Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(73)
From inside the asylum a hard-edged shaft of light threw a long shadow out across the gravel. Stansfield saw the coil of rope, looked left and right and then stepped outside. As he bent to pick up the rope Berlin smashed the iron water pipe hard into the back of his right knee. Stansfield didn’t yell. A sudden inrush of air at the agonising pain collided with whatever sound might have been trying to come out of his mouth. He went down gasping, and rolled onto his back, clutching at his leg. Berlin brought the pipe down hard again, onto the man’s left kneecap this time, and Stansfield blacked out. A king-hit out of the darkness wasn’t really Berlin’s style but tonight he knew it was necessary. Might have been a long time since the ex-boxer had been in the ring, but the same went for Berlin. And he wasn’t sure how many people might be on duty tonight so he needed Tiny out of action for whatever was going to come next.
He took the roll of Elastoplast adhesive tape he’d found in the bathroom cabinet out of his jacket pocket, tore off a long strip .and stuck it over Stansfield’s mouth. The man gave a stifled moan and opened his eyes. His burnt-off eyebrows were just stubble and Berlin was tempted to hit him again, give the bastard one for Pip. He resisted the urge and instead rolled him onto his stomach and tied his hands behind his back.
Bugger, he hadn’t brought a knife. Securing Stansfield’s hands put his rope out of action. Berlin checked the pockets of his jacket for something sharp but there was nothing. He would have to do without the rope. It only took a second to pull the man into the shadow of the wall and then Berlin was inside the complex, closing the heavy door carefully behind him but not shooting the bolts.
The courtyard was lit by a single strong bulb set high on one of the stone walls. There was no noise. Berlin crossed the cobblestones quietly, trying to remember the way to the admin building, but once out of the first courtyard he was immediately lost. After crossing a second courtyard he had a choice of going left or right and he chose left. He was holding the water pipe in his right hand, letting it hang straight down beside his leg where he hoped it wouldn’t be too obvious.
The smell of burning flesh was stronger now. He turned another corner and found himself outside the boiler house. There was a creak of hinges as he slowly opened the door. The place was empty. It was hot as hell inside and the smell was worse. He could hear a pump and the roar of the furnace and see a line of bright red around a steel door. Several long metal rods leaning on the wall were pokers used for scraping out the firebox, he guessed. On the floor near the door of the furnace there were two large metal buckets. Berlin didn’t want to look but he made himself.
Both buckets had rust-brown stains around the lips. Inside was what looked like the contents of the off-cuts bin at his local butcher’s, the stuff they wrapped up for the dog. Berlin felt sick. He started to turn away when something white in the second bucket caught his eye. He used the tip of one of the iron pokers to move a piece of flesh, then dropped the poker and his iron pipe and stepped back gasping for breath, his brain refusing to accept what he had seen. If he’d eaten the toast Rebecca had made for him earlier, at least his heaving stomach would have something to bring up.
He leaned on the wall with both hands, the stone hot under his touch, his shoulders heaving. He spat, trying to clear the taste of bile from his mouth. He wondered if Stansfield had been the one working in here when he’d hammered on the outside gate. Now he wished he had smashed the club into the bastard’s skull rather than just breaking the man’s knees. He spat once more, wiped his face with his handkerchief and picked up his water pipe. Now he was ready.
FORTY-FIVE
Berlin retraced his steps from the boiler house to the courtyard and this time he turned right. It took him several minutes to find an unlocked door that let him into a long corridor. Heavy iron doors were set at regular intervals into the cold stone walls. Checking each of the rooms as he worked his way along took time, but he didn’t want any surprises. Most were locked tight, with no light showing underneath. He listened with his ear against each door but heard only silence. The unlocked rooms looked to have been abandoned. Moonlight through barred windows set high up in the walls showed only empty space or storage crates or iron-framed beds bolted to the floor. Their thin, blue-striped mattresses were stained and rat gnawed, all askew.
Berlin knew those iron beds. He had slept or tried to sleep on more than a few in his time. His crew quarters in England had them, as had the camp where he was interrogated after capture. Was there a universal law that said the military had to have the same awful beds worldwide? He’d also had a bed like these in the repat hospital, in the lonely room where his dead crewmates came to chat with him just before dawn, when the nightly injection had begun to wear off.
He came to one room that had a huge stone bathtub in the centre, and what looked like a row of open shower cubicles. There were sets of manacles hanging from iron staples in the walls in the cubicles, and a heavy fire hose coiled over a drum to one side. A cast-iron grate in the floor probably covered a drain. Berlin pulled the door closed, trying not to think about what might have gone on in that room over the past half-century.
The next room was windowless and Berlin risked using his torch. It was padded, lined with some sort of rubberised fabric that covered the ceiling and floor as well as the walls. The fabric was ripped in places, with kapok stuffing sticking out. In several places, the beam of the torch picked up strange indentations on the padded surface, mostly a foot or so above the floor. It took him a minute before he realised he was looking at bite marks, bite marks which looked to have been made by human teeth. His stomach heaved again.