What Remains (46 page)

‘Why did he have to kill them?’

‘Healy …’

‘
Why did he have to kill them!
’ he screamed, his voice carrying out into the corridor of the building – an echo, repeated over and over, in search of an answer. When none came, when I couldn’t offer him anything, his eyes filled with tears and he began sobbing.

Their custodian.

Their avenger.

A man they had never known in life – but who had loved them all the same.

67

We left Grankin’s body where it was and moved back out into the corridor. Healy was completely silent, the tears gone, the gun returned to his jacket, this shell of a man reduced to something even less: a machine, pale and broken, propelled by whatever remained of the power that still held him upright. I’d tried to console him as we stood there between the bunks, but he hadn’t responded, had hardly been able to look at me. When he did, I realized I didn’t know what to say to him.

I’d looked for a phone on Grankin’s body, but he’d had nothing in either pocket. Whatever he’d come here to do, he’d come here to hide it, and he’d come here to do it quickly.

‘Healy, I want to take a look further down.’

He stared at me.

‘Are you coming with me?’ No movement, no reaction; he just continued to look at me, through me, something of him gone. ‘
Healy
. Listen to me.’

Except I still didn’t know what to say to him.

‘Come on,’ I said, and led us away from the room.

The corridor ran on another sixty feet, but it didn’t seem as closed in now, or as intimidating. I had the torch, which helped, but the further we got, the more daylight seemed to be escaping past the boards at the windows, binding together in the centre of the hallway. Eventually, we reached a set of double doors, one partially open, and
through the gap I could see the corridor kinked left, back around towards the reception area and the extension, a sign pointing the way.

In the opposite direction were toilets.

I slipped through the gap, shone the torch left, towards the reception area, and saw another door, this one coloured red. I’d seen the same one when I’d first entered the extension. It had been chained from the other side. That meant there would be no short cut back to the extension this way. We’d have to go out the way we’d come in.

I turned to Healy again. ‘You said you heard a noise earlier?’

He looked at me blankly.

‘
Healy
,’ I said, trying to rouse him. ‘You said you heard a noise when you were out front?’ I waited. Eventually, he nodded. ‘So you followed the noise in?’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t come inside,’ he said quietly, eyes still wet. He looked from me to the red door. ‘I checked around the back, because I thought the noise had come from out there. But there was nothing. Then I came inside.’

I swung the torch around, lighting up the entrance to the toilets: male and female doors, and some sort of janitor’s cupboard. Edging forward, I saw that the door to the Ladies was ajar, propped open with a chunk of brick. I gestured for Healy to follow me, placed a hand against the door and slowly opened it fully. Using the torch, I could see a row of six cubicles and a set of wash basins. A hand drier was attached to the far wall, and some of the old piping was exposed, plasterboard broken, edges fraying and crumbling.

‘Watch the door,’ I said to Healy.

He stirred, frowned. ‘What?’

‘Someone else might be here.’
Korman
. ‘Just watch the door, okay?’

The smell in the room was unpleasant – stale urine, damp, rust – but I kept moving forward. Halfway in, I glanced back at Healy, standing there in the door, swamped by a jacket too big for him. His eyes were focused on the hallway, but his mind was somewhere else: on Grankin, Gail, the girls, on the gravity of a single moment. As I turned, I noticed something for the first time, hidden in shadow beyond the cubicles.

Two oil drums.

The drums were empty, dry, the paint on the inside stripped away. Their lids – two big circular discs – were propped against them, at the side. I reached in and dabbed a finger to the interior, but no trace of anything came back on my skin.

Both drums were spotless.

A memory formed: I was back on the pier, in the moments before Healy and I were forced to make a run for it. I’d found a cassette recorder there, like the one Grankin had left in the bedroom – no tape, no batteries, but the same make.

And I’d found burn marks.

I knelt down in front of one of the drums.
These are what left the rings on the floor of the pier
. There had been two circles scorched into the wooden slats of the pavilion, their circumference matching the size of the drums. I shifted one of the drums out from the wall, looking at the piece of board it had been placed on. The board had the same ring burned into it: same size, colour, measurements.

Korman and Grankin were still using them.

Just not on the pier.

I turned on my haunches and directed my torch out across the rest of the room. Were they burning bodies in here? There was no smell of seared flesh, no lingering stench of decomposition. But as I continued to breathe in, the faint smell of disinfectant came to me.

Bleach
.

‘Wait here,’ I said to Healy, but this time I didn’t have to move fast to avoid an argument. He just nodded and remained there, half lit from one side by a row of four thin windows – all set behind wire – high above the basins in the toilets. There wasn’t much light escaping into this part of the building, but there was enough. I gripped the torch and headed next door, to the men’s toilets. They were set out in the opposite way to the Ladies, cubicles on the right, basins and the high windows on the left. In the same corner as next door, in the shadows beyond the cubicles, my torch picked out a fat plastic tube, on its side. As I got closer, I saw what it was.

A portable pressure washer.

Grankin had been in the middle of using it, the tiles of the bathroom still slick with water. That was why he’d made a break for it when he’d spotted us outside his house.
He’d come here to wash down the walls.

I edged closer.

There was blood in the water – not much, but some. It swirled around on the surface of the puddles like coils of red dye, gradually running into a drain beneath the basins. In between some of the tiles, blood had stained the grouting, but it had been rinsed to a very light pink over time, and you had to look hard to see it. There was the smell of bleach here too – even stronger than next door – and when
I went to the pressure washer, I found out why: setting it upright, I unscrewed the cap, and the smell hit me instantly. He’d mixed bleach and water.

Then my attention switched again.

I could hear a noise outside: faintly, distantly.

Shit.

It was sirens.

68

Grabbing Healy by the arm, I hauled him out of the toilets and back into the corridor, hurrying past the endless doors in the direction of the staircase. As we passed Grankin, I looked in at him: his legs were visible, one of his hands too, stretched out beside him, like he’d been reaching for something. The water was everywhere, a lake stained pink, his knife like a boat beached in the middle. I’d called Craw and got the police involved because it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Now I didn’t want them here. Not yet. Detectives and forensics would have a field day: not just with Grankin and the knife, but with whatever Healy and I had left behind.
Should I go back and wipe it down?

There wasn’t time.

I needed to get Healy out of here.

Moving more quickly now, I led the way back up the stairs, past the playrooms on the first floor, and then descended into the extension. Once I got to the grey doors, I paused, peering through the gap, listening to Healy move in behind me.

Everything looked quiet.

But that still didn’t settle my nerves.

I gestured for Healy to follow me, and we headed out, the cold starting to bite, the rain still coming down. Checking the rear of the building, and finding a series of empty parking spaces, I returned to the front of St David’s, looking off in the vague direction we’d approached it. What
had once been the garden, play fields for the kids who had called this home, was now an untidy mess of weeds and long grass. Among the trees on the far side somewhere, hidden from view, was the eight-foot electrified fence, and the hole in the ground that led back to Grankin’s house.

Our only way out
.

I glanced at Healy and suppressed a murmur of panic. He was looking at the floor, at the grass around his ankles, adrift, lost. There was no going back the way we’d come, not with the police almost at the house, and – if they’d listened to Craw, if they’d heard the part about the children’s home – they’d be coming through the main gates any moment too, somewhere down at the bottom of wherever the driveway led. We were trapped here, hemmed in. I’d tried to do the right thing – but all I’d ended up doing was boxing us into a corner. We’d left a body behind. Healy was supposed to be dead. Worse, he didn’t even seem to be aware of what was going on, or the scale of our problems. His muscles were still propelling him, but his mind hadn’t moved.

Part of him was still inside the home.

I grabbed his arm to try to rouse him – the kind of physical contact he normally would have hated – and he followed me down the driveway, through the knot of trees that arched around it, and on to a gentle slope. It snaked down the side of a shallow hill, enclosed by the forest, but – beyond the twisted branches and thick canopy – I caught glimpses of something up ahead: a road.

At the bottom of the driveway was a brick wall, separating the road from the property boundaries, an eight-foot main gate built into it. Either side of the gate, set atop the wall, was a stone eagle. I slowed down, signalling for Healy
to do the same, and looked off through the woods: the electric fence connected at either end of the brick wall, starting at road level and ascending the slope on my left and right, until it eventually looped around the children’s home. On top of the brick was more electric fencing – this time a three-wire variant – but there was none on the gates themselves. Instead, two CCTV cameras were set into the brick beneath the stone eagles, focused on the gates, the pavement and the main road.

Close by: more sirens.

I glanced at Healy, standing beside me, one foot on the driveway, one in the mud at the side, his eyes sunken and hollow, looking down towards the gate. Blood had run out of the gash in his jacket, on to his leg, his trousers gathering at the ankles where they were too big for him, his hairless head shining wet with rain. He looked at me, seemingly aware for the first time of what was happening.

We were about to be caught.

Arrested.

In two minutes, this was over.

As the sirens got louder, I pulled at his arm again and headed right, down to the gates. He followed. Cars whipped past, even more of Epping Forest visible on the far side of the road. I shrugged off my jacket and, as Healy caught up, I handed it to him. ‘Put this on over yours,’ I said.

He looked at me, confused.

‘But put it on back to front.’

It took a second for him to catch up, but then he got it: the cameras. I was going to hoist him up and over the main gates, and he was going to use the hoods on both coats to hide his identity: by wearing mine back to front, he could disguise his face. It was thin enough for him to see
through – or at least to see enough until he was clear of the cameras.

‘And you?’ he said.

‘Hurry.’

‘And
you
?’

Sirens, getting louder and louder.

‘Just put it on, Healy.’

He put my jacket on over his, but the wrong way round, like he was slipping into a straitjacket. When he was done, I zipped it up at the back. He looked absurd, but I didn’t care. Instead, I moved him into position at the gates, dropped down behind him, and then told him to place a foot into my locked hands.

The vague flash of a blue light.

‘Let’s go, Healy.’

I heaved him up and felt him fumble around for a grip, but then he came away, almost toppling on to me. Saying nothing, I grabbed hold of his foot again and pushed even harder. This time, I could sense a weight adjustment, as if he’d got hold of something. Pushing again, I felt him become even more secure, his foot slowly leaving my hands. I stole a look up. I couldn’t see the strain in his face, but I could see it in his skin: in the veins in his hand, his fingers like claws.

He was on top, one leg over the other side.

More blue lights.

I stepped up to the gates, looking along the road. I couldn’t see them, but it sounded like they were right on top of us.

‘Make the jump, Healy,’ I said. ‘
Now
.’

Still clinging on to the top of the gates, he swung down, one arm losing its grip, one still holding on, and
then – finally – let go, crumpling into a heap on the other side. I saw passengers in passing cars glance at us, and spotted a couple across the street, framed by a mix of fir and horse chestnut trees, talking to one another, yet to notice.

‘Run,’ I said to him.

‘What about you?’

‘Just run, okay?’

‘But you’re –’

‘
Healy
. You can’t get caught. You need to go.’

‘I …’ He hesitated. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Lie low. I’ll find you.’

He didn’t react.

‘Are you listening to me?’

A long pause. ‘Yes.’

For a second, he sounded emotional again, but it was hard to tell for sure. Through the hood of my coat, I could see the outline of his face: a hint of a nose, a chin. Nothing else. The sound of the sirens suddenly got louder than ever, ripping across the afternoon in a series of shrieks.
They’re here. They’ve entered the street
. He looked up to where the cameras were focused on him: I was safe on my side of the gate, out of view, undocumented; every second he lingered, more of him was committed to tape, more evidence, more for the police to work with.