Lucy walked over and frowned at the door. It was far too modern to take an old-fashioned barrel key. But its Yale lock didn’t accept any of the three colour-coded keys on the ring.
Still, no point giving up now.
She made her way along the front of the building and down the narrow alleyway that lay between it and another derelict warehouse. The gloom stank of old fish and motor oil, so strong she could taste it at the back of her throat.
A door lay at the end of the alley, partially hidden by a rusting display rack — like the ones dumped outside the printer’s she’d chased the Bloodsmith past. Didn’t take much to lever it out of the way.
That old lion-headed barrel key slid into the lock and turned, smooth as if it’d just been sprayed with WD40. Click. The door’s hinges didn’t even creak when she pushed it open, letting out the damp-grey fug of mould and mildew, laced with something sharper. Something unwell.
‘HELLO? I FOUND YOUR KEYS!’
Lucy stepped through into a gloomy brick-lined corridor, where the only light oozed in from the alley behind her. She pulled out her phone and brought up the torch app, following its hard white circle deeper into the corridor. A couple of doors hung open, the rooms beyond filled with nothing but darkness, dust, mouse droppings, and mould. The corridor doglegged around to the right, ending in another door. This one was locked, but it took the same key as outside, swinging open on a wide flight of stone stairs, leading down.
No dust on the floor here — it’d been used recently.
She opened her mouth to shout, ‘Hello?’ again, then closed it. Maybe not the best of ideas to advertise her presence till she found out what she was dealing with here. Instead, Lucy crept down, and down, and down, until she had to be about the same level as the river — maybe even below that — where a third locked door awaited.
Yeah...
This probably wasn’t the best situation for a lone police officer to be in. The sensible thing would be to give the Dunk a call and get some backup over here.
For what?
To help return a set of lost keys? Not exactly a number-one priority for Police Scotland, was it? Don’t be such a wimp.
The lion key fitted this door, too, and it swung open on a long, low room that—
‘Christ...’ Lucy shrank back, free hand clamping over her nose and mouth as the stench of raw sewage and rancid BO stampeded out of the gloom.
She gagged.
Spluttered.
Blinked away the tears that sprang into her eyes.
Ducting and wires criss-crossed the ceiling, glinting in the torchlight. But someone had set up a kind of play office in the middle of the room, complete with a threadbare couch, a little coffee table, and a dead pot plant, all of which looked as if they’d been dragged out of a skip.
She stepped into the room, Cuban heels echoing back from the bare brick walls.
Something clinked and rattled in the darkness, beyond the torch’s reach.
Lucy’s stomach clenched. ‘I’M A POLICE OFFICER!’ Putting a bit of force behind it, as if that would cover up the tremble in her voice. ‘ON THE GROUND NOW! HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!’
Assuming it was a human being making the noise and not a huge dog, of course.
Maybe backup wasn’t such a bad idea after all?
A thin, croaking voice rustled out from the shadows. ‘Lucy... Have you... Please, I’m so hungry...’ Coming from the same direction as the rattling.
She inched further into the room, torch held out in front of her. ‘Who’s there?’
A different voice this time, but right by her ear. ‘Who do you think it is?’
‘AARGH!’ She whirled around, free hand swinging a fist.
Thunk.
The blow reverberated up her arm as the person she’d hit went sprawling on the filthy concrete floor.
‘POLICE! STAY DOWN!’
The torch beam caught a dark-grey suit and mousy blond hair. Charlie.
He rolled over onto his back and smiled up at her. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’
There wasn’t a single mark on him — no sign of the broken nose she’d given him at Dr Christianson’s house, not even a scratch where she’d punched him just now.
Charlie sat up. ‘That wasn’t very professional, DS McVeigh.’ He stood, suit clean and neatly pressed, not so much as a smudge or crease on it. ‘But it’s all right, I’m not going to report you. I’m here to help.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Have to admit I’m a bit hurt by that.’ He wandered through the circle of torchlight, heading deeper into the room, towards those rattling noises. Disappearing into the darkness. ‘Don’t you want to see what all this has been building up to?’
He was off his bloody head.
Seriously, properly insane.
And quite possibly dangerous.
Why the hell hadn’t she brought an extendable baton down here with her? Or a can of pepper spray, or CS gas, or any sodding thing? Unless... She dug her hand into her overcoat pocket and yanked out the rape alarm DI Tudor had given her — the hundred-and-fifty-decibel one. Pointing it in the direction Charlie had gone, like an invisible sword.
Edging her way forwards, keeping the torchlight moving side to side like a search beam.
‘Charlie? Are you feeling OK?’
His voice came slithering out of the pitch dark. ‘Never better, DS McVeigh. Or do you think I should call you Lucy now? After all, we’ve got to know each other so well over these last few days...’
Should’ve got backup. Why the hell didn’t she call for backup?
She cleared her throat and kept moving. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? You set all this up. Dr Christianson isn’t the Bloodsmith, you are. You killed seven people and pinned it on him!’
‘Six people, Lucy. Six, not seven.’
The torch beam hit something pale. A bare foot, its skin a grubby shade of charcoal. Then the whole body came into view. It was a man, stark naked, so thin he wasn’t much more than a skeleton wrapped in tight pallid skin, peppered with bruises. Sharp cheekbones sat above a big, ragged beard — the hair around his high forehead long enough to curl down to just above his shoulders. Watery brown eyes squinting behind cracked round glasses. A twisted nose that looked as if someone had taken a hammer to it. He flinched back from the light, one bony hand coming up to shield himself from the glare. ‘Please...’ The knuckles were all swollen and twisted, the fingernails misshapen and caked with dried blood.
Thick chains were shackled around his wrists, another one around his neck, all bound together with a big padlock, the trailing edge leading to a loop of iron set into the floor next to a filthy stinking drain.
Lucy stared.
It was Dr John Christianson. A battered and starved version of him, but it was definitely him.
‘How...?’
Charlie appeared from the gloom behind him. ‘Too much?’
The ragged figure reached for her with those distorted claws. ‘Please, Lucy, I’m so hungry...’
‘But you’ve been following me!’
‘Lucy, I need you... I need you to listen to me.’ Christianson pressed his misshapen hands together, as if in prayer. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry for everything I’ve done. I confess: I killed those people and I’m so, so sorry for saying you’re unwell. You’re not, I was wrong, I can see that now. It’s all my fault.’
Lucy pulled her chin in. Took a shaky step closer. ‘Are you two in this together?’
‘But you came back! I didn’t think you’d come back, you didn’t leave me any food, and I’m so hungry...’