.’

‘You wouldn’t call them.’

‘I would.’

‘You would expose your lies?’

‘To expose yours?’ I nodded. ‘Absolutely.’

His eyes narrowed, the knife dropping away slightly. For a second, it was like he was standing down, finally cognizant of the fact that the end was coming.

But he wasn’t standing down.

Rocking from one foot to the other, he came at me, his sudden change of pace catching me on the hop. He was lithe and he was fast, devious, aggressive. I felt the knife disturb the air in front of me as I moved sideways, arching my body, the tip of the blade slitting open my jacket at the arm. As his momentum took him further towards me, I rolled back on to the balls of my feet and swung the broom handle. It clattered into him somewhere around the waist, knocking him off balance, and he staggered sideways into
the frame of the bunk on the opposite side of the room. The metal vibrated, its legs scraping against the tiled floors, water splashing up.

For a second, I thought I had him exposed, his back half-turned to me, the knife in front of his body, incapable of getting to me before I got to him – but as I swung the lump of wood at him, he ducked, the underside of it brushing the top of his head. The force of my swing carried me towards him. Knowing he couldn’t get the knife out from in front of him in time, he used his elbow instead, jabbing the point hard into the base of my throat.

It was like being shot.

I stumbled back, winded, spots in front of my eyes. My head was a mess of static, my legs weak, my sense of perception gone. I reached out for the other bunk bed just beside me, but it wasn’t there. I grabbed air, the bed another foot and a half away from where I expected it to be. With nothing to hold me up, I lurched forward, hitting the floor. Water spattered my face, my mouth, my skin.

I rolled over on to my back.

My vision was blurring in and out, but I could see enough: Grankin moved into view, knife out in front of him, looking down at me. He placed a hand on the mask and lifted it away from his face, perching it on top of his head. It was bound to his skull with a piece of old string. He had the torch in his other hand now, which I’d dropped without even realizing, and was using it to blind me, to toy with me, shining it into my eyes and then away again. I could feel my jacket soaking through to my spine, the back of my trousers too. I tried to shift myself up on to an elbow, but it was like I was paralysed. I was an animal, dying in the headlights of the car that had struck it.

‘Is that it?’ Grankin said.

He shuffled in over me, feet planted hip distance apart, fingers re-establishing their grip on the knife. His neck tilted to one side, almost looking at me with pity, and then he leaned forward, pursed his lips and let his saliva drop into my face.

‘You are pathetic,’ he said.

He drew the knife back, ready to strike.

But he never got the chance.

66

Something clicked.

Freezing exactly where he was, Grankin turned. I followed his eyeline, across the room to the darkness of the hallway – and then Healy stepped into the edges of the torchlight, gun aimed at Grankin. He moved slowly, cautiously.

‘Oh,’ Grankin said calmly, glancing at me. ‘I didn’t know if you’d brought him or not.’ He straightened, looking Healy up and down, then raised his hands above his head, the knife still in his left. ‘You should put on some weight, friend.’

Healy just stared at him.

‘Where did you go?’ I said.

‘I thought I heard a noise.’

‘Ah, look at you two.’ Grankin smiled. ‘Is it love?’

‘Drop the knife,’ Healy told him.

Grankin frowned. ‘Or what? You are going to shoot me? You are going to leave my body here for the police when they come?’

Healy’s eyes flicked to me. ‘You called the
police
?’

I sat up, my system starting to settle.

‘
Raker?
You called the police?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I called the police.’

‘Why?’

I looked at him, unsure what to say.

‘
Raker?
’

‘There’s something wrong with me,’ I said, hauling myself to my feet, wet, aching, unsteady.
I thought I was calling them because I couldn’t look after you
.

But it wasn’t you I couldn’t look after.

He frowned, stepping towards me.

It was myself
.

‘There’s something wrong with you?’ Healy said.

‘I think I might be ill. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now.’

‘What do you mean, “ill”?’

‘Colm,’ Grankin said almost delicately, moving fractionally in Healy’s direction, ‘why don’t you see if that cassette recorder on the floor still works?’

Healy glanced at it.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Ignore him.’

‘See if it still plays,’ Grankin continued.

I tried again: ‘
Healy
.’

He was frowning now, confused, half an eye on the tape. This was exactly what Grankin wanted: a loss of focus, a lapse, a mistake.

‘Healy,’ I said again, calmly, quietly.

He looked from the tape to Grankin. ‘Why?’ he said, jabbing the gun at Grankin’s face. ‘What’s on the tape?’ He eyed me, looking for the answer. ‘Raker?’

‘He’s baiting you,’ I said.

‘About what?’

I held up a hand. ‘We need to talk to him.’

‘What’s he baiting me about?’

‘He’s trying to force you into a mistake.’

I could see Healy’s jaw tighten, almost contract, as he gritted his teeth. He stepped in closer to Grankin. For the first time, from the angle he was at, he saw the mask on
Grankin’s head. It seemed to send a jolt of electricity through him.

‘What’s on the tape?’

‘We need to talk to him,’ I said again.

‘Gail’s on the tape,’ Grankin whispered.

Healy was instantly silenced. Grankin took another step towards him, capable now of reaching up and grabbing the weapon.

‘You …’ Healy said faintly, shell-shocked. ‘You recorded her?’

Grankin inched forward.

‘You
recorded
her?’

‘Yes.’

‘The night she died?’

‘Yes.’

‘Healy,’ I begged, watching as Grankin tightened his grip on the knife. ‘This is what he wants. Don’t you see that?
Focus
. We need him. We need his answers.’

‘You recorded her dying?’

‘
Healy
.’

‘Yes,’ Grankin said. ‘We recorded her dying.’

‘Why?’ Healy muttered. ‘Why did you do that to her?’ Tears softened the words spilling out of his mouth, his eyes filling up, saliva bubbling at his lips.

‘Because.’

‘Because
what
?’

Grankin shrugged. ‘What does it matter now?’

A tremor seemed to pass across the room, like the floor had shifted beneath us. Grankin glanced at me, as if this were some sort of performance – and then, in a flash, reached up, clamped his hand on to the barrel of the gun and tried to direct it away from his face, jabbing the knife in hard.

‘
Healy!
’

The roar of the gun going off.

A blink of light.

And then Grankin was staggering backwards, half hitting the bunk on the way, his balance gone, his control. He smashed into the wall and fell forward, dropping to the floor like every bone in his body had turned to liquid. Healy stepped in towards him, gun facing down at him, the front of his clothes torn, traces of blood evident where the blade had nicked his stomach. But if he was in pain – if the wound was deep, if it was serious – he didn’t notice, or didn’t care. He was muttering to himself, sobbing, inconsolable. He leaned over Grankin and pushed the gun into his skull, pressing it into his eye.

‘Why did you kill the girls?’ he said softly.

Grankin’s blood washed out into the centre of the room, the bottom side of his face a mess of gore and bone, his wound slowly being submerged by the lake of spilt water. It ran into his eye, his nose, his mouth, the hole in his head.

‘Why did you kill the girls?’ Healy repeated, but this time he could hardly form the words. ‘
Why did you kill the girls?
’

I took a step towards him. ‘Are you hurt?’

He looked back at me, surprised, confused, as if he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. In his head, in this room that Grankin had once called home, it was just the two of them – and now a gunshot, an act of self-defence, had robbed Healy of the answer he craved. Looking at me again, he lifted the gun up, away from Grankin, and I glimpsed the wound at his stomach: a cut, a swipe of a blade, but not deep.

‘Why did he have to kill the girls?’ he said.

‘Healy.’ I held up a hand. ‘It’s okay.’