Creed (40 page)

She held on to him. ‘I had no idea such things were going on here.’

He thought she was referring to poor Henry Pink and his living conditions at that moment. ‘Yeah, well, I think we can get this place closed down easily enough once we expose what’s happening. All we need is the evidence.’ He dug into his pocket, indicating the huddled figure with a nod of his head. ‘This’ll make a great shot.’

She tugged at his arm. ‘There’s no time for that. Come with me, I’ll show you something much worse.’

‘You kidding?’ Creed whispered excitedly. ‘I can’t miss out on this. England’s greatest and probably last executioner ending up like this, in an underground cell, sleeping in his own shit, haunted by his own past. It’s wonderful.’ He drew out the Nikon, switching on the flash recharger with easy speed. ‘Hey, Mr Pink. Come out of there and look this way, will you? Won’t take a second.’

The shape beneath the sheet hugged itself tight.

‘Leave it, Joe. There are more important things to do.’

‘Listen, Cally, grab the sheet and whip it back when I tell you. He’s bound to look round. You should see the state he’s in – it’ll make a fantastic shot.’

‘I don’t believe this. How can you act this way? The poor man’s frightened out of his wits and you want to take his photograph?’

‘You should see his eyes. It’s like they’ve seen the ghost of every person he’s ever hanged.’

‘Did he tell you about Nicholas Mallik?’

‘Sure. But he’s round the bend, mad as a hatter. He thinks his victims have come back to haunt him.’

‘Mallik, too?’

‘Especially Mallik. Move aside so I get some more light from the door.’

‘Didn’t you
listen
to him?’

Creed took his eye from the viewfinder. ‘What’s wrong with you? The man’s crazy.’

‘Nicholas Mallik is here.’

‘Pink told me he hanged him.’

‘He did.’

‘Christ, make up your mind. Mallik either escaped the noose or he didn’t. You can’t have it both ways.’

Cally vented her frustration with an angry groan and a clawing at the air. ‘Have it your own way, but come with me now.’

‘A coupla quick shots. Hey, Mr Pink . . .’ He stepped forward and, with much distaste, grabbed the edge of the bedsheet. ‘Henry . . .’ He tugged hard.

The old man rolled over with the covering as the photographer almost pulled it from the cot. Creed moved back a pace or two and swiftly lined up the shot. The small room flooded with blinding light and Pink’s scream rang round the walls so piercingly that both Creed and the girl cringed.

‘You really are a bastard, aren’t you?’ Cally said when the echoes had died away.

He shrugged acceptance and was about to reel off some more shots when a long, rising wail came through the wall from next door. Creed literally as well as metaphorically freeze-framed, finger poised, body motionless, as other cries filtered through from the passage outside. His look went from the bony, naked figure on the bed to Cally, and then to the open door. The combined wails and moans from out there steadily grew to a cacophony of misery.

‘Judas,’ Creed whispered. ‘Showtime . . .’

Pink joined in the wailing.

‘Can we go now?’ Cally demanded rather than asked.

All he would get from the old executioner was a bare-arsed shot, so Creed nodded agreement and ducked out of the door ahead of the girl. The wretched ululation was even more alarming out there in the wide passage, for it seemed that every room had its own voice, and every voice encouraged its neighbour.

‘They must keep the worst cases down here,’ Creed said over the hubbub of woe. ‘Or maybe they’re the charity cases.’ He glanced from left to right. ‘We’d better make tracks before somebody comes to check it out.’

‘The whole basement area is soundproofed from upstairs. Nobody will hear.’

‘I don’t suppose they’d want to spoil the Mountjoy’s tranquillity with the clacking of the cuckoos, right? Did you say you’d discovered something else?’

Now, although still nervous – well, bowel-clenching witless, actually – and desiring nothing more than to be back in the warm, cosy world of sex, scandal, booze and smoke-filled rooms, Creed could feel the familiar buzz all good newsmen and paparazzi get when a unique or, at least, newsworthy story is there for the taking (or making). Creed, as we know, was a
good
paparazzo – one of the best, in fact – and his senses were being titillated to the full, so much so that all other dreads at that moment were being overridden. The contrast between the gracious manor house above, obviously where richer ‘clients’ were cared for, and the squalid dungeons below where the less sane and no doubt less wealthy ‘clients’ were interned, was fantastic. He wondered if the celebrity guests who had arrived that evening to pay tribute to the late Lily Neverless were aware of conditions below-stairs? The tabloid newspapers and the Sundays would love it, especially if he got some decent shots of the more distinguished guests to run alongside the picture of Henry Pink, a frightened skeleton of a man, forced to live in a perpetual twilight world, driven crazy by nightmares of his own past . . . Great stuff!

‘I can show you if we hurry.’

‘What?’

‘You asked me what else I’d discovered,’ said Cally. ‘It’s not far from here, but I’m expected back, so we’ll have to be quick. I hope you’ve got a strong stomach.’

He looked at her quizzically. The wailing around them rose in pitch.

‘Come on, Joe, I can’t stand this noise.’

He allowed himself to be led away, although he regretted not having taken more snaps of poor Henry Pink. Something thudded against the inner side of a door to their left, but Cally dragged him onwards, not giving him time to investigate. Someone pummelled on another door and Creed wanted to stop and enquire who was in there; still the girl pulled and pushed him further along the passage. As he went he managed to turn and snap off a couple of shots of the almost mediaeval passageway behind them. Cally tugged at him impatiently.

They reached a corner and there in front of them was a solid and mean-looking iron door. Without hesitation the girl turned the wheel-handle and swung the door open. The brightness that poured through from the other side hurt Creed’s eyes.

Cally hastened him into the passage beyond, and he found himself in a place that was in total contrast to the dreary nether region they’d just left. The walls here were spotlessly white, the floor grey-tiled and equally pristine. Neon tubes, like pointers, lit the way ahead.

‘This is more like it,’ Creed remarked. ‘But why the Inner Sanctum back there? It’s as if whoever runs this place wants those loonies to live in misery.’

‘Perhaps that’s it.’

‘Huh?’

‘A punishment of some kind?’

‘For what?’

Cally shrugged. ‘Who knows? Perhaps they upset someone at some time or other.’

He stared hard at her. ‘You know more than you’re saying.’

‘Now’s neither the time, nor the place. We have to move on, Joe.’ She swung the door shut behind them, then started off down the passage.

Creed took a swift shot of the iron door before hurrying after her. She stopped halfway down and waited for him to catch up. ‘In there . . .’ she whispered when he drew close.

‘What’s in there?’ he whispered back.

‘You’ll have to see for yourself.’

He examined the double-door that she indicated. It was made of overlapping plastic, much like the push-through doors used in hospitals. Already, as if by instinct, he felt queasy, and the paleness of Cally’s features told him he had a right to feel that way.

‘Can’t you just tell me?’ he said.

‘You need to find out for yourself. Then perhaps you’ll believe me about these people.’

‘I believe, I believe.’

‘Go in.’

Resignedly, and with much trepidation, he pushed one side of the door. It opened a little.

‘Inside,’ Cally insisted.

‘You first.’

With a sigh, she pushed by him. He kept close behind.

They were in a small ante-chamber with a door opposite similar to the one they’d just come through.

‘An airlock?’ he suggested.

‘The doors are sealed to keep the room beyond as sterile as possible. You’ll find it’s very cold in there.’

The coldness rushed out at them as though in flight when Cally opened the second set of doors. She held one side back for him and, drawing a chilly breath, Creed entered.

It was like stepping into a giant refrigerator, for it was cool enough inside . . . he froze, but not because of the low temperature . . . cool enough inside to store dead meat . . .

There stood, in the room’s centre, a stainless steel table, the kind you might find in a morgue, with channels grooved in its surface for fluids to drain away. On the surface lay a naked grey-white body. There was a long gaping hole in the belly of that body.

The head was turned towards Creed and the girl, its mouth forming an immaculately toothsome grin of welcome. However, the welcome might have been more convincing had there not been a darkly-red hole where one of the head’s eyes should have been. The remaining blue eye seemed friendly enough, if a little glazed.

Creed thought he recognised the grin, with all its capped perfection, but it was the silver-fringed bald head, gleaming as though recently Mr Sheened, that confirmed the recognition. Even then he had to make sure; whether out of morbid curiosity or simply because of shock he did not know, but closer he moved. He bent down to look the mutilated corpse in the eye.

Creed stepped away so quickly that he stumbled and fell against one of the white-tiled walls. He slid to the floor, retching along with the descent. He wanted to be sick, for the heaving mess that rose from stomach to chest would have been better out than in, but it wouldn’t come; the bile just churned and lifted without making the full journey.

‘Someone you know?’ Cally asked from across the room.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the corpse. ‘Blythe. Antony Blythe. He writes the gossip column for my newspaper. I don’t get it. What’s . . . what was he doing here?’

‘Why don’t you take his picture?’

It was several moments before her remark registered, and several more moments before he could shift his gaze to her. ‘Are . . . are you taking the piss?’ he managed to say between gulps of purified air.

She had moved over to the stiffened body. ‘You want interesting photographs. It’s what you do, isn’t it?’

‘Leave it, Cally. Now’s not the time.’

‘I thought it was always time for a good shot, a great story. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You thought you might be on to something hot.’

‘I came here . . .’

‘To see if I was telling the truth. And if I was, then you had quite a story on your hands.’

He pushed himself erect against the wall, but his knees were not ready to bear his weight. He held them rigid. ‘I don’t understand this,’ he said desperately. ‘I don’t know why he came here and I don’t know why you’re talking this way.’

Cally hugged her bare shoulders against the cold and her face was angry, her eyes glaring. ‘I wish I could trust you,’ she said, but her voice softened, became quieter when she added: ‘Were you in this together, Joe? Were you both working on the story you thought you had?’

‘Cally, I swear I don’t know why Blythe came here. We couldn’t stand the sight of each other . . .’ His words tailed off when he glanced towards the open cadaver. ‘I don’t know how he found out about this place,’ he said lamely.

‘You haven’t told
any
one else?’

‘I didn’t know about it myself until last night.’ Last night? It felt like half a century ago. He forced himself to look at the corpse again. Oh God, why had they gutted him? ‘How did you know he was here, Cally?’ he asked.

‘I came down this way when I was looking for you. I looked into some of the rooms along this corridor – don’t ask me why. Curiosity, I suppose. I wondered what they kept behind these doors.’

‘Still you came and found me. Most women would have got the hell out.’

‘You’re forgetting my mother is here. I’ll do anything to get her away.’

He couldn’t be sure, he just couldn’t be bloody sure if he could really depend on her. Too many things had happened, her involvement was too deep. And she kept showing up at the oddest times, even if she always had good reasons for doing so. But what else could he do? He had to find Sammy and get him out, and she was the only one who could help him do that.

‘What now?’ he asked grimly.

‘The other rooms . . .’

‘I don’t want to see ’em.’

‘They keep large jars in one . . .’

‘I’m not interested.’

‘In the jars . . .’

‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.’

‘Parts of bodies . . . organs . . .’

He moaned.

‘They preserve them . . .’

He walked towards the plastic doors. ‘Are you coming?’ he said over his shoulder.

‘You’ll still help me?’

‘Like you keep telling me – I’ve no choice.’ He turned at the doorway and raised the camera. ‘Rest in peace, Antony. You were a bitch, but nobody deserves what they did to you.’