The Sanatorium(100)

A ring of pressure squeezes her head like a vise.

This can’t be happening. I can’t let it happen. Not again.

“How? We’re stuck here.” Elin’s aware her voice sounds out of control. Untethered. “We’ve no way of getting out.”

Lucas glances at her.

“I know. I just wanted you to know what she said.” She can tell it’s an effort to keep his voice calm. Isaac doesn’t know what to do with the information, how to react to it himself, let alone tell her.

“I’ll come up. See him before I go with Lucas.”

“Okay.”

Elin explains the situation to Lucas and then leaves his office, her heart pounding.

Stay calm, she tells herself, but all she can think about is losing Will.

She can’t lose any more of the people she loves.





81





Closing the door to their room behind her, Elin’s eyes fill with tears, tears she’d had to fight back as she’d sat beside Will. She’d wanted to be strong, to not show any fear, but it was a front.

Will looked worse. Frail. Under the bright lights above the bed, his skin seemed almost translucent, the bluish streaks of vein around his temple now visible through his skin. His breathing sounded shallow, like it was taking a herculean effort to maintain even the most basic of functions.

Despite Sara’s reassurances that his blood pressure had returned to normal, that things were under control, her mind keeps throwing up worst-case scenarios:

What if his blood pressure drops again?

What if Sara’s hiding the worst from me because she knows there’s nothing they can do until help arrives?

But she knows she can’t let her fears take over. If she does that, it’s not just Will’s life that will be in the balance, it’ll be everyone else’s.

Walking briskly down the corridor, she wipes the tears from her eyes.

Focus, she tells herself. Stay in control.

Lucas is waiting outside the archive room. “How’s Will?” His eyes are filled with a genuine concern as he opens the door.

“His blood pressure . . . it dropped suddenly, but it was back up when I left. Sara thinks it might be the start of an infection. He needs antibiotics.” She stops, feeling a horrible pull in her stomach, a fresh surge of guilt.

Should I really be leaving him to do this?

Lucas looks at her awkwardly. “Look.” His tone softens. “I’m happy to do this alone, if you want to stay with him.”

Elin walks farther into the room. “No, I need to do this.” Not only because she wants to make sure Margot can’t hurt anyone else, but because it’s now deeply personal. Margot hurt Will and Laure. She needs to be stopped.

“This is it.” She crouches down in the middle of the archive room, runs her fingers over the rubber matting.

Her eyes lock on the diamond-shaped holes in between, the small piece of metal straddling them, the silver stars decorating the top clearly visible.

“What is it?” Lucas kneels down beside her.

“A hair grip. It’s Margot’s. When I was in here before, I saw it on the floor. I didn’t make the connection until I saw her nail varnish on the envelope. It triggered something. I remembered her picking her nails on the desk. When she swept the flakes away, her arm knocked over her bag. Some hair grips fell to the floor . . .”

Her eyes find something else: several tiny flakes of gray between the holes in the matting. Licking her finger, she presses it down between one of them. Several of the flakes adhere to her finger. Elin stares, going over the sight in her mind.

It’s Margot’s nail varnish. That very particular gray color.

“What is it?”

“Nail varnish.” If she was in any doubt—not anymore. “Margot’s been here. Recently.” She looks closer. Several larger flakes are clearly visible between the matting. If she’d been just fiddling with her nails, the flakes would have spread over a larger area, over the matting too. There wouldn’t be any underneath, like this. Something has caused the varnish to flake off.

“This floor isn’t original, is it?”

Lucas straightens up. “No. The original floors were unworkable. This was only meant to be temporary, but then the plans for the room changed so we left it.”

Elin nods, still examining the matting. It’s then she notices it: a fine line scored through the surface. Her eyes follow it: the line measures roughly a few square feet.

She runs a hand over the line, fingertips tingling.

This can’t be a coincidence.

“What is it?” Lucas gives her a questioning look.

“I don’t know yet. Give me a moment.” Pulling her penknife from her pocket, she crouches down, hooks the end of the blade into a corner of the scored-out line. She pushes down hard until the corner of rubber matting lifts up.

She tugs at the edge, peeling the section up and away. Beneath the rubber matting is a thin layer of vinyl floor tile. Unremarkable, except that this, too, is dotted with tiny flecks of nail varnish. It also contains the same score mark: a large square in exactly the same shape as the rubber matting.

Elin feels the irregular flicking of her pulse. I’m onto something.

Hooking the knife into the line scored into the vinyl, she peels the square away. It comes up smoothly, easily, as if someone’s done the action before.